4 of Hearts.

A woman's face in profile takes up most of the card. She is... skeptical. Her eye is looking back at an offered bouquet - six diamond coin flowers, growing from a cup with a heart on it. I have the feeling she is not going to accept it, lol... At the bottom of the card are three similar cup vases, with the flowers in them drooping over the sides. Four hearts in total, one on each of the cup vases.

For whatever reason, this card feels very simple. I have the feeling that the imagery is, uh, not too hard to grok!

The pamphlet reads "Hesitation to Try Something New" and "Fear of Repeating Past Mistakes".

I see it - it's been funneled through the prism of love, not too surprising for the Hearts suite, but it's a general principle. She rejects the new (bouquet) and remembers all too clearly the failures (vases at bottom).

I've certainly felt these things - in fact, I suppose this is perhaps an appropriate card for today, a day in which I was going to restart my job search. (I'm actually going to clean up the house from our trip last weekend instead. Related?). Tomorrow I hope to have something a bit more optimistic, and I can begin again what must be done.

But today? I will cook, and clean, and take a walk. And have a nice supper with my father for my birthday :)

Sphere Of Protection - Air.

I've been doing the Opening and Closing for a bit now - let's figure out how to add an element!

1. Complete the Opening.
2. Turn to face east.
3. Using the first two fingers of your right hand, trace a clockwise circle and then raise your fingers up, creating sort of a "key" symbol.
4. Imagine the symbol in a blazing yellow light or yellow flame.
5. Point to the center of the circle.
6. Say an invocation. "I invoke the Air, the gaseous form of matter, its spirits and its powers. May they bless me, today and always, and further my work. May my mind be inspired by the ways of Nature."
7. Intensely imagine a wind blowing out of the east towards you, crisp and fresh.
8. See the sunrise on the horizon. Imagine spring in the place in which you live. Engage all your 5 senses, take a moment for this visualization. Thank the powers of air for their gifts.
9. Trace the same symbol in the same place, but make the circle counter-clockwise. This is the banishing.
10. Point at the center of the circle.
11. Say another invocation. "By the powers of air, I banish from within me, around me, and all of my doings all harmful influences, and every imbalance of the nature of air. I balance these far from me."
12. Imagine these things being swept away by the wind, and lost in the vastness of air.
13. Complete the Closing.

Whew... this is the meat of it all, clearly! It will probably take a few weeks for me to really get this one down. I'll come back to this and reference it until I have it memorized.

Reference: List of local flora and fauna.

Honestly not feeling up to doing the full and proper review right now, but I want to copy down a very important list of native flora and fauna of the area from the book Lewis and Clark Meet Oregon's Forests (by Gail Wells and Dawn Anzinger). These are plants, especially, that I should learn by sight and by heart to complete my Druid candidacy.

BIRDS AND MAMMALS

Beaver
Deer (Odocoileus)
Elk
Marbled Murrelet

FISH

Chinook (king) salmon
Coho salmon
Cutthroat trout, coastal
Steelhead

TREES AND SHRUBS

Alder, red
Bigleaf maple
Blackberry (Rubus)
Chinkapin, golden
Coastal redwood
Cottonwood
Crabapple, wild
Douglas fir
Elderberry
Grand fir
Hawthorn
Hazel, California
Huckleberry
Indian plum
Madrone, Pacific
Manzanita
Maple, vine
Mountain hemlock
Noble fir
Oak, Oregon white
Oceanspray
Oregon ash
Oregon grape
Pine, lodge pole
Pine, ponderosa
Pine, western white
Poison oak, Pacific
Port-Ordford-cedar
Rhododendron, Pacific
Sagebrush
Salal
Salmonberry
Sedges
Serviceberry
Silver fir
Sitka spruce
Subalpine fir
Thimbleberry
Western hemlock
Western redcedar
Willow
Yew, Pacific

GRASSES AND FORBS (new word of the day there...)

Brackenfern
Camas
Fescue
Reed canarygrass
Swordfern, western
Vetch, American
Wapato