spiritual

January 2019 Magickal Folk Meditation Kit Subscription Box Review

| marandarussell

This month I decided to try a different pagan-themed subscription box through Cratejoy. This is the Magickal Folk Meditation Kit subscription box that is only $7 + S&H. One thing I love about the Magickal Folk series is that they have a wide selection of boxes to choose from at different prices, so if you simply want Ritual Teas, Crystals, Meditation Rituals, or bigger combo boxes, you can get exactly what you want without paying for more.

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The kit I chose is a small kit that comes with a specific meditation and ritual to perform each month, with a few little magickal tools to perform the ritual. This month’s theme was Brigid’s Blessing and came with a winter-themed meditation card, two beautiful tumbled milk quartz stones in a pretty little maroon pouch, a white satin spell ribbon that says “As it is” and “So it will be” at opposite ends, and a large packet of Goddess Blessing Salts made with dandelion root powder & cut leaf, blessed thistle herb, and sea salt.

The ritual suggests you take the ribbon out to a natural place and tie it to a tree, but right now I can’t bring myself to part from it, so I am using it as a decoration on my altar:

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One thing I especially love about the meditation card is that it comes with a few journaling prompts for further reflection. So far I love this subscription box and will stay subscribed. It is a good price for a small monthly reminder to take the time to meditate and celebrate my connection to the earth and nature.

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I Attended a Psychic Class – How Did I Do?

| marandarussell

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Last month I attended a class developed to help you improve your “psychic abilities”. Partly, I decided to try it out just for fun and to see what would happen, and partly I have always been interested in the paranormal, whether it be ghosts, ufos, psychic abilities, time travel, near death experiences, cryptids, etc.

So, what happened? I will only share my personal experiences, nothing about anyone else at the meeting or any specific teaching. We did several kinds of exercises and a meditation period. I think the weirdest experience I had the entire class was when we did a practice where the leader would share a hidden word and we all tried to intuitively figure out how that hidden word made us feel.

We did this quite a few times, and only once did I have a strong physical reaction to the hidden word. For this particular word, my hair literally started standing on end on my arms and I got goosebumps. I thought it was weird and showed everyone else in the class. This didn’t happen for any of the other words. When the leader revealed that word, it was “evil”. Kind of interesting, huh?

For the other hidden words, I often was pretty accurate about the feeling I got from it, although none of the others gave me the visceral physical reaction “evil” did. We also did some practices where the leader tried to “create” colored balls of light energy and we tried to intuitively figure out what color the balls were. I was surprised how accurate I was on these too, even when I kept feeling it was white, though I didn’t think white was technically a color, so figured that couldn’t be right….however, turned out the instructor had chosen white lol. I even came up with purple and silver when the instructor decided to challenge us and pick two colors at once.

I’m not claiming to be super psychic or anything, although I have always felt I was rather empathic. I think I might keep going to these classes simply to see what happens and because it was rather fun.

Christmas and Family Forgiveness

| marandarussell

Yesterday my husband and I traveled over to Indiana to meet my mom and her husband for Christmas dinner. We all decided to meet at a truckstop that is about halfway between us, so that neither of us would have to cook, clean up, or drive too far:

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I genuinely had a good time and am glad I’ve been able to spend more time with them recently. Those of you who have followed my blog for a while, may remember that there has been a lot of water under the bridge between my mother and myself over things that happened when I was growing up. She made some huge mistakes, and as is often the case, my sister and I had to pay for many of those choices just as much as she did…maybe more in some cases.

She genuinely seems to be regretful and is trying to make things better between us, so although I am always going to be cautious and protective of myself, it feels good to be able to embrace forgiveness for my own peace of mind and well-being. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that what we went through was ok, or that the damage wasn’t done, but it does mean that it doesn’t have control of my life, my mind, or my heart anymore. I can move on.

I am somewhat a believer in the saying “When we know better, we do better”. Some of us take a long, long time to “know better”, but healing and wisdom are ours once we finally do face the truth.

 

Alien Abduction Experience?

| marandarussell

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You all seemed to enjoy my post the other day about past life dreams, so I thought I would share another weird experience I had years ago. This is the closest thing to an alien abduction experience I have ever had. This is only one of two experiences I have had where I honestly wonder if I was awake or asleep (I’ll tell you about the other otherworldy experience another time). It certainly felt like I was awake for the following experience, but it was so odd I can’t help but wonder.

Here is what I remember of that night:

Being woken up by a bright light and sitting up in bed. I have memories of looking at the window blinds in our room to try to figure out where the light was coming from. The next thing I remember, a few small alien beings entered the room and stood around the foot of my bed. I don’t remember them walking in or anything like that, it seemed like they were just suddenly there. The beings resembled the small grey aliens that have become popularized by pop culture/paranormal communities, maybe around 4 foot tall or so. I remember how smooth and shiny their skin seemed. They seemed to be silhouetted with bit of light too, but nothing like the bright light that woke me.

Naturally, I was terrified by these events and I remember trying desperately to wake my husband up, who was sleeping peacefully next to me. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get him to wake up, which panicked me even more. Suddenly, I found myself laying down again, almost against my will it seemed. I felt myself floating upwards in this horizontal position and then I don’t really remember much else until I was returned. I do not remember going through the ceiling, or being aboard a spaceship, or tests, or anything like that, but I do feel like a lot happened during this blank time in my memory. I do remember kind of floating back down into bed later, the same way I had started to float up. I remember being really sleepy and kind of out of it, almost like I had been drugged or sedated. Due to this, I fell asleep quickly.

