Door Number 20 ~ Oak, Ash and Thorn, aka the Isis Portal

I spent this past weekend, Monday and Tuesday painting a door given to me by our Goshen landlord when I took over the Blue House as an office next door. This was a skinny, dirty door with a shoelace handle, and we lugged it from Goshen when we moved to Kalamazoo in 2017. At some point, I felt eager to paint another door, but David told me he threw it away in our purge after arriving. He really thought he had, so whenever I wished I could paint this door, he’d say, “No, remember, I threw it away. I’m sorry.” I just couldn’t get it into my head that he had really thrown it away, no matter how many times he told me.

Fast forward to the weekend before Thanksgiving when David suddenly decided we needed a lighting upgrade in our dining room. He changed the chandelier to LED lights with an LED dimmer, and the flicker, hiss and tone drove me batty. It wasn’t just “Laura’s sensitive to light and sound,” this was awful! Like, I will never eat at home again kind of bad. He switched things back to incandescent with a new dimmer and installed 60-watt incandescent bulbs instead of 40’s. That change also caused an audible hiss and strobe effect: back to the 40-watts, but David had gotten used to much more light.

We compromised by buying a three-headed LED floor lamp for the corner, which meant moving plants to different locations. It also opened up the other side of the dining room window, as that plant went into our bathroom, replacing a plant that really wanted to go up front. The former plant location looked barren, but having a plant on only one side of the window looked imbalanced. We agreed to keep the area clear and that we’d know the next thing when we encountered it.

We spent a lovely Thanksgiving at David’s cousins’ house with their daughter, son-in-law, grandkids and friends from Canada. When new people ask what I do, I always need to intuit what kind of answer to give. This time I said, “I’m a life coach and an artist,” intending to gloss over both topics without going too much into either one. I didn’t mention “intuitive” or “writer” because I didn’t want to get into those discussions as an unknown guest at someone else’s close family gathering.

“Ohhhh, what do you paint?!”

“We need to see pictures.”

Each new person who walked into the room learned: “Laura paints doors. Yes, doors! We really need to see some photos.”

I pulled up the Divine Doorways and Porta-Portals page on my phone, so I could show them a few quick photos, but the talk continued all day. Our hostess volunteered to get a truck so she could drive me to galleries with all my doors. David and I explained that I’ve been painting canvases lately, because the doors are so large and heavy. Someone mentioned getting me more doors just for gallery showings, as which point, I said, “Oh, I do love doors! They’re so much more fun to paint than canvases. There was this one small door, a real skinny one from our last landlord, but David threw it away.”

“Actually, I found it.”

“YES!” (insert triumphant arm motion)

I got so excited I didn’t realize everyone had stopped talking and was staring at me, then celebrating. It turns out David found the door when they cleared out the surrounding area to install our new furnace. It had been tucked up in a dirt floor storage loft on the side of our basement.

I mention this background story, because it goes along with the portal’s theme. I must have been downloading this door for months in my dreams. The moment I located it last Saturday, November 30, I cleaned it and started carrying it to different spots in the house. The only spot it would fit well just happened to be the spot we cleared the prior weekend in our dining room.

What am I going to paint? Immediately, I heard: “Oak, Ash and Thorn” and “You’re going to integrate that Isis Yod in your natal chart. That Venus transit over the South Node conjunct your North Node — the one you’re so nervous about because anything crossing your North Node has huge ripple effects? Yeah, that’s the one. You’re going to paint a portal to integrate your North Node at 8° Capricorn with your Pholus at 7° 48′ Pisces/Mars at 10° Pisces  and the apex of asteroids Isis and Asbolus at 8° Leo. Just do it. You’ll feel so much better.”

Everything came fast with this portal, and it came back to front. Many of my portal doors feature two sides, but the back usually remains private and not for show. This time, I Reiki’d then primed the whole door in one afternoon and coded intentions down the sides as the first step. Usually, the Runic coded sides are the last thing I do, with the back as the second last. Instead, the intentions announced themselves, along with writing them using the Runa Faery Tradition, the first of three Runic systems I learned. One side says, “Highest Good of All,” and the other side features Carl Jung’s quote, “Free will is doing gladly and freely that which one must do.”

