Sync Winks and Faery Portals

I’ve been having one of those days already, and it’s just 7:22 a.m.! Due to a combination of yesterday’s late afternoon chocolate, a hot upstairs, new fan and the sudden absence of our heavy comforter, I had trouble falling asleep last night. My intuition was screaming at me to use that excuse to read the Kindle version of Sharon Blackie’s “If Women Rose Rooted,” since I had downloaded it in Pennsylvania but not had a chance yet to begin reading it. My Kindle sat on the floor next to the bed taunting me all night, but for some reason, I refused to give up on sleep and read.

At one point, after about my fifth bathroom break, fan fiddle, and prowl around the upstairs, I decided to go downstairs, still sans Kindle, and turn the full house fan on with just a few minutes of AC. We have super steep steps here — Dutch steps, as David and his dad call them. They have new hardwood directly over the original steps of this gut rehab, because to change the steps at all would have meant needing to bring them up to code, much less steep and a complete change to the house’s original layout.This stairwell has long given me visions of radical falls, and so I always hold the railing on the way down.

When Tania Marie visited last year, she tumbled down the last third of the steps while I was outside in the garden, but thanks to some kind of faery intervention, Reiki and both topical and oral arnica, my sweet friend who has a history of foot fractures didn’t even bruise. I experienced a similar situation last night on my way downstairs. Despite holding onto the railing and being catlike in my abilities to move through the dark, somehow, last night, I misjudged where the floor should be, skipping the final two steps.

I had just been wondering, “Where will we move when we’re finally done our time in Goshen?” I know I’ve got a contract with this land, and David and I had earlier been discussing how I might as well just continue to dive into the gardens here until I’ve completed the transformation. I had forgotten a message from 2014 that I am opening a faery portal here with all the land healing, flowers, trees and sacred work I do on these two yards. Around the same time, I received a vision of David and me as very, very old people, sitting happily by a fire in what feels like Ireland but might be the actual faery realm. This has remained a steady vision of mine for years now, popping up when least expected, but I wasn’t thinking about it at all last night.

Here’s where things get really strange:

There I was, hot, insomniac, listening to trains from across town blow their horns far away even though ours were silent … feeling far too vata with all that wind blowing from an air purifier and our new fan, wondering wherever will we move when I’m finally finished here. Before bed, I had just ordered a small frog birdbath/fountain and David Phlox, along with other white flowers for a watery moon garden in the Haus Am See’s backyard. Frustrated with my inability to sleep but for some reason not reading “If Women Rose Rooted,” I made my way downstairs, miscalculated the bottom and literally flew into Door Number 17 — “Elen of the Ways,” which is itself a faery portal, complete with faery star on top.

A few odd things about my launch: that’s not the door directly in front of the stairwell! I not only missed the bottom two steps and flew through the air unharmed, but I somehow pivoted midair in order to body slam the faery portal I had painted for Goshen’s “sustainable sovereignty” and in honor of Elen of the Ways, who finds the right paths. The door I ran into was the white one with the faery star, fly agaric mushrooms, and a faery passage “silver branch,” an apple in simultaneous leaf, blossom and fruit:

The maroon door directly in front of the steps is Door Number 4 –“Four of Wands/Karuna.”

Anyway, I eventually went back to bed, tossing and turning for awhile and then finally sleeping just long enough to awaken at 4:44 a.m., about 21 minutes before David’s alarm was due to go off. (Note the address on Door Number 17: 444. You can read the synchronous story of that door’s creation by clicking here, but I didn’t notice the 444 sync wink until several more synchronicities prompted me to take a photo of it to share in today’s post.)

David got up, and I decided to try to go back to sleep, but that “If Women Rose Rooted” book kept calling to me, so I finally picked up my Kindle and began reading all about Boudica and strong women of the Celtic Tradition — about the power of the land and the importance of women reconnecting with the land. It’s a delightful, enchanting book so far, but reading about Boudica reminded me of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “Ravens of Avalon,” which tells the story of Boudica, when then reminded me of “Priestess of Avalon,” which draws upon legends of Elen of the Ways.

Too many syncs before breakfast! This woman was rising rooted and reading her Celtic Devotional for the day. What did I find? A passage about soul kinship, which had me again pondering our next location and David and me talking about Irish people in both South Bend and Pennsylvania. I decided to pull a Wild Wisdom of the Faery Oracle Card, and pulled “Secret Doorway,” which pictures a half-woman, half-fae being approaching … a faery portal!

Stunned, I ran to Door Number 17, marveling at my unharmed crash into that faery portal last night. When David’s alarm went off this morning, I said, “Well, I’m still here. I fell down the steps and crashed into the faery portal, but I guess it wasn’t time yet.” As I looked at the door, I noticed the 444 and remembered my waking moment this morning.

I showed David the Secret Doorway card, and he said, “Hey, that looks just like the photo I took of you in Pennsylvania.”

Of all the things I wanted to do in Penn’s Woods on our visit there, taking David to my old haunts in Monocacy Park was on top of my list. We finally got a few hours to ourselves the afternoon before my father passed away. As we wandered by Monocacy Creek, I felt the presence of the Fae, so imagine our delight to find this faery door just off the path! David snapped a photo as I approached the door, and yes, it does remind me of the Secret Doorway card.

I had mostly finished this blog post before an early session with someone who had just returned from Ireland, and the sync winks continued in our discussion. Some key divinatory meanings of the Secret Doorway include: “Being able to see change ahead, but not knowing how to deal with it. Understanding that in order to learn something new, one must forget what one thinks one knows. Getting ‘down’ to the level of others who you do not know. Receiving messages from nature. Understanding that wonderment is the natural process of change.”

Indeed, I wonder as I wander … and, as Tolkien and Door Number 16 state, “Not all who wander are lost.”

Blessed Be

… and be the blessing!