Almanac of the Spirit

06/07/2024

“Once upon a time, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

- Terry Tempest Williams

26/02/2024

Thank you to all our friends and followers!
I appreciate you.

If any would like to enroll in my new Tarot for Beginners course, enrollment is currently open and priced for an early bird special of just $78 (the number of Tarot cards in a deck). It includes 12 weekly video lessons, a private Facebook group for all enrolled students, a course guidebook in pdf, and a bonus workshop series called the Destiny Discovery Program!

Each weekly lesson is just over an hour in length, and you'll have the video access for life.

Interested in finding out more? -
you can sign up at the bottom of this linked page and receive my 1-hr Tarot Foundations class for free. :)

If you like this first class, you can sign up for the full Tarot for Beginners course straight away, and you'll see all the info and details about the course right under the free Tarot Foundations class.

I'd love to have you join us!
- Laura (admin)

Learn the basics of the Tarot in just 1 hour. After viewing this class you will be able to begin doing basic readings with the Tarot, with any deck that you like!

25/02/2024

09/02/2024

We light a candle today to honor Stuart Kaplan, who passed away at the age of 88 on February 9, 2021. We still miss his smile, and lovingly remember his kindness, humor, and generosity.

In 1968 while traveling for business in Europe, Stuart Kaplan attended the Nuremberg Toy Fair in search of game ideas and gifts for his children. He discovered an intriguing deck of cards unlike anything he had ever seen before. He brought the pack of Swiss 1JJ Tarot back to New York and started selling it to bookstores. The deck began to sell well but there was no instruction book available, so Stuart wrote Tarot Cards for Fun and Fortune Telling.

With these products Stuart launched U.S. Games Systems, Inc. the first company to publish tarot decks in the U.S. He chose the Fool card from the Rider-Waite® Tarot Deck as the company logo because it represents the willingness to take a leap of faith and follow an uncharted path (And his birthday is April 1, April Fool’s Day). Stuart made it his personal mission to bring Pamela Colman Smith the recognition she richly deserved. He spent years researching Smith and collecting her original art and publications, which would be showcased in his book Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story.

Stuart’s dedication to education also led him to write one of the most extensive bodies of work on the tarot, the four-volume Encyclopedia of Tarot, which describes and illustrates more than 1,000 different tarot decks from the 15th century to the present. The Encyclopedia of Tarot has become the most influential collection of books for tarot history and research. (While out of print today, each volume of his Encyclopedia has been scanned and made available as E-books.)

Stuart believed that tarot cards are an unbound book, by shuffling the cards a new story is revealed. The person reading the cards brings their own, unique interpretation to each reading of an individual card and the cards in combination. In his experience tarot is a catalyst. In some ways, it is also a creativity tool to allow people to think differently and experience thoughts and ideas they might not otherwise have considered. For some people, tarot allows for serious meditation, others find it fun. It is all in the eyes of the beholder.

20/12/2023

"The love we give away is the only love we keep.” - Elbert Hubbard

(art: Jane Newland)

20/12/2023

"The way you alchemize a soulless world into a sacred world is by treating everyone as if they are sacred until the sacred in them remembers." ~ Sarah Durham Wilson ✨🌟✨

Art: Margaret Tarrant (1888-1959)🎨🖌

https://www.instagram.com/p/C1BIpKiso24/

13/12/2023

Ryan Drum is going home.
Before he leaves, while he can still hear me, I want to tell him: No herbalist has impacted me more deeply and profoundly than Ryan Drum.
His single drop crystallized so much in me. (Chemists will understand. If you don't, ask one about saturated solutions.)

Decades ago, at Breitenbush Hot Springs, my love relationship with Ryan began. Not a day has passed since that I have not felt his love for me and mine for him.

I visited him and Waldron briefly. He fed me duckling. We harvested seaweed. I slept in the drying shed. We swapped stories when we had the breath. (Lugging buckets of wet seaweed uphill took my breath away.) Ryan and I intersected, shared, loved, and lived with green attitudes we thought we were "alone" in.

Because of Ryan, I dared to be a Simpler. It's not just me saying "one at a time," Ryan hears the same message.
Because of Ryan, I dared to speak in "plant." His attunement to nature was so finely wrought, so subtle, so vigorous that it convinced me I was hearing the plants.
Because of Ryan, I dared to demand respect for myself, for women, the plants. His unflinching, unconditional respect for woman/nature/earth made me bolder.
Because of Ryan, I know I am held in a chain of green consciousness without beginning or end.

I hereby declare Ryan Drum to be the patron saint of the Red Clover Conference.
No one loves her more than Ryan. Being cut off from her by the Nature Conservancy seemed to me to be one of the great loses of his life. And I believe he was drawn to Waldron because of her.

Let’s honor Ryan's special relationship with red clover by writing down — or making a video of — anything you remember Ryan saying, sharing, teaching about red clover.

