Forest Faeries and an Eclipse Tomorrow - Monday Morning Check-In Post

How Are You??!!

Faerie Portal/Gateway on the Left - Path for Humans on the Right

The leaves under the tree to my left moved as if on their own. The garter snake gliding through them was barely perceptible to my eyes. Sookie's head tilted and her ears perked up. I gave a quick and firm “leave it” to her and she scampered down the path behind Zoey, Teddy, and Jon.

There were acorns on the ground. To be under the oaks once more was a treat after living in the valley of the oaks for as long as we did. We have a thing for Oaks, Jon and I. Moving to Oakley Ave in 2003, leaving the Bucktown neighborhood of authors (Webster Ave, Shakespeare Ave, Dickens Ave, and the like) was just the first in a long series of Oaks from Encinitas (which means “little oaks” in Spanish), to Enincal Ave (which means “Oak Grove” in Spanish) in the Ojai Valley neighborhood of “Meiners Oaks”, to our cross street “El Roblar” (which means “grove of white oaks” in Chumash), and on and on from Chicago to Southern California, and back to Oakley Ave in Chicago. It’s been all Oaks with a two-and-a-half-year stint in the Redwoods from 2004 - 2007.

We headed down the forested path in the Lakewood Forest Preserve Dog Park located an hour from our apartment and suddenly before us, a big, beautiful frog hopped across it. We all got excited about this being, and again a quick and firm, “leave it” from me caused all three to back off and observe curiously from afar as Jon and I got a closer view. I was a proud doggie mama at that moment.

Fuck!

I keep having to interrupt my writing of this piece due to news coming in about my mother, who has Alzheimer’s and is in memory care. I woke up to the text letting me know she was headed to the ER with a high fever and now the text that she has COVID with multiple texts and calls with my sister in between. At some point, I heard a loud bang coming from my office. The ring-shaped bulb from the light behind my laptop broke off its housing and fell onto my desk. As omens go, this one seems not good.

I do not want to write about this today. I want to write about the faerie portal I encountered in the forest on Friday while happily walking with Jon and the dogs and the upcoming lunar eclipse on Tuesday/Wednesday. However, this is the essence of these kinds of celestial/astronomical/astrological events, sudden disruptions (not always negative or challenging ones) that cause us to put our attention somewhere we were not expecting to.

Powerless, if I had to sum up the experience with my mother. It’s been the overriding feeling throughout from childhood and her controlling hand to her lies and secrecy and alcoholism and who knows what else (see the secrecy and lies and alcoholism) to her choosing to name people who are not her children as her durable powers of attorney, meaning we have to go through them to get any info about her. We are thankful, my sister and I, that information is being shared with us, and yet the gatekeeping sucks and leaves us as powerless in this relationship with our mother as we always have been.

I want to cut and run, and I may at some future point, but for now, I am choosing to be in it in as healthy of a way as I possibly can.

Back to the faerie portal, I am going to tell you about this magic.

We were at the far edge of the forest in the sixty-six fully fenced acres comprised of miles of paths through meadows of grasses and wildflowers, a giant flat field for play, and a densely forested section with a creek running along the other side of the fence. It’s Jon’s favorite of the five dog parks in Lake County, each connected to the forest preserves, some with water features, one that backs up the Des Plaines River, the same river that runs a couple of blocks behind my childhood home twenty-seven miles away from it.

Jon and the dogs were just a bit ahead of me when I saw it, arching twigs and branches creating a doorway leading into the densest part of the woods. “It’s a faeire portal!” I said to Jon in a hushed tone so as not to alarm any faerie nearby. He came back and looked at it with me as the dogs trotted on ahead, and then he followed along behind them.

I pulled out my phone and stepped backward to grab the perfect shot. My foot stepped into the hole I had noted in my head just a minute earlier and I quickly latched onto the fence to steady myself, saying, “Very funny, Ffaff!” (Ffaff the Ffooter from Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth’s “Faeries’ Oracle”)

I took a couple of snaps and as I was putting my phone back in my purse I saw a winged being fly past me, right into the opening, and disappear. It was there, physically right in front of me, and then it was gone, as if to say, “Yes indeed, this gateway is exactly what you think it is.”

We continued on and suddenly heard rustling in the leaves far above us as a torrent of acorns came crashing down, scurrying us along, a bit more of the faerie magic amusing us as we could see no squirrels or other physical beings in the trees responsible for the acorn storm. I was reminded of the squirrel in our neighborhood back in Ojai many years ago who would throw acorns at our kitty, Izzy. She would sit curled in her wicker chair cackling at him in response.

We left the park a while later and as we were on the road, I saw my third hawk of the day. The first I’d seen while driving into the park, was the first hawk I’d encountered since returning to Illinois. The second one soared high above us while we were in the park.

Snakes and frogs and hawks and faeries, the messengers were with us in full force, letting us know that magic was afoot and that some bigger things may be ahead.

The Lunar Eclipse is exact at 9:44pm Central Time tomorrow, September 17th. This eclipse occurs in the sign of Pisces during a Super Full Moon. This is the first eclipse in the sign of Pisces since a series of eclipses that ran from March 2015 through February 2017. There will be a Solar Eclipse on October 2nd in the sign of Libra and an “Almost Lunar Eclipse” on October 17th when the moon will be full in Aries and once again super.

Super.

How are you?? Please drop me a comment below and let me know.

This Addendum is brought to you by my actual experiences out in the world last night:
Be on the lookout (internally and externally) for reactivity, ungroundedness, general spaciness, big emotions, substance abuse, bad drivers (I mean, always right now, but yesterday was extra), boundary violations, and everything else you would normally associate with a Super Full Moon in the very watery sign of Pisces. Pisces also can open the door to falling into rabbit holes and delusions. As I look back at the series of eclipses in Pisces from 2015 - 2017, I keep thinking about Qanon and other delusions that had people believing Trump would be their savior and the connection to the four eclipses in Pisces that occurred during that period. Perhaps this one in Pisces will facilitate a final breaking of that spell, a spell which has already largely been broken.

Take advantage of your ability to dream big, feel everything, make magic, listen to your intuition, create, play, opportunities for healing, music as a facilitator of movement and joy, and the element of water as a system of support and grounding for you and your body which will all be highlighted by this eclipse.

A week from today, on Monday, September 23rd at 1:00pm Central Time, we’ll be gathering on Zoom for an Equinox and Eclipses Event. Register Here

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