Reading Signs Out of Nowhere

One thing that shamans and seers do is read signs. Always have, always will. Comes with the territory, we can't really help it, it just sort of happens. Throughout history and cultures you hear about the soothsayers reading the signs, doing cloud or bird auguries, scrying into pools and basins of water, and the gross reading the entrails of slaughtered animals method. Happily, I've never needed or wanted to do that one, but I'm a natural-born leaf, cloud and water gazer, and let's include the sounds as well, and add flames in a fireplace or fire circle to the mix. Augury is the verb; auguries are the messages you receive. I do bird auguries amongst others.

Like today, blue and green, perfect temps, with interesting breezes that arrest my attention to motion and the rustling sounds of the big maples and shimmering aspens here where I sit, entranced. It's no big deal, I'm not trying to do anything or get anything specific. That's the beauty of giving over to it without having an agenda. What comes in out of nowhere can be stunning in its simple eloquence. And by the sound of it, the breeze is getting happy with the attention, and a butterfly has just materialized to say hey, but I digress.

The thing about auguries is that they can be specifically ordered, as in a GOT type of 'go ask the oracle to do a bird augury and tell me if I will be victorious in battle' job. More often, these days, they are shamanic states of consciousness entrained by the light or wind or leaves or water themselves, commanding attention and shifting my awareness into a heightened state, what Michael Harner termed the shamanic state of consciousness.

Anyone can theoretically shift consciousness and perceive in a heightened state, and this of course happens all sorts of way. Augurers have often been said to have the gift, not learned but certainly developed through practice. It was cool to learn through both scholarly and metaphysical studies over decades that what I did naturally since I was a little kid entranced in the woods and ravines of Chicago suburban neighborhoods had a lineage back through time to those who read the portents of clouds and birds. I just knew I became different, felt different, and got info and pictures in my head that I couldn't really know on my own. Clairaudience, clairvoyance, and clairsentience is part of our human repertoire of skills and abilities, for those who wish to train up. Less persecuted than in days of olde, and in some ways less developed, tho times are changing.

Doesn't have to be earth-shattering pronouncements of gloom and doom, armies or floods, this reading signs thing. Today, for example, it's a delightful way of enjoying the moment, reveling in the weather that will soon change, watching the light and the subtle shift of the colorings. When you're quiet and listening, gazing and still, you get to do several things simultaneously. BE is a biggie, you get to to simply be. FEEL is the sentient channel, from which we human beings actually derive a lot of very useful information and connection to everything around you, without having to translate it into language and sentences and statements that can be bandied about and trifled with. 

When you're in this state of consciousness you can also ask questions, and you can read signs. That's the KNOW part. Asking and receiving/reading go together as a kind of knowing/not knowing dance, or question/answer period with the universe. While doing this with the leaves and the breeze, eloquently glossed by the dragonflies on parade back and forth, back and forth, I noticed the spiders and their webs now visible–––they weren't there before. Sign of the season, and then some. 

Spider medicine for Fall. Hence all the fake cobweb and spider stuff available for Halloween. Their web-building skills pre-date ours, obviously. The webs I'm appreciating are not covered in dew like the photo, and they each have a caramel-colored spider in their center. So what's the deal with spiders and webs and fall, and the relationship between the webs and the Web as in interwebs? There's a lot there to parse, not that I'm going to do all that here.

Spiders are the originators of the alphabet, according to indigenous lore, so seeing Spider in these newly created webs immediately gave me the sign to write. I'd been reading about writing, specifically Liz Gilbert's new book, Big Magic, which is technically not released yet. Lucky for me, soul sister and intrepid editor Kylie Bird at Penguin slipped me a copy in a recent care package. Liz Gilbert's topic, "creative living beyond fear" is about writers mostly, and fits right in with Spider medicine and the sign to write and the eloquence of the leaves/breeze conversation going on around me. There are layers of communication going on that ping off each other in ways mere advice or suggestion cannot. Energy I needed from the other web, as if out of nowhere, here now.

To make sure I got into the groove, Raven flew over very pointedly just before I noticed Spider, lecturing loudly from above on reading signs and receiving all that's needed 'out of nowhere.' It's where everything can be found.

Been awhile since I wrote a blog. The breeze is still now. The end.