I would that we had Ryan and red clover in his own words, first hand, but I'm not too proud to accept second hand. Your hand. Your recollections of Ryan sharing his love of red clover. I accept them.

Search your memory banks. Mine your dream caches. Find your old class notes.
Let’s hear Ryan in our own words if we can’t have his.

Your words and short videos will be shown at the Red Clover Conference and create a loving red clover heart for Ryan's ease, to pillow his head as he becomes everything, as he becomes green blessings. I love you Ryan.

Susun W**d
December 2023

07/12/2023

The Lord's Prayer...translated from Aramaic directly into English.
Rather than from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English (which most of us are used to from the King James version:

O cosmic Birther of all radiance and vibration,
soften the ground of our being and carve out a space within us where your Presence can abide.
Fill us with your creativity so that we may be empowered to bear the fruit of your mission.
Let each of our actions bear fruit in accordance with our desire.
Endow us with the wisdom to produce and share what each being needs to grow and flourish.
Untie the tangled threads of destiny that bind us, as we release others from the entanglement of past mistakes.
Do not let us be seduced by that which would divert us from our true purpose, but illuminate the opportunities of the present moment.
For you are the ground and the fruitful vision, the birth, power, and fulfillment, as all is gathered and made whole once again.
And So It Is!

27/11/2023

Most people have no idea that stupas are filled to the very top with hundreds of sacred objects. The Amitabha Stupa contains these offerings: sacred mandalas which antidote specific causes of suffering and increase prosperity, well-being and peace; close to a billion mantras for peace, compassion, and the pacification of negativity; precious medicines from around the world; and earth from every continent.

Within the Amitabha Stupa there is also a sacred relic from the Buddha of our time, Shakyamuni (Gautama) Buddha! There are numerous other extraordinary relics from past living Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. These relics give the Amitabha Stupa its profound potency to alter the karmic fabric for all who stand in its presence.

If you are interested in Stupas, what's inside them, and want to learn more, you can purchase a copy of the book "The Story of the Amitabha Stupa" (sold on Amazon) with fantastic pictures, imagery, and descriptions of what goes inside and how they are made.

28/10/2023

The dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presence, they slip out of visible form into invisible presence. This alteration of form is the reason we cannot see the dead. But because we cannot see them does not mean that they are not there. Transfigured into eternal form, the dead cannot reverse the journey and even for one second re-enter their old form to linger with us a while. Though they cannot reappear, they continue to be near us and part of the healing of grief is the refinement of our hearts whereby we come to sense their loving nearness. When we ourselves enter the eternal world and come to see our lives on earth in full view, we may be surprised at the immense assistance and support with which our departed loved ones have accompanied every moment of our lives. In their new, transfigured presence their compassion, understanding and love take on a divine depth, enabling them to become secret angels guiding and sheltering the unfolding of our destiny.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

County Kerry, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

13/03/2023

12/03/2023

🌹💫 Rachel Pollack 💫🌹🙏

05/12/2022

🙏❄️✨❤️✨🙏🌎❤️✨❄️

Dear followers and friends, near and far,

Happy holidays!

And: Stay tuned!
- We will soon begin publishing content from three readers who will be available weekly for different levels and types of intuitive consultations. 🙂 It’s finally happening! Yay!

Readings with highly recommended, gifted intuitive readers make great holiday gifts!
We will have gift certificates available.

I’ll be back with all the details for you all this afternoon (AZ time/ Mountain time ).

🙏❄️✨❤️✨🙏🌎❤️✨❄️

08/09/2022

JOY

Joy does not arrive with a fanfare,
on a red carpet strewn with the flowers of a perfect life.

Joy sneaks in, as you pour a cup of coffee,
watching the sun hit your favourite tree, just right.

And you usher joy away,
because you are not ready for it.
Your house is not as it must be,
for such a distinguished guest.

But joy cares nothing for your messy home,
or your bank-balance,
or your waistline, you see.

Joy is supposed to slither through the cracks of your imperfect life,
that’s how joy works.

You cannot invite her, you can only be ready when she appears.

And hug her with meaning,

because in this very moment,

joy chose you.

Donna Ashworth

Art by Inge Löök Oy Ab

06/03/2022

08/01/2022

Each one of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness. Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you. The mystic Thomas a Kempis said that when you go out into the world, you return having lost some of yourself. Until you learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you will only become empty and weary. When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality. In a sense this is the endless task of finding your true home within your life. It is not narcissistic, for as soon as you rest in the house of your own heart, doors and windows begin to open outwards to the world. No longer on the run from your aloneness, your connections with others become real and creative. You no longer need to covertly scrape affirmation from others or from projects outside yourself. This is slow work; it takes years to bring your mind home.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the book, Eternal Echoes
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

County Kildare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill