Real Sky Astrology Forecast for Winter Solstice-imbolc

The waning crescent moon in Libra at winter solstice allowed us to linger on our own shadow for a moment before releasing the past and allowing our hearts to lighten moving forward and reaching into the void for something exciting fresh and new.
On Saturday December 24th the New Moon will be in real sky Sagittarius the sign of the two headed hero/ villain wearing both the head of Horus the savior god and Set his vilified uncle meaning the ridiculousness of politics will continue on with it's strange polarized cartoon characters of the past year or so. The new moon's merge with Pluto the planet that reminds us about what HAS to happen let's us know that all this theater is happening for a reason. We the people can not stand by idly anymore this is our moment to make real change in the way things are run. This activity is squaring Uranus and yes it is taking up our free time . But these Pluto square Uranus moments are always present when fascist regimes try to take power. The last time this happened Hitler tried to take over Europe and yes it is that big now.
You folks born between 1963 and 1971 with Uranus and Pluto conjunct this is your moment, you are the generation whose "will" is being tested you may have never taken a stand before you may have kept the peace and never been a "cause" person but if you don't act you will not like the taste of the future.
Jupiter in real sky Aries is trining this new moon/Pluto conjunction, the new beginning that has to happen... we are expressing and defining who we are in a big way and it is going to feel good to finally take a stand. This is what they talk about when they say fighting for your freedom.
All this defining of the self you've been ruminating over inside is about to come to the surface as Jupiter in Aries goes direct on December 25th. Perhaps for the first time ever families may see eye to eye on politics during this holiday season.

As Mercury moves from Ophuichus/Serpentarius the healer to Sagittarius the warrior sometime in the night between January 7th and January 8th our thoughts move from healing and transformation to how to fight for that healing and transformation. We are suddenly thinking about action plans this is boosted by the energy of the full moon in Gemini on the 9th. As we think about all the great people we are partnered with and find the strength for standing up for ourselves.

The full moon in Gemini opposes the Sagittarius sun and this means solidarity will face off with the crazy asshats in power.

As Venus moves into Aquarius on late Friday the 13th of January we get a lucky sneak peek at the beauty of the Aquarian Age. We will know what is beautiful .

As the sun moves into Capricorn later in January we will see we've won a battle in a larger war and the uphill climb will stretch out before us we will use what we learned and who we've aligned with in the past year to move upward in the work that is ahead.
As people expand their ideas about who they are. We can expect the joy to come from doing hard work that is self motivated. Expect inspiration from miraculous new ideas and innovation as creative minds meet creative minds in the months ahead.

Real Sky Astrology New Moon September 26th, 2011

The first day of the four days of New moon starts today in Leo. By tomorrow the moon will conjunct the sun in Virgo. This new moon as well as this month's full moon in Pisces will intensify the hard aspects of Pluto in Sagittarius and Uranus in Pisces. In case you were wondering where all the fascist political polarities were coming from this is the culprit. Repeatedly in history when Pluto and Uranus are squared you have trouble with Hitler types. The last time Pluto and Uranus squared this was the result. However these aspects are in different signs this time and will play out differently. Pluto the stuff that has to happen is in Sagittarius the sign of the hero/villain when you have villains like Scott Walker/Rick Perry/Michele Bachman /the Koch Bros and other the big corporations, Big Religion and Wall Street who have revealed the shadow government that seemed unprovable during the time between 1963-1971 when Pluto and Uranus were in conjunction in Leo. This was a time when these guys were able to "work their will". If your old enough you remember the kind of BS people swallowed the magic bullet that killed Kennedy found intact on a gurney and all the rest. The Warren Commissions findings... no coincidence that Gerald Ford was on that commission and later became president. So the kids born with the aspect of Uranus and Pluto conjunct in Leo between 1963-1971 will have the hardest time during our current aspect. They were young impressionable kids, too young to remember the fight to get out of Vietnam and too young to remember the Kennedy assassinations. They were impacted by and probably inspired by the Reagan years being a child in those years was likely better that being a young adult. They were likely impacted negatively by the first Gulf war maybe even suffering their first loses of loved ones here, thus stimulating a natural hatred and fear of middle eastern types this was a well placed "theater war".
So now this thing will play out. We can see there was a plan we can see the players...Uranus the planet of freedom and eccentricity is in Pisces and wants to play out the theme of the Piscean Age. If you look back over the last 2000 years you see a lot of big establishment controlling the masses with fear and controlled information. Looking at the symbol of Pisces from the ceiling of Denderah you see the symbolism of this very phenomenon, the symbol is illustrated as a man with two fish on two lines the fish are at right angles to each other. The fisherman is holding these fish square to each other and in the end he's the one who will benefit from this catch. The fisherman has baited his hook and he has two polarized fish on his line. In ancient Egypt the fish is the symbol of the physical body it's the non-spiritual self the part that rots Sethian in nature. In the ancient Egyptian after life the first test of the soul was to escape baboons with fishing nets because they would catch the souls who were only physical beings, the souls who were spiritually asleep and who were not savvy enough to realize they could trick and convince the baboons that they too were fishermen and move on to the next test.
So from this we can see the game at play. The folks who got rich selling a better mouse trap see the masses as fools/ fish.( The saying
like shooting fish in a barrel comes to mind ) We made them rich and now they don't want to pay their fair share of the taxes to keep our country viable. We the people mean nothing to them we are only there as consumers to fill their pockets with gold ...that's the game. And in the end they likely know they should pay ...they are the ones who are always on the wrong side of history they don't care they will try to get away with whatever they can it's just a game to them.
So now it's up to the good people born between 1963-1971 with Pluto and Uranus conjunct in Leo to play this thing out to work their will, to see clearer, to see what they believe. Its going to be the hardest on these folks because they missed the summer of love they, missed the fight for woman's rights and racial equality. They got pumped full of rhetoric about dirty hippies and the dangers of all that free love and HIV and pretty much missed all the progress. They were raised on the 70's disaster movies with unhappy endings and some were pumped full of revelations and self hate from church. At a time when schools were changing into everyone is gifted and talented and being dumbed down, they were handed the threats of Y2K and those threats were right on time and the Twin Towers soon followed to prove bad stuff happens.

And now we've hit this strange moment when it seems like the whole system has gone crazy. But the thing is this the people who have taken power are the very ones who are most afraid most damaged and who are the least creative. They've hoarded all the wealth because they think this is what is valuable. Gold and diamonds and numbers in a bank, patents and oil and all. They've sold us a culture of convenience and gluttony, from fast food to throw away dishes to plastic grass but none of this has been very satisfying because it's based on the ideals of a small mentally damaged few. This generation has the chance to begin again to rethink, research, reclaim and redo live in harmony with nature explore the multiverse that is unfolding before our eyes. We get to decide we get to change the future we get to throw away the parts we don't like the parts that come from fear and not from love. We each have a dream inside of us each of us know what our passion was before life got us running in another direction. I ask this question to people a lot and I'm going to ask you now. If you could do whatever you wanted what would it be?
.....
It's new moon!!! NOW IS the time to start something that makes your heart sing. Get to it.

