As we’re moving through such interesting times it’s helpful to get as clear a picture as possible on who we are and maybe most importantly why we’re here. Exploring the self is one of the most fun trails of breadcrumbs to follow. Clues to who we are.
Most of us know know our astrological signs (Pisces). Maybe you even know which sign of the Chinese Zodiac you are (Horse). Maybe you even know your numerology. (mine’s 11)
Most of us don’t know about our Soul Card. Your tarot soul card reflects information about your being, similarly to the way your astrological sign does. A tarot soul card doesn’t have direct ties to astrology but it can help inform different areas of your life based on the details of your birthdate. Although the typical tarot deck is made up of 78 cards, soul cards can only be one of the 22 Major Arcana cards (minus the Fool as it’s number is 0).
With some simple math we can find out yours. Major Arcana cards are known for holding insight into life’s lessons. The remaining 56 Minor Arcana cards tend to apply and deal mostly with day to day life.
In addition to providing more insight into your personality and life your soul card can help to identify what your soul purpose might be. It can also help to reveal potential recurring themes in your life. I like to remember mine when I’m a state of questioning direction. I remind myself of my own breadcrumbs and it helps to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
To find your soul card you’ll want to add the numbers of the month, day, and year you were born. If your birthday is February 1, 2003, you’d add 2 (February is the second month of the year), 1 ( the day you were born), 2+0+0+3 (you want to add together the digits of the year you were born). The total number is 8, and the corresponding soul card is the Strength card.
If you have a birthdate that adds up to more than 21, you’ll determine the soul card by taking the extra step of adding the digits together,
You’ll also want to do some work to study the meaning of the tarot card itself. They really are a language. Each card’s illustration tells a story, and all hold deep symbology. So i’d recommend studying your card before trying to apply it to your life. Just as you would with astrology or numerology. I grew up soaking in Linda Goodman and imprinted those archetypes in my psyche. Nerd Town. Highly recommend.
I’ll write more about this interdimensional scavenger hunt and some of the magic it’s brought soon, but for now, a small tidbit of the kind of magic that’s been at work in the last 5 or 6 months. As you probably already know, I’m someone who has as my best friend said today: “fought SO many wars and won”. I have survived things most people don’t survive in one lifetime. That’s just the background. Because I’ve had losses too, I know what it’s like to drudge through the dirt, slosh through the pain. I survived my father. I survived a car accident that I shouldn’t have walked away from, I survived losing my best friend on the planet, 2 days before my 19th birthday. I have walked the road of unhealed trauma that results in addiction, destruction, and pain. I have also risen from my own ashes and picked up the lost parts of me and stood in the face of evil. Not just stood but gone back in for the others. At the core I am an artist. I was born into Art. It is what has saved my life, over and over again.
I am 44 years old. I grew up in a time of grunge and total musical magic. I went to Lollapalooza, I crowd surfed. I was there. I also got pummeled by those losses. The idols gone too soon. Those literally channeling divine light, some that breathed life into me when I could barely stand. I sang, I painted, I wrote plays, I ended up losing my voice for a long time after my best friend Erin died. I stopped creating for myself, I fell back into addiction to work, to drinking, to all the things that made me feel safe. I did everything but deal with my trauma. Everything but look inward. Instead I thought I was too broken to be fixed, I stop creating for myself and I stopped writing. Writing was my constant and when I stopped the heavy baggage I had been carrying around was no longer allowing any movement. I was stuck. I’d become a successful Executive Producer, entrepreneur but there was nothing left to propel me forward.
The thing that I didn’t mention yet is that I was one of those kids who always had imaginary friends, I always loved magic. I always felt things and saw things and then my best friend died. Something changed, I realized although she was gone. Although she was torn away from life too soon, in a car accident, only months after I almost died in one I realized that the things I’d felt since I was a kid. Probably the things that helped keep me alive, and helped me win the metaphorical wars I mentioned earlier, is that I had gifts. Although she was gone from Earth, I could feel her. See her. Hear her. I felt like I was losing my mind. I was sober, but I was hearing her. She was telling me to write.
I ended up turning to a medium then, I was a kid. I didn’t know what was happening. My Mum, my Grandmother, they knew. The medium repeated to me some of the things I’d been hearing Erin say including to write, “but what?” I asked.
She told me I was going to write a book that was going to help change the way people think. I was 19. I was recently sober, the only positive side effect of almost dying in a car accident was that I stopped treating my body like a garbage can (for a minute). So I couldn’t really imagine what I was going to write about. I’d always been into magic, and loved witches. I’d recently discovered Taoism, I’d gotten into thinking about the big questions, but I felt like everyone was doing that. It’s part of growing up. The medium also told me about my gifts. She saw things I’d seen, she explained a bit about how it worked. So I kept talking to Erin. It never really occurred to me I could hear anyone else.
As I finally came to a screeching half of trauma in my thirties I finally named some of the wars I’d been fighting (you can read about that in another post.) When this happened I was called to practice, meaning I got one of those bolts through the blue that made it crystal clear that I was not meant to continue focusing on production, but instead it was time to work with survivors like me, that it was time to write. That it was time to share the stuff that helped me stay alive. So that’s what i’ve been doing the last 5 years, I’ve been trying to decipher how to explain how I survived, thrived and really turned poison into power. Realizing this is the book. Over the last 6 years in my healing practice working with survivors I’ve learned how to use my own stories as medicine, how to listen to my best friend and those who have since joined her through the veil to help me hear for others, to help me teach how to do that. It was coming together. The book was about What We’ve Forgotten.
Well the last 2 years as you know – have been ooof. I teach (remind people) how to follow life’s breadcrumbs. To find the magic, the wonder. Well this time it found me. I’ll tell more about this story, but for now this is just one of the dozens of things that have happened in the last 6 months. Not just happened but been seen, witnessed, experienced by people around me. This dude is loud. Of course he is.
