aligned with the times
circle of salt
I don’t often “prescribe” something to everyone here, but right now I am recommending working with salt energy.
Right now there is an extra amount of psychic debris flying around; a natural, species-wide response to the extreme precarity of our current situation. There is also an extremely high volume of passionate images, words, thoughts, feelings and fears darting about on the internet – which, when we perceive them, attaches them in some way to our consciousness. And, of course, multiply that experience times every one else in the world and we are all swimming in interconnected oceans of chaos trying not to glitch.
When we sit in a circle of salt for 5-10 minutes it both cleans up some of that debris and more importantly, makes it harder for scattered energy to stick to us into the future.
This accessible practice also brings us into our body and “wipes the dust from our eyes” in the best, most gentle way.
There are many ways to call on the power of salt - alchemy bath, sweat, tears, ocean water, incendiary salt magic, salt across the threshold - and so many more. I really think that salt has wisdom and power we can use right now; and I’m encouraging us all to engage in practices that avail us to salt’s magic.
Here is a 3 minute video showing one way of sitting/meditating in a circle of salt.*
I invite you to take the time (and the salt) to create the container for whatever healing, love or inspiration you are ready to have come through.
Right now, we need you at your best - in touch with your true feelings, your spirit clear, your heart open, your mind liberated.
Wherever you are on this turning globe, I am sending you good tidings of peace and love.
Until next time,
Jess
*this video is from the Lunar Library – one of two videos supporting our magical practice for the Taurus new moon last week. The Lunar Library is the newest wing of the New Library and we are just a month in, but already I am LOVING the things that are coming through in this special space on the internet - and I hope you do too!
“In the magnificent fierce morning of New Mexico one sprang awake, a new part of the soul woke up suddenly, and the old world gave way to a new.”
― D.H. Lawrence
“Every morning you have to conquer the demons who say, “This will never be any good. This will never be what I saw when I dreamed of it.” But you just have to say, “Keep on, keep on,” and finally it gets through.”
—May Sarton
“But I don’t think one can self-improve out of having to deal with the convoluted nature of being with other people, not completely. Even though every popular new thought leader seems to make bank on cleverly nuanced ways to apply individualism to the social ills of our collective compassion chasm. If you do it well enough, you never have to deal with anyone ever again! And we wonder why we are so lonely.”
- Sable Young
“I am burning unreasonably happy logs inside the furnace in my chest. I become still more dangerous to hatred. I’m hunting it like an orca hunting great white sharks to just eat their livers out.”
- Neko Case
"Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads, idiots, and movie stars."
- Dorothea Tanning
"The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it."
- Henry Miller
“Which brings me to my important point - being magical has A LOT to do with being able to live life while simultaneously working with the prima material of our lives symbolically. Having this two-pointed awareness (on the real life, and on the mythic life) is essential for those of us who like to make magic and enjoy experiences others deem impossible.
Yes, this is the life we are living, AND also (at the same time) it is the story of our life coming into being. And, this story of our life coming into being is ripe with symbols THAT ARE CONNECTED to the story of the collective that we all live within.
Lots of connections, intersections and opportunities here in this overlapping space between us and the collective - many that are invisible most of the time to our ego/logic mind. We normally just can’t see beyond our most habitual perspectives.
When we engage with life on the mythic/symbolic level, we can access wisdom and intuition that is BEYOND what our ego/logic mind can comprehend. It’s like taking the blinders off a horse or removing the training wheels off a bike.
We can see so much more, and go so much farther, faster.”
- Jessica Snow,
“To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.”
—Many P. Hall
"Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening.
Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance."
- Henri Bergson
Two Kinds of Intelligence
There are two kinds of intelligence:
one acquired, as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.
–Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do.
I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too.
Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”
-Frida Kahlo
“The worse the state of the world grows, the more intensely I try for inner
perfection and power. I fight for a small world of humanity and tenderness."
- Anaïs Nin, from a diary entry written in June 1942
I LOVE your writing, so much. And your magical approach to life. But I do want to buy you a dustpan (saltpan) ;)
xoxo