Recording: Shining Tribe Exploratorium ~ Walking the Ways Alignment
As happened last year, the Shining Tribe Exploratorium and Soul Path Sanctuary's Walking the Ways of the Summer Light will overlap starting with yesterday's session. Recording below.
Greetings, Shining Tribe!
Walking the Ways continues traveling toward the Solstice and this week we shift from Earth to Air communing. The first Air Day prompt is below followed by the link to Overview Booklet and recording of yesterday’s session.
Yesterday’s session was an orientation to this retreat-in-everyday life as well as a check in on the happenings during the Earth week. When we pulled cards to prompt Earth questions it was quite amazing how by chance so many Stones cards emerged. What we reach out to in the elemental world reaches back to us!
Take good care,
Carolyn
In each of the four weeks leading up to the Solstice a different element is our guide for wisdom wandering and collecting questions for soul tending. We seek the wisdom of the season through connecting with nature and communing with the Tarot (or other oracle) in an embodied way. Here is the Day 1 Prompt for Practice for Making an Air Connection.
Words to Inspire
We are our grandmother’s prayers. We are our grandfather’s dreamings. We are the breath of our ancestors.
Dr. Ysaye Barnwell
Wisdom Image
Prompts for Practice
Today you are invited to contemplate Air in one or all of these ways:
gazing at the image above or your favorite Tarot card from the suit connected to air (most commonly the suit with titles like Swords, Birds, Clouds);
looking out your window to see if you can detect the air moving branches, flags, bags, bees; or
taking a moment to stand in a quiet part of your yard or on a busy city sidewalk to feel the breeze.
Then ponder your connection to and understanding of the element of air. This is the place from which you begin. Use your own current definitions and understandings to contemplate these questions:
What do you already know about the air element (from the Tarot’s earth suit, or connecting physically with the air, or from your spiritual tradition’s teachings about air)?
How have you encountered air before in your life?
What lessons might the air offer you?
What might you receive from some time spent with air?
What gifts can you offer to air?
Just let ideas float through your head. No need to be comprehensive, just open to what comes.
Continue your work throughout the week by inviting Wayshowers and Guides from your Tarot or oracle deck to accompany you as you wisdom wander the week.
Joining the Practice
It’s really as simple as wisdom wandering with cards and I’m happy to offer the essence of this soul tending practice to all who follow me here on Substack.
If you would like more of a structure for your seeking or to have opportunities to gather in circle to share stories of your wandering, paid subscribers have access to the Overview Booklet with Daily Prompts for Practice and virtual orientation and sharing circle sessions that will be held at the beginning, middle, and end of the season on Sundays May 31 (recording below), June 21 (the Solstice!), July 12th at 12:30 pm (time zone converter).
A quick and fleeting report on what attention to air brought to my morning as I walked with this prompt.
The wind was blowing. The leaves lifting. Air moved toward me, around me, surrounded me, and I let myself be blown. I took my tiny notebook and pen from my pocket and gathered fragments that might become poems:
Air joins water in clouds. Clouds cover the mountain, make mystery of what was solid. A landmark by which we oriented ourselves disappears and returns and disappears again.
Nothing moves but you know you are in air because sound travels to you. The “coco reel” of red-wing blackbird awakens a muscle that moves between your ear and heart.
What is the use of air? Earth gives us form. Fire animates each cell. Water moves through the heart, our liquid flow. But air is the emptiness inside. Must make for us a place to hide.
And so, my day began with deep attention and a gift of words.