O yes. The thing that shook me the other night. has nothing to do with anything in the last two posts.

So was at Macbeth up at American Players Theater, and one of my favorite core actors of the company who has been with them since I was a child but isn't in any of the plays this season was also in attendance in the audience, very front row with his wife. He was unwell and his wife extra solicitous, especially about the rain. It was unusual and I could tell he was unwell. And out of concern and as the gloaming (when the veil is thinnest and takes the least energy to play with) was settling in I tugged at the veil and pulled it taut to flip it and peer into his fate line.

Now I don't typically do this. I don't like to peek or ask for more. The precogs are more than enough glimpsing into the future. Me pushing and prodding can blur the lines between the fate lines of will be and the contingent futures of may be. Also, there are lots of things that one is better off not knowing... I prefer to allow the precogs that  affect me closely to come to me as required by my gifts and fates and not prod for more.  I can see more, but I dislike the asking. And also, when i feed my gifts, they grow. And they're already overwhelming powerful enough. Sometimes, the ability to see future fates, it doesn't turn off you see when I feed power into it.... The other night was one of them.

I wanted to know about his future fate, to know if he was ill unto his final illness (he's not) and if I'll see him on the APT stage again in another season (I will) so I pulled the veil between life and death a little bit tighter and peeked through to see whose lights were shining bright, whose were dimmed with inner illnesses that could still be cured, and whose were snuffed out to end in the next 6 months and by what cause(s) -- it's one of my healer's gifts, all healers with the sight have it. If you don't have this gift to see the light of life, then you're either not a healer or don't truly have the sight. Everyone knows that.

Anyway, the problem with the healer's death sight is that it's for everyone not just the one person you seek. It's not like laying the healing hands and energy flow to find the illness where you are looking at what internally your energy can set right. Pinching and twisting the veil to see with the death sight, you look at everyone through the twisted veil til it untwists again....

I was duly relieved about the actor who'd had me concerned. But it was a sold out show, including shuttle buses from the retirement homes in Madison. And there were so many dimmed, and so many snuffed out within the year.  It was disconcerting the percentage to be sure. But I could have dealt with the load of all those end of life stories flooding my consciousness, as I typically would, after all they were old and had lived long lives -- some more fulfilling than others but all long.

But what gutted me was that right across the theater from me on the opposite side and halfway up, there was a 15 year old girl with her family. And her life force was snuffed out. In just under 5 months, she takes her own life. She was surface enjoying the play, but through the twists of the veil I could clearly see her fate and her life force snuffed out, and by her own hand....

But what shook me hardest was there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't, as a complete stranger, go up to her to try to change her course tell her not to do it nor could I have told her family to keep an extra careful eye on her and surround her with love and watch her pver the next 5 months... . There was nothing I could do for her as it wasn't near future and there wasn't anything I could explain how I knew or even say anything to shift it.... I know, I searched through all my little pebbles to shift the course for them and none would do it. Just niceties and some positive energy from a stranger that would shine through for a time but not into her darkness 5 months ahead of now.....

And there was no way for me to untwist the veil, to turn off the death sight until the gloaming passed of its own and the sun finished setting. It was stuck. I couldn't stop seeing that light snuffed out in all of them and in the 15 year old girl..... Not til the sun set and it wasn't a thin veiled between hours... So I turned my head and fixated on the stage in an angle to shut out all the audience even from my peripheral. For all the actors onstage burned bright and clear full of life force -- even the not yet announced bitty one in one of the actresses. Thankfully, the sun set as it always does and the veil righted itself and pulled back to its normal thickness before intermission and while I could still wade through the future fates and perhapses with my normal precogs, the death sight was past until next I called on it. So I didn't have to watch her sitting there with her snuffed out self-slain life.... Poor dear....

The gifts and the various forms my second sight can manifest, they're as often curses as blessings in what they show. There's always a price you must pay for the gifts.... The fate of Cassandra where no one believes your precogs til too late is the fate of every prophet/prophetess and the least of the curses that your gifts can manifest.

It still haunts me though, that 15 year old whose suicide I could do nothing to shift..... There are plenty of such things that I see but cannot change that haunt me always. Some I see from people's pasts (including long ago pasts), some in their presents, and some in their futures.... And when I can do nothing to avert the fates that are immutable or that their choices will bring them... It haunts me, that I can do nothing to change it. With all my gifts and all my free will, still there are things that no amount of fighting can change.

*shrugs*

Such is my lives. There is plenty of light blazes through them and through me. but there are still shadows from it of the things I cannot change. Especially when I come up against the free will choices of another soul. It's my own set of rules, how I sight my course of ethics to guide me through. The greater the powers, the greater the  chance of it corrupting you -- yet to retain your powers and for them to grow, you must prove the trust that has been placed in you and not let it corrupt you. The more you are given, the more peril there is for it to corrupt you, and the more careful you must be to not be corrupted by the ego and the venal and the lies that flatter you..... Otherwise, you'll fail your testing and you'll lose far more than you temporarily gained....  For me, I set my course and try to keep clearheaded in my ethics by two maxims: 1) Cleave to the truth, no matter how much it hurts or how ugly it is -- still never turn from the truth for the sake of the beautiful lie. Not even the ones you tell yourself that you wish to be true. truth is eternal and to be chosen no matter how difficult it is to accept. 2) Free will is sacrosanct. You can try to teach or sway another -- but whatever they choose of their own free will, must be accepted without any attempt to shift it from their choice by the use of gifts. Free will is sacrosanct and magic and gifts are NEVER to be used to enslave or shift or sway the free will of another. Never ever.

