THE CALL OF
THE MYSTERIES
The Mysteries have always called to me. I grew up in a small West Coast island village, and they whispered from the shadows of the deep green forest I had to pass through on my way to school. I could hear them from my bed at night, crashing up on the wild Pacific shore with a cadence that made my heart ache. Starting in fifth grade, while other kids played at recess, I could be found hidden in the school library, spellbound by tales of mythology and enchanted by books on world religions. When I was thirteen, I happened upon a paperback copy of Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot in a free-book bin in the library. I was entranced by the enigmatic images, and I knew intuitively I had opened a door that would lead to the path I didn’t even know I was searching for. We were not lucky enough in our small town to have anywhere that sold actual tarot cards, so I carefully cut the black-and-white illustrations out of the book one by one and created my very first deck. I studied the pictures for hours, locked in my room, mesmerized by the mysterious symbols and the flood of impressions that arose from them. Whenever I left my room, I would hide my makeshift cards under a corner of rug I pulled up from the floor of my closet, carefully positioning a pair of shoes on top. Instinctively, I knew my conservative parents would not approve.
Thus began my lifelong study of the esoteric. When I ran away from home to the big city at seventeen, I found to my absolute amazement that there was much more to be discovered. Soon after landing in Vancouver, British Columbia, I found my way to Banyen Books, a veritable wonderland of books, crystals, tarot cards, and all manner of magickal talismans waiting to be revealed. Wide-eyed and breathless, I put my money on the counter and, feeling like an initiate come to the foot of the temple, reverently purchased my first metaphysical books: The Inner Sky, The Spiral Dance, and Positive Magic. And, as luck would have it, while leaving the shop laden with my new treasures, I noticed a community bulletin board advertising astrology classes. I was home.
Although it’s an understatement, life in the Big Smoke as a teenage runaway was less than idyllic. I ate, slept, and breathed astrology and tarot and spent whatever extra money I could conjure on books. I did tarot readings for friends and cast my first astrology charts the old-fashioned way—without a computer. I did them by hand, doing mathematical calculations armed with a protractor, an ephemeris, and an old atlas. I committed to studying as an apprentice under a local astrologer, Nikiah Jaguar. I wanted more than anything to make a living as an astrologer, but that would not come to pass for some time.
Coming back to my apartment late one evening after a Prince concert, I curled up in an armchair, opened my journal, and began to write. Although I often ended my day jotting down my thoughts, that night I scribbled in my notebook past the wee hours and into the sunrise. Call it automatic writing, call it channeling; what emerged was life changing. There are intermittent phrases peppering this forty-page epiphany, such as “I don’t know what’s happening, I seem to be on some kind of roll!” In the still of that night, I unwittingly stumbled onto something much bigger than myself. As the sun crept in and illuminated the new day, I held in my hands a curious sheaf of papers—many of which I had no recollection of writing—that was a veritable table of correspondences and explanations as to how magick, tarot, and astrology were all interwoven with the same threads. I felt as though I had stumbled upon nothing less than the meaning of the universe, and the way I saw the world would never be the same.
Fast-forward thirteen years later. I was in Glastonbury, England, at the tail end of my Saturn return and searching for clues to my next chapter. Got my first tattoo—the mystical vesica piscis symbol—on the back of my neck. I climbed Glastonbury Tor in the cold December night and tried to sit vigil there to watch the sun come up, but it was freezing and my flight back to Canada was the next day. I vowed I would return in the spring.
I arrived on Lunar Beltane 1999. And I decided to stay for a while. It was like I had stepped into the land of Faery; it could have been a thousand years ago. The memories of that time are elusive, ephemeral, and numinous. Scenes dance through my head: climbing up the back of the Tor in the dark, laughing, falling into a patch of stinging nettle, and, finally, tucked in under the Full Moon, sitting atop the mystical Eggstone with the faery tree looking on. Cupping my hands and drinking the healing waters from the Red and White Springs. Studying for hours in the Library of Avalon. Sitting before sunrise on the side of Glastonbury Tor, to turn around and see that the tower had disappeared (“Just like before the Christians got here!”). Initiation. Betrayal that shook me to my foundations. Spherical twin rainbows over the Chalice Well. Tying ribbons on an ancient tree at a baby-naming ceremony on Solstice Eve. Falling on my knees in the abandoned abbey. Straying into the Otherworld.
Somehow, I eventually extricated myself from this land where time ran so differently. I went back to my world, but I left a piece of myself there and brought a little bit of Faery back with me, tucked in a hidden corner of my big red backpack. And as many do if they find their way out of the realm of the Fae, I returned with a slight touch of madness. I began writing, painting, creating ritual—anything to try to translate that mystical rite of passage. I picked up my academic career, which had been interrupted all those years ago as a teenage runaway, and enrolled in university. It has been years since I last set foot on that distant shore, and it has taken many moons, many pathworkings, and endless conversations to integrate the experience. I still dream of it.
And so here I am, 2018. I have realized my dream: I make my living as a full-time archetypal astrologer and registered counseling therapist. The journey took a while, but there is no substitution for the initiation of hard-won wisdom and a life well lived.