Donna L. Faber: When Isis Rises

The World Wide Web has become an inner world, like another dimension, running parallel to the mundane. Aided by super-powered search engines and social programs like Facebook, it facilitates folks of a like mind gravitating toward one another. Symbolism, ever present on the web, has been a significant part of my life for as long as I can remember. I wore my very first pentacle in high school, was somehow aware of its protective qualities then, and continue to wear it (and other symbols) in sterling silver around my neck every day. In our mundane lives, symbolism works on an intuitive basis, coming from the same place as dreams and creativity. It helps unlock the secrets of our higher selves, as well, releasing them from where they are tucked away for safe keeping in the subconscious mind. The magic of symbolism is present and working whether we are spiritually awake or not. Just what do you think advertising is? On the Web, our interest is awakened spontaneously by pictures and words, aka symbols, appearing briefly before us. It's no wonder these symbols are like bread crumbs leading us to kindred spirits.

The bloggers we run into repeatedly become like friends, accept they are %u2026 well, internet friends. We leave messages for one another, one blogger to another, and at times exchange email. Rarely do those friends cross over into our real life. When they do, it implies a significant level of trust, and it's usually for a good reason.

Avia Venifica has been in my internet orbit, and I in hers, for almost three years. She has two wonderful websites and a weblog. I visit What's-Your-Sign.com regularly, particularly when my path is crossed by a specific animal bearing messages, which is frequently. I never hesitate to refer to Avia's work in my spiritually minded blogs on Sapphokinesis because she and I share one very important belief - that all spiritual seekers have the right to be where they are on their path. This isn't something she told me, but something I've intuited from her work, made more obvious in one of her recent postings. Tarot Teachings is entirely dedicated to its namesake, including card meanings and specific symbols within the cards. Symbolic Meanings takes symbolism to the next level, including places where it crosses into Celtic mythology, dream symbolism, as well as alchemy, astrology, and native american and chinese symbolism. Something Avia calls symbol scopes appear on her weblog. They are an unexpected and unusual but tasty tidbit spun happily from your average horoscope and issued on a monthly basis.

I signed up for Avia's email newsletter and was lucky enough to have my name pulled from a hat for a free card reading. This happened when I find myself in the midst of a personal review, brought upon by the upcoming visit of my spiritual mother, Sri Karunamayi Ma, who'll be in the Bay Area in just three short weeks. I've been working, writing, and doing my art, all the while rifling through the file cabinet that is my life experiences and mind. Avia and I also decided to do the reading over the phone, which we accomplished by engaging in a tentative communication exercise on scheduling. Happily, our exercise yielded only positive results!

I didn't go into this looking for specifics, so I asked no specific question. In fact, I had no focus and no expectations. Nor did I harbor skepticism. My motto was go with the flow, keep an open heart and mind, knowing full well that my life is an open book and all over my websites. Anybody with a computer and half a brain can discover I've got past issues with my mother, a strong dedication to my family and career, and a habit of biting off more than I can chew. What can't be premeditated, however, is the ebb and flow of a reading, and which cards show up where. This is where I found Avia's deepest intuitive currents ran true.

Avia laid out the cards in a modified Celtic Cross formation, with no auxiliary cards on the right. She used the Gilded Tarot Deck, which is very beautiful. Right away the focus was on home and hearth in a transition, which I have not blogged about. Avia noted that Leslie and I are not entirely comfortable with transitions (although we've been through many) and encouraged us to avoid making decisions prematurely. This was on the mark, as though she lifted it right from my head. There is no way she could know we are in the buyer's market for a home. No one knows it. Not even people at work.

Avia encouraged me to search for my nuts, as well (a priceless way of putting it, really), intuiting squirrel symbolism, which she's written about, and without knowing that we have a plethora of the little critters in our backyard. This refers to the number of things I'd placed on the back burner eight months ago to focus on my job. What Avia didn't know is that I've established a groove at work and now have more time for the activities that nurture my spirit. She also indicated there would be support for these endeavors. How could she know that I worry? If I put my art on Cafepress, will people buy? The presence of Grandmother Spider, one of my most significant earthbound totems in the eight of pentacles, confirmed the need to "weave a web of creative design into daily matters". Message signed, sealed and delivered!

The appearance of the Queen of Cups in a key position had me squealing with delight. Signifying past challenges with maternal energy, and the resolution of those conflicts with even greater maternal healing and reformation, couldn't have been more poignant. Minor Arcana Queens appear in readings I do for myself, so her appearance was somewhat expected, and happily received.

