The Power of Story

The Spark

I listened to James Hillman’s “The Alchemy of Psychology” lectures and I was deeply engaged and wanted to know more. The alchemical operations spoke to me as another way into cycles of change. SoulCollage®ing Asteroid Goddesses was going to be coming to end in March 2026. What if I created a new set of modules to teach myself the alchemical operations and practice what an exhibit for the metaphorical Great Hall of Transformation where my mythopoetic identity the Depth Docent can guide others in adult transformational learning experiences.

I wanted a select group who had shown commitment to SCPiP and SCAG in a way that wasn’t just mild interest but a true curiosity about diving deep into psyche. The group of four come together like the legs of the Magician’s table.

The table holds when all four are present. The Magician’s gesture “As Above, So Below” is where we can create the space for making magic. 

This is our laboratory. This is our vessel. And as James Hillman will teach us: we are the stuff going through the cooking in the cauldron. (email 4/15/26)

The Vessel | The Container | The Magician

May 19, 2026 – CANVA LINK and ZOOM 1 Passcode: AM9U1r@J

I’m looking back in June, at the time I got the brainstorm to start a running record of my experiences in this experience. As I look at the slides I’m even kind of fuzzy about what I said, but these are the cards that I shared. It’s a tricky role I play in all of this. I curate the modules a month ahead of time to send out. Then I try to revisit it closer to our gathering on the 3rd Wednesday of the month, and then I write the next module so it is ready the moment we finish up. I’m the curator and the student. We will see how that goes.

These cards that were already in my deck that I found relevant at the time.

The images are helping me recall what I shared, but thankfully I labeled them and this fits the module. Now I am recalling that for the first time, I am recording these on Zoom in case I use all of this for data for my PhD at Meridian.

Am I the container?: An image from Brody Hartman during the Purpose Discovery Program. When I made the card after my SoulQuest in Cambria in November 2025 I named it: Lighting the Heart Seed. This is the image from early in the program (and I had saved) came to me when I “woke” that night in the TreeCave, As I entered it into my SC App the note on 11/11 was named: Ugraded 2025 — 1:1 The seed pulsates. LOVE. It plants in my heart with that brilliance

Sun Magic: One of the early cards in my deck I named it: Magician and Sun Inspired. The card spoke about spiritual connections, potential, inspiration, some Venus influence too and blue sky showing “the ultimate possibilities with infinite rays encouraging radiance and exploration in all directions (3/2021). The paper swirls as paths that “unfurl and provide surprises around every turn”. Earth . Air. Water. Fire represented.

Stuck in Societal Container: In June 2025 the first version of this card Embrace the Yin arrived with messages of sand and water tides, a powerful goddess of the Earth who can break boundaries and a recognition that we can be trapped in societal messages that put us in cages on a shelf. Embrace Venus. Taurus. Earth. Embrace Moon. Cancer. Water. Tides. Embrace the Yin.

Then weeks later in July while in residence in Colorado with Clarissa Pinkola Estés for “Story is Medicine”, I had a meditative experience that inspired the card to be changed.
I heard: She comes out of her shell. I am where the sand meets the water. I see a crab walking and scurrying sideways. SHE COMES OUT OF HER SHELL. In meditation I was guided to ask if I needed a new shell? NO. YOU ARE GLORY. YOU SHINE IN YOUR INNER LIGHT. THE OUTER BODY IS JUST A SHELL. LOVE YOUR SEXUALITY. YOUR LIGHT DOES NOT NEED A CONTAINER. RUN FREE. RELEASE. BEE FREE.

The Magician Council card. Holds the Major Arcana Tarot energy in my deck.

Falcon. Storm. Song when I heard the poem from the module this card came into my mind. But it was created in December 2025: She Flies. The color is pumped into her wings and she is ALREADY flying. This was an aha moment I got in Cambria. In my interviewing and onboarding at Meridian, I felt I was out of the cocoon, but sitting on a branch pumping color into my wings – waiting for an invitation before I would fly. Then one of the early messages after my SoulQuest was the song “Blackbird” and the lyrics

…all your life

you were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Blackbird. Fly.

