Walking the Ways Week 3 ~ Water
Prompts for Practice for All. Plus a video by Mary Greer and me. Recording of Our Intention Setting (inspired by The Lovers) Session & Overview Booklet at end for Paid Subscribers.
Before diving into this week’s elemental offering, here is a video that Mary Greer and I did as a preview/intro to the upcoming Wisdom of the Tarot at Omega.
In the video we talk about benefits for those who attend and I pulled a card from the Shining Tribe. The 2 of Birds emerged. Such an interesting gift card on many levels. A personal association that I didn’t go into in the video is that for me this is the card of the dead and the living standing back to back, no longer in view of each other but most certainly connected. I thought this related to Rachel being with us :)! Also potentially the Tarot’s ability to connect us to the Greater Than Ourselves, including our Beloved Dead and Ancestors. I’d welcome any thoughts that you all had on this.
Elemental Connecting Weekly Flow with Prompts for Practice: Water
An offering from Soul Path Sanctuary to the Shining Tribe that you can participate in each week as we go toward the Solstice—or not. Details on this offering are here.
Also if you are local to me and interested in the in-person gathering I am having the morning of Saturday, June 21 here in Easthampton, do reach out.
The dark inner seas seek us out like the song of ocean in a shell, and we turn back toward them, to our origins, our waters of birth.
Linda Hogan, from Dwellings
Day 1 - Water Connection
The element of water has a message for you. Commune with the puddle, the stream, a dry riverbed, the deluge of drops (tears or rain), to learn what wisdom waits. Receive the life-giving gifts that come from water, the source of life and element of our first home, the womb. Let yourself be renewed.
Prompts for Practice
Today you are invited to contemplate an image of water: the image and words on title page for this element; your favorite Tarot card from the suit connected to Water (most commonly suits with names like Cups or Rivers); or any sized body of water from the ocean to the water glass you bring to your lips.
Then ponder your connection and understanding of the element of water. This is the place from which you begin. Use your own current definitions and understandings to contemplate these questions:
When you hear the word “water” what does it encompass?
What do you already know about the water element (from the Tarot’s earth suit, or connecting physically with water, or from your spiritual tradition’s teachings about water)?
Is there a place or an activity that especially connects you to water?
What lessons and gifts might come from connecting with water?
What gifts can you offer to water?
Day 2 - Water Guides
Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything - even mountains, rivers, plants and trees - should be your teacher.
Morihei Ueshiba
Prompts for Practice
Today invite, select, and welcome your Way Showers and Guides for encountering the element of water.
Because the language of nature and the elements is not immediately apparent to us humans, we can ask for help from the Tarot, oracles, or any other inspirational form we know well. Here are some options for making your selection:
If working with a Tarot deck, take out the cards from the suit associated with water (Cups or Rivers for example) and the Major Arcana. Shuffle this part of the pack and select a few cards to travel with.
For a Tarot or any oracle deck, if you have a relationship with a wisdom figure(s) represented on a card that seems to have an especial connection to air, feel free to find and wander with this card.
Working with a Tarot deck is not required. You could create your own set of cards that guide through images or words. You could, for example, take a poem or a sacred text that offers you special inspiration related to the water element and write lines or stanzas on different index cards. Select a few or bring the whole piece in parts to carry with you. Or you could find/select seashells and carry them with you. You can learn about the behavior of the creatures that inhabit the shell and/or look up their symbolic significance to add meaning to the shells you carry.
You could combine approaches and carry cards or items from more than one deck/text/container for inspiration.
If this seems like too many options just go with the first option using your Shining Tribe and see how it works for you.
Spend some time today meeting the one(s) who have emerged to travel with you.
Day 3 - Water Element Communion, Part 1
The dark inner seas seek us out like the song of ocean in a shell, and we turn back toward them, to our origins, our waters of birth.
Linda Hogan, from Dwellings
Prompts for Practice
What belongs to Water? What belongs to other elements? You won’t need to and won’t be able to ignore the presence of earth, air, and fire. All the elements mix to make our dynamic world. But you are invited to tune into water’s flow and its special gifts. You might try out being with water as …
Source of life. Creation stories from many different cultures begin with water. Our food comes to us because of water. We humans are mostly water. Once I stood at the edge of a slow-moving stream and was moved to whisper to the water: “Thank you for my life.”
A conduit of connection and wholeness. In The Earth Path, Starhawk says that in meditation, she heard water say, “All water is one – one whole, one awareness. All water is continuously aware of all the other waters in the world.” So, when you stand at the edge of the ocean, a river, or puddle you might feel the connection to all the other waters in the world. When you take a sip from the tap, you might imagine that you are drinking in the flow of all the oceans on the earth.
Trickster of cycles. The sun and moon have regular cycles, but water shows us an irregular flow from deluge to drought, or sometimes just enough. In New England we often have an overabundance or water while California experiences drought. This cyclical imbalance, too, reminds us of how we are connected by water. While I may not be in California, the food produced there feeds the whole country. I have a local farm share so the impact any particular summer may be lessened for me individually, but the current food system will struggle to absorb the impact and real problems will emerge as the drought continues. This trickster side of water is offering us a lesson in connection and a prompt to think about solutions like localized food production.