The reading's final card was the Moon, the only Major Arcana card amidst a preponderance of Pentacles. It held court in a summarizing position heralding significance and encouragement to pay heed. I've always loved this card, and consider it a marker for the Divine Mother. While respecting it's cautionary warding (which Avia didn't dwell on), I take great comfort from it. The Goddess resides in the moon, and so I see her there each time I look at it. Our dogs were there, as well, reminding me to heed the messages of animal guides. Not knowing I needed this affirmation, particularly at a time of personal inventory, Avia confirmed my intuitive impulses are a guiding light. The card also had significance for Avia herself, which she didn't elaborate on, but which may indicate she and I have more work to do in the future.

The last tarot card reading I had was eight years ago. I'd just finished a grueling project at work and was exhausted as my family and I stole away on a Fourth of July holiday to refuel. We ran away to Malibu, California, which is one of my favorite West Coast retreats. The Goddess exists in Her full majesty in the Pacific Ocean, which is very natural sacred space. It felt so right. I could hear the ocean waves crashing against the shore from where I slept. Halfway into our trip, I was leaving offerings on the motel room's deck.

There was a new age shop not far from our beachside motel. Rumor had it that spiritual folks from the business, like Richard Gere, shopped there. It had a curtained booth in the back where two separate readers did their thing daily. I was barely awake spiritually back then. True, I was perched on the precipice of great change, but still I lived from a place of fear, and was absolutely overwhelmed with life in general. I had a few readings, but the one which most impressed me offered excellent advice in a single word. That word was delegate, implying a surrender of control, in this case, at work.

Since then, my spiritual awakening has been steady, an on-going process I've written volumes on. The reading I enjoyed eight years ago marked a time of change in my life, and the overall message in Avia's reading is essentially the same, yet it's timing cannot be overlooked. Astrologically, the March to April 2009 Venus retrograde has us all rifling through our mental file cabinets with an evolved point of view. As we release old baggage into the ethers, we are graced with the time and energy needed to crack the nuts we once stowed away for safe keeping. In synch with the stars and moon above, and the subtle undercurrents they portend, Avia's reading addressed my hidden concerns yet encouraged me to release my creative spark into the world without fear.

Avia Venifica, a kindred spirit and gifted intuitive, races along the superhighway that is the World Wide Web, undoubtedly astride a dragon guide of her own. She poses the most timely question "will you let go?"

Having faith in her intuition, I do believe I will.

About one week ago, I had a strange dream. I was in a station wagon with my grandfather who has been dead for over 20 years. We were driving through Wallingford, Connecticut, and there were dark clouds everywhere. Dipping in and out of the dark clouds were tornado funnels, marking the second time that I've actually dreamed about tornados. There is no direct, real time connotation that I am aware of between my life and the presence of tornadoes in my subconscious, although I acknowledge them as intense, powerful, and chaotic forces of nature. It was my grandfather's dream-time presence that struck me as somehow significant, however, and I have been thinking on him ever since. I called him Pop.

My grandfather was a double Aries, a musician and teacher, a bandleader, a gardener, and a painter. He was an independent businessman, who lived life on his own terms. He was a husband of 45 years, and despite the fact that my grandparents often played swords with words, my grandmother spoke of him with great affection, and missed him terribly from her bed at the rest home. My grandfather played with Benny Goodman's band around the time of the war, and avoided being shipped overseas because of this commitment. I grew up hearing stories of his unpredictable childhood temper; how he held his brothers at knifepoint in the closet because they ditched him before heading for the beach. He was the youngest boy in a large, Italian family. As a young adult, he once held a group of young men at bay with a pistol in the street, because they made him angry. He spit fire like a dragon from time to time, so the stories told.

Pop was a cook, and had a special dish called "jombot", a mixture of rice, mushrooms, and other delicious ingredients that he made on Sunday mornings when my Aunt Jean, his sister, was at the house to play cards. I can't think of my grandfather without thinking of jombot in the next breath. He frequently played a trick on his sister, Jean, by leaving enormous mushrooms in her plate, ones she couldn't possibly eat in one bite, or setting her place with an enormous serving fork. The mushrooms were always wild, hand picked by my grandparents from nearby forests. In fact, I saw my first faeries in those forests while picking mushrooms with them. Then, when I was a small child, the esoteric world superimposed itself over the mundane unexpectedly.

When I was young, perhaps my daughter's age now, I took comfort from curling up in his lap. I did it often, then, and would lie with my ear against his chest, listening to his heart beat, and waiting for my love tanks to fill up. "Ding" the bell would ring, tanks are full, and off I would go.

Often enough, when times were bad, he came through for me in the oddest of ways. I was 13 when we lived on East Broadway. I had just gotten my period, but I couldn't convince my mother to purchase pads for me. I have a clear memory of my grandfather standing at the backdoor with a box of pads in his outstretched arms.

That was an awkward moment.