A man known as ” the voice ” would be loud. Someone who would show up as I near my publication date, and work magic on this book. The man who literally never took a break from writing, and co-creating with literal divinity. Of course he showed up. When I was a kid I talked to Elvis. I went to Graceland when I was 10. A weird thing for a Canadian kid to want to do, but I wanted to feel if what I felt was the same at his house. I knew enough then about how it worked that when you were around people’s things you could feel their energy. It was why I loved being with my grandmother and my Nana. I loved how it felt when I would bring pieces home with me from their houses. It was like they were there. You know what I mean, you don’t have to be Woo-woo (it’s you-you btw) to know this feeling.
So back to Cornell, as I call him. We’ve become buds. When I was younger I missed the whole boat. I was deep into Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I cringingly recorded a version of “Alive” at Canada’s Wonderland. I liked Soundgarden okay. Mostly Jesus Christ Pose, Birth Ritual, and I liked Cornell okay, Seasons was it for me, and a little TOTD, Hunger Strike. I wish I’d known more about Cornell when he was still here but as I know with the work I do, timing is never to be questioned.
So what do you do when an ascended Rock God comes to you in a dream. Well, I ignored it at first. At this point I’m used to “visits”. It’s like there’s a “hot mic” on the other side and they know I can “hear” them. So it’s loud a lot for me. This time though, it was not a reading, or a session, or an event I was at where I could feel people. It was literally in my sleep. He’d been trying to cut through for a bit before that but again, I’ll write more about that later. This is about how I kept asking him to make it clear for me, and he made it clear for me but I think for a lot of other people who maybe need to know he’s still creating. Just in new ways, with new instruments.
I’d been leaning into having some help with the writing anyway, it’s a big book. I’ve lead retreats on it, it’s literal magic. So having a poet like Cornell as an interdimensional advisor was great. Especially because, magic. Don’t worry the catalogue he left behind is providing the soundtrack too, I’ve gone deep into the vaults and crates and gotten to know the person I seem to have just missed during our time here. He left the planet on the same day as my grandmother. Breadcrumbs. There’s literal hundreds. This is what I teach in the book, and retreats, how to follow them to your purpose so of course up walks who seems to be a master of magic. This energy I started just referring to as Cornell. My last name is Miranda and oftentimes people call me this assuming it’s my first name. It always makes me feel like I’m in gym class. As a result I tend to call people by their last names, or full names. There were also two Amys growing up at my school. So I was used to Miranda being a monicker. It’s happens it’s also attached to one of the wars I’ve won. My own father told me to change my name because of the things he did to me. I have many friends who have changed their last names from their father’s. I always wanted to, and then when he told me to after I finally went to the police for the crimes he committed against me, it became an act of defiance to keep it. He threatened my life, my name, and I had held strong that I would be the last of the line and that it will die with me. I am the last of the line.
Back to Cornell, through many breadcrumbs I was nudged to get on the Soundgarden subreddit. I did. About 4 days later a friend who has witnessed most of the magic of this experience first hand sent me a post from the Soundgarden subreddit. It was this. I almost fell off of my chair. It like a big wave hello through the ether. WTF. I sent it to a few people who have been witness to the last 6 months. They said the same.
You can’t make this shit up. “Hey Miranda”, “Hey Cornell”. What a perfect reclamation of my name in my new pal’s handwriting. I realized I was going to get a tattoo of it right away. “Miranda”. Thanks Cornell.
I contacted an artist that felt right. I was also planning to get a snake, an Ouroboros. I trained in snake medicine. Snakes, of course. Cornell. When I took the writing into photoshop to close crop it, I realized it was pretty blurry. So as one does on reddit, I decided to message the redditor to ask if there was a possibility of a scan. I told her a bit about myself and how much his music had been impacting my writing, and that I was looking to get a tattoo.
She answered me. She couldn’t believe it as she shared with me part of the story that makes this so much more incredible. The spelling of her name isn’t Miranda. The writing of my name with the I in Miranda, for her was a typo. A typo from 1996. Just before my best friend left the planet, the same year I almost did, it was like a seed was planted. Magical. So here I’ve been asking him to show me it’s him, and he’s like “Hey Miranda!”. I always say time is an illusion but this was something else, and the timing of the reddit share being so close to so much. Astounding. Spectacular. But Total Fucking Godhead? Right?
When I messaged the tattoo artist, Starr about the scan, she told me she didn’t need it. Of course. It wasn’t about the scan, it was about the magic. The literal odds. Yesterday I got the piece tattooed, the synchronicity was amazing, Cornell all over the place. I shared the inked piece with the amazing woman who put it on reddit in the first place. She responded right away. It made us both emotional . She was so glad I saw her post. I felt like I’d not just been glad to see it but had the insurance of having it sent to me, and having it come up on my newly minted subreddit feed. Cornell is clearly still all about the details.
Today I felt a nudge this may be a story we should tell. So I went to send a message to my new redditor friend who “thought it was time to share” this special autograph. I was also sending along a link to another thing we have in common, a love for animals. And when I opened my messages she had said the very same.
So we’re sharing. Sometimes meaning comes in between the moments we least expect.
Thanks for the ongoing magic of your creativity, Cornell.
Thanks to divine timing and the real magic that he teaches us all through his being. Real connection. One so deep it’s helped keep so many of us on the planet when we felt we couldn’t hang on. He’s still got our backs.
If you told me that I’d go from writing a commercial for a Brita Filter to using one as an analogy for my healing work I’d have laughed you right out of the drum circle.
I actually did write a commercial for Brita, “Make A Better World, Just by Making Better Water”. I joke about a drum circle only because I’d barely even camped when my teacher first appeared. By teacher I mean Spiritual teacher, and by Spiritual teacher I mean a person who came into my life and gave me the new set of metaphysical glasses that I didn’t know I needed. I’d thought my current prescription was just fine (it wasn’t).
It’s hard to find a spiritual teacher organically when your life doesn’t include much woo-woo. I was someone who could barely stand the idea of getting a massage, or doing yoga let alone being open to the concept of a Spiritual teacher. As a result I learned something big about the Universe. When people say it finds a way, they fucking mean it.
