Category: Animal Messengers

The Wounded Healer

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized1 Comment

The tag on my tea yesterday read “Be Heard,” but let’s start back at that mountain from two nights ago. Part of me hoped I was done releasing, at least for awhile, after I woke on the morning of the March 11th. I had, after all, opened a door to let out the trapped energy of  fear. Naturally, when you go through a doorway (note the significance that this dream occurred early in the morning on the 11th), you need to deal with what’s inside. We never know quite what we’ll meet, or how long it will take to go through what we find.

So begins the journey that started with a single crow, perhaps the largest one I have ever seen, perched high in its glossy black cloak atop a bare tree as though waiting for me to pass by on my morning walk. The crow calls us to enter the darkness we hold inside, and through doing so create light from the shadows. It is a messenger of magic and the divine feminine energies that reside in all of us. There was one crow, I knew the job was mine alone.

Then the robin appeared beneath my apple tree, pecking the frozen ground to pull a treasure from the snow. The single crow, followed by the single robin, a messenger of spring, renewal and the birth, or rebirth, of one’s truth with its sky-blue eggs, told me this new phase was only just beginning.

I won’t deny that I had been feeling it. For the past few days I have literally felt as though I were pregnant. My lower abdomen felt achy and crampy, as women’s bellies often do in the early stages of pregnancy as the womb begins to adjust to new life. My lower chakras were, and still are, adjusting to that freed-up energy from two mornings ago. In fact, my entire body felt achy and tired.

The next night, after I dreamed of the mountain, I experienced a night of fitful sleep. I can’t tell you where I went in most of my dreams, my only memory of the first half of the night was waking to the message, healing, healing being played over and over inside my mind each time I woke before falling back into a restless slumber.

One dream, occurring again in the early hours of the morning, stayed with me. I was at Bowdoin, where I went to college. It’s perhaps worth noting that I last, physically, returned to Bowdoin for a reunion in the summer of 2011 (a doorway year). Right before, and during the time of the reunion, I came down with walking pneumonia and was quite ill, fatigued and feverish while I was back on campus with my family and the two friends I had stayed in touch with.

Can it be a coincidence that I dreamt of Bowdoin on the night of the 11th/12th? In my dream I was searching for comfort and peace, a space to freely express my truth, much like I had during my college years. I found myself in a dormitory with cluttered and dirty carpets, beyond which was a long room with a pristine polished wooden floor and organized, uncluttered furniture, but I needed to find a way to clean up the space I was in in order to get there. I walked into a large kitchen, like I had the night before on the mountain, only this time the cook opened an oven to reveal a large, pink, roasting pig. I was hungry, but this meal was not being cooked for me. Something was holding me back from partaking in the succulent feast that was being prepared.

Yesterday morning brought more fatigue and that strange pregnant feeling in my lower abdomen. I chose an Echinacea tea, and as I sat down to sip it, read the words “Be Heard” on the end of the string resting against my mug. Now, to be fair, Spirit had been trying to prepare me for this healing and release phase for quite some time. For weeks the repetition of signs kept appearing in various forms.

In her book The Hidden Power of Dreams, Denise Linn writes about learning to pay attention to messages that come in sets of threes, in particular. I had been seeing the number 3 for days, and had recently done 3 tarot readings for fellow healers/lightworkers that were eerily similar. Each querent, it became revealed, was, or had recently been dealing with, trapped fears in their lower 3 chakras. There was energy calling for, or being released in all cases. Denise Linn also tells her readers that the wounded healer draws to her what needs to be healed within herself, thus by healing this energy in others, she also heals herself. I have found this to be true in my own healing practice.

Now I’ll take you to last night. Although I was tired, I had trouble falling asleep. Perhaps it was the selenite crystal I had moved from the vanity beside the window and activated for dream healing before I went to bed. It had been a bold experiment. I had never before activated a selenite for dream work and placed it beside my bed.

I fell asleep sometime between midnight and 1:00 p.m., when I woke abruptly with my dream-voice calling for help, and filled with desperate fright. The dream began on the side of a road near my house. I was walking up a hill on my way home with my two dogs on leash beside me. Several construction/plow trucks were passing by on the left side of the road, I was on the right (the logical side of our bodies).  To prevent my dogs from attacking the trucks, I pulled the 3 of us over an embankment. Suddenly, I was struggling to hold on to the dogs, which were both orange in my dream, and the earth, so as not to fall down the steep ravine below.

Before I jump ahead to where I next found myself, let me draw your attention, as I did mine, to the time during which this dream occurred. Linn states in her book that the hours of 11 p.m to 1 a.m. are the gallbladder time according to the ancient Chinese clock. It is a time where we deal with unresolved, outwardly directed anger and test our courage.

After dangling from that cliff with my two, “loyal” dogs, I found myself home, inside what I knew to be my house (it appeared differently in the dream) with my family. I looked out the window and saw fire trucks and media vans pulling up the hill beside my home (again on the right side of me), and noticed a large white barn that was about to catch fire from my burning neighbor’s house.