Ruminating on Lammas and the Fundamentalist Attacks on the Goddess Columbia

I woke this morning from a dream about being chased by a tall dark haired ex-husband who was a cop. I was being accused of murder. When he caught me he tried to pull me down between heavy slabs of ever diminishing stone. At the last minute I kicked him and ran. He would not follow me down the hills but would pursue me on up hill climbs. Running down hill was easier so I ran down hill as much as possible. I came to a group of people having a parade and tried to lose him by blending in with the crowd. I saw a group of women lining up against a wall for a meeting they were nuns and catholic lay women I sat quietly blending in with them. Suddenly the man showed up I slid under the table and whispered to the nun who had been sitting next to me..." he's my abusive ex husband don't let him find me." As she whispered to the other women in this line to protect me the farther down the line the message went the less likely it seemed these women would keep me safe. Just as my position was compromised I woke up.

Sitting with my husband Peter we analyzed the dream together picking apart it's symbolism. I felt strongly that the dream had to do with the fundamentalist Christians holding prayer vigils against the goddess Columbia. He asked me what my ex husband represented and I told him, mainstream America NASCAR and fundamentalist Lutherans who were forbidden to belong to lodges. This fit my suspicions about the dream being about the goddess Columbia.

The goddess Columbia was the goddess of the illuminati I didn't know this until just yesterday when I looked her up. I thought it was strange that these fundamentalists would be going after a goddess of the illuminati since the Bush family was rumored to have ties to this group... So in my mind they seemed to be infighting against their own elite. They were also exposing proof that the founding fathers were not creating a so called "Christian Nation" but were in fact creating a well thought out democracy based on the principles of the constructs of their fraternal secret societies of Europe as well as the governing rules of local indigenous peoples. Blending the ideals of these nations was a lovely combination in it's purest sense if you can disregard Europe's misogyny and slavery.

So I saw the assault on Columbia and the statue of Liberty not so much an attack on paganism but on fraternal orders and constitutional America because as a practicing pagan they had not attacked or even scratched the surface of my core beliefs, as I saw it secret societies and fraternal orders had always missed the core ideas of the divine feminine and as long as women were barred from these orders their symbols and so called secrets would remain hollow, lifeless, mysterious and without practicality or reality.

As we analyzed the dream more the idea that this ex-husband would not follow me if I ran down hill reminded me of the distain and fear these fundamentalists have for the underworld this their hell to be feared as the place of the condemned and damned...this is clearly the place where we as pagans can seek refuge and protection.

I saw the row of nuns as a symbol of my own Catholic roots after I left Catholicism I could see that the goddess of ancient times had been kept safe within this religion although like the dream as the message was passed down the line her safety became less assured.

It was my ex-husband's religion that taught me what parts of the oldest pagan religions had been saved thru Catholicism because the parts that the Protestants had stripped away were the parts that faintly held onto this light. And now it would seem the extreme right was waging another holy war against sacred geometry, natural order and any form of goddess.

This all seems timely as we pagans celebrate Lammas first harvest of three harvest festivals. First harvest marks the harvest of the grain. It is a cross quarter day which means this holiday marks the day between summer solstice (the longest day) and Autumnal Equinox(second harvest) Their are 8 of these solar holidays that celebrate the seasonal changes in the pagan calendar. At Lammas also known as Lughnasad the days begin to show signs of becoming shorter and the wheat fields are cut down. The first new grain is ground into the first fresh flour of the season bread is baked and shared with community. This holiday is also known as the "least", this would have been the time of having the least in a time when communities were dependent on their own crops to sustain them throughout the entire year. This rings true especially because grains were actually a last resort food for the our most ancient ancestors. Dietary experts who study diseases like celiac disease and allergies to glutton will tell you the human stomach was never made to eat grasses. Bread was the ancient world's processed food and was eaten in times of famine and strife. 8000 year old grinding stones found in the shrinking savannas of what is now the western deserts of Egypt will attest to this fact. This is what brought a fully developed black culture to the shores of the Nile thousands of years earlier than mainstream keepers of history would like us to believe mainly just to maintain a biblical reality that supports certain ethnicities over others. But science and genetics supports a black African beginning. Perhaps this also explains the desperate power grab of this GOP political movement against reelecting our first black president, the assault on worker's rights, education, science and an obscure little goddess holding a torch named Columbia.

All I can say to these people is Dudes black magic returns 3 fold...just sayin'

Some personal thoughts on Synarchy, the hysteria of Apocalypse and the right Wing Agenda

Last month I started painting the High Priestess after having a dream that told me I needed to use the sleeping goddess again as well as Nut (Egyptian sky goddess) and that somehow Nut was connected to the zodiac sign from the 10 sign zodiac. In this 10 sign zodiac Virgo Libra and Scorpio/Serpentarius were all combined into one long goddess ...this felt right but I needed more info so I did a Google search. In the search I found a site called watch.pair.com I found the reference I needed regarding the zodiac sign and started pouring over the writings on this page which were full of accurate occult references and yet steeped with an anti gay anti matriarch, pro patriarch fundamentalist Christian bias. I shared the site with my husband Peter and at first was having a hard time finding who had written this. We searched and found the name Barbara Aho. Peter thought he read about her before. I mentioned her to my friend Angie because she is a member of the Parliament of World Religions and is well connected to leadership in this area if Barbara Aho was someone in a position of leadership Angie would know her..Angie thought she was connected to the guy who wrote the Left Behind series off the top of her head at the spur of the moment. I kept searching for a bio for this woman as well as any credentials and or affiliations but found nothing about her personally, no pictures only that she was some how part of a group working on synarchy a World Religion...that was somehow connected with a world bank ideology. She was clearly using occult sources to promote her fundamentalist agenda. Barbara Aho even quoted Blavatsky ,Crowley and the golden dawn to make her point. And always referencing back to the bible chapter and verse. Other articles she had written included articles on the John Birch society and she named names and criticized people involved in government siting agendas from the 1950's thru present day including bloodlines and other minutia. She is clearly pro patriarch pro Christian anti-matriarch anti-gay...chapter and verse gal who is well researched.



Then exactly a month ago more pieces of a puzzle started to emerge... I had a dream about my college professor John Boatman who died last June...it was the day after his birthday so I was not surprised to see him in my dream... He was the one who was responsible for cracking my mind open and getting me to trust my dreams and abilities more than 30 years ago...Anyway...in the dream he was teaching at my husband Peter's school. I was bringing him a TV to use in his class room. As I walked into his room I saw a painting there. The painting was shaped like a megis shell. And in the painting there was a woman with a walking stick facing away from the viewer looking toward a bright sun within the sun was a megis shell. I knew right away this was part of the story of the Anishnabe people who were led to WI by the megis shell. I thought the message was for Peggy since Peter and I knew the story. So I searched for a site who had the old story on it. I found this http://www.thinkaboutit.com/native/seven_fires_prophecies_of_the_an.htm I read it out loud to Peter and then the 7th prophecy started to talk about Mackinaw. This triggered me to remember that a fundamentalist group from Mackinaw calling themselves Mackinaw were the people who were requesting the emails of UW-Madison professors (John Boatman was a UW professor intersting dream symbol)...These (Mackinaw) people wanted any and all private emails that contained the name (rogue governor Scott) Walker and/or(Rachel) Maddow in there emails. And wondered if the message from the dream was trying to get me to see a connection between the people attacking professors and requesting their emails were perhaps somehow connected to this faceless Barbara Aho and her world religion. Were these people utilizing and co-opting sacred power sites...like in the dark ages when people built churches on top of Pagan Temples sites. Somehow connecting the un-American policies being inflicted on key campaign swing states Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida and others where Republican governors were elected who on issues of creating jobs are now attacking worker's rights and the waging economic war with the middle class. It would seem a bigger agenda was unfolding but I could and still can not wrap my mind around what their objective is besides purely wanting to get rid of Barack Obama in 2012 and covet power.



