Dear Friends,

I am undergoing a bit of a paradox: On the one hand, I want to know what is going on in the world, and on the other, it's so upsetting to learn the horrific details. Between girls being stolen in Nigeria, mass death sentences in Egypt, the ongoing conflicts in "pick a country," and our home grown, ongoing corruption in industry, politics, racism and homophobia, it's hard to pick a focus for a single subject to speak deeply about.

A tanker train carrying crude oil burns after derailing in western Alabama outside Aliceville, Nov. 8, 2013.
(Bill Castle/AP)There is one subject that is close to home for each and every one of us here in the US and much of Canada. A couple weeks ago, my husband Mark showed me a draft for a "Letter to the Editor" he'd been working on. The subject was about fossil fuels shipped by trains passing through Eugene; the danger of coal dust, oil, and liquefied natural gas on our town only to be burnt by overseas industrialists, and what that would do to the global environment. And then, almost as if the letter had been sent and read nationally, the news media became full of editorials, investigative reporting, and lawmakers at every level talking about the dangers of shipping fossil fuels. Rachel Maddow, of MSNBC, even called the trains carrying crude "bomb trains."

The delivery of this information to me came like a series of bombs, in a clear and unequivocal way: shipping gas, oil, and coal from the upper plains states through all of the our communities must be fought. Fossil fuel carrier. Imagine this train passing through your town several times a day. If coal from Montana is burned in China, we breathe the resulting pollution and the fine particultes that fly from the trains carrying the coal, dusting the towns it passes through as it travels. The pollution from gas and oil burned in India and Japan will degrade the climate, while the trains carrying those products will endanger the communities they travel through.

Some of you are in a position, or at least capable of, going after the industrial complex behind the lack of regulatory safety issues, while others can educate yourselves, broaden your scope of knowledge, and go after individual problems at the grass-roots level. For example: The people of one town Rachel mentioned got together and stopped the dredging of the harbor so that the larger vessels required could not pick up the dangerous loads. Others are simply stepping up and saying, "Not through our towns!" Community members of Bellingham, Washington have gotten together and stalled the building of a coal port there, while the federal government has recently announced that they want to stop all use of "bomb trains," the outdated rail tankers that have been exploding on a regular basis. So far, there is no request for legislation to empower that statement. We think it's up to all of us to see it through, however, that's only the tip of the fracking, coal, and fossil fuel problems.

I've tried to avoid politics and rants in my newsletters, however I can't remain silent on this issue. We are running out of time, and there is nothing like having grandchildren to make an old grandma like me remember the fundamental Native American teachings I was given by my earliest teachers back in the 60s: Make sure that everything you say, pray, and do is for the best interest of the next seven generations. At this rate, instead of worrying about whether they will have inherited national debt, we should be thinking about whether and how we can keep them alive and thriving on a desecrated planet.

Planetary Healing Call to Action

Enough ranting for the moment. Our job is to come up with solutions that change things from the inside out, and to share tools that help us to see beyond the wool. Back to our dedication of service… Please join us May 31st as our international Planetary Healing community comes together for our next Free Planetary Healing Call to Action. We will be using practices and/or ceremony from the book that Mark and I co-authored, Planetary Healing: Spirit Medicine for Global Transformation. If you have the book, let us know which exercise you think would be most appropriate for the job. If you don't yet have it, and wish to know more about it and our free Calls to Action, visit planetaryhealingbook.com.

Alchemical Astrology & Tarot with Christine Payne-Towler & Nicki Scully

It's difficult to convey the brilliance of Christine Payne-Towler, and the excitement I feel about having her teach a workshop with me here at my home in Eugene. She is one of the most articulate hermeticists I've ever encountered, and her knowledge of astrology and tarot is without compare, at least in my world. Although I will be teaching the Anubis Oracle, I bow to her greater knowledge on most all esoteric subjects. Following is a brief statement from Christine regarding our workshop. This is not a retreat, however I do have room in my home/center for out of town guests. You can get further details about this amazing opportunity here…

For more information about Christine, please visit tarotuniveristy.com. You may purchase the Anubis Oracle deck authored by myself and Linda Star Wolf at Hathor's Mirror. For a free Anubis Oracle reading please visit theanubisoracle.com.

