TIP OF THE DAY - WORKING WITH SYMBOLS

Magick and divination are both heavily reliant on symbols. Learning to work with symbols is like learning a foreign language, or perhaps the analogy of getting to know new friends from faraway places is a better fit... One thing is certain: once you've achieved an understanding of the true meaning of a symbol, the world has changed forever.

For symbols to be meaningful we have to work with them and really pay attention to them over a period of time. Each symbol has many layers of meaning. It takes time and patience to uncover them all.

As with the Moon cycles it is essential to keep a journal or to enter the observations into your Book of Shadows.

The first step is to decide on a symbol that you would like to get to know better. But don't be surprised if the symbol chooses you.

Let's say I want to understand the true meaning of rainbows. For many years, I might have just thought of them as pretty colours in the sky. Then one of them appears on the day that I receive news of a miraculous healing. The rainbow has my attention. What else can it communicate?

As I work with the rainbow symbol and enter the observations into my BoS, I start noting subtle differences like the size and brightness of the rainbow, what the sky around it looks like... if it's a double or even triple rainbow... where it's located... what time of the day it appears etc. etc. For these differences to have any meaning, I need to relate them to what is going on in my own life.

The different types of rainbows may be more related to thought processes and emotions than to things that happen in the world, or it could be a bit of both. As any person who spends time reflecting on internal process will know, the outside world often reflects that which is within.

Working with symbols in this way is the path to becoming the kind of oracle who can read anything, anywhere at any time. If you use any kind of man-made divination tool, like the Tarot or the I-Ching, your experiental database of symbols will take your divination skills to the next level as you'll start seeing correspondences that you weren't aware of before.

As a Tarot reader, I might pull a card one day and feel my eyes drawn to one of the details in the card. Let's say I truly notice the white dove in the Empress card for the first time. This might be the beginning of a very exciting journey that culminates in a deep understanding of the relationship between various aspects of Spirit and the Divine Feminine... I could read hundreds of books on the topic and never reach as deep an understanding of these aspects as I would by internalising them through observation and connecting them with my own experiences and emotions.

Learning to see with magickal eyes is fun and doing it together with others is even more fun! The moments of the penny dropping in group path working are priceless because we get so much further together than we can on our own.

I hope to see as many of you as possible at our next Richmond Chalice Meeting!

Bright Blessings

Lisa

http:://tarothealingbylisa.blogspot.com