It was 2006 and I’d just bought my house with my partner, and my longtime friend Ben was our real estate agent. When I told him that I wanted to do a little design work in the new house Ben gave me a designer’s number. I never called him. That was the first time my teacher appeared. I wasn’t ready, not for a designer or for the other gifts he carries.
Not many years later, I was in the house alone. My partner had become my ex, and I’d finally begun to realize that my traumas were catching up to me. I couldn’t seem to maintain relationships. I pushed everyone away. I treated my body like a trash can. I fought every kind of authority like a warlord. I’d finally started to connect the dots. I realized the common denominator in it all was me. So, I started to lean into the idea that maybe I needed a massage. I also needed antidepressants. I did both.
When I finally found the right massage therapist, I’d been seeing her awhile by the time I noticed something that grabbed me in the lobby. As soon as I got on the table that day I asked her:
“Who’s Daniel and what is this shamanic healing?” my face planted in the donut of the massage table.
“Oh, he’s amazing, you should go.” She said as she got to work on the years of touchless muscles.
In retrospect that didn’t tell me anything, but by then I was willing to try anything. So that was all it took. When I looked him up after my massage I learned that he focused on working to bring back lost power caused by trauma but not the trauma that caused our power loss. All i knew was that I needed this as soon as possible. I hadn’t felt the same passion for life that I used to. Although I had so many reasons on paper to be happy, I was afraid. I always felt depleted and I was constantly worried about what might be coming next. I’d tried traditional therapy, I’d been on antidepressants for years by then but I felt like I was out of steam. That’s how I met him. My little being had broken down and I knew I needed to find a way to bring myself home.
When I went for my soul retrieval ceremony with Daniel I didn’t know what to expect. I’d envisioned elaborate costumes and weird things being sprayed in my face. I grew up in the rave scene so you’d think I wouldn’t be worried about costumes and shit being sprayed in my face but I was. I couldn’t have been more off base. When I walked into the room for the ceremony it was more like a womb. Scattered with blankets and low lighting I got to meet the man who changed my life. I got to call myself home and he did the work to bring me back. What happened in that room changed my life. Less than 2 hours and I came out feeling more myself. I’d also gotten my first power animal guide, medicine, a totem. The translator for the next part of my journey. That’s the thing about Spirituality, or Spirit, Energy, it doesn’t speak English. It speaks of vibration and frequency. Humans need help, as we tend to enjoy overcomplicating things and playing a lot of broken telephone. I readily embraced and accepted the help. In that ceremony, in that room it was like co-dreaming. I felt, saw and suddenly seemed to know things. I wasn’t exactly sure what happened in that room but I felt better and I wanted to know everything. It was like he flipped through the index cards of my memories, of my soul and brought me back home. I knew in my bones this was my teacher.
What do you do when someone becomes your Spiritual teacher? Well, I decided to connect with him on Facebook. When I connected to Daniel, I saw he was also connected to Ben, my friend and real estate agent. I was perplexed. I messaged Ben.
“How do you know Daniel?” I typed into Facebook Messenger.
…. He was typing back “He’s my next door neighbor.” … Still typing
“Remember I introduced you to him when you moved in and wanted a designer” Ben finished.
What??????
It was like time folded in on itself like one of those MAD Magazine Fold-ins. The designer I never called. The same man, the man who designed this beautiful wellness clinic too, and who had just retrieved part of my soul. Living right next door to one of my oldest friends.Holy Shit, but also as I’ve learned since, of course. There’s no woo-woo. Energy is part of us. It’s you-you. The Universe had made sure that I didn’t miss this call. It will do the same for you, promise. The Universe is like a worried Mom, in that they’ll keep at it until you pick up. So please don’t worry you’ve missed your window. There will be more windows, think a Burj Khalifa amount of windows.
The more work I did with Daniel the more I was being reintroduced to myself. It was a remembering. I was coming back into myself. It was magic and I was hooked. The Ancient Egyptians used to describe things as happening “by Magic”. I’d always loved that, and them. As my experiences continued my wonder and curiosity were back in ways they hadn’t been since I was a kid. It was like I had to remember. As a kid I’d always loved Ancient Egypt, The Egyptian Gods. By 3 I’d begged my Mom for a witch costume and by 7 I was begging my Mum to order me the Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown Books I saw on TV. I whined that they even came with a bag of crystals. FOR FREE.
I was successful in my sales pitch and when the book arrived I scoured through them like sacred texts until the next one came. It was like I was remembering instead of learning. I would talk to whoever would listen to me about the pyramids, about the Gods and Goddesses. The Sphinx. Stories of Pharoahs and Magic. I went to Catholic school so this wasn’t the kind of school yard talk that interested anyone but me. I didn’t care. I had the knowledge of a little egyptologist and I felt more at home in those worlds then than I did in my own.
As I moved further into my newfound Spiritual work and away from my writing and producing ads something shifted in my life. Like I suddenly remembered these giant allies. It was like the Egyptian Gods began to appear just as they had done since I was a kid. Not in the imaginary friend kind of way but in actual feelings of calm and groundedness. The feeling I got when I was among their statues at the museum (so far the closest I’ve come to Egypt). As a kid my grandmother used to take me to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. I’d spend as much time as she let me in the Egyptian section with the Mummy. I always wanted to hang out with the Mummy. I loved the statues, the little tomb they constructed. I felt at home there. I’d examine all of the Gods painted on the sarcophagus. I’d name them. Point out to her who did what. Of course, it was my grandmother, the artist who was the only one who seemed interested then in my 7 year old Egyptology lessons.
I always delivered them like a sermon from underneath my overgrown bangs. At the museum I always wanted to touch everything. It was like a compulsion. I couldn’t help it. I knew I wasn’t supposed to but my little arm would rise up like an antenna searching for something ancient. Signs marked DO NOT TOUCH with a big red X through the illustration of a hand weren’t enough to deter me. One time I triggered the museum alarm (which is silent by the way). This was followed by a security guard suddenly coming out of the dimly lit Egyptian Wing reminding me not to touch the antiquities.