CHRISTINE'S NOTE: The Trumps of Tarot are one of Europe's persistent esoteric mysteries. These 22 master cards were anonymously grafted to the Arabic playing card pack some time in the early 1400's, appearing first in Italy. For most of that century the 22 Trumps, so called, were not numbered, but only named. By the end of the century this suite of cards (sometimes called the 5th suit) had acquired numbers to go along with their titles and standard images. The numbering pattern solidified the Trumps in their step-by-step order, as we know it now. It also allowed each Trump to participate in the past-established magical correspondences that had built up from ancient use of the numbers within the North African, Middle Eastern and European traditions of magic. It is with the assignment of the Trump Numbers that we can say the esoteric Tarot was solidified.

Fast forward to the last decade of the 1700's, when a pack of cards reputed to be The Book of Thoth was sweeping France. This pack hit the Tarot salons in Paris like a storm, as did the persona of its creator, who called himself Etteilla. Etteilla and his self-named deck attracted such popular attention that publishers of the 1800's feared the traditional Marseille-style packs would never be in favor again! The attraction of Etteilla's Tarot pack was magical, in that Etteilla was clearly bringing esoteric symbolism to the face of the cards, to the extent of representing Masonic, Zodiacal and Gnostic imagery throughout the deck. Etteilla's body of writings connected his cards to a number of esoteric topics, if only glancingly (out of fear of the Catholic Office of the Inquisition, which was still operative in his era). Etteilla's hints and allusions brought the inherited body of esoteric correspondences a little closer to the surface of collective consciousness, just as his deck brought a whole new group of people to the practice of Tarot. Ultimately Etteilla's star power made the whole phenomenon of Tarot much more interesting to the popular mind than the plain-brown-wrapper Marseille-style packs that had come before. Like a stone dropped into a still pond, the trend that Etteilla's Tarot started has never since been extinguished, and it leads directly, within 150 years, to a second Book of Thoth penned by Aliester Crowley.

Fast forward again to the present, where we are now over the lip of time according to all our ancient calendars. We have a new Book of Thoth in our hands, this time mediated by Nicki Scully and Linda Star Wolf, and rendered by the capable hand of Kris Waldherr. How does this new/ancient revival of the Egyptian Tarot fit within the trajectory established by Tarot illuminati of the past? Intuitively, the creators of the Anubis Oracle have kept the numbering system of the traditional Marseille-style Tarots, thereby maintaining the deep, ancient, ancestral connection to the web of correspondences that was first attached to the Trumps according their numbers in the late 1400's. This makes it easy to place The Anubis Oracle in context and continuity with the roots of Tarot esotericism.

In our Alchemical Astrology and Tarot workshop, I am going to reveal the magical body of correspondences that the numbers bring to the Tarot Trumps, whether they be historical or modern. The material we will examine forms the basis of Paracelsian alchemy, medical astrology, Rosicrucian idealism, Christian Kabbalism, Masonic initiation and our western Tantra. Once we are grounded in this ancient model, we will examine The Anubis Oracle and The Tarot of the Holy Light to see how the alchemical teachings are revealed through our cards. On Saturday we will walk through the model in overview, and witness the added dimension that astral alchemy brings to the Tarot trumps and Oracle cards. On Sunday we will be "drawing up" our birth-charts with our cards, in order to see how this inherent magical body of correspondences applies to our own psycho-spiritual situation. Some prior exposure to astrology is beneficial, but even a novice will enjoy seeing how our cards offer a window into this ancient therapeutic worldview, making its esoteric pharmacopoeia of spiritual remedies available for use at this pregnant period of history.

Mark and I are excited and hopeful about the things we are learning and the work we are sharing. We hope you will join us for one of our upcoming events, either by phone or in what is shaping up to be our most exquisite garden yet.

With Blessings and Love,
~Nicki