Barbara Aho was the first fundamentalist I had run across who was ever willing to use occult sources and science to further a very conservative right wing religious agenda. Until The Horizon Project was brought to my attention. I started watching it with an open mind but the first thing that bothered me was the narrator pronounced the "Big Picture" as the Big 'Pitcher' and then he didn't name any of the world experts who gathered to answer the big questions of why we are here and why there are big gaps in our history.



But I listened on...In episode 2&3 I found some really bad science warning that our gaps in history are because of a magnetic shifts and implying that the shifting coastlines were due to polar reversals and not because oceans rose and fell due to the ice age...their reasoning doesn't speak at all about global temperature changes and periods of glaciation when large amounts of ocean water were encased in the ice caps allowing for populations to build near the now submerged coastal lines.



In another quick Google search it's easy to find that according to the real paleomagnetists, the most recent magnetic pole reversal appears to have occurred some 730,000 years ago blowing their theory of a 10,000 BC a pole shift out of the water...



The narrator on the video continues in a whispering voice like he's letting you in on a secret...as he describes the effects of the polar reversal... weakened gravity...sloshing oceans and the whole earth spinning and physically turning upside down in space...giving the impression that people could float right off the surface of the earth...(sounding like that "ascension into heaven as predicted in Revelations yet?)



Finally In Episode 5 we meet our expert Dr. Agnew Dr (Brooks) Agnew...no first name this given until much later..A quick Google search informs me that Dr. Brooks Agnew is a BlogTalk Radio host who had a talk show called Exotica Radio which was changed to "Off Planet Radio" April 17, 2011. I start to smell the Rapture agenda. Agnew giving his scientific rhetoric... starts talking about our solar system"...cycling around the galactic equinox"...??? Around...? This doesn't sound like the proper wording to me. Maybe they should have said the Mayan calendar shows when we will cross the "galactic elliptic" maybe and start a new age.the Mayan dates "August 11 3011BC-December 21,2011". seem to coincide with the timing of the patriarchal era and if this ends and considering the politics of the extreme right wing I think we are hearing the death rattle...And I'm cheering on the sidelines for it.



The last 3 episodes are all Brooks Agnew...he's the only named "expert" in the entire series. They go on to how known prophets have been predicting a cataclysm for this year, Revelations, Nostradamus, Edgar Casey and the Mayan Calendar...But never once mentions the second coming...he doesn't have to he knows the indoctrinated will automatically imply it and not saying it keeps him pseudo-credible...(but not really.)



But wait it gets better according to The Horizon Project the beginning of the Aquarian Age also starts on December 21st,2011...This is off by about 3 degrees from perfect alignments...the precession moves about one degree every 72 years ...the midheaven line between Ophuichus and Sagitarius is December 18th. Perfect solstice is Dec 21st. The zodiac will still take another 200 years or so to make this perfect alignment but it will continue to precess and will only hold that perfection for 72 years before Ophuichus (Serpentarius) will end on December 22nd a day after winter solstice...the zodiac was meant to be lunar...it's a wheel on it's own...the solstices and equinoxes change dates every appox. 30,000 or 40,000 years or so...but the seasons stay in line with solar wheel. The very ancient people kept track of millennia using precession. The Egyptians allowed the star calendar to slide out of sync with the seasonal calendar. They could have reconciled the solar and lunar calendar but chose not to for the reason of keeping track of long stretches of time.



I guess what bothers me so much is they are using hard won ideas to promote a shallow right wing fundamentalist mono culture agenda and just like the Nazi Agenda who used the cross quarter days and old pagan holidays to peek interest and rally it's people... The teachings became tainted by their association with them... My work which is all inclusive and based on good science, permaculture and green philosophies is also using the ideas of precession and lost history...I feel they are soiling this information and co-opting it... And I am damned angry about it!!!... so instead of running away from my power which is, standing for nature, balance and truth I've decided to speak up! ;)

The journey to the Journey into Egypt Tarot

In light of the recent upheaval over precession in astrology I thought it was time to tell my own experiences on this matter. Since I am right in the middle of creating a tarot deck based on just this subject. It would seem that 1/13/11 will be known as the day people stopped talking about the controversy of politics and started freaking out about the fact they are no longer the sun sign they thought they were.

My day started innocently enough designing the Moon card for my new deck I started looking up information on Ophiuchus the thirteenth sign. A few minutes later my friend Jade sent me a link,Recent Renewed Interest in the Zodiac by Bill Duvendack on Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 10:02am. Synchronicity! It was exactly what I needed when I needed it. I was thrilled but this is fairly common in my life and it doesn't freak me out.

The truth is this sort of thing happens to me quite a bit and it made me decide to post the events that led up to my discovery of precession and my decision to create a new tarot deck based on this phenomenon. And here are the details leading up to the Journey into Egypt Tarot a work in progress...

The most important thing about this new deck is the archetype in relationship to the placement on the wheel of the year, the relationship to placement colors, changes or deepens the usual meaning of the card.
The goal is to try to experience the spirit of ancient Egyptian that still exists today. Keeping in mind the people of ancient Egypt viewed the external world as a reflection of the internal world. By this premise if we change our state of mind we change our environment.
I can’t help but wonder if in this time of great change if we couldn’t benefit from reconnecting to the earth and each other. And if a unique look back at a mysterious nature religion may help us get to know ourselves a little better.

