Your assignment in the coming week is simple but tricky: Take devalued ideas or trivial objects or demeaning words, and transform them into things that are fun, interesting, or useful. Here are some precedents to inspire you: what the punk movement did when it made safety pins into earrings; what gays did when they mutated the insulting term “queer” into a word of power; what the resourceful TV hero MacGyver did when he put powdered make-up into a confetti cannon and shot it at evil CIA operatives, temporarily blinding them and allowing him to escape.

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So glad that I could let that other one go, I wasn’t really looking forward to that since it had been going on already! Har, I’m always a bit behind.  I think I can easily go with this advice since I’ve been working on that all year.

And being on vacation for 9 starting Friday will make it fun for sure.

According to the Haggadah, an ancient Jewish text, the first thing God made, before anything else, was the Torah. This book was “written with black fire on white fire.” The 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet became the raw materials out of which the Divine One forged heaven and earth. Now you, Cancerian, have a chance to get firsthand evidence of the power that language has to shape experience. In the coming days, I suggest that you formulate what you say with great precision. The words you use will have the power of the ancient magical incantation, abracadabra, which is derived from the Aramaic word meaning “I create as I speak.”

So many things come to mind I’m going to have to ponder this.

More on the grasshopper issue.  Three times the word JUMP has come into my consciousness this week. First someone sent me a hilarious version of David Lee Roth singing van Halen’s “Jump” bluegrass style. Then came Paul Anka’s version.  Oh gods, the horror.  And then yesterday morning a car in front of me at a stop light had a vanity plate that simply said “Jump.” And suddenly I realized that this was just another version of the grasshopper theme.  Jump, Jump, Jump.

The last time I Jumped I left a terribly abusive job the day that I flew to France for three weeks to visit family for Christmas.  I just couldn’t bear to come back knowing I would have to go there one more day.  I had no job to come home to at all.  I Jumped and the Universe provided. Not only did the unemployment office grant my benefit claim based on a voluntary quit from an abusive job almost immediately but I got my dream job, the one I went back to school for at 40, within 5 weeks of my return from France. 

It was a very positive experience.  And now, the universe is sending out very pointed signs to me instucting me to do the Jump thing again.  I’m not entirely sure where I’m supposed to make this leap but since the signs have been so pronounced I suspect it will become very clear very soon.

This weekend was interesting.  Saturday was the Birth Creation Story workshop and I felt like all my chakra’s were wide open. I was having a hard time grounding and felt extremely scattered.  So scattered in fact that I went home before the ritual.  I just felt that I am still in the private processing part of this and really didn’t feel like opening up wide in a public ritual.  One of my friends thought I should go ahead and that it would be good for me, but I know what I need and what I needed was privacy.  I wasn’t feeling bad or icky or sad or depressed.  I just felt that I needed some alone time. 

The Ex was so wonderfully understanding so we found himan alternate ride home so that he could stay for the ritual and I could go home.  It was just what I needed too because I was in bed by 10 and must have instantly fallen asleep because when he came in at 1-ish I awoke and had no recollection of even laying there with my head on the pillow. I fell asleep immediately upon The Ex’s head hitting the pillow. He said I did a lot of puppy twitching in my sleep and I certainly did have a slew of strange dreams.  We awoke at 9 and I still took a nap in the afternoon.  I can only imagine the shape I would have been in if I had stayed for the rit.  I had obviously taken in enough and felt enough emotion that I was just exhausted.  But I do feel great today.

Sunday morning we went to a friend’s house because she was having a moving sale and selling tarot, statues, pictures and the like.  Most was gone as this was the second day of the sale but I found a couple things I’m pleased with.  The Ex actually found the first thing, a Cernunnos pendant in the style from the Gundesrup Cauldron.  Yeah, I wanted one for my altar, well a statue really, but this will do for now.  I have also been keeping my eye out for a Jesus/Jeshua statue.  While I am not a christian, not at all in any way, I do love his message and he is one of the gods I revere.  Mary Magdalene is one of the Goddesses I revere.  And what did my friend have? But a statue of Jesus and Mary M together as a loving couple.  MINE.  OMG.  That just totally made me The Happy.

