The year of the body--week 26

in which a giant grasshopper hints at what's to come

Friends, soul writers, mystics, and lovers of prayer,

For me, deep soul writing started on the page in 1997 and stayed on the page for several years. I was flabbergasted when a voice on the page started responding to my questions.

I confess, I was not always thrilled with her answers, but I kept showing up every day, asking bigger and bigger questions and listening intently for her response.

Slowly—and I do mean slowly—I began to follow the guidance she disseminated in little bits, day by day, on the page.

Slowly—and I do mean slowly—I began to trust that voice.

Until finally I realized the one voice I can trust, the one voice I can rely on, the one voice I can turn to no matter what is happening or how I feel, is her voice.

But who is she? Ah, now that’s the question, isn’t it.

The Voice is a bit of a mystery. The Voice is undefinable. She cannot be stuffed into a box. And yet she is clearly alive and wise and real and communicating on the page.

I loved my voice, but in the first few years of soul writing, it didn’t cross my mind that that voice could show up off the page. Or could show up in countless forms.

It took me a while to realize I could ask the Moon for help and she would send help.

I could ask the baby snake on my doorstep to wait until my son came home from grade school and the snake would be there waiting for him a half-hour later.

I discovered this “off the page” voice when I saw an osprey on the side of the road around the corner from my house on February 16, 2000.

I stopped the car, bent over, and realized rigor mortis had not even set in. This was an osprey. My totem. My protector throughout the divorce. There’s no way I could leave him there on the road to slowly rot.

So I took him home.

I put the osprey on the kitchen counter, looked at him lying there, and wondered, now what do I do. I called my first teacher, Charlotte Starfire, and asked her what it means when an osprey practically dies in your arms.

She said, “I think I know, but it’s not for me to tell you, ask the bird.”

This is possibly the greatest teaching I have ever received. Even though, at the time, I did not appreciate it, not one bit.

But Charlotte clearly wasn’t going to solve my problem for me, so I asked the bird.

Really, what else could I do?

I held the osprey like a baby and gently placed my hand on his soft white heart and then on my heart and went back and forth for several minutes, saying aloud, “Tell me why you’re here.”

And he did.

When I felt ready, I picked up a pen and the voice wrote:

What is an osprey? A fishhawk
What is a hawk? A messenger
What is a fish? The symbol of Christ
What did Jesus say more than anything else? Fear not

That message, “Fear Not,” has carried me for the last 21 years.

That experience also taught me to ask every animal that crosses my path: “Tell me why you’re here.”

So Thursday afternoon, when the largest female grasshopper I have ever seen walked slowly and gracefully across my patio at the exact moment of the Full Moon, I knew what to do.

I whispered through the glass, “Tell me why you’re here.”

She answered, “Wait and see.”

Two hours later, I received an email from Jennifer Gandia of Greenwich Street Jewelers in New York City announcing that the Joan of Arc Amulet I had asked her to make for me was ready. And would I like to see it on zoom.

It was a very emotional experience. As Jennifer slowly pulled the amulet out of its silk bag, the energy of this living symbol of the divine feminine sparked through the camera and touched my heart in the exact place where the amulet will live from now on.

I have not recovered from seeing my amulet for the first time.

The power of it. The ancient and new meaning. It has tendrils that reach across time, past, and future.

Jennifer put it on so I could see what it will look like on me, and as I stared, I suddenly saw things in it that I never even considered when I commissioned it.

The amulet is alive. She is a living expression of my eternal divine voice.

In perfect synchronicity, on Friday, the 3rd day of the full moon, I watched a video about Marija Gimbutas, the brilliant archeologist who uncovered thousands of goddess images in Old Europe.

To explain her work, Marija began to talk about symbols. She said, if you want to understand another time or culture, look at their symbols.

Everything they knew and believed is in their symbols.

When you find your symbol, she said, you've found your spiritual truth encoded in art.

I gasped. That’s my amulet!

It is a living symbol.

It holds a long, long deep memory of the female trinity—the first trinity, the original trinity. It is me.

In last Saturday’s pilgrimage, we stopped in Iron Age Britain to meet Queen Boudica.

Last Sunday I shared one stanza of her message (which was dictated in the night—another way and time the voice speaks).

Here’s what Boudica said that I shared last week:

I ask you to ask yourself:

What is sacred?
What is holy?
What is yours to protect?
What is worth fighting for?

But here’s what she said next:

Answer these questions and you will find your truth
Your truth is not the world’s truth

The world will tell you there are other truths, but they are not true

They are deceptions to keep you distracted

Search for your truth
Name your truth
Wear your truth
Plant your truth at the center of your being 

Got that? WEAR your truth!

Now, we can certainly “wear” our truth in our actions, our choices, our language…. But we can also do it in the physical.

I will be.

I’ll show you my amulet soon.

But for today, I ask you if you have found your symbol? Something that holds your deep and ancient beliefs encoded in art?

Ask your divine voice to show you your symbol and it will pop up.

I stumbled across the seed of mine reading Max Dashu’s Witches and Pagans. I didn’t know what I was seeing or why it held my attention, but I kept staring at a particular symbol. I found myself opening the book over and over again to that page and simply staring.

Finally, I asked Max Dashu for more information about that symbol and she told me its historical meaning.

But it is for me to ask the symbol for its mystical meaning.

How will you recognize your symbol? Oh, you’ll know. You’ll know. As the giant grasshopper says, "Just wait and see!"

to the joy of finding your symbol and wearing your truth,

Janet

PS: My birthday sale continues. Peruse my on-demand intensives and choose any and all you want. Enter the coupon code BIRTHDAY 
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Janet Conner Intensives

PSS: You are invited to join our pilgrimage. We gather every Saturday in June, July and August at 2pm Eastern plus 3 Sunday gatherings to talk about our personal and collective healing.

Don't worry if you can't be with us live, everything is recorded.

The Return of the Witches
Jeanne d’Arc Listening Pilgrimage