Blackbird. Fly.

into the light of the dark black night.

Calcination | Black Charcoal | The Tower

June 16, 2026 – CANVA LINK and ZOOM LINK Passcode: +95q.%NU

I was literally ON FIRE this month with creativity, integration, insights, downloads, expression, travel. presenting, absorbing, releasing, and noting that this was all happening at a crossroads – a liminal space – a passageway from the past 7 years (2019-2026) – a gestational period that was colliding and coinciding with what was Uranus in Taurus moving into Uranus in Gemini and it will be in this 11th house of my chart until a few months before I turn 70. At which point it will move into Cancer, my 12th house, the place of my North Node. Exciting energy that was coming through the work of ReStorying the Sacred Body with Cat Caracelo and JourneyPath Institute.

WOMB 2.0

In early June, I was experiencing a Sound Bath Accupunture session when a vibrational message of acute clarity arrived in the message WOMB 2.0.

I spent the last 7 years investigating the US rise in maternal mortality rates, the continued shame, stigma, and silence of infertility, examining my own history in a reproductive body, researching Reproductive Justice in today’s society, and watched the fall of Roe in the Dobbs decision. I marched. I wrote. I began to “clear my throat” and share my story and the stories of those who are living in a post-Roe world in some states in this supposed free country. It was all predictable which is why it was all the more enraging. It burned!

Personally, I lived the descent cycle with every miscarriage, every failed ART…and soon after becoming a mother to three children in less than 3.5 years, the spiral down into the underworld of perimenopause. I know this operation. And I don’t wish it on anyone, but I would not trade it. I learned that the ash, after the burn/bonfire/incinerator gave me MORE.

Spirals of Calcination. I wrote: Every cycle we descend and ascend, wax and wane we enter in and out of a sticky web like complexity that as we allow ourselves to experience the process we rise up with experiences that shape our BEcoming. We choose our natal chart. We choose our journey. I was born for these cycles.

HAIKU: I am the Spirals. Calcination Fire Burns. White Hot – Ash – Sparks More.

The Repro Tower. I went hunting for a candy cane to represent a tower because of the blood red and the purification white. The geometric solid found me and the card had an anchor. I went searching for “Uterus Art” and found a few images that made this and the next card. The traditional tarot card has a crown and people falling off after a strike of lightning in most cases. Going through my images from years ago I found the rainbow, tree, and lighting. A perfect background. (Some circles call a baby born after miscarriage a Rainbow Child) The circles are the artwork I did to start the ReStorying project based from my poem: A Bloody Relationship: Menstruation, Miscarriage, Motherhood, Menopause. My image is from some AI fun back in 2023. I cut off the crown I had added for a card around my 60th birthday and created a sticker to reclaim my crown. Adding in the snake fallopian tubes with the cosmos symbols of the stars, moon, and flowers clicked. I am reminded that the cervix can be a crown too.

HAIKU: Spirals of Down Up. I Reclaim my Sovereign Crown. Coloring New Births.

Reproductive Elder Rises. The double uterus tapestry medallion image found me and BAM! My uterus, my body, is reclaimed and it is re-ignited as my CREATIVITY VESSEL. It is generative. It is active. It is a garden. The butterfly without color survived the fires of trying and losing and trying again until she came to rest before the color could pump into her wings.

Second Womb is the dancing butterfly (images on this card have been in my files for years). Cells of adrenal and uterine substrates are in the background to honor what was lost in the hormonal hell but I honor the “journey” I had to work hard at to regain my endocrine balance. The spiral of red and white connects the two butterflies. A green and purple background signify growth and royalty/sovereignty. (And now they signify Patina). The firecracker is me. I am the calx -that which weighs more after the fire turns to ash.