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The Shield of Success

Nov4
Carpe Diem Wolf Shield by Springwolf

Seize The Day

Visualizing and Creating A Shield of Success

Everyone has a dream, a desire or a goal for their life. Those that succeed and attain their goals work hard for them. Sometimes it may appear as if they’ve had everything handed to them. If their road has been made easier and their path  paved the way to their achievements, they may have earned that golden ticket. Karma is an interesting thing, but sometimes good karma does come back and reward you for your actions.

Simply because someone else had it easy, doesn’t mean their success diminishes or impacts your ability to achieve the same thing. There maybe underlying spiritual reasons that they’ve had it easy and you need to work a little harder. But your lessons are more important to you and your life, than what they have done or did to earn the golden ticket. It’s up to you to take some time and learn what you need to in order to keep the ball moving.

One thing I’ve learned about people who have achieved success is that they never give up. No matter what wall is set before them, they look for a way to climb it, break it down or even find another way around it. But they never let the wall stop them and say “Oh well, I guess this is as far as I go.”

Sometimes that means looking for solutions outside the norm, or thinking outside the box. When I started Spring’s Haven I took a few business classes to get a good understanding about what it takes to start a small business. Continue reading →

Have A Spooktacular Day!!

Oct31
Image from: Megan Granata

Image from: Megan Granata

Merry Samhain & Happy Halloween

Today is a day to let the child inside come out to play. Nothing wrong with having fun and letting yourself play a little.

Halloween has become a secular holiday for Trick or Treat and nothing else. It’s not a Pagan holiday and it’s no longer a Christian holiday. So let the children play and have some unencumbered fun!

Once the children have had their fill at play, you can focus on the spiritual aspects of the day. For Pagans that means honoring Samhain.

Whither you use the Gaelic pronunciation “Sow-en”, “Sow-ween”, Sah-ween” or the Americanized version “Sam-hain” (yes that is an acceptable pronunciation), it’s still the biggest holiday on the Pagan Calendar. We honor the Celtic New Year with ritual and reverence to honor the spirits of the past and the doorway that has been opened for this one night to communicate with those we’ve lost.

From everyone here at Spring’s Haven, we wish you a very Happy Halloween, a Merry Samhain and a Happy New Year!

You can learn more about The History Of Samhain And Evolution of Halloween here on Springwolf Reflections 🐾.

© This material is the intellectual property of Author Springwolf (Springwolf's Hanko)
© 2013 Springwolf, D.D., Ph.D. Springwolf Reflections / Spring’s Haven, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Merry Samhain & Happy Halloween

Oct23
Photo by Dennis Dow, Woodland Park Zoo.

Photo by Dennis Dow, Woodland Park Zoo

Happy Halloween

Here in our community some folks are bashing Halloween as a Pagan Holiday and they’re altering the evening to be more Christian. Halloween however was created by early Christians to honor the Saints of the Church for All Saints Day. The evening before that day was known as All-Hallows Eve, which was set aside to honor relatives who had passed on and left this physical world. It’s a Christian Holiday, no need to make it more Christian than it already is.

This evening celebration evolved over time has  become the secular evening of Halloween where children get to play dress up and adults get to scare each other in haunted houses.

Merry Samhain – The Celtic New Year

Pagans celebrate a holiday called Samhain. Whither you use the Gaelic pronunciation “Sow-en”, “Sow-ween”, Sah-ween” or the Americanized version “Sam-hain” (yes that is an acceptable pronunciation), it’s still the biggest holiday on the Pagan Calendar.

Samhain, dates back to the ancient Celts who lived 2,000 years ago. Early Pagans set their calendar to the change of the seasons and this is the perfect example of that. The Celtic word Samhain means “summer’s end” and it’s a celebration of the Celtic New Year.

Contrary to what some believe, is not a celebration of a Celtic god of the dead. It is the time when the veil of forgetfulness is lifted between the physical world and the spiritual world. Where the dead are honored and communication with spirit can take place more than any other time of the year.

For pagans it’s a time of celebration, but it’s also a time of reverence and deep spiritual reflection for the past and the future year to come.

Pagans follow a lunar calendar. Our holidays begin when the sunsets on October 31st and it will end at sunset on November 1st.

You can learn more about The History Of Samhain And Evolution of Halloween here on Springwolf Reflections 🐾.

© This material is the intellectual property of Author Springwolf (Springwolf's Hanko)
© 2013 Springwolf, D.D., Ph.D. Springwolf Reflections / Spring’s Haven, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

The Spirituality Of The Tarot

Oct22
The Moon

Mystic Faery Tarot by Linda Ravenscroft

An Increase In Interest

Over the past few weeks I’ve received an unusual number of emails asking for information about the tarot, their history and general overview. I’m not sure what has sparked this increased interest, but I’d like to know. Was it a TV show? A movie? A new popular book?

Whatever the reason, I thought it would be easier to reply to those notes in a post that hopefully folks can find through an online search. I hope this provides some quicker answers than waiting for me to get through my email.

A Basic Overview
They are called the messengers of the Divine, the window to Universal Law and the sacred symbols of the higher consciousness. Whatever their auspicious synonym, the Tarot has been mentioned in ancient texts for over 35,000 years.