So there they stand on my altar, next to the stags and Hekate and her black dog and antlers and crystal balls and the like.  And they look just lovely.  Makes me very smiley.  Who knew anyone made such a pagan image of them together?  That someone would create them as the loving married couple they still are? Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Have a lovely week y’all.  Me, I’m looking forward to Friday at 5 when my 9 day vacation begins.  9 days of projects and naps and sleeping in and staying up late and puttering in my little house by the woods. What a great way to start the week with that joy coming.

Perhaps it’s Locksmith.  Or maybe Manual Locks.  Or perhaps New Engine. 

Cuz I?  Am not feeling all that F#&%ing Sacred at the moment.  I locked my keys in the car at the 7-11 at lunchtime while going to the bank to deposit $10 dollars to cover a check.  $10 dollars, 10 measly dollars. 

The mechanic across the street said that he couldn’t ethically unlock my car for me. But he did let me use his phone to call a locksmith.  I got back to my car to wait and discovered, adding insult to injury, that the engine was actually running.  Sacred Dorkweazel.

Where was my Sacred Brain at the fateful moment of exit?  It was hovering over the Sacred Monster Truck next to me shaking my finger at his bass boom Sacred Rap Shit that was so loud I couldn’t even swear effectively. Not the best place for your brain to be when you are exiting your running car.  You can’t hear the Sacred Ding Ding of the warning alarm.

The good news is that I’m back to work in pretty speedy time, it only took 5 Sacred Seconds, really, to open my car.  My car is new so the engine wasn’t the worse for it, my last car, a month ago would have died then and there.

Oh, wait, I got it. Sacred Fucking Fifty Dollars.

Off to a Sacred Bloody Meeting and then Sacred Working Late to Make Up the Time Lost

If I had let that check bounce it would have only cost me $35 instead of $50.  There’s something for me to ponder.

And yeah, if you didn’t know before hand, I swear like a Sacred Fucking Sailor when I’m venting steam

Edit: Okay, all better now. 

I had to post again today when I found a little friend on my office floor.  Very dangerous place, that.

With the exception of a few months here and there, I have lived in the Pacific Northwest my whole life. 48 years. And until last year I have NEVER seen a grasshopper in a garden here. Not one. Then, last year, I found a dusty gray fella in my rosemary patch. But this summer? They are everywhere. Well, not really because then I guess they’d be a swarm of locusts, but I do keep finding them.

Two very bright, green grasshoppers on my car, one found with Patrick also bright green, and this morning one on the floor of my office, black with gold. There is lots of grass and trees near enough to my office but this fella had to get on top of a one story roof and then into my window, no easy feat. I rescued him and put him outside, I almost squashed him by accident when he was on the floor. This solidifies my feeling that Grasshopper is trying to tell me something.

So I did a quickie google search on grasshopper totem. This is what I found with great snippage for the important parts.

Listening and responding to your inner voice as well as using it in a complimentary way towards self and others is equally important.

Gotta keep working on that.

When the grasshopper-locust appears to us we are being asked to take a leap of faith and jump forward into a specific area of life without fear. Usually that specific area is one that we have avoided and is often connected to change on a larger scale. This can represent a change in location, relationships, career or just in the way we perceive ourselves.

Hmmm, very warm, hot even. Certainly have had some changes in relationships lately. Relationships with people and with things. And definitely with how I see myself and have decided to present myself to the world.

Those with grasshopper-locust as a totem must remember that the gifts of mother earth are available for everyone if used in sacred and practical way. Sometimes a person forgets that sacred balance and takes more than is needed. This can also signify individuals taking from you. Are others demanding too much or your time or energy? Is responsibility being placed on you that is not rightfully yours?

Hahahahahahaha! Well alright then. Sacred and practical. That just cracks me up! Thanks Mama, I heard you! And I’m doing all I can about it.  And yeah, that’s been happening for a long time. And I have no one to blame but myself because I’ve encouraged it even.  Sacred appears to be a common theme of late as well.

These are some of the questions to ask yourself if the grasshopper-locust presents itself to you. Remember life becomes more difficult when we refuse to leap forward into the magic of change.

Well then.  Guess this time of change and transition isn’t done with me yet.  But I am not refusing to leap.  I hope that I am leaping with great joy and abandon.  Because one of the things my heart tells me that Grasshopper is saying to me is that I must play more and stop working like an ant all the time.  I will get to play at OLOTEAS this weekend and that’s good.  That said one of the hardest things for me to be is not so serious. 

Patrick has been very good for me in this area of my life. Bringing the play back in, sparkles and glitter to offset all the black.  Thanks my love!