I felt ashamed and never told anyone. My grandmother didn’t tell anyone either and she still let me pick something out from the gift shop. She still didn’t get mad at me on the subway home. She had leaned over as the subway cars swayed under the fluorescent lights. She whispered to me that when she’d seen the mask of Tutankhamun a few years before she wanted to touch it too.
As I got older I still spent a lot of time at the museum. Time moved on and acquisitions grew. Not long after my best friend passed away the museum acquired a beautiful but broken statue of the lion-headed warrior goddess Sekhmet. Known as the Mistress of Dread and Lady of Slaughter. Great one of Magic, Great Enchantress. The statue was chipped and broken but the power that came from it was palpable. Of course, the Museum was tempting my no longer little hands. The statue wasn’t enclosed. It was out in the open. Seated in the entrance to the Egyptian wing. The goddess of both plague and healing. From the moment it arrived I felt the need to bow or kneel at the statue but always felt embarrassed.
Not long after I was called to practice and did my year long shamanic training with Daniel, I got the most amazing email from the museum. Of course as an adult I’d become a member, secretly hoping that one day that could give me some kind of special permission to touch things, especially that statue. When I read the email it was a note about how the museum would open for halloween. That ticket could be bought in the evening and that ALL exhibits would be open. I couldn’t believe it. Not only was I going to get to go to the museum at night, I was going to get to wear a witch costume AND do ritual at the place I’d felt safest in my life.
Maybe I’d even get to bow. This is how the Egyptian Gods show up in my life. Not down from the sky, not some booming voice everyone can hear from the clouds. They come in breadcrumbs. They come in wishes come true. It felt so good to be true that I had to call the museum to make sure it wasn’t a mistake. Really, All exhibits would be open? Even the Egyptian wing on the third floor? YES.
When I went to the museum in my witch costume (not the one from when I was 3) I brought a printed copy of the first draft of my book with me, as well as some of my tools and sacred objects. As I mentioned about Daniel not having costumes or spraying stuff in your face, I tend to me more of that kind of healing practitioner (and person). I am big on adornments. Though typically not in session with clients, just on special occasions with permission in case you’re worried I’m going to spray you in the face.
When I got to the third floor of the museum it was empty. Not a soul.
More magic. I walked toward Sekhmet and kneeled in front of her. I said my prayers and proceeded to do my usual circuit. The mummy, the little tomb, the paintings on the sarcophagus, the tools, the jewelry, the statues. As I got closer to being finished with my ritual I felt the voice of Sekhmet. So clearly in my head. Like an idea, that wasn’t mine clear as day.
“You can touch the statue,” she said.
I answered her back in my mind. “Thank you, but I really can’t because you’re in a museum and you’re ancient and security will come”. As I tried to show her a visual of me being dragged out by armed guards. It was like she smiled to me at that revelation and I felt a bright light and at the same moment heard the first sign of life behind me. I didn’t need to touch her. She was radiating to me. I was basking in it when I heard a young woman’s voice.
“Ask the witch”.
I turned around to see who was speaking and it was a group of 4 girls in their twenties dressed in costumes. I smiled at them.
“Can you take our picture?” they asked. I did, and then I left the museum. I’d gotten 30 minutes completely alone with the statues and antiquities I’d visited since I was a kid, and I got permission to touch them. I wasn’t sure how I was going to convey that to the museum, but enough dreams came true.
It wasn’t long after that that Daniel relocated from Toronto to Salt Spring Island, it gave me that beautiful perspective that he’d been here for exactly the time I needed him. Living next door to my lifelong pal. It wasn’t much longer after Daniel had been there that I found out he’d moved in right next door to my ex-father in law.. My ex’s parents aren’t together but my ex-mother in law had done healing work with Daniel as well so the irony wasn’t just mine. It triangulated around him like a little pyramid. More synchronicity, more breadcrumbs.
Without the house I bought with my ex, without being literally triangulated around Daniel, and now this. It was like a hug from the Universe that although he was thousands of miles away, he was no further away. He was still nestled into the connections of my life. When I went to visit Salt Spring Island not long after Daniel’s move I stood on his deck overlooking the mountains of British Columbia as one of my totems flew across my vision. I followed it to the right and saw my Ex’s Father’s place. I imagined him walking out of his home across the country and looking up and seeing me. I laughed. Imagining the moment of shock “is THAT AMY”?” it never came but I howled about it. What the fuck are the odds of that? As I like to say, you can’t make this shit up
That energy of my ex and the magic running through from Daniel seemed to move to my ex-mother in law who I call my Bonus Mum- Jennifer. She told me not long after I got back from the magical trip to Salt Spring Island that she was planning a trip to Egypt. She told me an old friend had reached out and offered an opportunity for a trip to Egypt. She told me she was being drawn there and just felt she had to go. Wait for it. The name of the man who was leading the trip, her old friend. Daniel. It was like some kind of permission from the Universe, the Gods for me to ask. Because, Daniel, So I’d made one request of her. I asked her to leave a crystal I’d given her at the Sphinx, and to bring me back a piece of Egypt. A rock, a stone. anything. When she was there she had messaged me a photo of her kissing the Sphinx and told me she’d completed my mission.
I was over the moon. In her message she also told me she’d had a life changing experience and that she would share more about it with me when she returned.
Here’s the thing about magic and wonder. It doesn’t matter how much you believe in it, how much you know it to be true. It never gets old. Not ever. When she got back to Toronto we set up lunch and she handed me a gift bag. I tried to act cool and put it beside me but my 7 year old self was eager to rip into it. Somehow, I managed to hold myself off until we’d eaten lunch. Inside the bag were two stones from Egypt that she’d picked up for me pieces of the pyramids. A tube, a tube I had at home. My best friend Chanda had gone to Egypt 18 years before. It sounds like the beginning of something out of the Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown Books. “Two people who don’t know each other but are incredibly close to one person, both travel to Egypt 20 years apart both choose and bring back the very same papyrus as a gift for the person they both know.” . As I slid open the tube and pulled out the papyrus Jennifer said something that still makes me laugh.