I turned into rescue-mode and began gathering clothes, which are often symbolic of our outward appearances/coverings that hide our true selves, and blankets to bring over to help out. (Years ago I witnessed a fire in a neighboring apartment building and gathered clothing, etc. to donate). My husband went outside to investigate and I told my children to start getting ready for bed. Suddenly, our house turned into a Red Cross van (an overt symbol for healing, and since a vehicle often represents our bodies, this could be interrupted as a call for self-healing) and I could not get “upstairs” to my children, because there was no longer an upstairs, but a small, unreachable set of windows above me.

I began to panic, and looked out a lower window where I saw my husband on the hillside axing what I knew to be the remains of our house, which was what had actually burned. He was standing before a large pile in the shape of a teepee (I lived in a tepee for several months as a child), containing the  stacked remains of what we owned, encased in some of my shirts. One shirt, which was purple and stiff like it had been starched, stood out in particular. In her book Linn notes that an ax can be symbolic of the “fear of loss” and “cutting away that which isn’t needed.”

As I watched my husband, I could feel his devastation and anger. He was, like most people in our dreams, symbolic of my own shadowed fear. In the middle of the pile I knew was my old white computer, which contained all my work and writing. My manuscript, not yet published, was lost in the middle.

Along with the fear of losing my belongings and my creative work, I was now worried about our pets that I knew must have perished. I was filled with grief and helpless frustration. Yet, next to my husband, and the rubble of our house, there was a new, unfinished house wrapped extensively with plastic that was our new, unfinished home. Still, I was ravaged by my grief brought on by this fire, and woke to my struggle to express my emotions at 1 a.m. My body was feverish, my stomach upset, and the side of my big toe on my right foot was aching, an area associated with the throat and the thyroid. The word “mother” popped into my head.

It took me a long time to get back to sleep in those early morning hours as I thought about my dream and what it meant for me, trying to shed the fears it brought up as I did so. The sleep that came after was deep and restorative, I can’t tell you where I went, I don’t remember, but I woke without aches.

Again, I hoped I was done with the healing and release, but Spirit wasn’t quite finished with me. As if to make sure I’d gotten the message, the first part of my dream played out in the morning in slightly different form. I gathered up the dogs, as I always do on school days, and walked with my children and husband down the driveway to await the bus. I only made it half-way. Rosy, my orange-and-white dog, decided to lunge suddenly at a small animal, likely a cat or squirrel, pulling me in the process over an embankment of snow beside the driveway. I fell backwards and landed, not too graciously, on my right hand. It was a painful experience, to say the least.

Can you guess what I broke? My right, middle finger. The finger that holds our fire energy, which we house in our lower chakras. Message received!

The Sifter

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections, Uncategorized6 Comments

the sifter

It appeared to me at the end of a dream last week. I held the large metal sifter in my hand as I surveyed the boxes of artifacts from my past on the floor of my childhood basement. The sorting and discarding was finished, or so I thought. But, left in my hand was a sifter. What do I do with this? I wondered.

When I dug out my kitchen sifter to take a photo for this post, I noticed how similar it was to the one in my dream. As I studied the metal holes and edges, I realized this sifter, although cleaned after last use, was holding onto debris stuck stubbornly to its meshwork. Instinctively, I started to scrape away at the stuck residue with my nails, then stopped. There’s always something left behind, lingering, isn’t there? Whether it is an actual artifact we can feel through the caress of our fingers, or a memory tucked into the folds of our brain. When we clear the clutter, it never really disappears.

It can only transform. Before my dream of the sifter, I had spent weeks sorting through past fears. Have you ever noticed how the Universal Spirit has a way of kindly dumping a load of our fears at our feet, not one-by-one in a gentle fashion so that we might lightly skip over them, but in a pile so large we have no choice but to notice it? We have no choice, but to make a choice.

We can try to climb the pile to get over the top, then down the other side, but chances are if we do this, its jumbled contents will cause us to trip or fall. We’re likely to get hurt and bruised with the effort, and the pile is still there, slightly less neat, waiting behind us.

Another option is to bury ourselves inside of it and hide. The task of sorting being too over-whelming to accomplish, we simply let it enclose and crush us. How many people do you know who look like they’re carrying the weight of an invisible world on their shoulders?

Years ago, before I started healing my past, I realized it was no fun to carry my fears with me all of the time. It not only weighed me down, the effort made me physically ill. So, I started sorting and shedding. I’m still doing it today. That’s what I was doing in the weeks before I saw the sifter in my dream.

It started with the uncomfortable weight of fears presenting themselves in various daily circumstances. Not fun, it never really is. But, thankfully, I’m learning to take a different perspective on these periods of learning that Spirit sends to me. Ah, ha! I say after I get over my state of grievance (lengths may vary ;-), It’s time to shift! Lets do this!

Yep, that call for sifting is a cue to us that we are ready for a spiritual shift. Our soul is calling us to release a particular burden of fear and transform it into light. So, after I grudgingly accept this (again, the length to time it takes me to do this often varies :-), I now say, Bring on the joy! I’m ready to receive!

