Alchemy of the Soul, The Arc of the Ancients. Intro

“What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.” Mat 10:27
“If thou love to hear, thou shalt receive understanding: And if thou bow thine ear, thou shalt be wise.” ~Sirach 6:33

Universe is a garden of secret wonders.  If you look, at any minute she will part her skirt, pull you into her rich soil and whisper secrets to help you find your way home.

At every turn there stand sentries, guardians of the gates and banshees to flood you into the tangled and odiferous bowels of despair and torment; lest you lose sight of the higher and noble calling, the skeleton key that will allow passage.
This is the majestic texture of our world, often in plain sight the grand design arouses the inner visionary in us who knows the way~ if that voice can rise above the din, the decadent and the superfluous sheath that is every bit as real as every layer beneath and below, above and beyond this dimension.  To negate one is to negate all, to negate the very self that yearns to be found, rescued but above all, WITNESSED, heard and loved.  Love is a complicated thing and at the same time, like the universe she created, she is a marvel so simple one has only to sit inside her listening and ever-present watchful embrace and let her carry you into bliss.

But here…here is where you may find yourself sleeping….and once again wake on some precipitous and craggy cliff, with only the crisp air as company, while the mind gallops off in search of itself, and the heart of all that matters waits for its consort to catch up and surrender to her embrace once again.

I am a girl born on the seventh day of the seventh month, one of seven children and whose name begins with the seventh letter in the English alphabet.  My world has never been one as simple as it appeared to be to others.  In youth, I wondered why I must leave the richness of my forested mind, for the more superficial world everyone else wanted to play with.  All of it thrust upon you like a strange car wreck, or an obvious game I had to wake up in, but what would it take?  What special code or learning must I figure out to unlock the treasure map, and have everyone take off their masks, and congratulate me for unraveling the grand play too?

I tell you this in complete honesty.

For the longest time, I peered into eyes, wondered what part of me was not good enough, to be taken into the grand illusion that everyone was playing.  Why did they act as if no one else knew the secret world that was hidden in the veins of the leaves that danced around us, mesmerizing with brocades of changing colours like swimming chameleons inhabiting the world?

When would everyone else talk about the ‘big people’ who are all lit up but whose appearance only silhouetted the backdrop of the canvas my mind fell into?  Didn’t everyone entertain them and wasn’t it one of the most fulfilling camaraderie’s to experience those who stood tall as trees pour their genuine love in mutual praise as if every choir song wrote itself from this cause?

I thought surely that since I had such a tendency for mischief and finding my way into odd adventures that something then must be wrong with me.  Other people somehow weren’t thinking like me, but maybe I was just bad.  I was so bad, that no-one could share this secret that existed in every page I turned and followed on my adventurous sojourn through life.

Who would discuss the fairy fields I found as surely others did too?  Who else knew about the circle around the trees in the woods that shifted and sprinkled star dust?  Who else entertained the large beings of light that would appear after I prayed which opened the vaults of heaven?  The smiles on their faces and the glint in their eyes infusing me with love and contentment, letting me know that they enjoyed watching me entertain them with my singing and dancing? 

Surely once I got one more A, one more gold star, finished first in one more contest, then…. then the game would open its doors and the cast members would reveal their identity.

The sad thing is that one risks losing their freedoms just for mentioning the world that is real and more alive and vibrant than the march of superfluous reality that seems to have seduced the masses into plastic images and celluloid dreams, of contorting the deep forest into packages of exactness whose only hope is to replicate the new and improved image being craftily lit and cascading around their thirsty souls.  

What a web; all sticky and sweetly perfumed again with some replication of the natural bounty that would adorn the temple of our beings with layers of truth; the kind that marches down the halls and lights up the senses with the purpose of being alive.

Why be here at all if the care isn’t taken to wonder?  To take the train on the dark night and wake in the valley of the gods who have been coaxing and guiding us all along?

This is my world; it is as it has always been an adventure of strange beliefs and hidden knowledge.  I feel like Moses in the desert, parting the red sea of life; opening the book one living word, one page at a time and learning the meaning I somehow already know.

There is magic afoot, it is under every stone and shimmering on the waters….it is dancing on our rooftops and howling in the wind.  It creaks down the halls and breaks down silence until it spills loudly into the room and stands between the moments of disbelief like a lighthouse forming from the mist and gloom.

I am yanked back into the strange reality like a naughty schoolgirl, made to play the game with scolding eyes and sometimes worse; while the mystery drips from my veins and disappears into the cracks, waiting for me to rescue the life I was born to live and reveal.

This is my attempt to take you in and reveal what sorcerers have been burned alive for sharing, madmen have caught shards of along the way, and stories that hold power have hidden in their pages, if one learns how to listen ~ and has the eyes to see.

They stand all around us, sometime alone and more powerfully together; our guardians are rivers of   We need them, they need us.  Excitedly I crept into the canopy of autumnal glory; fiery reds and umbers crisply painting the baby blue skies and the lemon sun drizzling down in shafts of warm surrender.  My heart beating in rhythm, my breath, dotting the air with invisible ink, as the forest shifted and turned, the secret panels opened. It is then, that Her voice grew louder.  The voice of the earth, called by many names, but I know her now, as Mary Magdalene.

wisdom who symbiotically breathe into us life and we exhale the breath they need.

Each cracking branch underfoot becomes a lever to the magic code of the great Cathedral.

Can you see?  Can you hear?  Maybe you forgot how to listen?  This book is written in my attempt to help you hear that voice, that voice that will help find your own voice and your way home…we'll walk there together.