In rural and forest areas, such as around our cabin, the frigid stillness of February nights is sometimes shattered by the mating call of the Great Horned Owl. It’s an eerie unearthly sound. And their hunting noises are downright frightening. I remember hearing a long, single owl call as I lay in bed one night. “Hoo- hoo-hoo.” Immediately after, an animal, perhaps a rabbit who had foolishly ventured out of its hole after dark, gave a series of blood-curdling screams which were cut off abruptly mid-cry.

I went out in the woods the next morning and looked for blood marks. All I found was a circle of tiny frenzied paw prints.

No bird (except maybe the raven) has as much myth and magic surrounding it as the owl.

Because it’s a nocturnal bird, and night time has always seemed mysterious, the owl is a symbol of the feminine, the moon, and the night.

Ancient civilizations had widely divergent opinions about owls. The Greeks chose owls to represent Athena, the goddess of wisdom. She had a companion owl on her shoulder which revealed unseen truths to her, and it was the guardian of the Acropolis.

The Romans considered them bearers of ill omens. They believed placing an owl feather on a sleeping person would allow one to discover the sleeper’s innermost secrets. It’s not hard to understand this superstition when you look at the owl. It is a bird of night, stealthy and soundless in flight, and its eyes can adjust from telescopic to microscopic focus in a fraction of a second. When you look into an owl’s eyes you certainly feel he knows your deepest secrets.

The ancient Egyptians had a kinder view of owls, believing that they protected the spirits of the dead as they travels to the underworld.

Many Native shamans considered owls to be intelligent messengers, and would listen for their calls so they could time their magical work accordingly. To the Pueblo, they were associated with the Skeleton Man, the god of death, but also a spirit of fertility.

If you work with owl medicine, you will be able to see and hear what others try to hide. You have the unique ability to see into the darkness of other’s souls and life. This can be scary to many people and one reason why owl is often the medicine of witches. But while you may be drawn to magical practices and perhaps the dark arts, you should resist any practice that takes energy away from another person or being.
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There are more than 100 species of owls, and they have always had an intimate link to humans. Where we live, so do rodents, one of the owl’s primary food sources. 

The Great Horned Owl, sometimes called a hoot owl, is the most successful predator in the owl family. It can easily snap the neck of a woodchuck or rabbit and will not hesitate to take whatever live food presents itself, even other birds of prey. This has enabled the owl to adapt to constantly changing environments. Unfortunately, this same ferocity has interfered with the reintroduction of the peregrine falcon into some of its former habitats, including the Virginia coast. In the peregrine’s absence, the great horned owl has taken up residence and refused to share its habitat or food source.

The favorite food of the great horned is the skunk! The owl doesn’t have a great sense of smell, which is probably why it is the skunk’s most fearsome predator.
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The tufts on the top of this owl’s head is not its ears, but merely tufts of feathers. The ears are located lower in the head.

Happy New Year, you beautiful, complicated, weird people.

Has the fresh slate of a new year motivated you to make changes in your life, great or small?

If so, what are they? And are you confidant that you will keep them, or are you already busted?

If not, why not?

I’m welcoming 2019 with open arms and a slew of good intentions. I’m gonna list my goals here, and return in January 2020 to evaluate progress. You’re welcome to add yours in a comment. Words have power, and listing your intentions is a powerful act.

It’s important to remember that we don’t have to be perfect in our resolve. If you set the intention to exercise every day, and then you miss two days in a row, do you quit exercising entirely? Hell no! Improvement is still improvement, even if the progress is jerky.

But I find I do better if there is some structure to my goals. The method I use is SMART goals. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

SPECIFIC refers to a concrete, clearly-defined goal. My first goal: I want to finish my book, Crescent Moon Crossing this year.

MEASURABLE is the ‘drilling down’ on that goal: I want to write 500 words every day until the book is finished.

Next is ACHIEVABLE. I want to aim high, but within reason. I know that writing a book is doable for me, since I already have one published. But also want to establish the habit of writing every day, while also feeling like I have a life away from my desk.

Is this a RELEVANT goal? You bet it is! I decided to write this stand-alone suspense before going on to write Book 2 in my Ancient Magic series. I’ve futzed around so long that my first book has gotten stale. I desperately need to jump-start a healthy daily writing habit.
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And, at last, the T for TIMELINE, probably the most important. Looking at my calendar, I see there are 4 days in the next 4 months where I have prior commitments that will prevent me from achieving my 500 word goal. I move my deadline out four days, to April 20th, and write “Rough Draft Finished” on that date. It feels great!

