In blogs in the past I have mentioned that I had a rather tenuous relationship with my father. I am not unique in that aspect because a LOT of boys have tenuous relationships with their fathers. It takes years of healing work to move beyond that and to realise that what the relationship was does not define you in any way. In fact, the relationship that I have with my own children is rather enriched because I have not allowed myself to continuously parent the way my own father did. Yes, we all slip up here and there. There is no such thing as a “perfect parent”. But most consistently, I have allowed myself to be loving and kind and generous and supportive. This makes a world of difference in a child’s life. So basically I wanted to be all the things as a father that my own father lacked in his skill sets. I have not checked in with my kids on that front lately, so perhaps they will have a different perspective on that, but at least I was not my father.
Along the healing journey there comes a time when one must acknowledge that we have some pretty awesome characteristics within ourselves. Although some of those may have come forth amidst abusive parenting, they are not there BECAUSE of the abusive parenting. Those characteristics were always there within us. It is just that the life experiences that we were presented with made us draw on those characteristics and personality traits sooner than if those abusive situations had not been present. We cannot allow ourselves to “be grateful for the lessons that we learned as a result of the abuse we went through.” That is, frankly, hokey shit psychology. What we can and should do, however, is be grateful to ourselves for having the strength and resilience it took to survive that abuse. That strength and resilience was always there within us, so we need not give any credit to any abuser for its presence within us. The abuser simply gave us ample opportunity to put it all into practice.
As we move through that level of awareness, we can, eventually, find the traits that we carry that are inherited and that are good, even if they are inherited from the abusers in our lives. For me, this falls into the category of Shamanic gifts. As mentioned in other blog posts, I come from two very strong lines of shamans, witches, healers, and gifted people. So of course I would inherit some of that good stuff from my parents and their bloodlines. For example, I am a Dream Walker. This I inherited directly from my father. My mother’s line did not have Dream Walking in their genetic skill set. There were many other skill sets involved in my mother’s bloodline, but Dream Walking was not one of them. As a Dream Walker, when called by Spirit, I am able to enter into someone else’s dream state and help them to heal an issue that they are working on in that state. I often say that 90% of the work that I do I do not get paid to do because it happens while I am sleeping. So no, I do not in any way feel guilty about charging a fee for the work that I do in the waking hours. My father was a Dream Walker. His mother was a Dream Walker. That is how it moved down the line to me. I use my gift as a form of healing. Sometimes it is also used in the waking world. I can access the Dream Weave that connects us all while I am fully awake and aware. I don’t tend to do it while I am driving because that is dangerous. I also do not tend to do it while I am having sex because that would be just too wierd. But any other time through the waking world I can access it. Sometimes I am able, with permission, to access it in order to open up synapsis in a person’s brain that have previously blocked memories that they are trying to uncover. It is not like I go in and say, “Hey, look here! This is what has happened to you!” That would have the risk of creating false memory syndrome. It is more like, “Hey, there is a door here, wanna check out what is behind it?” Then the person is able to go through the doorway and find whatever it is they need to find in their own unconscious memory. This, to me, is a huge gift and one for which I am forever grateful, even if this gift was passed down to me from my father. He did have some good parts to him, after all. And no one is 100% horrible. It really is a matter of how one chooses to put said gifts to use.
Another gift that I have had passed to me from my father’s bloodline is that of Water Witchery. This includes all sorts of things like using water alchemy to heal, connecting with the consciousness and subconsciousness of a person through that Dream Weave (water being the element of emotions and the soul and the subconscious), performing Soul Retrieval, doing Water Readings for people, and Witching for Water for people who want to dig wells, just to name a few. Really, humans are made up of an extremely large percentage of water, so it makes sense that some of us would be gifted as Water Witches.
Being a person who is born into the element of Air, I was quite focused on mastering that element as I grew up. And Air was a major element in my mother’s bloodline, so a lot of my training had to do with that. These types of things include talking to spirits, connecting with spirit animals, communicating with the spirit essences of plants and stones etc, telepathic communication with other telepaths, telekinetic abilities and so on. Spell casting was also a part of this because the spoken word is reliant upon the element of Air. All of this is very cool and wonderful, but it took me years and years to make the connection between the two. Water (H2O) does, after all, have Air within it.
