Follow the Voice of your Soul/ Crow Mandala
I pulled an Oracle card this morning that said “Follow the Voice of your Soul.” It struck me deeply because I realized that I have been feeling really out of touch with that Voice for sometime now. Entangled in the busyness and responsibilities of my everyday life. I recently made a difficult decision to step down from a leadership position in the Green Mountain Druid Order after two years of service. It was the best choice for me but of course comes with some grieving and letting go as well. I am embracing that this change will open up more time for me to follow that Voice! This is what is needed for me right now. SO, I decided to go into the woods and make one of my mandalas (nature shrines) with the idea of finding my soul’s voice once again. Where better to go than the place where I started this practice many moons ago, the Cow Pasture in Barre Vt.
As I arrived, I felt called to go down a new path I had never been on before. As soon as I stepped onto the new path, I began finding crow feather after crow feather. I smiled picked them up and said “thank you.” Knowing this was my acknowledgement that I was heading in the right direction. Each time I thought I should turn around, another crow feather would appear! So I followed them…Much like following the Voice of my soul. My inner guidance. In my hour long walk I wound up finding 21 crow feathers!
The interesting thing is that I have been trying to repair my relationship to crow ever since my last break up. As most of you know I have had an ongoing friendship with the Barre Murder of Crows ever since I moved to this area. They often visited my yard, hundreds of them descending and chattering at me. I often tried to feed them to no avail. But always was in awe of their presence.
But I must tell you a story now: One day a few years back I asked the Crows to go find me a soul mate. I told them they had to bring him here, to Barre, down the street from me. Soon after my last boyfriend showed up living up the street from me, in Barre, and having a close connection to Crows. It was the first thing we spoke about and it was actually unreal how they would show up at every step of the way for us, every date we went on the murder was there, every night he slept over they roosted by the hundreds in the trees behind my house. One day he left me a gift of a crow feather and a flower on my windshield. When I walked out the next morning, a crow swooped by me and sat on my roof looking at the gift on my windshield, and then me. He did this over and over, until I picked up the gift. “You were making sure I got this huh?” I said. He he cawed and flew off. Things like that happened on the daily during my six months with this person. But once we broke up, I realized the crow’s affiliation with the Dark Goddess and that I had summoned a deep lesson from her by calling this person into my life. Dark Goddess doesn’t mess around or play when it comes to lessons. It was thankfully a short but potent reminder of what kinds of relationships I should not engage in, of past unhealthy patterns of mine around relationship. Soon after the breakup I made a mandala and put a Blue Jay feather in the center. Switching up my Corvids! The next day the Blue Jays took up residence in my yard and literally chased the crows away. In the weeks following every time a crow approached the yard, the team of Blue Jays would all start hollering and flying at them until they left! It was a real validation for me around my magical work. I was seeing magic in action. But I also felt grief around my loss of relationship to Crow due to this unfortunate situation.
Fast forward to today, on the way to the Cow Pasture I was listening to a book in the car. She started talking about Corvids, and particularly Crows. She talked about their “Trickster” energy. “Trickster happens along when something urgently needs to shift, sweeping out the old, arid, and useless, to make way for the new. Sometimes the methods used are more extreme than we might like. Tricksters is rarely a comfortable, warm and cozy character.” (Sharon Blackie, Hagitude) I had to chuckle when I heard this thinking back on the lessons I learned from the last relationship. Trickster energy, Dark Goddess energy, coming into my life in one fell swoop, like the murder of crows landing in my back yard, to shake things up for me. To remind me to hold onto my Power and not give it away. So obviously finding the 21 Crow feathers on this walk felt hugely significant. Clearly, they belonged in my mandala.
As I walked along chuckling at each feather I found, and speaking to the forest in my own way, as I do, I remembered how I use a sort of inner “dosing” on these magical walks. It just sort of switches on whenever I go back out. Even if I’m out of practice, it’s like muscle memory you don’t forget the skill It just happens. I thought, “Oh yeah! Inner Voice, Voice of my soul. I’m following it.”
I wound up making this mandala on a stone where I made an eclipse mandala many years ago. I have included a dried Egyptian Blue Lotus flower in the center, as it was a great teacher and catalyst for change for me when I recently used it ceremonially at a Dream Retreat a few weeks back. It is slightly psychotropic and helps us to remember dreams. I am very sensitive to these types of things, and it wound up having a profound experience for which I am grateful. I also included apple, and mugwart that were also present at the retreat. I included calendula flower for soothing, and rose (as always) for heart opening.
I placed the crow feathers into the mandala, hoping this is crows way of repairing our relationship. I contemplated how they have a strong and loud Voice, and how this may be part of the medicine for me to find my Voice.
An important thing for me (and I’m sure some others out there) to remember is that our unique inner voice is something only we can know and understand. With my moon in Pisces, I can often get swept away in the emotional waters of other, of demands, requests, and the need to care for and nurture others. Perhaps also a lesson from the full Moon Eclipse in Pisces a few weeks back.
Ultimately what I discovered on this walk and mandala building experience is that I have never lost the Voice of my Soul! It’s been there all along. I just stopped listening. I remembered that all I have to do is take the time to listen to that voice again and let it guide me forward. Just like following my inner dosing, and the crow feathers up the path