Once I finished the side Runes, the design for the Isis side came fully formed. I suppose this makes sense, since the asteroid Isis, which represents the Goddess Isis and her powers of integration, regeneration, Divine Feminine, Sacred Wisdom and Mystery sits in my natal 12th house — the house of dreams and the unconscious. Since she helps with integration, I figured she’s the perfect apex of this tricky to integrate natal Yod. In astrology, a Yod looks like a tall isosceles triangle, and it represents a kind of soul directive, a tricky task one “must” integrate this lifetime. I’ve never found a way to wriggle out of a Yod, so I figured I might as well work with this one.

This painting came so fast, with almost no revision, either. I apologize for quality of the photos. It’s very difficult to photograph doors anyway, especially during the low light of Michigan winter. Here are some shots, though. You can see the symbol for North Node in the top panel, Isis rising up the middle panel, an Ankh, and the bottom panel in Runes. Translated, that column reads, “Serenity, Courage, Wisdom,” the requests of the Serenity Prayer. (“God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.”)

Some people consider the Ankh a symbol of Life or Eternal Life. I also like my friend James’ take on the Ankh as a mirror to the Self. “Know Thyself,” is a big focus of astrology. My natal chart includes some powerful, “easy” aspects, but it also contains two Yod’s related to my career and life path. I suspect the next paintings will deal with the other Yod, but who knows? Clearly, I don’t run this creative show. 🙂

I’ve had so many precognitive dreams lately, hence the Precognitive Blues series. All my dreams tell me I have amazing things coming, but I don’t see how the details of those dreams fit with my current life. Despite the happy, reassuring messages, they imply loss and grief, unless I’m missing something. Whenever I try to interpret things on a symbolic level only, I get avalanches of synchronicities showing me how my dreams literally come true. In any case, when I read Astrobutterfly’s recent post and realized what kind of popcorn activations I’ll receive this December, I panicked. Just a little bit. Just the right amount of panic to make me go, “Wait a second. There’s a door for that!”

As soon as I coded the sides of the door, my anxiety lessened. When I painted Isis, the North Node panel and the “Serenity, Courage, Wisdom” panel, a deep calm settled into my heart and solar plexus.

Since I thought this would be the back of the door, I painted fast and things just flowed. The whole time I painted, this little owl bottle cap kept staring at me. David had saved it from a 2017 Bell’s Best Brown Ale, a Kalamazoo favorite, and for some reason, it was sitting in the corner of our counter by the door’s location. I felt led to add it as the “doorknob” next to the Ankh. Owls always open doors for me, so this seemed like a great sync wink to have the owl stand in as the doorknob.

I felt so happy with the back of the door that I could have stopped painting then and there, except for the “Oak, Ash and Thorn” visions (and song) in my head. I knew the portal was only halfway done. The back represents the apex of the Yod, hidden away in my 12th house, while the front needs to integrate my wild, crazy Pholus (small thing/BIG EFFECT) and Mars in Pisces with a hypersensitive Capricorn North Node.

Whenever anything crosses over my North Node, I feel it in a huge way. In April 2018, I had three NDE’s in one week when Saturn crossed over it. When Pluto crossed over it, I had a series of nightmares and travel restrictions. When Neptune crossed over it, my entire family life and understanding of reality dissolved. I painted Isis to anchor something … to provide a sense of calm and stability before transiting Venus, Jupiter and Pholus cross over that spot in succession. Venus crosses that spot every year, but not usually when the transiting South Node sits on my natal North Node, or when my progressed Venus just happens to sit at the apex of that Yod. Those factors intensify the process. I needed an attitude adjustment. Instead of anticipating disaster or trauma. I wanted an upgrade of Faery Fun.