“I hope you don’t already have this”
She said it as if the hand painted piece of papyrus she’d chosen from dozens across the world was a mass produced object. When I opened it, it was papyrus that is identical in depiction to one I received from my best friend 18 years before. The only differences are slight, and that the Papyrus from Jennifer shows one figure now wearing a crown.
I was, for once, speechless. When I told Chanda later all she could say was “Holy Shit”. Holy Shit indeed.
On the left: The Papyrus from Chanda in 2000, and at right The Papyrus from Jennifer in 2019
There was one more thing in the bag. How could she have known?
It was a little amulet, a statue of Sekhmet that instantly had me in tears. I thought about her words to me at the Museum those years ago and cried harder because this, I could finally touch.
As I sat speechless Jennifer went on to tell me about her life changing experience. She told me that her tour group was led through the World Heritage Site and Temple of Karnak in Egypt. As she wandered through the 70 foot columns of Karnak towering over her she felt the power and magic of what constructed this place. The place that once held over 200 statues of Sekhmet. She explained that she felt a strong pull to one area of the temple. She moved through the gateways of the temple to a small room at the back. She described to me that there were security guards outside of the room and they were only letting a few people inside. She wasn’t sure how they were deciding but felt herself pulled to wait to go into this room. She described it as a compulsion. I nodded, holding this gift of the Sekhmet amulet in my hands as she spoke.
Once it was her turn inside the room the guards opened the dark sanctuary for her. She walked into the darkness stepping out of the blazing Egyptian sun. Now cold and damp in this room she told me she felt home. And as the doors of the room closed the lioness appeared to her gradually through the darkness. As the 7 foot tall statue of the goddess Sekhmet revealed herself before Jennifer she began to weep. I was already crying at the restaurant holding this amulet of Sekhmet in my hands. Inside half laughing about how I was once embarrassed to kneel in a museum and now I was bawling in a restaurant with the same goddess statue. As Jennifer wept in the sanctuary of Sekhmet the guard motioned to her that she could touch the statue. She was confused at first by this permission but didn’t bother to question why. She didn’t just touch it. She embraced it. That’s what I’d have done. She described the embrace and feeling of unconditional love. I was floored. This is how magic shows up. She even hugged the guard after they shared the magic in that room. She described feeling warmth, bright light and complete acceptance. I know that feeling. I’ve been wanting to touch it most of my life. She told me as we parted that she hoped I liked the gifts and that she’d splurged and purchased a larger statue of Sekhmet for herself.
The following summer I got a call from Jennifer out of the blue one afternoon, she was crying. She told me she’d been careless and had knocked the Sekhmet statue she bought in Egypt from its place on her dresser. She was beside herself. She told me she didn’t know who else to call.
I paused for a minute. I thought about Sekhmet. I thought about everything I know about her. She is a warrior. A healer. A goddess. She is the medicine of transformation. I saw the face of the statue at the museum in my mind. Broken. Missing an arm, part of her face. I told Jennifer that the statue wasn’t too broken to be fixed. She still had the pieces. It didn’t make the statue or her experience at Karnak any less meaningful. That Sekhmet would never be upset about this. She brought war, and plagues but she also brought healing. Most of the statues of Sekhmet still in existence from 4000 years ago are broken. They’re chipped. They are no less powerful. They still sit in museums and temples around the world bringing the same energy. Hers would be no different.
I’d had my own practice for a while by then when Jennifer called me. I have been taught well by the teachers I can see with my eyes, and with my heart, but as they say, healing heals the healer.
Two years after that trip to Egypt and being busy writing that book I asked for the Gods to bless at the museum. I’d leaned into doing some self care, inspired by Sekhmet moving out of being a warrior and into my healing years. I registered for a peer support group for survivors of childhood sexual abuse and also asked for a ceremony with Daniel. My Mum gifted it to me. What came through was another soul retrieval. My 5th. Magically both of these gifts came to me in the month of May 2021 within 10 days of each other. Witnessing the things I lived through as a child, the things that I was going through in between my trips to the Museum were bookended by a soul retrieval ceremony with my teacher. Unlike the times I’ve done ceremonies with Daniel before, this time I am a practitioner. He has taught me the ceremonies, I have been practicing them with my own clients for years. Survivors like me. People who have lived through trauma, or just life, because it’s hard as much as it is magical. As we moved through this ceremony, I walked with him for this journey. I walked beside him through space and time to retrieve the parts of me that left because of pain, or trauma. This time we both brought back my power. The first piece was far back in time, the first thing we both saw were the columns. 70 feet high. We were tiny standing among them. We were both being guided back through the gateways, and into a room. Dark. Making an offering to a statue, the light coming through and then in that room, there was me. A piece of me from another life in that room with that statue. A priestess. I knew as Daniel described what he was seeing that he had no idea where we were. I knew it in my bones.
As we left that room in the temple and journeyed back through space and time looking for any other pieces of me ready to come home the newly retrieved Priestess inside of me insisted on going with us. We moved together through darkness and desolation to get there. Crying together as we looked for her in spirit. This tiny girl with the overgrown bangs. I could see her hiding behind a stone. I could feel her there. I am 4 Years old. The wonder, and brightness. The magic of my childhood. There. Returning and remembering.
I could see them vividly. These pieces of me through the veil. The Priestess and the child holding hands and walking home to me in the here and now. I welcome them home. They tell me “it’s time” and “bright, bright, bright, light, light, light.”
As we came out of the ceremony Daniel asked me “Where was that?”
And I said “it’s Karnak, that was Sekhmet” I recounted Jennifer’s story and Daniel sat back.