This journey of connection began with the visitation of my paternal grandmother. I had never personally met her as she died before I was born. So let’s back up a number of years to when I was 13 years old.
The house I grew up in on the farm was a two and a half story farm house. The attic was one that had a set of stairs that you could actually walk up and enter the attic, which had dorm windows, 4 slants on the roof line, and a sky light that was installed shortly after we moved to the farm. It was sizable and fun to hang out in. We had a lot of antique furniture up there and book shelves filled with books and such. As a kid it was one of my favorite places to hang out if I was not out hiking through the woods. Basically I was one of those very introverted kids who was also empathic and liked, as a result, to avoid human contact as much as possible because humans are generally not in control of their minds or their emotions and as a kid that can be overwhelming when you pick up on everything people think and feel. So I would hit the hiking trails on foot or horseback and I would isolate myself in the attic and read until after dark.
One day when I was up there hanging around the family bible that my paternal grandmother had, which was passed down to my father, literally jumped off the shelf of the bookcase. It scared the bejeebers out of me when it hit the floor. I am not one who was into reading bibles so to have this happen was, for me, a bit meaningful. I walked over, looked at this bible on the floor, and saw that it had opened to a page with a piece of paper between the pages. The writing was in Romani, but somehow I knew what it said. It was a something that my grandmother had written before I was born.
This paper laid out what each of my father’s children would have as gifts. And it was really accurate. But, being the 5th child, I was disappointed to see that all she said about me was that “The fifth shall be as I.” Now, my grandmother had a reputation for being an “evil witch”. I now know that this was just a matter of her being completely misunderstood by my mother’s line of practitioners. I can feel my mother rolling over in her grave as I write this. Needless to say the sentiments ran deep between my two grandmothers.
Upon first meeting my father, my maternal grandmother looked up from her knitting, stared him up and down, and asked him, “So who in your family is the Dark Witch?” My father replied that she was likely referring to his own mother. It took some time, but my father eventually won over my maternal grandmother and he and my mother were wed.
So when I found this paper and I read the line “And the fifth shall be as I” there was a bit of a shiver that ran down my spine. She did not mention any of my gifts or abilities, just that I was going to be like her. I did not know her other than by her reputation, so I was a little freaked out. I took the paper to my mother and showed her. She read it and asked, “Where did you get this?” I told her what had happened. She immediately contacted her mother and they set about breaking what they felt was a hex.
The thing is that this type of “hex” cannot be broken because it was not actually a hex at all, it was prophesy. There is a difference. And, by the way, prophecy is one of the abilities that accompanies being a Water Witch. Nonetheless, a spell was cast to protect me from this “hex” and to make sure that I did not become like my paternal grandmother.
As previously mentioned, though, my paternal grandmother came to visit. One day I was minding my own business at work when suddenly she “orbed in” right behind me. I felt her presence, turned around and there she was, as real as if any of you were standing before me. I recognized her from her photograph. Suddenly I found myself speaking in Romani to her. My brain knew that I was not speaking English and that I was speaking Romani but I could not figure out how the hell I knew how to do that! My father was fluent in seven different languages. Not that he took the time to teach me any of them, but between that and my university time in Linguistics, I seem to have accessed a key in my brain to languages. I don’t speak them, unless I am immersed in them. Then suddenly I am speaking them.
I asked my grandmother, “Why are you here?” She told me, “You have to save them!” So I asked her who it was I was supposed to be saving? She told me that there was a dark entity that was hunting her family line. That meant that my cousins and their children as well as myself and my own children were at risk. This began to make sense as I had a couple of cousins who had recently died under very strange circumstances. She said that she was here to help me fight that entity.
And so my training began in Romani Water Witchery. Admittedly it was a crash course and fortunately it worked out well. And then, after that was all dealt with, I tucked it away and thought I would revisit it again some day but I was really too busy to continue with it right then. Years later it opened up for me again and I decided that I had to dive in.