The end result of first sifting through our pile of fear, then shifting it into light, is joy! We have now opened ourselves to receive more of the Universal Source of Abundance, that I call the Light of Love, Joy and Truth. Let me give you my most recent example:

For weeks I played with my little demons called fears. In my daily life challenges, and in my dreams, I worked with shifting the energy that clutched my heart and throat, going to the source of the pain, and bringing it out to light. It wasn’t fun, playing with this last patch of fears.  As I sifted through them, they brought me back to my childhood in this lifetime, they brought me way back to distant past lives. They danced in my dreams and I woke up to a heart thumping with exertion.

I even shifted the energy in my home, with the help of a gifted friend. I burned clutter that was weighing me down, asking the fire spirits to transmute its energy. I rearranged and sorted, nothing too drastic, but all with the intention of bringing in more “light” and abundance.

As the shift started taking effect, the metaphorical pile, with its bulky weight, lightened, transforming into a path of abundance. 4 crows and a hawk appeared in the sky while I walked, followed days later by an unexpected surprise in my email box. WordPress had Freshly Pressed one of my erasure poems. I was pleased, but didn’t hold on too tightly to the tether of hope, instead I released it and a few days later my inbox was flooded. 400 pages views in one day on a single poem (I was lucky to get 10 before), over a hundred likes, numerous comments and reblog notices appeared, and the flow has continued with each day. My audience has grown by hundreds, without any direct effort on my part. I simply cleared the clutter abstracting the path.  I brought in more light.

The Hidden Mysteries of the Parrotfish #dreams #parrotfishdream #parrotfishsymbolism #hexagram #pastlives

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Memoir, Reflections30 Comments

parrot fish
Have you ever really wondered who you are and why you are here in this body at this time in evolution? Deep inside the memory of your cells, and within the door of your heart, your answers to who you are can be found, but how do you get there? How do you unlock lifetimes of memories and wisdom? How can you find your Truth?

One night last week I entered the realm of dreams while visions of ancient Egypt played with the gods inside the garden of my mind. There was Horus with his maddening blue eye, Isis mixing magic, Ma’at with her feather of Truth, and Sekhmet, the warrior goddess holding the ankh and her secrets to heal.

I had recently finished reading Sue Vincent’s The Osiriad, and had just begun Denise Linn’s Past Lives, Present Miracles. In a shadowed corner inside my mind, amid the play of gods, I searched for myself and saw a woman bent towards the ground, drawing a story in pictures. Stand up, I begged her, Show me who you are. Tell me your secrets.

The last image I can recall before I succumbed to sleep, was of an ancient oak tree. I was traveling down its trunk into the heart of Earth. I can’t tell you were I went, only that I met a parrotfish. One stubborn image that stayed inside my brain after waking.

There was a part of me that found it rather funny and, well, random that I had dreamt of a parrotfish. It seemed completely nonsensical and unrelated to my night musings. I had, after all, never before given the parrotfish much thought. I only vaguely knew what it was.

I’m not much of a believer in random signs, especially a sign that stuck so stubbornly inside my mind. It was, it seemed, a messenger from Spirit. I just needed to figure out what it was trying to tell me. I opened the computer and did some research while Sue Vincent quietly nudged me along across the ocean.

I silently thanked the divine for my friend who doesn’t appear to think I’m crazy, and happens to possess a wealth of esoteric knowledge, as I decided to explore the messages of my colorful messenger. While Sue wrote about polarity and the “surrender of self,” I thought about a fish that has the ability to change gender, color, and size.

The parrotfish is, you could say, a shapeshifter, having the ability to adapt and transform to its changing environment. It is, in essence, neither wholly male nor female, but able to harness the universal yin/yang energies we all have within us, at will. The parrotfish also wears the colors of the rainbow, the pattern and hues displayed subject to change throughout its lifetime. It is a chameleon of the sea.

The parrotfish, although residing in the warm waters of the tropics, is also connected to the element of air and land. Named after the parrot for its colorful scales that resemble the tropical bird, the parrotfish also sports a mouthful of impressive teeth that are shaped like a beak, as well as a second set inside its throat.

The more I read about this remarkable fish, the more my head swirled with symbolism. Here I was trying to evoke the memories of a distant past life I had led in ancient Egypt as a woman scribe, and it seems Spirit had scent me the parrotfish. It was a lot to digest.

Later in the morning, a dam inside of me broke and the waters of my emotions spilled from my eyes. I sat in my blue living room and looked up on my wall, noticing for the first time that the Chinese checkerboard my late grandfather had carved into wood was actually two interlocking triangles.  The hexagram is a magical symbol that Sue explores in-depth with her coauthor Dr. G. Michael Vasey in their book The Mystical Hexagram.  As I gazed upon this beautiful representation of united polarity, this union of opposites, I felt peace settle over me.  I knew in that middle space I would find my truth. Or, to put it another way, the truth was already there, unfolding like the roses etched into the corners of the square.