My journey back to Egypt and toward this new deck began with the completion of my third tarot deck a controversial deck based on full moon signs and cross-quarter days instead of the usual linear ordering MAAT was circular and cyclical in nature and it changed the ordering of the major arcana. The premier of this deck took me on a trip to Los Angeles, California in 2006 to present The MAAT Tarot at LATS (The Los Angeles Tarot Symposium). It was there that Mary Greer first mentioned to me a possible “Tarot Tour” to Egypt. I was interested and knew this would be the dream trip of a lifetime. My favorite author Normandi Ellis would be one of the co-facilitators and I had always wanted to meet her.
It eventually turned out that the dates of this trip coincided with my 49th birthday, this was a Saturn aspect for me and I knew everything I have done so far that is tarot related coincides with Saturn aspects. It seems to be part of my “karma” or at least is turning out to be my life’s work.
The first trip was just the beginning, as my tarot journeys would lead me to another tarot symposium and yet another serendipitous trip to Egypt. The second Egypt trip came about in an amazingly serendipitous way and it all started at BATS 2008 (Bay Area Tarot Symposium) when a woman named Norma came up to me after the panel discussion on the last day of the conference and said, "I have something to tell you and you have something to tell me but I don't know what it is..." My response was," well let's figure it out" Turned out she needed to know something about cross-quarter-days and full moons for the labyrinth she was creating and she told me I needed to read The Egypt Code by Robert Bauval... My thoughts were “if I ever see this book sometime I hope I remember to pick it up,” frankly I doubted I would find it anytime soon...
Since my husband Peter had never been to San Francisco we made plans to take a ride with Ferol Humphrey and a woman named Darlene both women had been on my first trip to Egypt. By the time I had finished talking to Norma, Ferol and Darlene missed us and left with Ruth Ann and Wald Amberstone to see Wald’s old haunts in Berkley. So Tracey Hoover (author of the companion book to my first deck Ancestral Path Tarot), Peter and I decided to go walking, we ended up at Field's book because Tracey said she saw my MAAT deck and book there and she wanted to show me. So just 20 minutes after Norma had told me about Bauval's book there I was at Fields Book Store and Bauval’s book was the first thing I saw. I purchased it right away. I looked through it that night and thought, “wow its pretty complicated,” and set it aside. A little over a month later I started reading it and really connected, I also realized this was the same guy who connected the three great pyramids of Giza to the stars in Orion’s belt way back in 1990’s. This idea really influenced my thinking about Orion and Osiris and later the Fool and Orion for the MAAT Tarot. Anyway part way through the book I had a bunch of questions and wondered if Robert was on Facebook. And he was!! And better still I could write him a message so I did. I introduced myself and told him about my work and asked him if he was ever going to be covering the Egyptian’s spiritual views about the moon as clearly the Egypt Code was singularly focused on alignments of Sirius, the Sun and other stars. I was surprised to hear back from him that very night and he responded that he would be doing an entire book on Egypt and the Moon at some later date. I joined his fan club and left it there a few days later he friended me. Being Robert’s friend now I could see his posts and I was one of the first people to see his invitation for 10 guest/visitors to see the 8000 year old stone circle in Egypt’s western desert an ancient site with possible ties to Egypt’s pharaonic culture...before I could think about it I responded asking about dates and prices. Thinking to myself “Can I do this?”
As it turned out yes I could and my second trip to Egypt would the door to tarot deck project #4. My diary post gives my full emotional reaction to the idea of precession...

Day Nine
Tuesday April 14th, 2009
Card of the Day
King of Wands
Leisurely day didn’t go to the Nubian Village and swam in the pool, got some sun, rested, read, and attended a lecture on star alignments and temples. The lecture turned out to be more of an ambush than a lecture. Robert Bauval made a point of letting us all know that “modern astrology was rubbish” knowing full well that I used astrology in my work he insisted I explain to him why astrologers still used the sky of 4th century. He went through each of our natal skies by plugging our birthdays into the computer program and showed us that clearly the sky had moved back a full 30 degrees a full sign, each of us had sun signs that had precessed to the previous sign. All the planets were in the same alignments with the same houses as our charts everything was just in the previous sign. I couldn’t tell him why I insisted that astrologers knew this but he would have none of it. I was angry and frustrated and I ended up walking out of the lecture rather than be subjected to more of his condescending abuse. I felt humiliated and sabotaged he could have presented his case in more sensitive less rude manner. It was a full day before I would speak to him and he set me aside and told me that the real time astrology works, that I should write about it that the world needed to know about this and that I would be at the cutting edge of something new if I was to speak up about it. I told him he was right but that he had a lousy way of presenting his material. I had to agree I was pretty upset with myself for not figuring this out on my own for not knowing or considering precession. My first thoughts were mainly how annoyed I was that MAAT Tarot is wrong based on this antiquated inaccurate sky...my second thoughts were I’m NOT doing another deck...
I was clearly angry but perhaps I was really angry at myself for not already knowing this.

A week after my return from Egypt I was back on a plane again and on my way to the Reader’s Studio "09 a huge tarot conference held in NJ. My nose was stuffy and by Friday of the conference I had laryngitis so bad I couldn’t talk. Sales were down due to the bad economy and due to the fact most people in attendance already had my deck. I was feeling run down and felt I needed to do something else for a while just paint about Egypt and forget about tarot...by the end of the trip my leg was seriously hurt out of no where. I thought I maybe pulled something coughing and lugging an 80-pound suitcase full of inventory around. Friends pulled a few cards for a quick diagnosis. The Ace of Coins, the 8 of Coins...their take was...”There are more important things than money...take ONE day off...” I knew I needed more days off than that. In the MAAT Tarot the Ace is all summer. By the time I got home I was forced to go on bed rest to stay off my leg that got much worse. I stayed home stayed in bed and finished writing The MAAT Book of Court cards, and started MAAT Book of Days 2010 all the while I had a niggling feeling in the back of my mind that haunted me...the sky I was using was wrong...it felt like a lie now.
By the week of Summer Solstice my husband Peter and I were on the road to PSG ( a Pagan Spirit Gathering in Missouri) where I would be doing a class and vending tarot decks. I met a woman named Lori Mann who came to my class she was a reader as well and we ended up swapping readings... Lori's reading for me ended up being a download about a Tarot deck that was like a puzzle...a two-hour download from psychic medium Lori Manns...I still didn’t realize it was a new deck she was talking about until I went to get a massage from my friend Jude Christiansen. It was the day before the solar eclipse in July 2009. I thought perhaps a massage would help to heal my bad leg it was also the first massage I had gotten in probably 6 years. That night after getting the massage I went to sleep and the floodgates opened. I saw an entire Egyptian tarot in the form of MAAT Tarot’s wheel of the year in all its full glory big paintings like a giant mural all fitting together all telling a story and all based on the real sky astrology Robert talked about. I woke up inspired but not sure I would do it. I talked about it on Facebook everyone was supportive and excited wanting me to do it. The face of the High Priest standing in front of Karnak temple was the clearest card from my dream. He seemed to beckon me on. Suddenly I was kind of inspired and later that day Peter said to me...”You’re going to do another deck...” my response was....”no I’m not.” The next day I started waking up with ideas I found myself thinking about correspondences again...I was going to do another deck.
By the time The Minnesota Area Tarot Symposium came at the end of July 2009 I was ready to announce the decision to make a new deck. And after Nancy Antenucci performed her journey of the Fool tarot interpretive dance I knew right away that I wanted her to dance this new tarot and that we would have a gallery show that would travel to different cities. I knew where I wanted to start. I felt the joy again I was excited I had a project that I could finally sink my teeth into.
Just before Mercury went retrograde in September. I got a call out of the blue from Kassandra Murray Niagara Ontario owner of the Mide Bistro. I was scheduled to do classes and show pictures we made plans the summer of 08 but I never had enough paintings to make it worth the trip. I saw her name come up on the cell. Her words where that she had a waking vision about doing something with the sabbats (cross quarter days) with paintings I had done...I laughed and told her what I was working on...Her vision was about the journey of the god through the underworld and the goddess joining him at Samhain. I knew right away this was the journey of Osiris and the trials of Isis bleeding through for all my cross quarter day cards. Kassandra had given me another big piece of the puzzle. The tarot puzzle Lori Mann had hinted about in her reading at Summer Solstice.
If my dream, the reading from Lori and the waking vision from Kassandra was not enough. My neighbor Laura Zastrow also came knocking on my door the last week of September. Her words, “Julie I had a dream about you and I need to know what is going on...I dreamed you did all these paintings and I was being shown all of them one after the other but so fast that I couldn’t get enough time to look at any of them closely...What are you working on?” I think my eyes got pretty big and we sat down for a visit and I told her the whole story....
And there you have it the whole introduction to the chain of events that brought me to creating yet another tarot deck. Does the world need another tarot deck? I guess it does.

