Fortuna: Oracle of Oracles reveals her face and voice
Week 8--in which we realize we all have access to analeptic memory.
Beautiful Ones,
“Analepsis or the process of remembering and recovering forgotten knowledge—a technique used by poets, historians, mediums, and others—is an inheritance available to all of us who succeed our shamanic ancestors.”
Caitlin and John Matthews, Walkers Between the Worlds
In the course of my research for ART 5 on Divination, I learned that analepsis is a name for that magical space between the conscious world and the other worlds. More commonly, you’ve heard it called liminal or threshold or daydreaming.
I have loved and visited this space (whatever it’s called) ever since I stumbled upon how to activate a divine voice on the page 27 years ago. At the time, I wasn’t journaling for edification, I was trying to navigate a divorce with an increasingly violent ex-husband.
Without having a name for what I was doing, I simply showed up every day, addressed the voice by name, threw all the big scary questions that were keeping me up at night onto the page, and then paid attention to how the voice responded.
It didn’t take long to realize that the most reliable, sacred, loving, and wise relationship in my life was the Voice on the page.
The first name I had for where I was when I was writing this way was the mystical theta brainwave state.
When I started this daily practice, I knew nothing about deep soul writing or brainwaves. I had no way of knowing that in order to activate that beautiful voice, I had to gradually slow down my brainwaves from fast-paced, fear-filled beta all the way down to slow, gentle, creative theta. And sometimes mystical theta—a state scientists have measured in the brainwaves of master meditators.
Mystical theta, I now know, is the magic sweet spot. And you don’t have to be a lifelong meditator to reach it.
Turns out, theta is simply who we are and how we are wired. All of us. As the opening quote says, it’s an “inheritance available to all.”
Once I had a name for this state—Mystical Theta—and learned that it was in my brainwaves. I decided to see what would happen if I expanded my time in theta. I obviously knew how to reach theta in soul writing, I wondered when else I could slow my brainwaves down. The answer, I discovered, is almost any time. Walking, showering, staring off in space, reading, praying, chanting, doing something creative, going on guided journeys….
If I had to name my favorite times and places to hover in theta, times when information, insights, and breakthroughs from the other worlds arrive naturally, I would choose these:
- Morning Theta—lie still on the pillow with your eyes closed and do nothing for at least a half hour
- Magic Hour 3-4am—keep paper at hand because the otherworld is alive, conscious, and communicating intensely in the wee hours when the Earth’s Schumann waves are closest to the surface
- Experiential Journeys—every time we follow Cathy Stevens Pratt’s voice into the Other Worlds, we are met by ancestors and shamanic guides who have something precious and important to tell us or show us or give us
I’ve talked about morning theta and the magic hour often in these Notes from the Field. But I don’t think I’ve talked enough about what happens in the Experiential Journeys in the ART intensives. That’s because it’s so magical, that even I, someone who dances in mystical theta all the time, is flat-out flabbergasted by what I experience in Cathy’s journeys.
But calling them Cathy’s journeys is a misnomer.
Yes, Cathy is the one speaking. Yes, it is her voice we follow. But the words arrive from another realm. Cathy is their voice not their author.
Cathy will describe this divination process in ART 5 in more detail, but here’s a quick overview.
- When Cathy picks up her pen for deep soul writing late at night, she begins by going into her private liminal space—her cave.
- There, she meets her special guide, her touchstone for art, insights, oracular guidance, and the content of our Experiential Journeys.
- Who is this magical being? No one less than Black Moon Lilith herself.
- When I learned that Cathy is in constant communion with Black Moon Lilith, I knew I had chosen well in partnering with Cathy to create the ART intensives.
Cathy Stevens Pratt is a mystic.
A genius. A mystic genius.
A mystic genius artist.
Even if you’ve not been in an intensive yet, you are familiar with Cathy because she creates all the art for all the intensives. Art that I have showcased in these Notes from the Field since the first intensive two years ago.
Last week, I showed you Cathy’s vision of the pars fortuna in your natal chart. Thanks to Cathy’s mystical eyes, we get to see four things hiding inside that glyph.
I have spent the last two weeks stepping inside those four sections of pars fortuna and have emerged with a whole new mystical prayer practice called the Remembering Ceremony. In that ceremony, we will drop into mystical theta and access analeptic memory reaching far, far into the past—the Once Was—and into the future—the Not Yet. On my own, without Cathy’s mystical art, I don’t think the Remembering Ceremony would have come to me.