My Grandfather's Chinese Checker Board
My Grandfather’s Chinese Checker Board

If you happen to encounter the parrotfish as a messenger, consider asking yourself these questions: Is there something you are hiding within that seeks to be found? Are the energies within you in need of balance, or are you being called to express more of your inner yin or yang? Are you comfortable speaking (and digesting) your truth, or is a fear holding you back? Are you expressing your true, colorful self and your innate talents? Is there an alchemist inside of you waiting to be born?

The parrotfish calls us to balance the energies within us. To connect the elements of air and water and bring forth our creative gifts into this reality. It calls us to fully and fearlessly express our true selves. This beautiful being reminds us that we are more than what we appear to be on the surface, and that our true mysteries lie within, waiting to be expressed.

You Can Go Your Own Way

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections8 Comments
What is your path?
What is your path?

Often, when I am feeling lost, confused or in need of direction, Spirit takes me back to school. I call it night school. In that often blatant, but still cryptic manner that Spirit has, I return to the scene of my high school, college or graduate schools while I sleep, yet the characters and events are exaggerated, twisted, and labyrinthian in nature, like an M.C. Escher painting. Usually, it’s not a very pleasant experience. Who doesn’t feel, at least at times, lost and over-whelmed when they’re at school, especially in the school of dreams?

Spirit though, has a way of hammering a point home until you get it. Two nights ago, I found myself back at Brown University, only it was vastly different from the Brown I knew for only a year. The campus had changed into a congested city of buildings hugged by the sea, and I found myself following my husband (who had not attended Brown with me). I was losing track of him as he wandered through the city on his way to class, and suddenly I was alone, by the wild ocean, with only his black cell phone. Naturally, the phone did not work, and I found myself panicking as I punched in numbers to no avail. I was lost and bewildered, unable to find my own way to where, I was not sure.

Instead of exploring all of the symbolism in this particular dream, let me take you to last night, where I again returned to school. This time I was at Bowdoin, where my husband and I completed our undergraduate education together. Bowdoin, when I attended the school many years ago, was a place of mixed blessings for me. My husband took full advantage of his time at Bowdoin, and found the rigors of the education and social environment fulfilling. I, on the other hand, found it hard to adjust to an environment I found to be, in many ways, a repeat of  high school, only here everyone was an over-achiever. I couldn’t find my place in the sea of cliques.

It was no surprise that the Bowdoin of my dream last night was an exaggerated scene of what I had experienced years ago, there were even characters from high school. Here I was in a crowded cafeteria of sorts, filled with tables and people figuring out their schedules and where they needed to go. In my personal confusion, I was trying to follow their examples. A confident and sure friend was going one way, my husband another. I tried to follow him to an early biology class, but I was late, twice.

The dream changed, and I was in a metaphysical store. A woman was making miso soup. I told her I loved miso soup. I could smell it. I could taste it in my mouth. The colors in this scene were vivid and more real than life. I was wearing a natural face devoid of make-up, and a peach-colored shirt. The walls were hung with hand-bags, just out of reach, and in the center of each was the rounded form of a globe. At the counter 3 or 4 women poured over a map. I approached them, looked over their shoulders, and watched their scenes unfold. The map came to life, characters interacted in scenes, which the women understood clearly, yet I struggled to make sense of.

Suddenly, in this room, my senses were becoming dull and tired. My face swollen, and my eyes heavy, as though I was taking on energy that was not mine, and in the process, draining my own. When I woke, this lyric from Fleetwood Mac started playing on repeat inside my head, You can go your own way. Go your own way. You can go your own way…or was it find your own way?

Both versions, it seems, I needed. I thought of The Fool card in the Rider Tarot deck, blithely skipping along his own path, unhampered by the potential of danger ahead. I thought of the 2 of Wands, depicting a traveler holding the world in his palm, and I thought of the dreams I had just left.

That map on the counter was not mine, nor were those paths I was trying to follow at the revisited school(s). The world held inside that wall of handbags, which had seemed just out of reach, was waiting for me to reach up and grab it. To find my own way. I thought of Goddard College, the literal school in this life in which I found home. When I dream of Goddard, I dream of paths in nature, I dream of mysteries waiting to be found. At Goddard, I found my own way, through the gentle, nudging guidance of its faculty, my peers, and its wonderful connection to Spirit. I found home among a place where everyone was going his or her own way. There was no path of convention to follow. Instead, success was measured by the mostly personal barometer of finding and embarking on the creative journey of the soul.

I graduated from Goddard nearly 3 years ago. My environment, and the characters within it have changed, and I have been challenged by their individual lessons. There have been paths I have been tempted to follow, like the path of martial arts, which led me to the painful (yes, it is often painful when we uncover our truths and shed the weight we no longer want to carry) truth that it was not the path intended for my spirit. I have had to let go of judgement too, realizing that a path (martial arts was one) may be right for my husband and others at this stage of their journeys, even though it is not right for me.