One such text, from the Hermetic Kabbalah, tells of 108 stone tablets that lay beneath the ancient pyramids at Giza. 78 of these tablets are called the Exoteric Tarot, the remaining 30 are the Esoteric Tarot. This text goes on to say, that one day these tablets will be uncovered and will explain Universal Law and the soul’s path through the cycle of rebirth. Continue reading →

Releasing Hurtful Energy

Oct12

Pain, Hurt & AngerWhen You’re Hurt or Angry

If you live on this planet, you’ve gone through experiences where someone in your life has hurt you deeply. Either by a relationship that has broken up, or through a situation where you were targeted as an adversary. Or some other event that has put you at odds with someone or others in your life. We’ve all been hurt.

We can sit down and dream or visualize what we would like to do or say to others that will make us the victor in the situation. You can “see” them apologize to you for being so mean and hurtful. You can wish for them to try to make it up to you, so you can throw their shallow gesture back in their face. But dreaming of revenge and how you might hurt them back, only keeps you connected to them and the negative energy built up within you.

When we allow that hurt to eat away at us, it causes physical ailments to develop. When we hold on to that pain and anger, it creates strife in our own lives that have nothing to do with the situation we experienced. When we allow our character to change because of what someone else did to us, we are giving them more power over our lives and who we are. Releasing this hurtful energy is the key to creating a healthy, happy and positive life. Continue reading →

Mother Nature’s Waters

Oct2

snowwolfCollecting & Using Water For Rituals

Practitioners of pagan paths have long been associated with and connected to nature and all its elements. Using natures energy to empower workings and promote their connection to spirit, can be found on every continent throughout history.

When the world relied heavily on the swing of Nature’s spirit, rain and snow were honored components of every day life. Crops needed the right amount of rain to flourish. Winter needed the right amount of snow to maintain water supply. That hasn’t changed over the ages. But as societies became more urban, the focus on Nature’s energy and our connection to it has faded.

Today people notice the extremes of weather and pay little attention to its every day impacts. Unless you’re a farmer, or have your own garden in your backyard, you may not give the rain a second thought. But if you’re pagan and look for the energy in Nature’s movements through our world, you know it can be both an omen and a blessing. Continue reading →

Animal Sign

Sep26

fallwolfWhen Animals Cross Your Path

Everyone has had an experience where an animal has crossed our path in the physical world and we wondered if it means something. How many times have you asked, or been asked, wonder what that wolf, deer, squirrel is trying to tell me?

Nearly all Shamanistic societies believe animals in the physical and spiritual worlds come to us for our own good to deliver messages.

When animals cross our path in the physical world they maybe bringing a warning or a message as guidance. They’re a “here in the now” kind of message that impacts our physical world.

But depending on the animal, they can cross their influence of meaning between the physical and spiritual worlds. Perhaps we’re not being as perceptive as we should be or we maybe we need to pay attention to a message from spirit that affects our physical choices. Listening to our gut feelings is an important part of living in balance and nature is all about balance. Continue reading →

Merry Mabon – The Feast of Avalon

Sep20

mabonCelebrating The Fall Equinox

Mabon (May-bawn) is also known as the Feast of Avalon, the Festival of the Wine and the Festival of the Apple Harvest.

This year the Equinox will fall on Sunday, September 22, 2013 at 4:44 PM EDT.

On the equinox, night and day are nearly exactly the same length – 12 hours – all over the world. This is the reason it’s called an “equinox”, derived from Latin, meaning “equal night”.

Today we have better methods and tools to measure astrological events. So we know that this initial accepted idea of equal hours isn’t necessarily true. In reality equinoxes don’t have exactly 12 hours of daylight. But let’s not mess the holiday with that. It’s tradition! Continue reading →

The Full Moon By Name

Sep19
"Merlin In The Moon" by Springwolf 🐾

“Merlin In The Moon” by Springwolf 🐾

Have you ever wondered what’s behind the name of a Full Moon? Every month the moon graces Mother Earth with her bright Full phase. And occasionally she’ll pop in a second full phase in a single month too.

We know those occasional double full moons in a single month as a Blue Moon. But every full moon has its own name as well. You may have seen some people refer to the September’s full moon as the Harvest Moon, or the Fruit Moon. You might have even seen it called the Corn Moon. So which is it?

Well, it’s all of them really. As with most things, there isn’t a single definitive set of names to correspond to the full moon world wide. There are many.

Ages ago, cultures around the world kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to each recurring full moon. So there are a multitude of corresponding names to each Full moon of a single month. Continue reading →

Remembering Today

Sep11
Patriotic Wolf - Artist Unknown

Patriotic Wolf – Artist Unknown

September 11, 2001
Never Forget the Innocent, Never Forget the Brave, Never Forget Those We Lost

Today is the 12th Anniversary of 9/11. Twelve years ago today I was at work in Reston Virginia. Our building was on a single road business complex on the edge of town. Behind our building sat large homes with rolling hills, horse fields and lush yards. It was a beautiful and peaceful view. At the end of the road deeper into the complex we knew were government agency buildings.

Being a small office complex, people got to know each other during morning runs, lunch time walks, or the bi-weekly soccer games that seemed to gather in the large empty lot across the street from our building. We knew who the government people were, generally what they did and which agency they worked for. My company held two office buildings in the park and throughout my career I worked in both buildings.

In the late ’90s the agency building across the street from us had a bomb scare. It was in the dead of winter and exceedingly cold outside. My boss and I came off the elevator from a meeting upstairs and noticed all these people standing outside freezing to death. Continue reading →