When we closed the first thing I did out of the ceremony was to research the statue of Sekhmet at the Royal Ontario Museum. Every piece of my body started to vibrate as I read about its origin. Then not just my body, the lights flickered. It was like I already knew. The statue came from the temple of Karnak. Now I could understand why I wanted to touch everything, why she’d told me herself that I could touch her. In some iteration of my life I already had. Not long after, within days, I decided it was also time to prepare to return home where I’d left a piece of my soul and a lifetime. Egypt. Within 60 days I met an Egyptian woman who would tell me that she would take me back to follow the breadcrumbs. When I finally determined the origin of the scene featured in the papyrus Chanda and Jennifer had both brought back for me from Egypt it all made sense. The image depicts a scene from the tomb of 19th Dynasty Queen and Priestess Nefertari.
Nefertari is making an offering of magical oils to the goddess Hathor. The goddess Hathor is known as the ascended Sekhmet. The healing component of Sekhmet is Hathor. Of course these two women brought me back this same image. It was my destiny. From the Mistress of Dread to She who Heals with Magic.
3AE-U1-P1 (44876)
‘Königin Nefertari opfert der Göttin Hathor zwei Vasen’
Ägyptische Malerei,
19. Dynastie.
– ‘Königin Nefertari opfert der Göttin
Hathor zwei Vasen’. –
Grab der Königin Nefertari.
E:
‘Queen Nefertari offers two vases to goddess Hathor’
Egyptian painting,
19th dynasty.
– ‘Queen Nefertari offers two vases
to goddess Hathor’. –
Tomb of Queen Nefertari.
This is time, Time is like taffy. We can move through it like an ocean. We don’t have to let our trauma hurt forever. It’s time to remember that like Sekhmet you are never too broken to be fixed. It is never too late. It is never too much. We can be put back together, in witness, in beauty and in bright, bright, bright, light, light, light. It’s time to remember what you’re made of. Light and star stuff. Welcome home.
Footnote: In May of 2021 – Egypt held the Golden Parade and moved the Pharaoh’s and Queens to the museum. For the first time in thousands of years these sites were used for major ritual. Hymns sung came from the Book of Going Forth by Day (this is the Hymn of Isis)
You showed up like a rhythm that I remembered, but couldn’t name.
You tell me you don’t want anything, cross your heart. You’re here not to take , but to give.
Then I hear your voice across the ocean of the Universe.
Give me your hands. Put them right against mine.
I hesitate. You nod and I hear your thoughts. “Do it” And when I do I see my future, my past, my present. Everything. All at once. And I know now. I remember this song.
You wrap me in a full moon blanket. and carry me back to the place where we came from.
Blessing or curse. We’ve always found a way. Why would this be any different? Catapulting together through time.
I thought you were lost, until you told me you were found. Your breath against my ear. Through the veil,
I hear your voice. Your eyes pierce, right into my soul. You know what I’m made of. It’s in us both.
Your energy takes me above the storm. My ears burn with the soundtracks you left me. I can’t think about how we were both here and I just missed you, but you knocking on my consciousness like a window is enough fuel. I’ll finish the journey. I’ll see you just up ahead. Waiting for me, right beside the place from which we came.
For now I’m left behind, but you see through my eyes.
I’m sure you’ve said it too. When things get “back to normal”. I’ve stopped saying it. I’ve realized how much I didn’t even like “normal”. The pace of it, the breakneck back to back meeting schedule. The rush, the alerts, and notifications. It’s like we were all participating in some kind of terrible contest of who can spend the least amount of time enjoying life and spending the most time working. Accumulating.
We spent more time on our devices than looking into each other’s eyes. We went to work when we were sick. We avoided staying home. We ignored the signs. We kept going. Driving directly at the wall.
It’s not so surprising we hit it. Some people would argue about who hit it first. It doesn’t matter now though because we’re all stopped. We’re all waiting. No one is first.
I don’t want to go back to that. I know some people still haven’t left it. Still clinging to the old ways and convenience of “me-first” mentality. Ironically, they’re also the people who seem so intent to be holding us against the wall. They don’t want to wear masks, they don’t want to use their turn signals, they don’t want to follow the arrows in grocery stores. They don’t need to follow the rules because they’re still trying to be first. They’re in a rush to get back to a normal that involves us being in service to them. Instead many of us have realized they’re the ones who have kept us in a second wave, and now a third. Those who think it can’t be them. I don’t want to return to that normal where we ignore the brazenly dense. We have seen things in this pandemic. Things that were there before have been highlighted. We are seeing the failings of humanity. We needed to see them. This is normal and it’s a mess.
I don’t want to have to clean up someone else’s mess, but we’re learning what we should have learned as toddlers, that someone always has to hold hands with the jerks. We’re all connected, and as such, let’s start holding them accountable. Maybe they didn’t learn as toddlers and that’s why they’re bashing into the walls now.
Mine was Transcendz. I wrote under that handle for 12 years. It was prophetic in so many ways, just like so much of what we are when we’re young. We’re pure channels, we vibrate so clearly. It was like my soul knew what I was supposed to be doing before my body did.
I used to write episodes of TV shows I liked. I wrote plays. I wrote stories. I wrote journals and poems. I won essay contests. I wrote for hyperreal.
Then I stopped writing online and I started making. I left writing behind unless it was for other people. I stopped writing for me. There’s a lot of reasons why, and they’ll all be in my upcoming memoir but for now i’ll just say, the reasons were good ones.
Finally it’s safe to write again. I feared that writing was self indulgent, or somehow too enjoyable to lean back into. That’s what happens when you’ve been an Executive Producer for 20 years. You get too logical. You do too competent a job of managing risk and sometimes you put down your own art.
This is me picking it back up. Officially under my own name.
Transcendz still exists, it has a home. It’s for big ideas and magic.
This is a place is for stories. Welcome. I hope you enjoy.