There has been that struggle to find connection to others, along with the courage to travel my own path. Even though I am on my soul’s journey with my writing and healing work, I have sometimes struggled to stay true to my own voice and trust that my individual path will unfold it its own unique way. It seems to be the quest of humanity, to find that balance between connection and individual truth. How many of us have tried to follow a path of “conformity,” while forsaking our soul’s truth? We can too easily forget that we are all here to do something unique, perhaps radically, or only slightly different, from someone else, yet none-the-less, a purpose that is only ours. This is why we are here, to blend our own voice of truth to that universal breath we all share. This is how we balance the world, this is how we balance ourselves.

I am a writer and and a spiritual/energy healer, I have a path that is not, by nature conventional. I often find myself in places where I feel more alone than connected, yet when I fall to the temptation of conformity, I am quickly reminded that I am on the wrong path. I doubt I am alone in this feeling. How many of these people around me are trying to follow a path of conformity that doesn’t make them feel blissfully happy and free? I think, sadly, too many.

It is indisputable that the world, and its inhabitants, struggles in a battle for balance. We are striving for destinations that are not our own, we are walking paths of conformity that cause crowding and strife, and we are, in this sea of masses, often left with a feeling of loss.

When I opened the curtain of my bedroom window this morning, I saw the blue feathers of truth worn by a jay, flying into the evergreens. When I opened the door to my house to step outside, 3 crows flew in front of me, calling out to me in that loud, unmistakable voice of magic. Later, as I walked the dogs, those 3 crows became 4, and I was reminded that to follow the magic of individual creation does not mean we must leave those we love behind. That, in fact, each path will merge and mingle in the mysterious song of harmony when sung in the vibration of truth.

“Say What You Need to Say” #speakyourtruth #thyroiddisease

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Energy Healing, Memoir, Reflections6 Comments

I turned off the light the other night after reading the following passage spoken by Agnes Whistling Elk in Lynn V. Andrews’ book Jaguar Woman, “‘Children are told to speak when spoken to. We as women are taught that to speak of our power is to be shunned by most of society. When you listen to the voices of many men and women you hear a strangled sound. And it’s no wonder. Women’s voices are often weak or a monotone or barely audible. Voices need to be open and free, so that energy can flow through the throat center. We hold our enlightenment there. If energy is trapped in the throat, it can’t move up into the crown of the head. That’s why we get sore throats, thyroid problems, or diseases such as throat cancer. Whenever you have an energy knot like that, it will eventually cause disease.'” (70)

Agnes and the narrator go on to discuss how this concept of trapped energy pertains to disorders in other areas of the human body, but this is where I ended my reading for the night. It was the message I needed to “hear.” After closing the book and placing it on my dresser, the lyrics “Say What You Need to Say” by John Mayer played over like a stuck record inside of my head.

The message from Spirit was clear and obvious, but the concept itself is complex. When I was about 24- years-old, I was diagnosed with thyroid disease. To be more precise, hypothyroidism, which means my thyroid was under-active. I was not surprised. Thyroid disease, after all, runs in my family on my mother’s side. She has it, her sister has it, my sister has it, and the list likely goes on. I have an old photograph of great aunts, five sisters posing in pretty dresses that hug their enlarged, goitered throats.

At 24, I thought my thyroid disease was a cause of bad genetics, I neglected to consider the environmental triggers. I didn’t realize I was holding a knot of energy trapped in my throat. All I knew was that I was destined to take a hormone to supplement my deficiency for the rest of my life, and that if I had children, especially daughters, it was likely they would suffer the same fate. This is what I was told, this is what I believed to be true.

I was wrong, thankfully. Over the past several years, I have witnessed the breaking down of the truths that were the foundation for my early life. Not a day goes by that I am not thankful I set foot on this path to spiritual truth. As Agnes states in Jaguar Woman, we heal ourselves, sometimes through the facilitation of others. Awhile ago a psychic told me I would cure, or heal, my thyroid disorder. I’m still getting there. I’ve lowered my dose, but not a lot. I wrote my memoir, but I still have not sent it out wholly and fearlessly into the world. And, I still don’t always “say what I need to say.”

What does that mean? How does the individual who is used to being silenced, often through many lifetimes, clear the trapped, stagnant energy in her throat? It’s not about avenging past wrongs, it’s not about anger or rage and it’s not a matter of turning into a person driven by aggression. I have lived most of this life trying to avoid conflict, assuming that if I were to speak my truths at certain moments, especially when dealing with aggressive people, I would face a verbal battle or worse. Silence became a way of life for me; a life, it seems, not so easy to change.

I still have moments when I flee a room in tears, unable to form the words caught in the web of energy inside my throat.  Sometimes we heal “miraculously,” sometimes we heal by small steps with a few leaps and bounds. In Jaguar Woman, Agnes cures the beginnings of disease in the narrator’s throat by using shamanic healing to help her free the image of a black crow Andrews sees trapped in her throat. The crow tells Andrews, “You need to remember the importance of saying what you need to say.” (66)

The words that we need to say come from that place of truth inside of our soul.  As Meyer sing, “from a heart wide open.” Our true voice is the clear, bold, yet compassionate voice of the spirit, stripped of the fears of ego. It is the release of constriction from fear’s hands at the present moment, for it does little good to move back to the past in an attempt to alter a situation that has already occurred. The energy has already been lost, or wasted. The moment cannot be fully recovered.