Politics and Spirituality in Watertown Wisconsin

Well the aldermanic ballots are counted Peter lost. Not surprising really. Watertown is a red island within a blue state. He got 25% of the vote the exact ratio of progressive to conservative in the populous. He's a science teacher in a population whose fringes pull their kids out of class for bible studies and would prefer creationism to physics. And well we don't belong to a church, which is really frightening to some locals. Yes we have a stone circle in our backyard where local firemen came and put out our Yule fire while Peter stepped in the house for 5 minutes to get bells. The frightened neighbors from across the yards called. I mean seriously a fire no bigger than a BBQ in an enclosed stone fire pit surrounded by a sea of snow away from buildings by a half a football field. Later we heard the gold sun mask that we had hanging on a tree freaked out the fireman . The sun mask represented the sun since we never actually get to see the sunrise from the divot in the yard where the circle resides. Seriously folks we just ring bells to wake up the newborn sun and welcome the returning light. It's ritual it's ancient and people have been doing it since they started keeping track of the seasons nothing evil about it. Ignorance and fear go hand in hand around here and perhaps it's time to quit minding our own business and start educating about what pagans do.

Our good friends Peggy and Kathleen came out last night to watch the returns we went down to Lyons pub and hung out. Jim the owner gave us a tour of the upper floors of the building he bought for a dollar with the promise of doing the reparations. The building was built a hundred fifty years ago when Watertown was at its height...a cultural Mecca and very nearly the state capital. In it's day the building had a functioning ballroom in the upper most 3rd floor. It had been a gathering place for a fraternity called the brotherhood of Pythia. I'm thinking Pythia as on the oracle of Delphi. Maybe? Early Watertown history is so fascinating to me. There is a Masonic temple here too just a few blocks away in another defunct department store from my childhood. The early history of Watertown is one sided and fuzzy at best trying to get to the heart of the initial contact and evolution of Watertown and the reality of the first contact between the original settlement of 1000 Ho Chunk and Potowatomi and the first German settlers who were religious reformers and the influx of rich Yankee lawyers from New York who made Watertown their cultural playground, well the information is limited. There seems to be no documentation of the details of the Native history here. But I remember spending my childhood immersed in a wash of strong bleed through from that era. Spending much of my early years before grade 5 dressed in clothes from the period whenever we played. I had that same feeling when viewing the remains of the ballroom last night. Water damage in the 80's left this vital building in ruin the ceilings buckled plaster and wallpaper dripping hardware stripped by the previous out of state owners.
Just 30 years ago Lyon's was a JCPenney's department store 3 stories of clothing and a catalog department in the rear. The rest of the building housed a Kressege's 5 and dime. My grandmother and aunt worked there and my friends and I shopped there every Saturday stopping at the classic soda fountain lunch counter for French fries and Club sandwiches for lunch...back in the day when McDonalds was only a special treat and could only be found in Milwaukee or Madison. To look at the ruins of this once vibrant place was a shock I mean Egypt itself had faired better. The influx of franchised businesses like McDonalds, Shopko, Ace Hardware and JoAnne Fabrics had truly sucked the life out of the once vital downtown. The businesses once owned by citizens had been squeezed out by large chains owned by absentee owners who took their profits out of the city leaving it a burned out shell if it's former self. The locals still high on big discount stores never make the connection of job loss and low incomes to the chain stores instead they will blame the new populations of Hispanic people in town.
Just like the Yankee's blamed the Irish and the Italians when they first arrived back in the day.
Jim the owner also opposes the idea of a light rail that would connect Watertown to Milwaukee, Madison, Chicago and Minneapolis because it would raise the taxes. Never thinking about the possibilities and job opportunism and visitors with money who might like an adventure to someplace new small and quant. There would be job opportunities in other public transportation like shuttles or even buggy rides if people were creative and smart using the historic value and playing on it. Young and old people could really use an option for getting around without the expense of a car. Right now there is no public transportation not even a bus to connect Watertown directly to the big cities or the major airports if you don't have your own car here you're screwed.

Anyway this is where my head is this morning after the lost election. Peggy and Kathleen imagined an event in the ballroom with the new tarot paintings I'm working on it would be an ideal spot. I imagined a time when local people owned their own businesses again when the banks loaned money to local small businesses and the money circulated locally and the abundance of life came from trade, artisans and craftsman who took pride in their work instead of dependence on the war machine and oppositional political theater. Where opposing points of view and fear fills the coffers of both sided of any partisan issue. Where each side plays the other for capital gain and neighbors fear the other will fill their children's minds with godlessness. Where my daughter’s high school friends sign up for the military because it seems like an easy option. And I know what the emotional repercussions will be to the generations to come with fathers and now mothers too who come back emotionally damaged from yet another war. We all need better options there is work to be done there are workers who need work and yet our historic American treasures lay in ruin waiting for funding...The ballroom like my small hometown is no more finished than my next deck of tarot cards and there is a lot of work ahead of us...we have long way to go till we all see better days ahead.

The Egypt Trip 2009

My Egypt trip came about in an amazing serendipitous way and it all started at BATS when a woman named Norma came up to me after the panel discussion on the last day of the conference and said, "I have something to tell you and you have something to tell me but I don't know what it is..." My response was," well let's figure it out" Turned out she needed to know something about cross-quarter-days and full moons for the labyrinth she was creating and she told me I needed to read The Egypt Code by Robert Bauval... My thoughts were “if I ever see this book sometime I hope I remember to pick it up,” frankly I doubted I would find it anytime soon.
Since my husband Peter had never been to San Francisco we made plans to take a ride with Ferol Humphrey and a woman named Darlene both women had been on my last trip to Egypt November 2007. By the time I had finished talking to Norma, Ferol and Darlene missed us and had left with Ruth Ann and Wald Amberstone to see Wald’s old haunts in Berkley. So Tracey Hoover, Peter and I decided to go walking, we ended up at Field's book because Tracey said she saw my MAAT deck and book there and she wanted to show me. So just 20 minutes after Norma had told me about Bauval's book there I was at Fields and the book was the first thing I saw. I purchased it right away. I looked through it that night and thought, “wow its pretty complicated,” and set it aside. A little over a month later I started reading it and really connected, I also realized this was the same guy who connected the three great pyramids of Giza to the stars in Orion’s belt way back in 1990’s. This idea really influenced my thinking about Orion and Osiris and later the Fool and Orion for the MAAT Tarot. Anyway part way through the book I had a bunch of questions and wondered if Robert was on Facebook. And he was!! And better still I could write him a message so I did. I introduced myself and told him about my work and asked him if he was ever going to be covering the Egyptian’s spiritual views about the moon as clearly the Egypt Code was singularly focused on alignments of Sirius, the Sun and other stars. I was surprised to hear back from him that very night and he responded that he would be doing an entire book on Egypt and the Moon in another book. I joined his fan club and left it there a few days later he friended me. Being Robert’s friend now I could see his posts and I was one of the first people to see his invitation for 10 guest/visitors to see the 8000 year old stone circle in Egypt’s western desert an ancient site with possible ties to Egypt’s pharonic culture...before I could think about it I responded asking about dates and prices. Thinking to myself “Can I do this?”. And also thinking what about Gina? As I scrolled down Robert’s page I noticed Gina Thies my roommate in Egypt also friended him that day. My first thoughts were, you’re going and so is Gina. In the end we were both picked to go but it wasn’t as easy as that. There were many pitfalls before the trip took place and much to consider before the trip was settled we would all have to face our own shadows.

