Given today is the celebration of Earth Hour, people are being encouraged to turn their lights OFF during the hours of 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. to conserve energy and show awareness of global conservation efforts.

I’m reading their site right now to see what things I can do to help conserve energy. Before we moved I’d begun switching out all our bulbs to energy efficient ones, but there are all kinds of little things which can be done around the house, very simply in order to help conserve energy.

I keep my Cosmic deck in a cloth bag that is patterned with lucky cats, and my Manga deck in a small wooden box with a pentagram on it. My Celtic Dragon deck, by comparison, is kept in a box that it came with, although I feel that it needs to have a cloth that is unique to it. My Witches Deck used to be kept wrapped in a rainbow cloth and then in a bag. When I’m not using all my decks they’re kept inside a wooden locked box so that my son can’t get to them and chew on them.

At least once a year I’ll do a full cleansing ritual on the decks and douse them in sage incense and do a sort of grounding on them. In between times I keep charged cleansing crystals in the box and will do additional smaller cleansing rituals if I feel they’re getting logged with people’s energies and not reading properly, but given most of the readings I’m doing at the moment are online or over the phone and not in person that’s not as essential as it was when I was working at the coffee shop and doing readings at college and they were constantly getting “manhandled”.

I’ve heard from others that they keep their cards on a mirror to reflect energy and catch it from the sun. Others keep their cards under their bathroom vanities, or on a high shelf, under their bed, or on their person at all times. It’s all in what you feel will work for your cards.

It doesn’t hurt to keep a quartz crystal with them to help the energy flow, or keep a sachet of cleansing herbs in their bag. It does hurt to wash them in the dishwasher or cleanse them with fire though. A lot of it is just common sense.

Be confused. All is well. Now you are blessed.
You have life to nurture and nurture you.
Be calm. Be easy. Be comforted. You are blessed.

Alternately if you can identify the cause of the imprint as a previous resident speak directly to them in the most affected room.

It is time to leave here. All is well.
There is nothing here for you. You must be gone.
Go now go. Complete your passing.
Go and with our blessing and farewell.
Farewell!

Make sure nothing has been left behind that carries the energy field of the previous resident, in particular old writings and photographs. If they’re causing issue.

If you wish to keep something of theirs that is imprinted with a previous energy field purify it with salt; if you suspect furniture use incense to purify it.

With this I purify you of the past.
Of hurts and memories, keeping only love.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

The nicest version of a protection that I’ve discovered in my searches for a small child is this one.

Light without, light within
Let this magic spell begin.
Keep me guarded well, safe to be
Knowing the light walks with me.

The idea with this spell is to have your child mix together a cup of baking soda, a teaspoon of chopped dried mint and powdered clove while saying these things, and then if there’s a day where things are worrying them, you sprinkle a little in their shoes to keep them guarded.

How do you contact spirit guides?

I’ve also seen spirit guides being discussed in a forum that I participate in over on IMVU. Working with spirits like working with anything non-corporeal has always been a bit up in the air with me. It’s hard to say there’s a definitive way to go about this because you’re dealing with the whims and whimsy of another entity than yourself, as far as most people believe. There’s been several times in dealing with guides myself that I’ve felt that I’m dealing with a different-me, my “higher self” if you will, especially as my first guide showed up in the form of a past life of mine, Myeda, who was a shaman in Peru in the early sixteenth century. I’m still not sure if I was just talking to “other me” because he had been a lot more open in his life time to what I was wanting to find out from my guide, or if that’s just how the guide chose to manifest because that was a trust worthy image.

I wasn’t actively seeking a guide that I knew of. It just kinda “happened” that he showed up. My friend and I had previously done work with guided meditation for past life regression and uncovered our shared life time in Peru, where I was Myeda, and a few month later while I was on vacation from college my mother and I were in the mall and there was a stall set-up selling random framed pictures, and as we were flipping through there was a big picture of a Native American crouched in a forest. We went back and forth passed that stall several times but each time I was drawn to the picture. It was my Mum who proclaimed he was my guide and insisted we bring the picture home.

After he was put up on the wall, I began to hear and feel impressions every once in a while as I was doing things. “Don’t do that,” “Oooh, go here!” “That looks like fun!” I had to bring the picture with me and hang it up above my bed in the dorm room, and he was always the first that was put up whenever I went to a different dorm or came back home.

It wasn’t until after I’d been married a while that I realized the picture had disappeared somewhere in the mayhem; but “Myeda” if that’s who he was has been quiet for a while. I think he’s happy that I’m with who I’m with now and feels he doesn’t have to comment. I do deal some times with other voices, words of wisdom from other lives, and occasionally from my grandfather who passed in 2001 and has been appointed “guardian of the munchkin”. There were different circumstances surrounding his appointment, also, dealing with entity attachment…which is something I’ll get into at a later date, other wise this will go raging off topic.

As far as guides, I’m at the point now where I can generally go “is this right?” and get a resounding feeling/chorus of “yay” or “nay” but I’m really not sure how I got there. My development in this regard is on rotation with my development in other areas, working to uncover past lives, future lives, alternate lives, learning to trust my intuition about reading the cards, doing meditation, grounding. Everything ties in together, I believe, whole-heartedly.

There are some exercises I’ve used to get insight on other lives, and to talk to my Higher Self, which can easily be adapted to ask for guidance from an actual guide. One of those is to talk to “Sister Swan”. I’m honestly not sure where I first heard about “Sister Swan” but she’s credited with being a dream-space guardian. You talk to her before you go to bed at night and ask her to show you in your dreams whatever it is you’re wanting to know about. For example.

Sister Swan, Sister Swan.
As you guide me into the land of dreams, please set me on the path to see what happened when I was in the frozen north as a fisherman’s daughter…I had an image of sitting on a rock and watching boats go by…it looked as though two ran into each other. I’m troubled by what happened and would like to resolve it.

That could easily be turned into “Sister Swan, Sister Swan. I’m in need of guidance. As you take me to the realm of dreams please show me the path so that I can see the face/find the name of one of my spirit guardians.”

The main thing I cannot cement home enough with all of these sorts of exercises is that you have to do something very simple. Listen.

I’ve not done it myself many times, and I can get images of being hit over the head with something large and heavy numerous times by guides going, “QUIT ASKING WE’VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU FOR WEEKS!!!!! SHUT UP AND LISTEN!!! YOU WOULD HAVE HAD THE ANSWER A MONTH AGO IF YOU DID!!!!!! It’s not like putting together Delta machinery after all…” to which I leave you for now as I have a resounding chorus of “It’s ABOUT TIME,” in my ears.

If you have a question about tarot, hypnotherapy, psychic abilities, ghosts, witchcraft, paganism, being in an interfaith marriage or anything along these lines of paranormal and supernatural feel free to Ask Catriona.

Mother Earth, this salt is purification
We return it to the ground, your ground
With this ring we set the boundaries
Walls to keep this house hold safe

We thank you for the bountiful garden
Which surrounds this home, our keep
We thank you for your guidance always
And your protection while we sleep.