Oak, ash and thorn trees traditionally grow near sacred wells and locations favored by the faeries. At first, I thought I would just paint one tree in each panel and continue the back’s simplicity onto the front. I realized that a white, brown and green door wouldn’t look right in our dining room, though. We have existing artwork, and our open space also makes that door visible from many different angles of the house. I needed to integrate not only the Yod and Node in my chart, but also fit this door within the context of our entire home.

For the first time painting the front of a portal, I had no idea what to paint other than those three trees and their Ogham alphabet names. Again, the door proceeded backwards. I painted the trees last, not first. Decorative elements piled on top of each other, and I wrote the quote early on, when usually that’s my last thing to do on the front of a door. Because of the bright colors and our dim December daylight, I really can’t get good photos of the front, but here’s a peek:

In addition to paint, the front of the door features an entire bracelet full of sunstone, used to highlight the orbs, an amber doorknob, a Lemurian seed crystal on the oak, and gauzy fabric on some of the other orbs to give them a 3D floaty feeling. I also mixed modeling paste with the paint for the bark and leaves of the trees. From bottom to top, you’ll find oak, ash, and thorn, with their Ogham names written above each panel. When I added the Lemurian crystal to the oak trunk, I felt energy leap up the portal. It “activated” so strong and fast that I needed to go on a walk to ground the energy.

I’m bummed I can’t seem to get the colors right in the photos. It looks and feels much more alive in person. You can see some of the 3D leaf effects on the angle:

Depending on where the light hits, different parts of the door glow and shimmer.

The orbs arose because I was listening to a lecture about Hildegard of Bingen and J.R.R. Tolkien. (Fantastic lecture, btw, which you can find here.)

The crystals arose, because the door looked too busy with all the orbs. I thought David would have me paint over them, but he liked them. Hmmmm, how do I integrate the orbs and French curves? “Bling! I need more bling.” I kept thinking of this bracelet and remembering how the owl bottle cap stared at me then worked so well as the doorknob, I pulled out the sunstone bracelet, realizing the colors worked perfectly with the range of orb colors.

I glued them on and in process glued my thumb and forefinger together. Although I drew blood separating them, I took it as a good sign. While creating a portal for integration, I found some parts so tightly entwined that it took my own mini blood sacrifice to separate them. Kinda witchy, magical, dramatic … just the sort of substitute I hope the portal achieves for any real life trauma-drama.

Between gluing sessions, I happened to do a phone session for a friend/client who only recently found her correct birth certificate and time. I took a look at her chart, and it just so happens that she has a natal Yod only 2 degrees off from mine. Hers involves a 12th house 10° Leo North Node, and Sun and Moon at 10° Pisces and Capricorn. I took that as a synchronous confirmation of the portal in effect. I finished painting the trees after our call and then felt it needed one more thing, the Lemurian quartz on the oak trunk.

The vibration turned very Faery with that addition. In fact, with the Oak, Ash, and Thorn side out, this portal sings at such a high frequency I sometimes need to turn it around. As I type, I’ve got the Isis side facing outward, calm and potent. When we want to ramp up the fun, over-the-top, “just the right amount of too much” energy, we can reverse the door.

After the fact, I discovered that the entire time I painted the portal, Venus was already in orb of my North Node, sitting right on it for much of the major painting. I also found sunstone a perfect stone to add since it brings light, positive energy, protection, and the ability to let your full, true self shine through. Amber acts as fire energy, along with sunstone, and in Feng Shui terms our dining room forms our Fame/Reputation/Fire area. I finished painting just as the Moon came within orb of my 7° 48′ Pholus, that activator Centaur carrying the energy of small thing/BIG EFFECT.

Dreams, sessions, synchronicities and my inner sense of calm tell me the portal already took effect. These doors continue to activate themselves many years later, so we’ll see what else this one does. For now, I found it a perfect way to utilize that double Venus energy on my North Node and in my 12th house. In addition to love, Venus also rules the arts, so creating a large work of art on a hidden and rediscovered door synchronized it all together.

I hope you enjoyed this little portal excursion. I love using creativity and inspiration to resolve what rationality and ego cannot or will not integrate. For the full list of portal doors and links to their descriptions, please click here.