Later in the day, while driving my children into town, I turned on the radio at the moment “Free Bird,” by Lynyrd Skynyrd was playing. Spirit likes using this song as a call to action for me. It’s not an accident that a healthy throat chakra vibrates in the color of a cloudless blue sky, the color of a robin’s egg in spring. And, yes, I saw a robin when I walked out the door of my house in the morning, boldly baring its orange chest to the world and pointing its yellow beak to me.

Multiple Messengers #watersymbolism #dreamsymbolism #animalmessengers

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Reflections4 Comments

Sometime Spirit likes to hammer the point home until we get it.  I find this happens when I am really being called to shift and get rid of old energies and systems of belief that are not serving my highest good. Since my mind likes to work with symbols and metaphors, I often get these messages in the form of animals and vividly detailed dreams. When I put all the pieces together the puzzle becomes complete and I really “get it.”

I’ll share my most recent series of messages as an example. It’s rather amusing when one lets go of self-frustration. Two nights ago I had a series of vivid dreams, of which I would now recall in more detail had I written them right down after waking. But, I think what I retained was enough to get Spirit’s point across, especially when combined with the other messengers that ensued.

In the dreams I found myself in a landscape of water (the element of emotion). The water was an ocean, and it was rising. As I made my way through the water I encountered a large (too large) seal. It was alive, but unmoving, floating like a buoy with its bloated belly turned toward me.

The seal as an animal messenger beckons us to awaken our imaginations and creativity. In his book Animal Speak, Ted Andrews writes, “If a seal or seal lion has shown up as a totem, it is time to do some questioning. Are you getting out of balance.” (pg. 311). Considering that my seal was bloated and unmoving, I would have to say yes.  Since I am a writer and my soul needs this form of creative nurturing, the seal was a “gentle” reminder to find space to feed this part of my soul.

What of the bloated belly though? One might say that the seal in my dream was over-fed. Now, let me tell you about the other vivid image that stayed with me from that night. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say I was on a toilet and a lot of waste was moving through me. Our physical bodies are responsible for storing, processing and getting rid of the energy we take in. Sometimes, when we harbor fears, these energies find a home within us and grow – they quite literally bloat our bellies, or cause dis-ease of some kind. As a former sufferer of IBS, I know too well this type of energy retention and the body’s struggle for release and balance. Although, two nights ago, I was not literally having an episode of IBS, spirit was showing me that it was time for a release of fears.

The following day, I went for a walk with the dogs and my eyes were pulled to the side of the road where a black snake lay curled in the sand. Again, my animal messenger was unmoving, although alive. The snake as a messenger seems to make an appearance in my life when I am in the process of, or am about to undergo, a big shift. As a totem/messenger, the snake awakens the dormant energies inside of us (it’s associated with the awakening of the kundalini energy at the base of our spine) and, through its ability to shed its entire skin, calls us to release our old self and rebirth.

The snake energy is associated with the 2nd chakra, where we house our sexual and creative energies. A chakra area that has been calling for attention and healing in my body.  The point of Spirit was really starting to hit home, but there were still two more messengers to consider.

Over the past few days I have, much to my dismay, encountered more than a few ants in my house. Through much investigation and cleaning, I discovered the lure – a jar of honey with a loose lid. Now I must confess that the ant is not one of the animals I tend to spare when I encounter them in my house, so I did my best to thank the universe while I sent the messengers down the drain with a good dose of the element of water.

It’s likely the message here was multifaceted. The ants were lured to honey – a sweet substance of life (and there may be an indirect message from bee here too, see below). Ants, as most people are aware, are quite industrious. They work in a complex social unit of cooperation and order. Andrews writes in his book: “The ant is the teacher of how to build, how to become the architect of your own life. It can show you how to construct your dreams into reality. It will show you that the greatest success occurs with persistence.” (pg. 336). I can safely say I have a few dreams I’d like to manifest into reality, some of which are directly related to writing.

Now let’s side-track a little and look at the bee, because we really should consider the lure of honey. Andrews states that “Bees are long-time symbols for accomplishing the impossible.” (pg. 337). Of course one might say that the impossible is only impossible inside the confines of our minds. Could it be that I am being called to actually enjoy, and find the sweetness inside, the process of manifesting my creative endeavors into reality (yes, there is a tone of irony here)?  Sometimes we do forget that life is supposed to be fun and filled with light and joy.

There’s just one more messenger I want to consider before I end this blog. The catbird. I seem to have a resident catbird outside my home that likes to make itself seen in my presence at the most telling of times. The catbird, with its talent for a wide range of songs, is a messenger of communication. This morning, when my friend the catbird appeared before me, I was quite literally thinking about my own communication blockages (related to the throat chakra in particular).

And so, it seems, spirit is calling me to the two chakras in most need of my attention – the 2nd, and also the 5th. Two chakras I feel are intimately connected. For when we manifest our creative gifts, we want to be sure we sing them in the clear, beautiful and enduring voice of our truth.