When the dates were announced I was struck that we would be there during the holiday of Easter in fact we were there for both Christian Easter and Coptic Easter the week later we were also there for the Egyptian holiday of Sham El Nessim “The Spring Day” meaning smelling the breeze which falls on the first Monday after Coptic Easter. Sham El Nessim is an agricultural holiday that dates from about 4500 years ago. Sham El Nessim is celebrated by eating special salted fish and colored boiled eggs, green onions, green lettuce, Lupine beans and grey mullet a meal with ancient pharonic roots and symbolism of new life. To add to the mix in 2009 Passover begins at sundown on Wednesday April 8 and ends at nightfall on Thursday April 16 in the Diaspora (Wednesday April 15 in Israel).

For me personally it marked the 28th year since my vision of the girl on the cliff at Hatshepsut’s Temple. This was clearly a Saturn return for my vision. I wondered what it would mean to be back in Egypt again at this time and was only slightly disappointed that the trip would only be a desert tour. But having seen the Nile and the other temples I was content to just be in the country on this anniversary and that would have to be good enough.

For those of you who have never heard about the day I woke up at Dier El Bahari this is what happened, the experience changed my life, it changed my reality, my world view and the way I look at time and space.

Late March in 1981 during an emotionally dark point in my life I was gifted with what I would view now as a shamanic experience and one of the biggest reasons I felt that 'someday' I would need to go to Egypt.

I was home from UW-Whitewater staying at my mom and dad's house for Easter break, sleeping on the couch, I had the most tremendous astral journey. Some time in the night I woke up but instead of being in the living room where I had fallen asleep I was lying on a woven linen mattress seated upon a stone slab. I stood up and saw white curtains billowing between 2 or possibly 3 pillars. I looked beyond the curtains and saw water that seemed to go on forever. To my left was complete darkness. To my right I saw brilliant red cliffs against the most beautiful bright red sky, and below on the shore, there was a three-tiered temple with flickering torch lights inside. Between the cliff and the temple there were thick bushes growing. The cliffs behind me were green and lush with ferns and delicate plants of all types I could see their roots co-mingled with stones, and there were square white buildings nestled into the vegetation up above from where I was. There were also stone stairs to my right that led down to a sandy beach below where the Temple was.

I thought to myself, "Where the hell am I?" I was thinking with my own mind, and thought perhaps it was the Mediterranean Sea, Greece or Italy based on the small white buildings behind me. And even though in my mind I was Julie when I looked down at my body, it was not in my body. I was shorter and smaller in stature and my hair was black and wavy really long, trailing past my knees, my skin was a beautiful light brown. In the distance I could see lightning flashing in the south and I could hear the low rumble of thunder. There was a large black cat with a small head accompanying me. The cat jumped up in my arms, I crossed my arms around the cat’s body and flew out over the water. When suddenly, I was back on my mother's couch, a black cat was sitting on my chest meowing loudly and I was completely paralyzed and I realized I couldn't speak. The sound and the flashing light from the thunderstorm was all around me. Then I seemed to 'wake up' again, and the cat was gone, and I could move, but the thunderstorm was still clashing fiercely outside.

The very next day while still at my mom's house I was paging through old encyclopedias because there was nothing else to do. Suddenly in one of the books there it was!... the Temple from my dream it was in ruins, the uppermost tier was without a ceiling and vegetation was all gone but it was very recognizable, it was unmistakably Hatshepsut's temple in Egypt, a necropolis (City of the Dead) on the west bank of the Nile across the river from the city of Luxor (ancient Thebes). The temple is situated just east of the Valley of Kings separated by the cliffs that are actually a beautiful golden color. It took me ten years to find out any information as to whether there actually were actually cliffs to the north of this temple… the cliff that had been my vantage point… or if the Nile had ever risen that close to the temple in the past.
Since that vision Hatchepsut's temple has been the subject of many of my paintings, the Star picture in the Blue Moon, in the Ten of Staves in the Ancestral Path, and in the Two of Wands as well the most resent painting which I did just before this trip came up. This was the most intense astral journey I had ever experienced. The memory is still so strong and so powerful.

What I have discovered about Hatshepsut since my vision?

Hatshepsut was the only female “pharaoh”. Her name had been scratched out sometime after her death and all the evidence of her reign was deposited in one location. I have been following the archaeological finds about her. My main question at twenty-two, since I was divorced, and raising a child alone was "Why is there so much prejudice against women?" I struggled with how hard it was to be a woman raising a child alone back in 1981. I found that after Hatshepsut laws were created so that women could never be pharaohs, women could never be kings, and women could never be priests. I really think that Hatshepsut may have been the pharaoh from the Bible story who released the Hebrews. Her stepson, who she took power from, was about nine years old when he was supposed to be king. Her husband Thut'moses' II, who had been appointed by her father Thut'moses' I, was a weak ruler, so she had the responsibility of running the country during his lifetime. Her stepson Thut'moses' III, was the son of her husband’s consort, was supposed to take her place. Even though the dating by Biblical scholars doesn't correlate, there are some archaeological studies that name her as the pharaoh from the story of Moses. According to the story after the Hebrews had been set free Moses led them to the “promised land” but here is a thought, promised by who? Hatshepsut had the power to promise him lower Egypt and since pharaoh was considered a ‘god-king’ there is plenty of room for error as far as translating what god promised lower Egypt to “Moses”. In the biblical story Moses also disappears from the story after his people reach the ‘promised land’ and doesn’t stay with his people. No one knew until recently what happened to Hatshepsut; Her death was not recorded. We know that Thutmoses took over and stayed in power for about forty years. He also suddenly removed Hatshepsut from the public record some years after he was in power, and her temple at by the cliff was destroyed within 100 years after it was built laid to ruin until it was rediscovered in the late 19th century and reconstruction has been on going since around the 1950’s.

During my first short visit to Hatshepsut’s Temple our guide announced casually that the daughter of Hatshepsut was buried up on the cliff where my vision originated. I felt certain that this was the girl whose body I had occupied.
I nearly came out of my skin with excitement. With more research I was able to find that her name was Neferure and she served as “god’s wife” for her pharaoh mother. That Thutmoses III was supposed to marry her to legitimize his claim to the throne because he was not born from a queen but from a lesser wife of Hatshepsut’s brother/husband Thutmoses II. There were also some amazing environmental upheavals during this time that could have thrown a shadow on the reign of Hatshepsut, things that were beyond the control of this otherwise successful pharaoh. There is now evidence of ash from the eruption of the island of Thera (Santorini, Greece) during this time. The catastrophic effects of this volcanic eruption would have thrown dust and ash into the atmosphere blocking out the sun causing the red sky from my vision and inducing thunderstorms as well as tidal waves causing the Nile to flood with sea water and could easily account for the plagues of Egypt. Since the pharaoh was responsible for maat (universal balance and order) poor Hatshepsut was to blame. Neferure who would have been pharaoh’s first born died young she may or may not have ever been married to Thutmoses III there is not a lot written about her life.
For many years I thought this girl had something to tell me. In a recent reading by Nancy Antenucci I was told that Neferure is looking to me to find her story. This may or may not be true but it would seem that the story does seem to have started to bleed through. My questions have only increased as time goes by.

