Why Magpie?

Head tilted to one side with eye focused sharp, the bird stops its ungainly hopping, and looks at me. Its long tail feathers bob up and down a couple of times, causing the light to play across the edges of its iridescent wings. And, for a second or two, we have a connection – an accord, perhaps. I stay really still, held by the moment and by the inhuman gaze of this bird. In my mind, I ask the question… Why you? Why magpie?

For the last couple of months, I’ve been finding magpie feathers. Most of them right wing feathers. It got to the point that when I found another, I would start to laugh. It felt like a cosmic joke. You know the kind where you don’t really get the punchline, but you can’t help laughing anyway? Yeah, that kind.

I laid them out on my main altar where I gather up the significant pieces that represent the material of my life. Photos of my kids, rocks collected from their birthplaces, a mirror my beloved bought me when we first moved in together, love letters, my birthchart, items to represent important friendships, a sorrow buddha my dad brought me back from India when I was a teenager, my softbound phd thesis… stuff like that.

The magpie feathers I fanned out in the centre. I didn’t know why they were important, but I just knew that they were. They deserved to feature in a prominent place while I worked it out.

And, as is so often the way with things, I kind of half forgot about them. But the medicine was brewing regardless of whether I worried it and worked it. It didn’t need me to keep a weather eye on it. It just needed me to pull it into my awareness, to honour its importance…

Then, a couple of important things happened. The first was that I signed up to a be a Beta tester of Annu Tara’s Alchemical Chocolate Practitioner Online Training Program. After a night of cacao (heavy on the cayenne) and of wild dancing and of spontaneous giggles and of tears and hugs and food, Annu gave me my practitioner’s package. And it included… yep, you guessed it, a magpie feather. Ah, ok. I see.

The next thing was that I decided it was time to do another Practical Magic Business Circle. It wasn’t actually my intention to do another circle until next year, but the conviction that I had one to do this year was so strong. I also knew that it was going to look a bit different from before, and I dived deep into my desires to figure out exactly what it was that needed to change.

Having established the container, the energies that I wanted to invite in and work with through the special guests and the goddesses, I launched the offering. Then I planned a sacred cacao ceremony with various practices and rituals that would support me in the holding of this circle. Perhaps, not surprisingly, it was the magpie feathers that again appeared. They were seeking their place in the family of things, and so I duly included them.

After preparing the cacao, I set my intention using a cacao bean to connect with the goddesses that were stepping forward to help hold, support, guide and inspire the next round of the Practical Magic Business Circle.  I then found myself dedicating a magpie feather to each of the 6 goddesses and 1 for myself. The reason for this became clear in the vision that I’ve been sharing, and which you can read (and hear!) in its entirety now.

Each goddess contributed a magpie feather to the cauldron along with speaking her gift to the circle. When I had finished writing up the vision, I noticed that a breeze from the open window had caught the feathers, and they were now scattered across the floor. Collecting them up, I placed them on my work altar, arranging them inside a shell – my work altar has a lot of sea energy as I dive so often and so deeply into the collective unconscious.

And they’ve been sitting there ever since. Always in my awareness, just in the periphery of my gaze whether I’m reading, typing, Skyping, journalling. So the question returns… why magpie?

Because magpie is offering me and those who are choosing to enter into the circle with the insight, the discernment, the acute awareness to gather the wisdom, the keys, the pieces of the puzzle, the sparkly jewels of deep embodied understanding that we require to take the next steps in the evolution of our businesses. Together, with magpie, we are communing, collecting, coalescing. We are swooping deep and soaring high. And we are finding that which desires to be sought by us.

The next round of the Practical Magic Business Circle opens of the 1st of September. Will you be there?