When I finished creating this unique and radically different prayer practice, I suddenly realized it contains seven components of the ancient rituals at Delphi. I dare say the Pythia and all our oracle ancestors are thrilled to be seen and heard once more.
If you would like a taste of the shamanic wisdom that awaits you in ART 5 on Divination, let me introduce you to Fortuna.
We are met by an oracle at the entrance to each circuit of the labyrinth. The oracle takes us by the hand and accompanies us each step of the way as we awaken, remember, and trust each of our original sacramental WitchArt gifts.
These oracles came as quite a surprise.
To illustrate the first ART intensive on full body intuition in March 2023, Cathy drew a dancing woman with her eyes in her hand—showing we’d be learning how to see what our eyes do not. And her ears were in her thymus—showing we’d be learning to hear what our ears do not. Cathy said the figure’s name was Aurora.
I thought Aurora was fun. I had no idea she was an oracle, though.
When Cathy and I began to create the second ART intensive on crisscrossing the threshold between worlds in the fall of 2023, I asked Cathy if she’d draw another figure. Cathy sent a picture of a woman whose body dissolves as she steps through Rumi’s “round open door.” “What’s her name?” I asked. Cathy didn’t know.
That night the image came to me in the magic hour. She said her name was Mystica.
That made me so happy, but then, I realized Mystica was not alone. She was leading a procession of figures who walked in front of me in order of the seven WitchArt gifts, each chanting her name.
When they were finished, Mystica whispered, “We are the Oracles.”
The Divination oracle who greets us at the entrance to the fifth circuit of the labyrinth told me that night that her name was Fortuna. But it wasn’t until Cathy and I were finalizing our plans for ART 5 last month that Fortuna returned to give me her full name;
Fortuna: Oracle of Oracles
Just as there is a wealth of mystic wisdom inside the pars fortuna glyph, there is massive ancestral wisdom in Fortuna’s name.
Consider these layers of the word oracle:
- person functioning as an oracle
- inquiry of the querent
- tools used to activate a response
- message received by the oracle
- message communicated to the querent
- message received by the querent
- changes querent makes as a result
And then, of course, there’s Fortuna herself. The Oracle of all oracles.
No wonder her numerology is 99—the master number of 9, the Goddess in all Her glory.
Each of the oracles has come to Cathy in her cave and sat for a portrait. Each has been a surprise, you might even say a shock. When Fortuna first showed her face, Cathy didn’t know how to respond. Could this really be Fortuna? She didn’t look anything like any of the previous four oracles. So Cathy waited a few days before she let me see Fortuna.
She waited until Fortuna spoke.
Take a moment to look deeply into all that is hiding in plain sight in Fortuna. Look at her with eyes that see beyond what your physical eyes see.
Now listen to Fortuna’s words. Read them reverently with ears that hear way beyond what your physical ears here.
Fortuna: Oracle of Oracles speaks:
"As you all slip into embracing your oracle selves, it is about HOW you look and where your attention is. I am barely here and I am all that is. Don’t you see, when you search and wait for me I don’t show up? You must jump in! Let go, open, and there I am under your breath, below your fingertips, inside your belly.
But you are not your body. YOU are everywhere just like me. WE are in the clouds, inside all people, inside the trees and rocks, inside creation and even inside destruction. Everything you search for is inside you, behind your eyes, just waiting for your shifting attention.
Notice. Divination of all sorts happens beside the working of your brain during a receptive curious state. Stories of all the times await you.
SEE without looking. In your dog’s eyes I am there. The winds are my echoes from everywhen. Mountains sing my tales if you’ll hear them, and this vast divine universe is ever inside you."
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After feasting your eyes and ears on Fortuna, tune inward into your body, your heart, your mind and your hunger to explore divination in a safe loving community.
Let Fortuna take your hand and invite you to explore the 5th ART of Divination.
NOTE: you do not have to have taken any previous ART intensives.
Astrologers agree March is going to be the wildest, richest, most powerful and prophetic month of the year. The perfect time to come together with a global community of sister and brother mystics to awaken, remember, and trust our prophetic gifts.
Click on the link below. Watch the welcome video Cathy and I made. Right below it is the Q&A conversation we recorded last weekend.
Please don't wait to register.
We open next Sunday!
to holding Fortuna's hand as we step into the wonder and mystery of analeptic memories
Janet
website: janetconner.com
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