Door Number 24: The Two of Cups Equinox Portal

Happy Autumn Equinox! (And Happy Spring Equinox to those in the Southern Hemisphere.) After nearly two months of creation, I finished “Door” Number 24 on 9/22/2020, Autumn Equinox.

The 22 and 24 numbers are significant for a variety of reasons. Originally, this patron wanted her portal to be Door Number 22. She wasn’t quite ready at that time, and the commissioned Justice portal came through in perfect timing to be number 22, with an 11-11 built into the image itself. I felt a little bad for bumping this Two of Cups portal back, but even commissioned pieces flow from dreams, visions and synchronicities. I don’t control the timing, but I trust it.

I received very strong instructions that I needed to paint The Magician portal as Door Number 23, so that it would be a 123 “door,” with the Magician’s Tarot number as 1 and the 23rd portal. That one also unfolded in perfect timing and was another very long trajectory from start to finish. I was “told” to paint over a spiral Sidhe glyph I’d done in early 2018, incorporating and layering Faery magic into a Tarot portal. At first I didn’t know why I was painting that one, only that my Dream Guys were most insistent that I do. So I did.

Finally, it came time to paint the Two of Cups portal for this person who’s long known she’d have me paint it for her. She kindly accepted the delay and only in retrospect realized how perfectly things organized themselves. Since we waited so long to begin, she symbolically ordered the oval on her birthday — July 24th — and had it shipped to me. I knew I couldn’t start working on it right away, but she wanted to enhance the birth energy by beginning on her birthday. Only after the fact did she realize the 24 connection to the 24th portal.

She gave me permission to share whatever wants to come through of this process, so I’ll include some of our back and forth as part of the write up. (I’m still keeping many details private, but this was such a magical unfolding across many months, two of them active coding and painting time.)

Comments she shared early on about the birch oval she chose as a kind of “porthole”:

I know we’re not there yet, but I wanted to make sure an oval is feasible.   Then once I found it and the symbolism for the birch, it all just kind of came together with the things I had already found, so I’m sending you my thoughts while it’s all still fresh.

… I looked up birch and it said regeneration, hope, new beginnings and the promise of things to come.   Carries ancient wisdom but appears forever young.

That excited me!  Dovetails nicely with the oval symbolism of rebirth, fertility and immortality. (I found that on an engagement ring site, by the way,  following your rule of going with the first search result.) It also said it stands as a sign of uniqueness and a zest for life. So both the birch and the oval tie in well with my chart and the death/rebirth/change/growth

On August 2, I wrote to her:

Your oval has arrived. I think it came yesterday, but with a shop name called Wooden Hare, I thought it was a gift from Tania, LOL! Just opened a stack of boxes this morning, and the oval is here. 🙂

Bringing Faery Twin Tania into the mix — even symbolically — just amplifies the magic, because she’s one of the most magical people I know. I didn’t think I’d have time to begin any time soon due to a busy session schedule and prior writing commitments, but the next day, I got nudged to do a tiny bit of coding on the portal and give it a Reiki Healing Attunement at the 11:59 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Savings Time) Full Moon on August 3. When I looked up transits after doing the attunement, I found that things aligned very precisely with the patron’s North Node and several other key relationship placements in her natal chart. I didn’t plan that. “They” did.

I gave the oval another Reiki Healing Attunement at noon on August 5, right when transiting Venus and the transiting North Node crossed paths. A powerful moment that seemed too perfect not to include in a Two of Cups portal intending a harmonious, loving, compatible and on path relationship. Those intentions are epitomized by Love Goddess Venus having a date with the North Node destiny point.

At some point — I think the August 18th New Moon — I gave it a third Reiki Healing Attunement after heavily coding the back of the portal using three different systems of Runes. This very slow process of back and forth emails and conversations about intentions, inner processing, receptivity and opening to change brought many possible portal quotes onto the back of the portal as coding, rather than a front quote.

We finally decided on a portal appropriate quote for the front, but on September 7, a dream informed me that the quote would be, “Let my love open the door to your heart” by Pete Townsend. OK, that actually would work much better because it directly referenced a door. She approved the change, and I asked if she wanted me to write the “to” as “2” as an echo of the Two of Cups energy. She went a step further and requested I use “2” and an UR Rune in place of “your.” We went back and forth, because there’s another Rune with a closer pronunciation to “your,” but she loved the UR symbolism.

I told her this would then link Door Number 24: The Two of Cups, with Door Number 16: UR ~ Not All Who Wander Are Lost, posted way back in March 2013. That “painting is dedicated to healing journeys of all sorts and features the UR Rune as an archway into a magical tree-scape. UR invokes healing of the root causes of any dis-ease or situation. Closely tied to the Mother aspect of a Mother-Father Divinity, UR also stirs ancient memories of a much deeper connection to Earth. The repeated sequence of Runes within the portal reminds us that infinite degrees of healing exist, so long as we continue on the journey.”