It began with prophetic dreams. These are, in shamanic terms, “Medicine Dreams”. These prophetic dreams showed me events that would typically come to pass within the week. Then it began to extend to two weeks down the road, then months, then a few years. I had no intent, usually, to prevent what I was seeing, as it is not necessarily the job of the seer to do that, but rather to simply witness what it is that is unfolding. Yes, now and then I would “warn” of something, but it usually fell on deaf ears anyway, so I stopped that nonsense.
Then I was able to see that there are timelines that, at certain moments, intersect. These timelines, once intersected, can often create another timeline of reality dependent upon the choices that someone makes in that moment of intersection. It is rather cool to witness, yet also somewhat disturbing at times. Nonetheless, it is there and I have learned to witness the timeline shifts and see the ripple effects that are a result of said shifts.
I began to also create elixirs from water and the energy of crystals and healing stones. These became amazingly effective immediately. Along with that I began to be able to create Holy Water (which is actually more like an acknowledgement of the holiness of the water that is already there…much like acknowledging the gifts we have always had lying dormant and waiting to be seen, followed by charging the water and blessing it). This Holy Water is useful in so many ways when it comes to healing, to space blessing, to scrying (the ability to “see” things as one gazes at water or immerses oneself into water), to name just a few.
I developed a much stronger ability to “see” while taking a bath or going for a swim. It was like the water element began to just spring forth all of my Water Witchery abilities. And those that I already had in play but that were not really acknowledged at the time as being Water Witchery got so much stronger. Where they were once a bit of a drop in the pond they became more tsunami-like.
Dream Walking was one of those abilities that got a LOT stronger over the last few years since training with my paternal grandmother’s spirit. And along with that came the awareness that the tattoos that I have had installed on my body (each of which was already there, just not inked in) are all a part of that Water Witchery. You see, before having one installed I have to wait for a sign that it is time to have it inked. Until then, I can see it on my body, as can others who “see”, but it also moves around my body and, at times, leaves my body, like something that drizzles out, to enter another and give them healing energy, then leaves them and re-enters me. This freaks people out when they are able to see it happen. But happen it does and they therefore learn to flow with it.
Recently, my paternal grandmother very casually noted that I have her bracelets. I was wondering what the heck she meant by that. She pointed to the ones that I have tattooed on my upper forearms. Then she raised her sleeves and showed me her actual bracelets. Identical. IDENTICAL. Hers were in gold. Mine were in ink. I only have one photograph of her and she was wearing a wedding dress and, as far as I knew, she was not wearing much for jewelry. She told me that she had her bracelets on under the sleeves, as she would not take them off. I asked her what the energetic medicine of these bracelets were for her? She said that they helped conduct healing energy through the dream time. Pretty cool!
So for those of you who know me and have been wondering why I have done things like transforming my counseling room into something that looks like the interior of a Romani caravan, or why I have begun playing water sounds in the background during healing sessions, or installing a fountain on my water themed altar, or why I have begun giving Water Readings now and then, or a plethora of other things that I have been doing along those lines, it is because I have been inspired by my dreams, and as a Dream Walker I must respond. I am embracing my inner Water Witch and it is not just beneficial for me, but to everyone with whom I do healing work. You are welcome!
Notes:
1. This was an extremely long blog post. My apologies. I assure you that it is, in fact, the Reader’s Digest version!
2. I know that after reading this some of my readers will be asking questions…good questions! So I may have to add to the notes along the way. As a result, you may want to check in now and then to see what additions, if any, have been added.
3. I wonder how all of this will pass down to my descendants. I know that I have seen one who lives in the 35th Century, and that is really cool. But when it all unfolds for her I think she may have some big challenges along the way.
4. Time line realities leads us into the reality (and it is a REALITY) of time travel. I will have to blog on that one some day.
5. It occurs to me that I am an Aquarian. Aquarius, according to the Zodiac, is “the water bearer”. Cool, eh?
6. I love plants. I do a lot of gardening. Whenever I plant something in the earth I utter a spell for its growth and well-being. And I bless it with water. I know…the water tends to make plants grow. But when there is something so sacred that is being done in a meaningful way, it just makes it all that much more magical. This, to me, is where science/botany and magic/spirit unite! In NATURE. O