Mirror. Serenity, turbulence, peace. The movement of water can help to let our feelings flow. Cascades of water can loosen our tears. A calm stretch of water can give us rest. We can mirror the water and find a new rhythm. This experience goes beyond words. Just be with water and see.
Voice. The sound of water is hypnotic, can shift your state. Let the water relax you into an altered state and then listen for its messages.
Mystery and play. Below the surface, water can be dark and murky, impenetrable. We know we can’t see everything. Once on a Wisdom Wander, I visited a large vernal pool that a few weeks ago had been filled with frog life, but now was dark with decay of leaves and fallen branches. How did this darkness descend so quickly? The question followed me for a while, but as I continued to wander I came upon a water park where children squealed in delight as cold water hit their shoulders. And many of us take summer trips specifically to play in the water, swim in its pools, dance in its spray. So, water shows that seriousness of mystery and delight of play exist together. Like Yin and Yang, they contain each other.
And as you are exploring – and you might have to use your imaginal senses to do this – see if you can feel your blood flowing. What tunes you into your inner movement? What softens in your body? Where inside do you know you are liquid and water and flow?
Day 4 - Water Element Communion, Part 2
The suit of Cups shows an inner experience that flows rather than defines, that opens rather than restricts.
Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom
Prompts for Practice
Growing out of Western traditions and including insights added by contemporary practitioners with eclectic influences, the Tarot gives each element a range of meaning. The water element – most commonly associated with suits named Cups, Chalices, or Rivers – has gathered meanings such as:
Essence: Receptive. This element serves the flow.
World: The world of Mystery that moves constantly around and connects us even when we do not perceive its presence.
Tasks: In the world of water, we bridge Mystery and our daily lives through befriending the irrational forces of the emotions, intuition, and the imagination. Here, we endeavor to make connections to the people in our lives, our own creativity, and even the not-fully-expressible Mystery. Led by water, we seek to nurture others and ourselves as well as grow our emotional intelligence.
Senses: The feelings manifested in our bodies, minds, and spirits are the guiding sense of water.
Pace of the Journey: A watery pace has both slow and fast moments. The slow moments can have us feeling like we are stuck while the fast moments thrust us into the fear and thrill of riding white water rapids. If you lay out your water-connected Tarot suit, you may see a journey that includes happiness and grief as well as delight and frustration but culminates in a joy that integrates the different emotional poles.
Practice: This is an openhearted path of devotion It tunes us into feelings of love and compassion as the fruits of path walking. You can come to know Mystery in a personal way, as a friend, as a presence. A few examples include: singing and chanting in groups or alone; forgiveness practices; listening with an open heart to friends; meditation practices that focus on the heart such as heart chakra meditations.
To tune into this list, you can consider on or all of these questions:
What here resonates with your physical experience of the element from yesterday? What seems different or outdated or not useful?
If you have drawn your Guides / Way Showers cards for the week already, which of them seems most attuned to these ideas? What lesson of water are they offering?
Do any of the cards that you have drawn look like they are doing a practice? and/or Is there a practice above that particularly speaks to you? Can you take some time to do that today? You may want to weave it into your Water Wisdom Wander.
Day 5 / 6 - Invitation to Wander
Follow the calling. Set out on the quest. Not the silly one, the scary one. Go where you must for who or what you love
Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, from The Greek Goddess Tarot’s Eight of Cups, the suit dedicated to Aphrodite
Prompts for Practice
Today - or when you can fit it into your weekend - you are invited to take a Wisdom Wander focused on the element of water. Your goal is really to travel with a heart as open as the Tarot Roots of Asia Fool. (A student of mine once called this Fool, the Warrior of the Heart.) All you need to do is wander at your own pace. Possibly carrying your Guide cards pulled earlier in the week (or right before you go). Possibly taking some pictures or scratching some scribbles as you make your way. Let yourself flow like water.
You may also want to begin by making an intentional connection to water by walking by a body of water, meandering through the rain, drinking a glass of water with reverence, or contemplating with your imaginal mind the waters that flow within you before you start your wander.
Day 7 - Gathering Questions
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Prompts for Practice
Water questions are the questions that just flow out of you as you wander and come afterwards upon further reflection. Their source might be from your sensual experience of the wander or from some unknown well within. Just let the questions that enliven and stir your heart surface.
You may never answer all the questions that come to you, but no need to stop the flow of their emergence. Wisdom Wanders, after all, are not about finding the answers but become more fluid with welcoming our questions. I love what Mellissae Lucia says of questing for questions in the Oracle of Initiation companion book:
“Divination is truly about becoming a “question carrier.’ A question carrier is one who is able to be with uncertainty, mystery, and paradox within their lives … they do not need to rush toward concrete qualifications for things – they allow the story to unfold over time.”
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A little biz: We got a bunch of responses to our survey about continuing and the answer is Yes! The super short survey is still open. We ask about people being interested in leading sessions.
Below is the Overview Booklet and Link to Our Intention Setting Session with The Lovers for Paid Subscribers