She loved the link to this portal, which, unbeknownst to her, also ties into a major dream I had on 1/23/2020 … 1/23/4, echoing the sense of going forward on an intertwined and magical journey. (Fun fact: it’s now my exact birth time as I type this — echoing the birth element of this portal.)

Around the time of this UR synchronicity, a female cardinal stared at me from the weeping cherry trees outside my office window, and my client told me of a magical encounter she had with a male cardinal singing to her at 11:11 a.m. as she contemplated the portal. When she returned inside it was 11:22, so another link her originally intended “22,” as well as the Door Number 22: Justice portal with its double 11’s.

Again, unbeknownst to her, this cardinal connected not only with the female staring at me, but with a male singing its heart out to me back on April 9, 2020, after major synchronicities on the 2-year anniversary of my NDE in Detroit. More rebirth energies. Oddly enough, I now see that the post I made about that experience includes a picture of the UR portal painting, so this is a double whammy of UR and everything connected with that portal.

I’m not going to include all the synchronicities, or this post will take forever to write, but the cardinal also linked into Door Number 15: The World Tree and the Norns. A splotch of red paint “accidentally” fell onto that canvas and because of the method I used to paint it, I needed to turn it into a cardinal. That “door” is about aligning with destiny — the Norns are the Norse equivalent to the Three Fates — so yet another layer of this North Node, destiny, Love Goddess, intertwined paths intention.

My client was extra pleased to hear that Door Number 15’s cardinal also links into Door Number 4: Four of Wands, aka “Karuna.” The Four of Wands is often considered a marriage card in the Tarot, and that portal had a similar thing happen with a white splotch of paint. I could not get the background yellows to match again, so I ended up needing to add a white dove overseeing the entire scene. This mysterious connection to additions of highly symbolic birds encouraged me to add a cardinal into Door Number 24, because she had already asked me to make a kind of Peaceable Kingdom around the more traditional man and woman.

It’s difficult to see in the photo, but, per her request, the cardinal sits above two hearts carved into the tree. She also requested an owl, a squirrel, a cat and dog, and we both had major synchronicities with a butterfly on the same day. The dog and cat are actually nods to her cat and dog. I had them cuddling and holding paws to echo the Two of Cups harmony energy. Since she’s a Leo, and her cat’s name is Leo, this also substituted for the sometimes inclusion of a lion above a caduceus.

She wanted the healing and Leo echoes, but not a caduceus, so I painted a twisted tree and her cat Leo instead. A caduceus represents healing, and synchronously, the day I finished painting Leo, the actual cat Leo was having a somewhat risky surgery. I’m happy to report, he came through it just fine! Maybe the portal helped him, too. In any case, here’s Leo snuggling with Hero, the dog.

Above you can also see one of many crystals on this portal. In addition to being the most heavily coded portal, this 9×12″ oval also features the most crystals of any portal. (Door Number 20: Oak, Ash and Thorn, aka The Isis Portal is a close second.) The black crystal “Faery door” in the tree is shungite, a highly purifying stone. It acts as a powerful filter of energies, water, emotions, and offers healing on physical, emotional, spiritual and even mental levels. Shungite’s origins are unknown, but some theorize this 90% carbon stone came from a meteorite. In any case, as soon as I affixed the shungite to the portal, the energy went wowzers. This felt like just the right stone to include as a filter for the most aligned, healing and “clean” relationship possible.

The Two of Cups Equinox Portal by Laura Bruno

Above, you can also see lots of peridot crystals (1:11 right now) attached as leaves of the tree. I took this photo yesterday to show her how the portal picks up light and glows from different angles. Peridot brings powerful energies of healing, forgiveness, protection and rejuvenation. I also liked that with its green color, peridot connects with Gemini’s emerald birthstone, but its connection to the Sun and royalty brings in a Leo element. This patron has a Leo Sun and a Gemini Moon, North Node, and Midheaven. A harmonious, loving, compatible relationship supports both Sun and Moon, and it also aligns with destiny and career. I didn’t put all that together when I bought a bag of tiny peridot pieces for the leaves, but in retrospect, it all worked out.

You can see from this outdoor image that I coded the portal along the “porthole” window into the Faery Realm, too. I wasn’t sure how to create the people, but they came through very Faery. She’s Celtic and wanted a Celtic feel, and she has red hair. She also has a close connection with St. Bridget/Goddess Brigid. Yesterday, she asked if I had included Brigid in some way, right before she realized, “You painted me as Brigid!” Indeed, the woman has many Brigid qualities, including the long red hair, and it turns out the man is wearing Brigid’s famous (and magical) green cloak.

