Tidings of Trickster Triumphant Joy!We’ve prepared a replenishing feast of metaphor and music. Metaphor and Music are the incarnational garb whereby Power enters the World – the Power to animate the desirable guiding story. Here be a portion of the whole replenishing presentation with ally musicians, Keith Carr & Tina Eck, of Lilt.
(12.27.2018) Winter Solstice (Chart & Themes)
Yo back-stage ally Tricksters,
We already have the complete cahoot (here)…
but on radio 12.27.18, we play a pretty woofy portion…
And as all moments in time await our dedication,
here below is the chart for the radio airing, that we,
together may further animate the desirable, and spiral forth
blessings to all who would find heartening…
The Omen Days: The Twelve Days of Christmas
By Caitlin Matthews
(original post: https://caitlin-matthews.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-omen-days-twelve-days-of-christmas.html )
The Twelve Days of Christmas as intentional auguries:
“In the medieval liturgical calendar, the festival of Christmas Day stood alone by itself as a supreme holy day, and so the counting of the twelve days began from 26 December which is the 1st day of Christmas until the 6th January which is Twelfth Night, or the 12th day of Christmas.”
Well, in Brittany and in Wales, the Twelve Days of Christmas, which mark the intercalary days of the year, are called ‘the Omen Days,’ and they have a special purpose. ‘Intercalary days’ are really the days left over from reckoning up the solar year and, in calendars throughout the world and at different times, they are special because they are considered to be ‘the days out of time.’ It is in this interval between the ordinary count of days that gods are born or conceived in many different mythologies, including the Irish one, where Oengus Og, Young Angus, is conceived, grown and born at Brúg na Boinne within this time, all in one day, by the magical workings of the Dagda.”
Within these twelve days lies a wonderful secret that those dismissive of the Christian tradition might well miss, for each of the twelve days is assigned to a month of the coming year, with the first day of Christmas the 26th December as symbolic of January, the second day or 27th December representing February and so on, right through to 6th January which represents the December yet to come. It was the custom of many to go out on each day of the Christmas festival to observe the signs in nature and divine from them the state of the year to come. The omens experienced on each of the Omen Days indicate the nature of each month in the coming year.”
Caroline chiming in: The word “Inauguration”- comes from the augur, the Diviner within us all, who would walk out into Nature, and discern Nature’s choosing of the most responsibe human to mediate betwixt the human community, and the whole larger Community of Creation. And then that woman/man would be “inaugurated.”Let’s return to that as a way we choose our “leaders,” this entrusted with wise, kind stewardship.“
The divining of oracles from nature has a long tradition in Celtic lore. The Scots Gaelic tradition of the frith or the augury from the signs of nature is well established. The listening to bird’s calling was a critical part of druidic lore, as was the movement and behaviour of other animals. Some of these auguries have come down to us, like the little white book of meanings in a tarot pack: some people used them, but others did not. The real skill is to read the signs in accordance with your understanding at the time, and as it relates to the question that provoked the augury in the first place. I’ve been teaching this skill for over 25 years and not yet found anyone who couldn’t do it, as long as they first asked a well-framed question.”
“In this case, you treat each day of Christmas as the opportunity for an augury for the month it represents in coming year. This might be experienced during a daily walk, or perceived in the nature of the day itself and how it falls out. Personally, I like to make a frame for each Omen Day, by asking to be shown an augury from nature and allowing the next thing I experience, see or hear to be the sign I am expecting. It helps to find the right place to do this on a walk, to close your eyes, to spin around on the spot and then be attentive.
Many of my students have been doing this for a while and last year I shared it with an online group of Lenormand Card readers, who are now using the Omen Days to divine for the year ahead, choosing one or more cards each day to discover the nature of the months of the year.
There is no right way to do this, only by the unique interaction you have between the world that is seen and the world that is unseen, but just as real.That the Twelve Days of Christmas have kept their assured place at the heart of Celtic divination is one of those wonderful instances of double-decker belief that are scattered throughout folk tradition worldwide.
The Russians have a good word for this kind of thing, naming it dvoverie or ‘double-belonging,’ a word originally coined to cover those who had an earlier belief running alongside a later one. Wherever a newer tradition has come into a country, the older one doesn’t just die or go away, but becomes fused with the newer one, so that the traditional continuity can be enjoyed by us all.
Whatever your beliefs, the Omen Days continue to offer the opportunity to understand the year ahead so, forget the ‘year’s round up of news’ and the ‘look-back specials’ on the tv this Christmas and look ahead to a year full of promise!I wish you and yours joy, health, love and peace!
So, even though I will not be live at the helm,
tis the playing of the edited event, this be its larger public airing..
that together we can animate, within and without…
(on this 2nd day of Christmas, relating to each one of our customized Februaries 2019)
Tis deep fun that the Sun in Capricorn is in the 8th house, back-stage invisible (as radio be),
at the degree ”Heavily veiled Hierophant,” cahooting with “the divine, leads a powerful ritual.”
*Encouraging our participation… tossing undesirable things into the cauldron,
and ladling out the liberated anti-dote Medicine…
*And always asking everything sketchy,
“now what did you want to be- before you were bamboozled?”
Let’s Track back to radical root, and set free to fulfill your/our Destiny (aka “Weird”),
like freeing an animal from a snare, seeing it scamper off jaunty….
*Everything we set free, sets us free…
In this Season of Reciprocal Liberating Blessing!
The rising sign (the Diaphanous lens, through which everything shines)
is a beautiful augury: “A White Dove Flying Over Troubled Waters”…
“assuring that what one seeks is near at hand.”
Noah’s ark like preparations…Woo-howdy…
Neptune has just changed degrees,
and is now at the constellating our Dream team degree….
Inviting (trining) Venus and Ceres Demeter to join (conjoined)
at 19+ Scorpio (grumpy medieval priests called that degree
“the accursed degree of the accursed sign,” because it’s a no priest hood degree):
“A woman draws back two dark curtains leading to a sacred pathway…”
Sextiling the Medicine Moon in Virgo, at “Volcano degree” –
deep underground stirrings…rising into conscious language crafting
….that we artfully express our prayers,
(opposite Neptune) amplifying today’s beginning message,
that grief artfully expressed becomes a sacrament of all embracing kinship.
Trining Saturn and Pluto, providing the artful craft
of navigating this imminent year of mega-collapse of old structures,
that we be prepared to ladle out of that cauldron –
the authentic structures of compassionate indigenuity…
Mars continues to proffer the literal and symbolic fuel, on which we most want to run,
the quality of yang we most want to honor – within and without
(approaching conjunction with Chiron, the Mentor Centaur):
qualities of kind, wise guiding, comforting protection of all beings
and drawing upon all ancestral guiding wisdom to do so…
Let’s remember the quirky Stock Market term of “animal spirits,”
inadvertently reminding us that our economy is related
to how we treat our animal kin…
Let’s warmly greet all the animals, foreign and domestic,
that we encounter through January 6th (well, really, forever) –
Twelfth Night, Epiphany!
Uranus, Trickster Ingenuity direct, forward out into the world…
What we craft inwardly now, is what we connect with outwardly then!
Aizon!