When I was 16, and my mother's current husband began beating me, I asked to move into my grandparent's home. It was my grandfather's decision, and he said yes. Thank the Goddess. My grandparents suffered an enormous emotional and financial burden when my brothers and I lived with them. Both parents had abandoned us, but Thelma and Ed did the right thing every time. I would have ended up in foster care had they turned their back on me.

My life would have been so different.

I was almost 20 years old and still living in their house the first time my grandfather got sick. He'd been up unusually early that morning, working in his garden, as was his favorite pastime. He buzzed from here to there on their acre of property in his tractor, with a wide brim hat atop his bald head, and a towel or "mopene" wrapped around his neck. He suffered his first cardiac event atop the hill, but found the strength to bring the tractor down to the driveway and sit on the cement retaining wall. His heart completely stopped then, and Pop toppled over, face first, onto the blacktop, where my grandmother found him moments later. It was her shriek that drew me out of my room that day.

My grandfather lived another two years thereafter, quietly, and without much memory. Much later on, my Aunt, the smart one, discovered he had cardiomyopathy, or chronic inflammation of the heart muscle. He was 67 in 1985, when we buried him at the foot of his mother's grave in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

There is so much out there on angels and spirit guides, those ephemeral, other worldly entities who watch over us. I've never seriously honed in on it, although I am fascinated by the work of clairvoyants like Lisa Williams and James Van Praagh. Just before the near year, I began thinking on it in earnest, felt the pull, you might say, and thought about going to see Felix Lee Lerma, who gave my friend, Jen, a few terrific readings, and who lives right here on the Castro. I even placed the call, but was side railed completely by going out of town in late January and bringing back a case of the stomach flu.

I am a firm believer in the subtle signs, and write on them frequently enough. Numerous animal signposts and other telling things light the path on my journey and so, they did most recently.

About three weeks ago, a single mushroom sprouted at the base of the back stairs in our backyard. It was a very tall mushroom, quite the phallic little bugger, as well; defiant and proud, and I passed it each and every time I took the garbage out, every single day for over two weeks.

At approximately the same time, Isis began rising in me like high tide at Ocean Beach. It knew it heralded the visit of my spiritual mother, Karunamayi, who is scheduled to visit the Bay Area in late March. By early January, I found myself rifling through favorite books, seeking visual inspiration, and creating a huge pile of creative chaos on the dining room table

Spiders appeared as they typically do, announcing a subtle message from the ethers.

Then, I had that dream about my grandfather and the tornadoes, and thoughts of him weaved into many waking moments.

Last weekend, while we were kanoodling around Millbrae, I found a whole cluster of wild mushrooms just outside the skateboard park and not far from where Elizabeth went to grammar school. I even took pictures (but can't unload them right now due to the most annoying of technical difficulties). They drew me like a magnet, despite the fact that my daughter and I were squabbling about finding the right place to use her skateboard for the very first time. This was going on the same weekend she crossed the ultimate feminine threshold herself, which we cried over privately. Leslie and I mourn the rapid passing of our little girl, and welcome the fine young woman.

Early this week, I answered the call of Isis and finished a piece called "Gregor". Gregor is a dragon whose mythos came to me spontaneously as I posted him.

"The ancient ones lie quietly, as old as the mountains, as strong as the rocks, stability and fortitude their mainstay ... that, and waiting, of course. They wait patiently for the world to turn on its spiritual and historical axis. With weathered wings that long to soar, eyes that see absolutely everything, and ruby red hearts of the purest crystal, they wait and wait until the sleepers awaken. They know that some of the sleeping ones can see them from time to time, tentatively aware as they are in their slumber. For the ancient ones, who need no mirror to realize themselves, and for whom existence is whether seen or not, this is only consequential. Soon the sleepers will awaken and ask them to be guides again, and, oh, the glory will return! But until then, with patience of the ages, they remain content to wait ... and listen to the primordial om, the sound of all being.

Meet Gregor, one of the ancient ones. Master of all the elements, this ancient guide prefers the earth to the skies, and wraps himself in a comforting drape of aromatic flora simply because it pleases him.

Om ..."

Gregor emerged as a guardian, which was also intuited by A. Venifica, a blogger I've grown to admire and whose focus is on symbolism and totems. She wrote, "Your Gregor is a stunning beast. You've rendered him in painstaking detail - gloriously bejeweled. I watched him, then closed my eyes. His scales still glitter in my inner sight. Gently approaching him, I see my reflection in each of his faceted crystals (trippy). Thanks so much for sharing your sparkling gifts. And, for resurfacing a very well kept secret. Angels got the credit first...for being spirit guides, guardians, messengers, fill-in-the- blank. Dragons serve in the same capacity and beyond. their inception was simply more primitive. Hence, the subjective understanding of the dragon was less received by human perception than angels were. Angels came on the scene a bit more formulated, more digestible to human logic than dragons. Some of us identify deeply with your artistic rendering, and wholly with what you've written here. There are some of us who have been awake and have taken the dragon as their consort. Some of us even move as one accord amongst a legion of them. Thank you for seeing, recognizing, translating and being awake. And, thanks also for wiping the sleep from the eyes of all who would See. "

The people I work with are enthralled with Gregor, as well, although they know him only as a drawing. Somehow, he's emerged out of the two dimensional realm, and they recognize the energy, but don't understand it or call it by name.

