Tiwaz, or the “Spiritual Warrior” Rune has special significance to me. One day, when I was about sixteen, I was standing in the kitchen of our home. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, something hit me in the top of the head. Startled, I looked down and picked it up. It was the Tiwaz Rune! It looked like the white ceramic ones from the bag of Runes my mother always had around. So I went to check her bag and her spiritual warrior rune was still in her bag! So it hadn’t come from there. Even weirder is it literally seemed like it came straight down from the sky through the house and hit my crown chakra (the chakra on the very top of your head related to your connection to Spirit.) I clearly took this a some sort of sign or initiation. I saved this particular rune and put it into a medicine bag with herbs and other sacred object. Just recently, nearly twenty years later, I found this pouch and uncovered this rune. It’s interesting how I had just recently began studying the Runes and this special initiatory Rune found it’s way back into my consciousness. Perfect timing!
Unfortunately, this is not an easy Rune companion to have along your path. The Spiritual Warrior is about finding your inner strength and standing in your power. It’s about sacrifice and Justice at all costs. Looking back over my life, I can see how many tests and challenges have shaped who I am today. Also, these challenges have kept kicking me back onto a spiritual path. Like the path of the “Spiritual Warrior.” Being a Spiritual Warrior can be a lonely long path. No matter what religion or spiritual path we follow, if we choose a spiritual life, or it chooses us, it is not going to be smooth sailing. When we make a commitment to any path we have not signed up for easy. We will be tested again and again, we will travel over stormy seas, and walk through fires to become worthy of the title Spiritual Warrior.
I am currently in my second year of my Druid work. The second year is called the “Ovate” year. In the Ovate year we are asked to face our shadows. This means doing a deep dive into our inner landscapes, leaving no stone unturned. It is a long and gruelling process. The idea is to come out the other side transformed. It’s like becoming the goo that butterflies become when they are in their cocoon. Sitting in the darkness, completely un-forming yourself, so that you may be transformed into something wonderful! This is truly the time of the Spiritual warrior. A concept we also use during this part of the training is “hunting.” We are hunting for our energy, and pulling it back towards us. We are searching for places where our energy gets drained, in our habits, and thought forms. We are being asked to be conscious about ever aspect of our selves, our lives, and where our energy lies. This is the work of the Spiritual Warrior. Because in order to be a Warrior you must take full responsibility for yourself, and your life every single day. It’s so much easier to pull the wool over our eyes and live in a trance like Zombie state. Spiritual Warriors want Freedom! We want to step out of that way of life, to wake up, to live differently. To serve others and the world. Another word comes to mind Shaman. Shamans of all cultures are like Spiritual Warriors,” needing to go through initiations to access their true power. The Ovate year of Druid work is also about facing death and dying. Often times Shamans go through a near death experience, which marks the start of their “new” life.
I was going through a particularity hard time in the days leading up to building this shrine. I was recognising my own patterns and how I was repeating them again and again. I was being tested and had to go through the feelings, the process, to come out the other side in better form. We can not rush or truncate these experiences. I found I spent one entire day feeling these emotions in my body. It is as if they had to be felt and experienced holistically in order to be somehow psychologically “digested,” so they could then move on or evolve. Since we are made up of so much energy, not just physical matter, I wonder if the breakdown of emotional states and mental epiphanies actually change our vibrations somehow? After going through these “digestion” periods I often feel lighter and more free!
I built this shrine in an area of the woods that I often have felt is a bit special and magical whenever I pass by it. It had some quartz crystals peeking out of the ground and the sun always shines through the trees to embrace them. The air feels different in this area. When I was building this shrine I felt as though there were something tangible in the space around me. The energy was different than the rest of the woods. But I couldn’t see anything with my naked eye, so I stepped back and took a picture. I think I did capture something in the photo! Because even if the sun coming through the trees made a rainbow, it wouldn’t explain the rainbows coming from other directions and all seeming to converge over my shrine.
I built this near Beltane, a time of year when the veils between the worlds are thinner. Samhain (Halloween) is known for being a time when the veils are thin and is often a time people have experiences with their beloved Dead, or ancestors. Beltane is on the opposite side of the wheel of the year and is also a time when the veil is thin often being associated more with the faerie realms. With it being spring it makes sense that the faeries would be more active! Do I believe in Faeries? In a sense, yes. But not in the way they are portrayed in modern media (like Tinkerbell.) I believe that everything is made of energy; plants, trees, water and rocks. When I was little I thought of faeries as the spirits of the trees astral projecting around the forest since they were stuck in one place. I think it makes as much sense as any theory. Basically faeries are nature spirits or the energies of the forests, and they come in all shapes and sizes! Not just pretty little women with wings.
Sali Crow, psychic medium, saw this photo and confirmed it was a “thin space.” So not only was it a thin veil time of year, but this is also a “thin” space” in the veil of the forest. The day after this shrine’s construction I was walking with a friend near here. I didn’t say anything about my experience the day before. I just pointed into the woods and said; “I built a shrine back there yesterday.” She stopped and said; “I have to walk into the woods here! There is a doorway here!” So it was confirmation to me that I’m not the only one who could feel the difference in energy at this spot.
The Tree Song Journey 