26 Nov A year laterDreams do come true. Some of you may remember a few years ago I won an auction on ebay to meet and have lunch with one of the people who has helped to inspire not only so much of my personal aesthetic, but also my career, and my motivation to do things differently. Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman himself. Well, that was about a year ago today. We met. We had lunch. We shared Pizza. And I even got to ride shotgun with Paul over to the Hollywood Museum to see his bike from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. No big deal. No big deal at all. I wrote about my experience leading up to meeting Paul here: I never followed up, well because the adventure has continued. Much beyond my wildest dream, Paul and I have been in touch throughout the course of the last year and about 6 months ago I was elated when I got word that he needed a hand. So of course, the thought of collaborating in any way was a dream come true. I couldn’t pass it up, so I’ve been lucky enough to speak with Paul and his amazing team frequently, and what a joy the process has been. Today, we launched the all new Peewee.com ! If there’s one thing I can tell you about Mr.Reubens, he has vision. He knew what he was looking for, and how he wanted to bring it to life. I’m so excited for the beginning of such an incredible collaboration and friendship. I am grateful and this marks the beginning of a new era for me. I’m excited to share some exciting news in January… Be sure to check out all of the amazing content on the Log. including the amazing Premium Diamond Platinum Club 🙂 Whether you’re a fan of Pee-wee or not, I think you’ll find something that will make you laugh. Surprise and delight indeed. Thank you Paul for trusting me to get this done for you. I am humbled to have been able to help.
The countdown is on… Last year in December I won an auction which benefited the Adrienne Shelly Foundation (benefiting women filmmakers) to have lunch with Mr. Paul Reubens (aka Pee-wee Herman). I have always wanted to tell Paul what he meant to me growing up and how much it shaped who I am and what I do. I didn’t have the happiest of childhoods and he represented magic to me. Every Saturday morning I felt happy and safe during the time I was in the playhouse. I am now extremely grateful to be in the position to tell him myself. The secret word is “joy”.
What are you thinking when you are on your way to fulfill a life long dream? Well, first of all you can’t sleep very well. It’s like Christmas but better, because well, you still have Christmas coming. You can’t believe it’s really happening, even though you have been assured many, many times over the last year that it’s real. You wake up to an email confirming the location of your meeting and realize in that instant that within 24 hours you’ll be walking into a restaurant saying “There’s a reservation under Paul Reubens”.
When I first saw the auction that would lead me here it was within about a month of “liking” Pee wee’s page on Facebook. Before you know it there’s a listing that Paul is auctioning off a lunch for charity, on ebay. You think about the chances of winning, and you think it’s too good to be true. How often in life does someone get a chance to say “Thank You” in person to someone who has inspired the life you’re living, to someone who’s overcome similar obstacles, a real person. Someone who’s maintained the same collaborations throughout their career and who’s innovation has inspired what you do in life? Rarely. The charity was the Adrienne Shelley Foundation, benefiting female filmmakers. You went to film school and have seen first hand what challenges women still have in the entertainment industry. So you feel, like most things in your life it’s a sign. You should do it.You gather your closest female friends together to watch the film that started it all. Inspired the first crush you ever had, on this magical, snarky, smart boy named Pee Wee. You watch Pee wee’s Big Adventure with your closest friends. You decide that you’re going to make the investment to do it. To splurge, because you’ve worked so hard to be able to do it. The night of the auction you head to one of your favourite client’s companies, in fact one of your first clients. Saatchi & Saatchi. The ones who took a chance on giving you one of your first projects when you went out on your own, when a lot of people wanted to see you fail. That night, surrounded by friends old and new, You win. You are going to have Lunch with the man who served as a bright and authentically human light in your otherwise dark childhood. The one who started the ball rolling, just like the breakfast machine in the first scene of Big Adventure.I’m going to stop writing it like this isn’t me now. I want you all to feel what it’s like to be on a plane headed to Los Angeles for only the second time in your life, alongside one of your best pals, and an artist who also believed in hitching his wagon to my truck in the very beginning. Alex McLeod. We’re in First Class. Because this is my Big Adventure now. I will remember every moment of it for the rest of my life.
We are 35,000 feet above the Earth right now, and I’m watching Pee wee’s Big Adventure. Right now we are flying over the Grand Canyon. I’m amazed. I’m inspired and most of all I am incredibly grateful.In an hour or so we’ll be landing in LA, headed to a beautiful apartment where we’ll get settled and then head to West Hollywood for dinner with friends to celebrate what is set to be an absolutely incredible adventure. I am elated.What am I going to say to Paul Reubens? A lot of people have asked if I’ll be pitching him. At first I debated it, and then I thought long and hard about what the 6 year old me would have wanted. More than anything I wanted to be friends. I always, as most children do with children’s shows, I imagined that the house in Big Adventure was real, and then that he moved to the Playhouse, or maybe it was a cottage. I always imagined growing up and becoming friends with Pee wee and being invited for a visit.So what I would love most of all is to be friends with the man who started me on the magical path I’ve been so lucky to walk down all of these years. I’ve never had a mentor, and the thought of asking Paul to be mine was what came to the surface. I’m not sure what he’ll say, but I am hoping I have the courage to ask. Because after all courage is rooted in the word full heart. And Mine is right now.
I had a lot of feelings over the last year as I waited for this lunch to be scheduled. Thoughts of joy, nervousness, anxiousness and unworthiness. I felt that maybe I didn’t deserve it. Then I realized that we all deserve it. Everyone on this planet deserves for their dreams to come true. We are all worthy of it. Something I’ve learned in my life is that we’re all equal. We all deserve magic. I’ve been in relentless pursuit of it for a long time. We’re human, we all make mistakes, we all have our wins and our losses and we’re in the end much better for it. As I write this now more than ever I realize that everything I’ve ever done has led me to this moment.
At times I’ve been a loner, and a rebel, but at the end of the day, everything I’ve ever done I’ve done it with the support and love of other people. In fact my phone was a flurry of amazing messages this morning, from all of the people in my life who love me. Telling me I deserve this and they are all so happy for me. I am feeling as if I’m surrounded right now with love and positive energy as I go to fulfill just one of my dreams. Every moment of this I will be loving, enjoying and grateful for. It still feels surreal that it’s even happening. From the person who’s consistently asked the charity if it was “Real”. I finally feel like it might be.