The two tiny acorns painted into cups came from the original “seed” of this Two of Cups portal. Long ago, the patron found some double acorns, and she knew she wanted an oak tree in the painting. We went back and forth on how to include the acorns — at one point even thinking the whole portal would be acorns instead of people. Then, she kept adding and adding things she wanted to include into the portal and requested I somehow make the cups look like acorns.

While trying to figure out how to do this, I happened to be staring across the street and realized I was staring at an oak tree! I walked over there and found these two very tiny, yet perfectly sized, acorns under the tree. I realized I could paint the nuts blue like water — “my cup overfloweth” — and have the base of the acorns as the actual cups. She loved the idea, especially because it also connects to the idea of the Ace of Cups, which often features a cup overflowing. That’s one of the happiest cards in the Tarot deck, along with the Two of Cups and Ten of Cups. I showed her the link to the Ten of Cups portal, Door Number 8, and she felt thrilled to bring that vibration into this portal, too.

Before we started this process, she had “no idea how this works,” but by the end, she grew giddy with all the dreams, synchronicities and portal tie-in’s. I’ve watched her change as the portal unfolded, and yesterday sent her the outdoor images for approval. I noted I might have a couple touch ups but that I sensed I would finish on Fall Equinox. She thought that was the 23rd, but again, perfect timing when you let go of timing: I finished her door on the 22nd, so she got her intended 22 after all.

We agreed I would do another Reiki Healing Attunement at the exact moment of Equinox, 9:31 a.m. this morning. Last night, I awoke after just a couple hours with instructions to add even more Runic coding to the back of the portal. I had left a space for a hanging element; however, in the course of my painting, the patron decided to display the oval on a plate holder. Apparently, my Dream Guys wanted to take advantage of the extra spot for even more intentions coded onto the back.

I got up and recorded the English translation and then went back to sleep. I awoke this morning from SUCH a happy dream. Really high vibe and magical, related to the portal’s energy. I carefully coded the additions onto the back, and then something very strange occurred. I turned over the portal, and it was upside down!

This is very significant, because all along I had checked and double checked to make sure the coding and the portal faced the same direction. In other words, that the coding on the back was upright when the portal was upright. As of yesterday, this was still the case. I know this is true, because I had flipped it over many times in the process of creation, and it was always the same. Sometime between yesterday afternoon and whenever I finished the final coding, right before the moment Equinox, something very significant changed. A 180.

To me, this confirms the portal “worked.” With portal painting, I find the portals always do work — the intentions unfold, and they continue to play out years, even a decade down the road. Little things I didn’t realize were important in the doors will reveal themselves in key, related moments that cause me to go back to the original door, the original write up and go, “Whoa! Holy, moly, wowie, whoa!” To have all the coding somehow flip over to me seems like the portal opened, a timeline changed, or reality got very bendy to accommodate the sweet, loving, destiny level connection depicted in the portal.

I went to do the final Reiki Healing Attunement, right at Equinox, and I had a couple moments before 9:31. I thought I’d snap another photo. Here’s what came up:

Over and over, I tried to photograph the portal, and everything blended together in this energetic swirl of color. I wasn’t shaking, and this was not one photo. I tried taking many, and it reminds me of when I try to photograph the weeping birch focal point of my front garden. I know that tree is a gateway to Faerie, and sometimes, no matter how hard I try, if the energy’s really magical, I cannot for the life of me take a photo of that tree.

I began what I thought was the final Reiki Healing Attunement for this portal, but it turned into four simultaneous Reiki Healing Attunements. One for each Season, on this magical Wheel of the Year day of equal night and day. This four in one attunement took the total number of Reiki Healing Attunements up to magical number seven. Pythagoras considered seven so significant that anyone with Life Path Number 7 was automatically admitted to his Mystery School.

I don’t know what this means, but it seems important. I’ll be sending off the portal this afternoon. We agreed to have me write the post on the 22nd to honor more of the 22 energies she wanted in there, but also so that she has a description to refer to once she unpacks Door Number 24. I mean that in every sense of the phrase. There is MUCH to unpack with this portal. I feel truly honored to have painted it for her, and it’s been amazing to watch her shift and open through this process of creating a door to her sweetest dreams.

I’m not sure if it comes through in the photos, but in person, it really does feel sweet. Between all the animals, the Faery people, the tiny acorns and just knowing all the quotes, song lyrics, hopes and dreams she had me embed into her birch oval, the energy feels like a big heart-smile. Happy Equinox and thanks for sharing some of the journey with us!