Then, like a bolt of lighting today, it hit me.

It is no coincidence that Gregor emerged from my pen at the same time I was thinking of spirit guides and dreaming about my grandfather, seeing mushrooms everywhere, and watching Grandmother spider wave her eight feet at me to get my attention. As I ask the question "who are my spirit guides?", I remain unable to connect with the concept of angels or people as guides. I am, however, wholly able to connect with the primordial dragon, who was a guide and protector long before Christianity came up with the word angel to identify these subtle entities.

I am the Witch of the West, once called Melufa, The Recordkeeper, and once called Morgaine and Aurora. I am a Daughter of the Living Goddess, as well as a lover of women, and a mother. I acknowledge Grandmother spider, who appears from time to time to help me toward my destiny. I am blessed by the hummingbird, who reminds me to stop and smell the blossoms. I am blessed by the Great Blue Heron, who assures me I am where I am supposed to be. I acknowledge the faeries in my life, tiny embodiments of my personal discoveries.

I meditate on Gregor and he emerges at once as my ever present spirit guide, a shimmering creature of multi-faceted crystal clarity. I acknowledge Gregor as my spirit guide, and in him feel the spirit of my grandfather, also a dragon, who once protected me. I call upon Gregor now and through him nurture my masculine energy, the ever present Shiva, handed down to me through my mother's blood, also from my grandfather.

I am awake, and I can see.

I am the Keeper of Mysteries in my home. I am protected by the Goddess, who often gives me what I need (as opposed to what I want).

To those who wish me harm, or who waste their time weaving negative webs I am expected to get caught in, I say this ...

Deal with Gregor.

And may the goddess help you.

The ancient ones lie quietly, as old as the mountains, as strong as the rocks, stability and fortitude their mainstay ... that, and waiting, of course. They wait patiently for the world to turn on its spiritual and historical axis. With weathered wings that long to soar, eyes that see absolutely everything, and ruby red hearts of the purest crystal, they wait and wait until the sleepers awaken. They know that some of the sleeping ones can see them from time to time, tentatively aware as they are in their slumber. For the ancient ones, who need no mirror to realize themselves, and for whom existence is whether seen or not, this is only consequential. Soon the sleepers will awaken and ask them to be guides again, and, oh, the glory will return! But until then, with patience of the ages, they remain content to wait ... and listen to the primordial om, the sound of all being.

Meet Gregor, one of the ancient ones. Master of all the elements, this ancient guide prefers the earth to the skies, and wraps himself in a comforting drape of aromatic flora simply because it pleases him.
Om ...

Look here for A. Venifica's wonderful information on dragon totem symbolism.

Look here for information on Amma's visit to the San Francisco Bay Area.

(c) February 16, 2009 by Donna L. Faber, Original is 8.5x11, image done in pen & ink on Strathmore smooth bristol paper, then cut out and mounted in black textured paper. Highlights done in silver metallic ink. Some colored pencil used. While the text below indicates that Buto's venom comes from her bite, in my rendition it is Buto's tail which carries the deadly blow; hence, the eldritch flame and energy pulse from it.

Buto
(Uatchit, Udjat, Wadjit, Edjo)

Buto was a cobra-goddess whose original home and cult center was in the Delta of the Nile at Per-Uatchit. In time she became a prominent protectress of all of Lower Egypt. As such she was routinely connected to the goddess of Upper Egypt, Nekhebet. Together, they appeared in many pieces of art as symbols of the Two Lands, a united Egypt.

Buto did not just protect Egypt, she also was an aggressive defender of the king. She was portrayed as the uraeus cobra first worn on the brow of Re, and later the pharaohs'. Her hood is spread in a threatening position and she is ready to spit poison on all of the pharaoh's enemies or burn them with her fiery glare. It is thought perhaps that her powers could be used against the pharaoh as well. Her bite may have been the deadly device used by Anubis at the appointed time of the pharaoh's death.

Buto was a personification of the sun's burning heat and she was called the "Lady of Heaven" and the queen of all of the gods. She was closely associated with Horus the Elder, who was the protector god of Lower Egypt. Also she was associated with Harpokrates (Horus the Younger); she protected him from Seth in the marshes of the Delta while Isis was searching for the body of Osiris.

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