Since my out-of-body experience happened at Easter and Passover, so that suggests to me there is a correlation. This was a wild time travel journey and nothing similar has ever happened to me again. It makes me think there is so much more to this universe than I could possibly understand. Was it the timing of the holiday weekend? Was it my question? Was it the power of the thunderstorm? Were the ions just right? While visiting Abydos temple just a short distance from Dier el Bahari we were shown hieroglyphs of what looks unmistakably like modern modes of transportation, a helicopter, a jet, a tank and a possible submarine are carved into a stone beam high up near the ceiling at Abydos. This makes me wonder what the ancient Egyptians had tapped into. It is apparent that the temples of stone resonate and hold energy, the obelisks carved of singular pieces of stone hum like tuning forks when struck. What did the Egyptians know that we have forgotten?
***
As the deadline for the down payment neared Gina was wavering on going, she was in the process of buying a new house and overwhelmed. She sent in her money on the last day of the deadline and then when it seemed as if everything was settled she backed out. She had gotten a reading from her friend and mentor Beatrice who told her to wait for the better trip, that she would not enjoy this trip in the desert. Suddenly I was back to going on the desert trip alone. At first I was panicked but then remembered I signed on way before knowing Gina would go and settled into the idea shortly after. Booked all my flights and hotel rooms for my return.
So here I was about to go back to Egypt for a tour of the western desert or so I thought…when the Saturday before we left the whole itinerary changed suddenly as if by magic…

I was out at Bullthistle Farm for shearing day when the phone call arrived from Robert Bauval that the permits for seeing the cave paintings at Gilf Kabir had been denied and because of this he would now be adding Abu Simbel, Philae, Aswan and a cruise to Luxor to the trip. My head was swimming with excitement. I knew that if Gina knew the trip had changed she would now want to go. And so it was, in one single day Gina managed to coordinate and book her flights to come along we were going on a whirlwind trip back to Egypt together and Luxor was on the table as well.

The timing and the itinerary are still mulling over in my mind by the time it was over not only would we have stood before the only living statue of Sekemet again but we would journey through the eastern desert to the Red Sea before heading back to Cairo and we would also be seeing Alexandria as well.

I picked a card for each day’s journey and in 3 to 6 months I will review these picks again for more insights since when dealing with spirit and trying to understand one must blur your eyes and view the negative space as well as the objects before you to really see what is being presented.

Day One
Monday April 6th, 2009
Card of the Day
The MOON
After a nervous day and threats of a snowstorm the weather parted like the Red Sea my flight though delayed for 3o minutes left without a hitch. However the weather that missed me had Gina stuck in Chicago and she missed the Egypt Air flight by 45 minutes. For whatever reason we were meant to journey separately to Cairo. I spent my 10.5 hours to Cairo with 3 seats to myself reading and thinking and trying to sleep. Gina would reschedule for the same flight the next day and arrive on Wednesday instead of Tuesday.

Day Two
Tuesday April 7th, 2009
Card of the day
No entry
I arrived at the Cairo airport a young man named Mohamad stood there waiting with my name on printed on a card he whisked me through customs and boarded me into a private luxury van that brought me to the Cataract Hotel. I got checked in and joined Robert by the pool where we chatted with a man who was from England he had brought his young son to Egypt and Rome for his birthday because the boy was obsessed with all things Egyptian and Roman. To look at their faces I could see they were both revisiting…past lives.
I also was introduced to Joanne Cunningham a New Zealander who had been living in Cairo for 5 years and worked as a graphic artist for the UN she was old friends with Robert and would be his guest on this trip.

Day Three
Wednesday April 8th, 2009
Jewish Passover begins at sundown
Card of the Day
No entry
Gina arrived around noon after a morning of watching Pallo Productions filming Robert at the Sun Temple for a documentary about his next book Black Genesis. After Gina was fed and settled our 8 fellow travelers loaded into the 2 4x4 vans with the desert expedition guides from called Red Sea. The group consisted of a married couple from Palermo Maria and Nicholi, Joanne and Robert, Gina and myself and the Italian filmmakers Johnny and Antony who would later be affectionately known to Gina and I as the Roman Guard.

Day Four
Thursday April 9th, 2009
Christian Holy Thursday
Card of the Day
The Fool
Full moon in Libra this was our first day of seeing the oasis at Bahariya Robert
brought us to see the water and then we drove to a high cliff where an English major built a stone house of slate overlooking a Roman tomb we spent the day on the road driving through the Black desert and then the White Desert where we were served a lunch of Egyptian fare on woven rugs. By sunset we found ourselves in the Sahara. The guides helped us set up our tents cooked us dinner and we watched as the full moon rise orange and full over what looked like a wall to wall carpet of sand nearly the color of golden cornmeal… perfect tiny pebbles of golden rock. We were visited by desert mice and saw fox scat but didn’t see any fox. This was by far the most beautiful place I had ever seen, so pure and so perfect the air was light and dry and pleasant.

Day Five
Friday April 10th, 2009
Christian Good Friday
Card of the Day
The Chariot
We woke to the sun rising in the Sahara the sea of sand. The sun rose where the moon had risen the night before. We had breakfast served and broke camp. Our first stop was a Ptolemy Temple outside of Bagawat. Where we had clouds and a rare sprinkle of rain. Our next stop was an 11th century Moslem City Bagawat. The city was now empty and served as a sort of museum. I took lots of pictures of this ancient place. Our next stop was the oldest Christian necropolis. I thought it was very ironic to be here on Good Friday. We set up camp in a nondescript desert site and we were served dinner again chicken and potatoes, soup and various Egyptian salads.

Day Six
Saturday April 11th, 2009
Christian Holy Saturday
Card of the Day
7 of Cups
As we broke camp had breakfast of eggs and crepes, fruit, cheeses and jam. Then drove through to the old caravan trails we stopped so the filmmakers could shoot some footage and when we were done. Robert pointed out the red and yellow ochre pigments found just below the surface of the ground. It was easy to find it where the tires of the 4x4’s made their tracks. I scooped up two plastic bags full of the pigment and cried a little realizing this was a gift from Manitou who wanted to give Peter back his pigments. Peter had emptied his ochre supplies at Manitou’s grave the week before. This was the place of death as there were literally hundreds of ancient camel skeletons littered all around us. I also had to be quick about collecting the ochre as it was not long before I could hear it was time to load into the 4x4’s and go.

That eventing as the sun began to set we got to see the oldest stone circle in the world with alignments to Sirius and the Summer Solstice at Napta Playa. The Black culture that lived here left suddenly leaving behind their grinding stones and their stone circles. Not far from this 8000 year old site we saw the ruins of ancient Roman outposts and giant round stones that no one seems to understand.