Salamander, Tarot and the Element of Fire #tarot #salamandersymbolism

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Energy Healing, Gaia & Elementals, Reflections, Tarot/Oracle Readings32 Comments

salamander

Those of you who study Tarot will know that the image of the salamander appears on 3 cards of the Rider deck, all in the suit of wands – representing the element of fire. The salamander, though, is shown only on the “royalty” cards, and not on all 4.
Rider Page of Wands
In the Page of Wands, we see a young person contemplating the growth that is sprouting from his wand, which he holds like a staff, ready to embark upon a journey.  He wears a yellow tunic (symbolic of the 3rd chakra – the power center),  which is covered in salamanders curving toward circles. Under the tunic, the Page has on orange leggings, the same color as the lining of his cloak.

Rider Knight of Wands

The next card in the line of royalty, the Knight of Wands, depicts a knight riding a steed, presumably towards battle. Again, we see a yellow tunic with salamanders, some of which are now forming complete circles, connecting tails to heads. The figure has moved from the point of contemplation that we see in the Page card, to action. The color orange, symbolic of the 2nd, or sacral, chakra, appears on the steed, as well as in flaming plumes emerging from the Knight’s back and head.

The 2nd chakra is where we house the energy of creation, both sexual and artistic. From this energy center, which exists between our tailbone and our solar plexus, we give birth to our unique gifts. When our 2nd chakra is healthy, we  glow with the fire of creation. We have a healthy and satisfying sexual life, and are manifesting our innate creative gifts.

The salamander has long been considered the animal symbol of fire.  Some species of salamander, the type we associate with the elemental symbol of fire, are a bright orange. Often we see them appear in the woods, or upon our walking paths, after it has rained and the earth is still damp. These silent, harmless creatures, look like curls of flame on the forest floor, and we must watch our step carefully so as not to tread on them.

The lithe body of the salamander also evokes the element of fire with its ability to bend and twist with stealth-like ease as it crawls across the ground.  Its moist skin reminds us that fire often needs the element of water to temper its heat. When we have too much fire energy inside of us, we can literally feel a burning in our second chakra. Sometimes this burning is a call to put our creative gifts into action, sometimes it reminds us of a balance lost.  When an individual has suffered sexual abuse, or is sexually obsessed (which can be a side-effect of sexual abuse), the second chakra will often appear over-inflamed.

With the second chakra, as with any of our energy centers, it is always a question of finding that healthy balance. An over-expressed chakra can create havoc, while a stagnant chakra can lead to lethargy. In the case of the second chakra in particular, a loss of appetite for pleasure and a lack of vibrancy in one’s aura can result.

When I opened up my deck of Rider Tarot cards I was initially surprised to see that the image of the salamander appeared on the Page, Knight and King (image later in post) cards, but not on the Queen.

Rider Queen of Wands

Unlike in your average deck of cards, the King in Tarot does not “trump” the Queen card. In fact, I often find that the Queen cards symbolize a more balanced energy representative of the suit. In the Queen of Wands in the Rider deck, we find a woman/queen sitting on a throne with her legs relaxed and spread out to the sides. Her “relaxed” posture shows us that her 2nd chakra is unrestricted.

The animals featured in the card include the lion, fox, and cat. Two of the three lions are yellow, as is the robe and crown of the queen, symbolic of the 3rd charka, the seat of our inner power. The fox is red/orange, evoking the 1st and 2nd chakras – another indication of the comfortable, fearless aura of the queen. In her hands she holds her wand (in bloom) and a sunflower – a symbol of the birth of one’s creative and sexual self (the fertilized seed’s growth into a flower). Then there’s the black cat, sitting at her feet. When I was at Goddard College, I took a tarot workshop with Rachel Pollack, and I remember her telling us that she associates herself with the Queen of Wands card.

Once, when Pollack was giving tarot workshops overseas, a black cat suddenly appeared and sat at her feet while she spoke, then, just as quietly, left when she was finished. The cat, especially the black cat, is associated with feminine mystery and magic. One can’t help but feel the feminine and creative power of this card, yet it is not overwhelming or threatening.Rider King of Wands

Now, maybe it’s just me, but the figure in the King of Wands card looks a bit disgruntled, and dare I say a bit angry. Although he is seated, he looks as though he is getting ready to stand, his gaze turned toward an unknown source that may be troubling him. His left hand (the hand that held the sunflower in the Queen of Wands), is partially clenched and the arm is pulled back as though prepping to support the king to stand.

The element of fire is everywhere in the picture. The King’s hair is a red/orange, as is his dress. His yellow crown bares tips that look like flames, and the salamander has reappeared. Instead of a cat at his feet, we see a salamander off to the side. On the back of his throne, and on the outer layer of his cloak, there are salamanders curled into circles. One can’t help but think that the king has not only mastered this element, but perhaps has over-mastered it to the point where there is an imbalance, or too much heat, in the second chakra.