I am a thinker/maker/producer/perpetual child. It was as a child that I fell in love with the world of Pee-wee. From Pee-wee’s Big Adventure to Pee-wee’s Playhouse. I imagined a house where i’d live one day filled with the same kind of magic and friendship that existed every Saturday morning. I always imagined we were friends. The best part of a trip to Universal Studios for me was this photo.
I’ve been relentless about creating things ever since and magically it’s creating those things that lead me to be in the position where I could bid (and WIN!) on an auction to have lunch with Mr. Reubens himself. What I dream to tell him in person what he meant, and means to me.
I have gone through ups and downs in my career, and I have always gotten back up. I’ve always been relentless about pursuit of dreams, and not just my own dreams but creating a collective of people who are inspired and interested in the same things. I learned this from Paul. That collaborating with the same people could have magical, and wonderful results. This in some ways shaped what I did with founding Lunch, my company, 5 years ago.
I decided i’d share my story for those interested on a blog about what is set to be the biggest adventure of my life. Flying to LA, to meet a mentor, who has no idea he’s been my mentor all of these years.
What a wonderful adventure. I am incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to do something that as a child I never dreamed i’d be able to do. This one is for all of the kids out there who wished for the same thing.
“Everytime I thought I got it made, it seemed the taste was not so sweet…”
[What I Needed] 02-19-02 Haven’t written in ages, makes me feel guilty. I just made a decision. You know when you just wake up and know something has changed. I know it was just what I needed. I feel uncompromised, after a year of feeling nothing but. I am walking away, as unaffected as possible. Though it’s not without hurt, not without the pain and anguish of leaving something, someone, behind. Saying goodbyes comes easy to me. It’s the reasons behind saying them that take the time. I fell. I lashed. I stumbled. At times life kicks me in the teeth and I remember everything previous. I wonder if I walked away would I be making a mistake. Principles are a funny thing. Anger sits in my heart, sets up camp and I get so mad that thoughts could evade me. That even if for an instant eyes were redirected. If thoughts of it were so good that it seemed stupidly worthwhile. Cry me a river. I fall behind. Listening to the undercurrents of a thing I thought I knew. It occurs to me now. I know nothing of it. This is true. Your tenure here is finished and I walk briskly with a closed fist. Sickened. Nothing to say. Even less to think about. “Everytime I wish it was again a time when I was younger.. No better explanation…Tugged in all directions. .”Everytime I thought I got it made, it seemed the taste was not so sweet…” Still don’t know what I was waiting for And my time was running wild A million dead-end streets and Every time I thought I’d got it made It seemed the taste was not so sweet So I turned myself to face me But I’ve never caught a glimpse Of how the others must see the faker I’m much too fast to take that test
[July 16, 2002] Seems that the last time I wrote I was at a crossroads too, how curious. Seems that I’m always at a crossroads. Amazing how life changes. I’ve just had the chance to be off of work for about 8 weeks. Just changed jobs and was laid off two months in, unexpected. Pretty amazing it doesn’t happen more often I guess. Luckily I’ve landed on my feet, I’m back on the path and excited to just get going. To get started. With so many changes I figured it was time, again, for a Transcendz.com facelift. Everything is a work in progress I suppose. This past few months has been a time of great re-connections. Finding, and re-discovering….friends, family and most of all myself and my goals. A little selfish time to get reacquainted. The city has been hot, and at times too cramped. Thoughts of relocating, getting out have passed. Seems I’ve always got my bags packed. This time, I chose to set them right back down. Thanks to everyone in my life who has re-commited themselves. It’s been an incredible summer so far. So glad we’re back in touch.. -Amy
herstory. On the morning of March 8th, 1998 just two days before my nineteenth birthday my best friend Erin Muckle died in a car accident. She had just turned 19, and I hadn’t seen her in 3 months. Senseless. I remember the absolute gutteral pain when I heard, and just the reflex in my hand causing me to drop the phone. She was the absolute closest person in the world to me. Everything went into slow motion, and my tongue was broken. Then came the angry tears….It’s 5 years ago, and it’s yesterday. Erin and I were fast friends, we first spotted eachother through the patio doors of our childhood houses. At just 3 Erin had pointed at me through the glass and told her mother that I was her best friend. This, before we had even met. She was right. Funny thing, she was always right. Erin had a beautiful carefulness about her, she just felt. She was a brilliant presence and sometimes when I realize how rare that is in the world. I mourn for her all over again. She was discovery to me. Everything I remember about being a kid involves her, every smell, detail, laugh triggers a memory of her. She and I spent most of our time together laughing. It has been 5 years since her untimely passing. I am five years older, every year on my birthday I am reminded of how incredibly fragile it all is. I want to thank her, for giving me the courage to do all of the things I’ve done in the past 5 years. The will to stand up for what is right and to speak on behalf of what is good. For giving me the strength of will to try harder at everything I do. They say that no one ever really gets over someone dying. Funny, i’ve never felt that our relationship was over, I just felt it had changed. Erin, i write this memorial for you in thanks.
Memorial. You live in this place in my heart where rivers run so deep that the water is black. The sky rushes red with stormy electricity and everything you touch just slips through your hands no matter how tightly you clench your fists. The soil is like memories that just keep fading with each second that passes. This thing, the thing that I can’t begin to understand. This feeling I get where I feel so unbelievably sad, that I just close my eyes and feel that feeling again. Of sheer anguish and pain, and love all at once. That feeling that you never want to have again… I wonder, if I have become a bigger person since or only half of one. I look back at this defining moment and just close my eyes and try to make sense of it. There are times when I feel you, like you’re yelling at me through glass, as I pass you on the street. I hear you, but it’s muffled I feel like you live in a world surrounded by a membraneous shield. Where you can see me, but you are still healing. Your eyes are new and I am just outside. Talking about you feels like the first bite of a Godiva chocolate, it keeps you alive, keeps you close. Remembering the details is like an ice cold drink on a hot day. Whenever I laugh it reminds me so much of you. I made you promises, and they kept me honest. You have taught me more in the past 5 years than I ever hoped to know. You have helped me to live my life better, you are an experience of my soul. Thank you for that.