Day Seven
Sunday April 12th, 2009
Christian Easter Sunday
Card of the Day
8 of Swords
We were the first to arrive at Abu Simbel that morning. It was just Gina, Robert and myself. Robert suggested that we not look at the temple until he told us so we could get the full impact of just how grand it is. We walked down the stone walkway and though it was tempting to look we did wait the monument was awesome tall and imposing. Robert told us the story about the guy who found it and that some local people tipped him off that there was a temple there.


Day Eight
Monday April 13th, 2009
Card of the Day
Prince of Wands
In the morning we went to the Temple of Isis at Philae ( built 200BC and closed 514AD when it was turned into a church)
I was disappointed that I did not get the shot of the view looking west from where the island used to be before it was moved…So near and yet so far. The boat drivers are not allowed over there by police orders.
I did get a photograph of the hieroglyph of the Nile that I used in my MAAT book, this may eventually become a painting.
Later we visited the island of Elephantine stood in the ruins of the Jewish settlement where Jesus was supposed to have lived when he was in Egypt. This island is no bigger than a few city blocks Egyptian and Jewish cultures blend. This place was a potter’s colony there are layers and layers of pottery shards. There is a temple to the Egyptian moon god Khnum who created people on a potter’s wheel just a stones throw from the synagogue where the Hebrew god formed Adam Lilith and Eve out of dust.

Day Nine
Tuesday April 14th, 2009
Card of the Day
King of Wands
Leisurely day didn’t go to the Nubian Village and swam in the pool, got some sun, rested, read, and attended a lecture on star alignments and temples.

Day Ten
Wednesday April 15th, 2009
Card of the Day
King of Cups
We had another unusual Wisconsin sky today. I was up early much to Gina’s dismay I went to the upper deck to watch as we sailed on to Luxor. I saw shores filled with palm trees and distant dry hills to the east and to the west.

Day Eleven
Thursday April 16th, 2009
Coptic Holy Thurday ( 2009 Jewish Passover ends)
Card of the Day
10 of Wands
We finally arrived in Luxor this morning we went to the temple of Rameses III
we got pictures of parts of the temple we missed before.
Then we went to Hatshepsuts’s temple the temple site has gone through many improvements including a new entrance building. New tombs on the walk in seemed to be recently excavated. We noticed many more lion and snake symbols than we saw the last time we were here and I took more shots that will lend themselves well to painting.
Later after the heat of the day had passed Gina and I went with the guide to Karnak Temple by the time we got there the ticket booth had closed I thought we would miss out on going in. The guide told us to wait by the avenue of sphinx and I took a bunch of good pictures thinking I would be satisfied with the shots I got this time. We both decided that if Sekhemet wanted to see us she would and we would just let it be whatever it was going to be. Low and behold after a few phone calls we were allowed in. Gina and I went looking for the red chapel but didn’t find it. There was a little old man who showed us some special walls that were in really good shape. And then we told him we wanted to go see Sekhemet at the temple of Ptah. He took us there and they unlocked the door for us. We went in and it was as always a powerful moment out of the darkness you see the eyes of Sekhemet and they seem to glow in a soft blue green. The little old man began to weep openly and it brought us all to tears. We stood before her and I thanked her for seeing us again and for other things as well. I felt the journey was complete at this point and whatever else happened would be more than I expected.


Day Twelve
Friday April 17th, 2009
Coptic Good Friday
Card of the Day
9 of Cups
We traveled by van from Luxor to Cairo via the eastern desert following the footsteps of the Exodus. But before we left we went to Dendera and got some great shots of the temple of Hathor which has got some of the best preserved paint that I have ever seen.
The day was long we journeyed from 5AM until 10PM stopping at the Red Sea for lunch and to put our toes in the water. The water of the Red Sea is perfectly clear and clean and is the most beautiful blue green.

Day Thirteen
Saturday April 18th, 2009
Coptic Holy Saturday
Card of the Day
6 of Coins
We were up early to go to Sakara and Giza stopped at a friend of Robert’s an old man who used to be a guard at the Sakara pyramid complex. The filmmakers were trying to get in to shoot the pyramid complex. We got a close up of the reality of life in Egypt. The man and his wife and 10 children lived in a brightly colored house in close proximity was a cow and a goat with 2 babies, there were 2 dogs and 3 puppies running around. The wife was not too happy about the camera filming her. There was a teenage girl who served us tea and a little boy who spoke pretty good English. Johnny Pallo the film producer asked me if I noticed the bruise on the oldest daughter’s face. I hadn’t but from what Joanne had been telling me earlier the women of Egypt have really got it tough.

When we got back for lunch I was just in time to meet up with Gina and Emil Shaker our tour guide from my first trip to Egypt. He took us to see Mohamad Nassmy at Quest Travels and we had a good time catching up. Then Emil treated us to a fabulous lunch and a trip to old Cairo were we visited the oldest Christian church that had special healing water running through it in small canals, then we went to the oldest shops in Cairo that were once the shops of all the Jews. We got back to the hotel just around sunset. Upon returning to the hotel we decided to hire a van and go see Alexandria just 2.5 hours away.


Day Fourteen
Sunday April 19th, 2009
Coptic Easter
Card of the Day
6 of Swords
The Quest Travel van arrived at 7AM sharp and we were on our way to Alexandria. We arrived a couple hours later and stopped at the Alexandrian Museum first it was surprisingly small in my opinion but it had some pretty amazing mosaics. This made me think back to the reoccurring dreams I had about a mosaic floor with two dolphins just off the coast of the delta to the east of Alexandria. The city itself had touches of mosaic something that was not in other parts of Egypt. After the museum we had the driver take us to the Theatre of Alexandria Gina and I took turns standing at the sweet spot and hearing the effect of the perfect acoustics it was amazing how the size of the theatre seemed to be reduced almost as if by magic. The stage still showed places there were still mosaic tiles on the floors. The full city block also had remnants of the old city around it.
After the theatre Gina and I were hungry and we did the unthinkable and ate at McDonalds…yes I broke my 30 year record but somehow I think I needed the American food just to ground myself in 2009.
The last thing we did was visit the harbor our driver dropped us off in front of the little shops and we walked watching the blue water crash up on the shore, again the water was the most beautiful blue. After a quick cruise past the new library our driver bought us an Egyptian ice-cream and drove us back to the hotel.


Day Fifteen
Monday April 20th, 2009
Sham El Nessim (pharonic agricultural holiday of new life and new beginning)
Card of the Day
Princess of Swords
The last day in Egypt the driver picked us up at 6AM for our 9:15AM Egypt Air flight back to JFK. We stopped for coffee and something quick to eat and then headed off to our gate. The 11 hour flight back seemed to go fairly fast there was a lot to process and I was ready to go home…

Day Sixteen
Tuesday April 21st, 2009
Card of the Day
High Priestess
Gina and I parted ways and I took the early shuttle to LaGuardia to catch my Midwest flight back to Milwaukee. The 2-hour flight seemed like nothing and I could see Peter’s smiling face waiting at the end of the ramp a chai latte in hand.
It was good to be home again…

Post Script-
Friday April 24th, 2009
I received an email from Tracey Hoover she sent me the information that Friday’s… on this day in history…Thutmoses III is crowned the 6th pharaoh of the 18th dynasty on this day in 1479 BC
She read about this just before she found and read this blog post…the serendipity continues.