Twice in recent days, an orange salamander has appeared on my path. Its small, flame-like body reminding me to go within and assess the 2nd chakra energies that are calling for balance, for voice, and for healing. It’s a reminder that sometimes  we need a bit of fire to burn off the emotional element of water, and to spur our desires into action. My salamander, after all, came after rain.

Robin: The Bird of (Re)birth #robins #robinsymbolism #robintotem #rebirth #sacralchakra #throatchakra

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Energy Healing6 Comments

Robin

The American Robin is considered by many to be a harbinger of spring. When the robin returns to its summer home in the spring, it gets to work building a nest with its mate and laying a brood of beautiful, sky-blue eggs. It is also one of the first birds to sing at dawn, harkening the new day with its melodious voice.

The robin, in many respects, is a bird of beginnings, of birth, and of the rebirth of the true, creative self. Upon its proud chest, robin shamelessly displays the color orange. Although robins are considered to have a “red-breast,” the color is really a deep orange, the vibration of the second, or sacral chakra. Orange and the second chakra are symbolic of our creative and sexual drives. This wheel of energy stirs us into action, and when balanced and healthy,  enables us to live our creative truths without worry of how we will be received by the world.

When I see robin, the bird always inspires a sense of awe and reverence. Standing erect and confident on the ground, where it digs through the body of Earth for sustenance, robin appears a master of the self. The robin has no doubt who s/he is, unafraid to sing in full-throated beauty the first song of the morning.

The robin births eggs in the spring in the color of the cloudless sky, making the robin a creator of truth and a teacher for a healthy throat chakra. The throat chakra is the fifth chakra in the set of seven primary chakras in the body. It is closely tied to the second chakra. When we are able to create freely from that seat of orange energy, we need to be able to bring it up through our throats, where we express our truths with compassion and confidence.

Near the end of last summer, on the first day of returning to school for my children, I experienced a day of magical peace and communion with nature. It had been a difficult summer for me, not because the kids were home, although that presents its own set of challenges and gifts, last summer was a time of transition for me. I was emerging into the field of energy healing, and was getting ready to finish up my memoir and start sending it out to the world. I was feeling called to release old fears and habits that were no longer serving me. Part of this releasing was letting go of relationships that were no longer in alignment with who I was, and my upper back, neck and shoulders were suffering the struggle to unburdan an old, heavy load.

feather

That day at the end of August, after I sent my children off on the bus, I was able to decompress and live in the moment in a way I had not been able to for a long time. I spent the beautiful sun-filled day with my dogs walking in the woods and sitting outside. Many birds appeared to me, including a hummingbird, flicker, and robin. For a long time I watched these individual birds and took in the lessons they had to offer. Robin sat in a maple tree in my front yard, toward the middle of the afternoon shortly before the kids were due off the bus. I had my camera with me all day, and I captured the bird on the branch, then watched as it released a single feather, which swirled with gravity toward the earth beside where I sat. A gift, it seemed.

Spirit sometimes speaks to us with feathers, offering them to us as a gesture of hope and reassurance that we are a part of a great, universal love that is so vast and infinite we can hardly comprehend it in our human form. I am often reluctant to take feathers from the Earth when I see them, for there is also the belief that one should not take from Earth what one does not need, or belongs to someone else. Sometimes, though, the gifts are so overt one is pulled to accept them. That day, as I gently lifted the fallen feather, feeling the vibration of the robin’s energy still humming inside, I knew I had been given a precious gift. A gift of new birth and beginnings. It’s been quite a journey.

The Great Blue Heron: Wader of Elements #herons #heronsymbolism #heronmessenger #greatblueheron

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers3 Comments

heron wading

Often, when I look to the sky these days I see the majestic form of a great blue heron flying a silent, solitary search for the next body of water. In flight, the great blue heron evokes the image of a prehistoric bird from a time when dinosaurs ruled the land and sky.

The great blue heron is often seen alone and there is a sense of awe instilled when we are lucky enough to glimpse this shy bird who walks and flies soundlessly through the elements of air, water, and earth. It is a bird of great grace and beauty with long appendages adorned in watercolor feathers.

The heron, when its presence graces our lives, reminds us of our inner strength and ability to adapt and survive on our own. That when we live a life of quiet grace, our inner beauty radiates and affects those around us.
flying great blue heron

Although it is not a water bird, the heron is a wader of shallow depths in the areas where land and water mingle. Here, the heron walks with stealth and grace on long legs, bending with ease to find sustenance in the form of fish, frogs, or other small animals living in or near the water.

The heron not only moves between the elements of land, water, and air with effortless ease, it is a master of balance, able to support its large, slender form on one long leg. Balance comes to the individual through wisdom and the ability to go within to find harmony. The heron evokes ancient wisdom. It is a sage for the soul who seeks balance and the harmony of inner truth, as well as a guide for the individual who finds peace in solitary endeavors.

The photographs in this post were taken by a good friend of mine who dances with heron. Much love and gratitude to you, Rachel, a woman who embodies the grace and beauty of inner strength. The journey of the heron can be lonely at times, but offers great rewards.