If this was a dream and I was asleep the entire time, I find it odd that I don’t remember any of the middle part, even though I remember the beginning and end so vividly and emotionally. Normally, I remember a dream fairly in its entirety, and the more I think about the dream, the more details I remember, but no matter how much I have relived this experience, I really do not remember what happened after floating upwards until I came back down.

I have no idea what really happened that night, but I’ll never forget it. We do live near Wright Patterson Air Force Base, which I later found out is rumored to be highly connected to the Roswell incident, Area 51, and other secret space programs, but who knows? I have heard that UFO activity is common in the area around the base, but that could be due to various military-related programs.

Reincarnation: Remembering Past Lives?

| marandarussell

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I want to start this post by saying I am not implying that the experiences I will reveal prove that past lives are a thing or that these were definitely my past lives, however, they were interesting experiences and I thought you guys might enjoy reading about them. I do not ascribe to any particular religion or ideology, although I do tend to favor new age spirituality concepts over religious dogma. Reincarnation makes sense to me in many ways, so I do consider it a possibility and enjoy reading about it.

I have had two very emotional, realistic dreams that made me wonder if they may be tied to my past lives. In both dreams, I think the strangest thing was that I was in an entirely different time and place, surrounded by people I do not recognize from this life, but I felt that I intimately knew these people and places, just like I do my own family and home now.

In the first dream, I was in a Celtic land, it felt medieval or earlier to me, although I don’t know the exact era. I was in a wealthy family, maybe even connected to royalty somehow. The dream wasn’t particularly exciting that I remember, just kind of mundane day to day life as a wealthy young lady, but what stood out to me was how emotionally connected I felt to the dream and how deeply I felt connected to people I do not recognize at all from this lifetime. I do have Celtic family roots and have always felt drawn to that culture, but perhaps there is even more to my love for that era than I thought…

In the second dream, I was a young man (really weird for me to dream that!) and I was fighting on a battlefield. I’m not a war historian by any means, but it felt like it was around WW1 from the uniforms and what I saw on the battlefield (I’m not sure what country I was from, but it felt like I was on the side of the allies). I ended up dying in the dream, which is always an interesting experience. I remember most the feeling of camaraderie and deep love I felt towards my “brothers” in uniform. I was almost glad to die if it meant maybe my friends could live. It was a sad and somewhat scary dream, but also full of love and friendship.

I also had one other experience that wasn’t a dream but was very curious. I was meditating, definitely not asleep, when I was suddenly in a foreign but very familiar place. I was in the desert, in what looked and felt to me like ancient Egypt. I saw a young girl climbing a large sand dune and instantly knew that I was that girl, and yet, I was watching events from a distance, outside of her body.

Suddenly, a gang of what I felt were robbers and criminals appeared. This group assaulted the girl and did horrible things to her (I’m sure you can imagine). The odd thing was that even though I felt that girl had been me, I wasn’t emotionally reactive to what I was seeing, at least not in the way you would expect. I didn’t feel fear, anger, trauma, or anything like that, I just felt deep sadness for all involved, both the poor, innocent girl and the deeply misguided men. I actually felt compassion towards these men who had abused me.

I want to say that this meditative experience was only the second time I have ever had something like that happen while meditating. The other time that I suddenly found myself somewhere else, it was simply a field of wildflowers I found myself transported to. I don’t know what the heck that was about lol, but it was a beautiful place.

I hope you enjoyed reading about these odd dreams and visions. If you enjoy this type of stuff, let me know. There are plenty of other odd “woo woo” type of experiences I can share if you are interested!

Astrology Talk: No Wonder I’m So Emotional

| marandarussell
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My personal astrology chart

I don’t know if any of my readers are into astrology, but I’ve always found it fascinating (one of my Asperger obsessions maybe). I don’t give any credence normally to the daily astrology forecasts you find in newspapers and magazines, as I figure much of that is probably made up and not even necessarily written by people who really have a good grasp on astrology, but I do find that there is some truth to the fact that people born under specific signs seem to share certain personality traits, characteristics, and life themes.

One thing that many people don’t realize is that according to true astrology, it isn’t just your sun sign that makes a huge impact on your personality and life path. Your moon sign and ascendant sign matter a lot too. There are websites where you can put in your birth information and find out what all three of these signs are, as well as lesser astrological influences.

When I looked mine up, I found out that all three of my major signs are water signs: Sun – Scorpio, Moon – Pisces, Ascendant – Scorpio. And what are water signs known for? Being emotional and intuitive. Just like large bodies of water, we are fluid, constantly shifting, and often unstable. With three major water signs, is it any wonder that I often feel ungrounded (lack of the earth element), apathetic and lazy (lack of the fire element), and heavily weighed down by uncontrollable feelings (lack of air element)? Seems to me water signs were made to be bipolar lol.

I know some people think this is all mumbo jumbo, and I respect their opinion, but I still enjoy studying it. If any of you would like to hear more about astrology in the future, let me know!

New Art that Took an Unexpected Turn

| marandarussell

As I mentioned last week, I started a series of ACEO art trading card artworks based on various kinds of symbols. I created a couple of these artworks based on Native American symbols, but somewhere along the way of creation, they kind of took a turn of their own and didn’t end up looking quite like the symbols I started with. I figured I would still share them though.

The first one was based on the Native American Hano Clown Kachina Mask image. This one did turn out closer to the original image than the other one:

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The second image was based on the “Spirit of Evil” symbol, but turned out looking far more like a creepy ape lol:

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Both of these new artworks have already found a home with a fellow art lover, but if you like my art, feel free to check out my art currently for sale on my Ebay store!