Blessed Mabon. I’d like to welcome all the visitors from Donna Faber’s lovely website. Mabon, also known as the Fall Equinox, is a time of rebalancing our energies. We thank the world and summer for giving us a hearty bounty. We also acknowledge the time to rediscover and balance the light and darkness that can be within us. And apparently… it’s a good time to make mead.
In this blog hop, Aisling the Bard, charged us to discover:
Of all the cards in the Tarot, of all the spreads you may use, of all the meanings and significances of relationships between cards, which to you most truly bespeaks the Power of Transformation? What is the crux of your Search for the Hidden God, your Mabon Mystery, that power which makes you able to transform your Self, your circumstances, and produce something better than that with which you began? It is this which I ask of you as a focus for your Blog Hop posting. Show us your Mabon Gift, your Transformation. Make Mead with us, and we will all rejoice!
This year has been a very transformative year for me. Last year, at this time, I was invited into a goddess project. I wrote a little bit about this project for the Ostara blog hop. Last weekend was the culmination of the year long journey with this mask. We made magic during our ritual using song and theater. Afterwords, I reaped the stories attendees told to me. Here I sit, a week later, still processing the festival moments and stories.
Which leads me to this blog hop topic Mead Making (or incense making). Carl Neal held a Incense Making 101 workshop and I got to make two types of incense. And I’m using the components he talked about to frame the idea of making and transformation as my post. He taught us that incense is composed of three ingredients: a base, aromatic, and a binder. Separated these three ingredients don’t look like much, but when combined in just the right amounts, they transform into olefactory heaven.
Will all this said, here’s my recipe for transformation using tarot cards for ingredients.
The Tower: The base is used to assist in burning and it can mellow out strong scents. The Tower is my base because it’s Lilith’s card. As a Goddess, she is ever present, blunt and stands to assist others in their spiritual searches. Goddesses also form the base of many spiritual practices, so this also seemed fitting because I’m trying to figure out how to incorporate her into my own daily tarot/spirituality practices. The Tower is a card of strong and immediate transformations. If you are not living your life with authenticity and integrity, Lilith will invoke the powers of the Tower to strip yourself bare and look deep within.
The Magician: The aromatic part is the stuff you smell when incense is burned. And for my aromatic, I’ve chosen the Magician. This card represents me, who I see myself, and my passion for inspiring magic in everything I do. Magic, and tarot, is the scent of my life. The Magician is the intent, the beginning and the I. Without the I, we cannot work any magic in our life.
Temperance: The binder is the glue that holds this all together. Temperance represents my binder for it’s the card of alchemy, of art, and balance. It’s the act of transformation in motion. Temperance is also the card I associate with the Equinox. Temperance is the key to balancing all the light and shadow aspects around us. When we use the power of this card, we blend the high notes of light, in with the dark, musty notes of our shadow selves to create a blend that is unique and truly our own calling.
In the recipe of my own mead, these are the ingredients that help spur on my transformation. They contain the lighter notes of flowers I enjoy (like daffodils and roses) and the musky shadow scents (like vetivert and patchuli) that get blended together through the power of adding just the right amount of binder (glue or alcohol) to create the person I am at any given moment. Of course, the other 75 cards of tarot blend their scents to occasionally alter the scent when burned but lately… these three cards form the basis of any core transforming I have in my life.
What grapes of the harvest will you pull to make your blend of mead? What light and shadow sides will you include to pour into the pot of transformation? I’d love to know, so please comment below. Thank you for stopping by Tarot Inspired Life. To continue the blog hop, please click here to visit Christiane’s blog.