My List – 15 New Year Resolutions for 2019:

1. Complete my 2nd novel, Crescent Moon Crossing, by May 1.
2. Novel accepted by a publisher-or- published, by end of July.
3. Attend Dallas Bucheron and Donald Maas workshop (October)

Exercise

1. 10k steps at least 5 days a week (by walking each dog daily)
2. Take a Tai Chi class – twice for 4 weeks each
3. Take a Yoga class – weekly
4. Do a plank exercise 5 days a week


5. Limit carbs to 250grams a day. Adjust as needed to lower A1C to <7.0
6.  Drink at least 35oz water a day (in addition to tea & coffee
7.  Release and identified toxic people from my life. I know who they are, no need to name them here.

Habit Changes

1. Bed by midnight
2.  Vacuum 2x a week. Dog hair be gone!
3.  Book all DR visits at first of year, and bunch together.
4.  Read and Netgalley review 3 books/month
5.  Clean out closets and donate old clothes. Eliminate ruthlessly, and reward myself with one new outfit.

 
This list feels like A LOT. Any volunteers to share their Resolutions list here? I’ll share your pain and support you for the entire year!

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the concepts of “spirit” and “connection.”
What evokes the sensation of connection for you? Some people may feel connected to nature while walking in the forest, or sitting silently beside the ocean. Others may experience it while performing music, or writing, or creating art, or kneeling to pray. Many others gain connection through making love, sharing a meal with family, or laughing with friends.
 
While we might find many of these activities pleasurable, it is the presence of this sensation of connection to your own core, or to something larger or beyond yourself, that differentiates a pleasurable experience from a spiritual experience. Only you can tell which things are simply, if delightfully, pleasurable and which things hold that unique sensation of connection.
 
“Wakan, Wakan, every creature
Wakan, Wakan, every rock.”
 
One of the basic tenants of Native American belief, and one of its most beautiful, is that everything in life has a spirit and is Wakan, or sacred. Our First People honor the primal force of life, the stream of existence in which each of us swims.
 
In witchcraft, when we look within ourselves to seek the nature of spirit, we often use the concept of “As above, so below. As within, so without.”
 
The Dalai Lama used the analogy of a pebble, dropped in the middle of a pond, whose ripples flow outward all the way to the edges of the water.  Unfortunately, people sometimes swim around in their little spot of water, largely unaware of the larger cosmos in which they are involved, and the miracles it can bring them. But you have to wake up and stretch your feathers to see the whole pond!
 
 Jean E. Charon, a French physicist, philosopher and author of the book, The Spirit: That Stranger Inside Us, says, “There are microscopic individualities inside every human. They think, they know, and (they) carry Spirit in the Universe.” He calls these bits of intelligence eons, also known as electrons.  “An electron that was successively part of a tree, a human being, a tiger, and another human being will thus remember for all time the experiences it has collected during these different lives. The electron will maintain within itself all of its experiences as tree, as human being No. 1, as tiger, and as human being No 2, to whose organisms it belonged.”
 
Wow!
 
The ancient Celts had a word for this concept, tuirigin (TOOR’ghin), a very precise word for which there is no English equivalent. The nearest we can get to a translation is, “a circuit of births,” according to Caitlin Matthews, a Celtic historian. She says it’s, “not quite the same as reincarnation. In tuirigin, the soul or spirit moves between the otherworld and this world in a series of journeys.”
 
The Gaelic word for God is Cruithear, which means ‘creator’ or ‘shaper,’ and the ancient people in Scotland, the Picts, were referred to as the Cruithne, “people of the shapes.” Roman accounts, as well as Scottish oral tradition, tell us that the bodies of these ancient ones were covered in elaborate blue tattoos of various animals and other shapes. According to Matthews, it was their way of honoring the sacred world that had shaped them.
 
How many of us live our lives as ambassadors of the sacred spirit in all things, be it human, plant or animal? If we do not remember our own sacred standing, we may do things that are not in alignment with ambassadorship. Rather than fostering harmony and living an inspirited life, we may instead create discord and destruction.
 
What if the soul that is our current self came into this lifetime for a specific purpose? First, however, we must recognize that purpose and consciously act upon it.
So this week, I turn my attention inward to my personal work. I take to heart the Dalai Lama’s analogy of a pebble dropped in the middle of the pond, whose ripples flow outward all the way to the edge. My actions ripple outward, having impacts I may never know.
 
For the rest of this year, whenever I find myself in a crowded place, whether it’s a football stadium, a Yule ritual, a movie theatre, football stadium, or driving in traffic, I’m going do the following activity: I will look at all the different people and whisper to myself, “Every man, my brother. Every woman, my sister. Every crying child, my child. Every old woman or man, my grandmother or grandfather. Every wounded soul, my soul. Every animal and creature, under my care.”
 
Will you join me in this exercise in conscious connection?
 
In my mind, your spiritual path makes no difference. The witch’s path, the tribal path, the Buddhist path, the Christian path. Your path.  All of us make ripples that radiate out around us. Let’s make the biggest loving ripples we can.
 
Blessed Be.