Those are my 2 rules that I use to guide me -- for thousands and thousands of years now. Cleave to the truth no matter how difficult the truth or tempting the beautiful lie and always respect the free will of every soul as sacrosanct as it is what guides the course of their lives and the lessons they must learn....  All else changes, all else is of the moment it's in then gone. But those two ethical core maxims can be trusted to guide you through anything -- no matter how difficult the battle you're fighting in any given life and no matter how heavy the price of the gifts weighs on you.

Still. I hate when I see things like a 15 year old who will kill herself in 4.5 months and nothing I can do to shift that even though I can see it.... It makes me wish I didn't hold myself to the two old rules and I'd allow myself to meddle and force people's free will to bend to mine for their own "good" like so many dark practitioners do (any magic that requires forcing another person's will to be enslaved to your own desires IS dark magic -- no matter how you've rationalized to yourself your reasons are good.) But I have the gifts I have because I'm trusted with them and pass my testings and don't let power or ego unduly corrupt me. And that is entirely because I'm so strict about these two rules and always have been.

*sigh* So it goes. So it goes... She'll have other lives and there must be some reason for the path she's on and the lessons she must learn (and that those who love her in this life must learn) for it.  Still. It's hard to know and not be able to alter course....

The gifts are what they are. And I do more good for the having of them than I ever have to suffer for the carrying them. I have more power in my little finger and a flareup of temper than your hippie witch in her life with her rituals and her blood magic that she doesn't know what she's truly tampering with. If you wish to learn and to grow in your gifts, study with the old souls who have been priestesses in more lives than you've ever even incarnated in. That's where the true knowledge and power is to be found. That is what I've been working on raising up in this time since Rome (which I vehemently fought against ever rising to feed like a locust and destroy this planet with its insatiable greed and colonial selfish taking.) Why did you think I ran away from my homelands, from Greece and France, to spend so many centuries in the great northern wild woodlands of "the new world" that Rome would never touch and its diseased basic premises wouldn't reach for at least 1500 years of building and instilling. Those who are grasping at the after shocks of what us old ones are doing know nothing -- especially if they've turned their back on the old souls and old priestesses who still walk among us. Calling yourself a witch doesn't give you any of the true gifts -- no more than attending white chick yoga retreats teaches you Hindu spirituality.

~*~*~*~*~

In happier news. I'm about halfway through season 2 of Anne With An E (the new CBC series, it's on Netflix as well.)  I adore it!!! It plays INCREDIBLY fast and loose with the storyline, but it's true to the soul of the novels and the time and the characters. And it's utterly gorgeous and sublime!!! So perfect for the crispness of fall!!!! I always associate Anne with the color and glory and crisp everything of fall -- the 8 books of the series are what I'd most likely bring to re-read while eating apples up in my red cedar tree every non-rainy afternoon after school til sunset..  (L.M Montgomery is one of my forever favorite authors of a million re-reads since I first learned to read when I was 4 -- skipped right over kids series like babysitters Club which I thought stupid. Went from picture books straight to Andrew Lang fairy tales and Edith Hamilton's Greek Mythology and L. M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott and Frances Hodgson Burnett and Laura Ingalls Wilder and adventure novels like Island of the Blue Dolphins and Julie of the Wolves - and of course completely free range through scifi and fantasy with some gentle nudges from my father and grandfather of works I HAD to read. I own and have read every book and short story L.M. Montgomery ever wrote, over and over and over and over -- she is one of my forever favorites and an author I reread whenever I need a pick me up.  I relate to her characters more than I relate to most modern girls.  I adore Anne, she's certainly a kindred spirit. But my favorite is Emily. Read the Emily of New Moon trilogy -- even if you're a grown man and think it well beneath you, read it. They're brimful of magic and wit and beauty and the eldritch and love.)

And tomorrow (today now) I'm taking my grandma to see her accountant about Richard's estate and taxes and getting her finances squared away now Richard has passed. And then we're going to lunch and then I'm taking her shopping at Trader Joe's -- it's one of her favorites to explore!!!

Later this week, on Fri night I'm headed to Chicago to see Aoife Scott (and her man Andy Meaney, also her guitarist and co-writer of her songs, lol) at the Chicago Irish Heritage Center. Then on Sat is Ian & Jane's wedding. Then on Sunday, back to Chicago to see Cathall's other band The Conifers -- but Cathall doesn't know yet. he was so sad at the prospect of not seeing us again til next summer (not even as Aoife's fiddle player when she's back stateside in April as he'll be in school finishing up his undergrad in music composition, music theory, and Irish language/literature) that after big hugs and orders to facebook befriend him, he ran to his bag and came back with 2 copies of each of The Conifers CDs as gifts for Crissy and me -- just for the joy and the smiles and the great conversations and the good craic over the summer and fest seasons. Anyway, because Ian & Jane's wedding means not going to Muskegon Irishfest this year and having to cancel all those plans, Cathall didn't think he'd see us again. but when we checked the schedule for The Conifers, they're playing Chicago right before they fly back to Ireland (he starts uni again next Tuesday.) so we're going to surprise him! And then nearly two weeks with nothing in the calendar but Packers games and meteor showers and moon phases!!  Nothing til heading up to Minneapolis to see Hawktail and then see Penny & Sparrow!  😁 (not going to get to see their Chi show on the Ginch tour since they scheduled it same night ad the only Hawktail show near me alllllll year!)

I'm also excited I'll get to see my banjo boys (3 of  the 4 are older than me, Dave is the only one younger than me) again this year, in Skokie in October!!!! It's the randomest thing that date -- they're just finishing up their Ireland tour and their home show in Galway and all. then off to Oregon and Alaska and a handful of October dates including Skokie again!!!!!  I'll see them in October and then not again til January per their tour schedule... Very much looking forward to that!!! Though it's on the other side of many many concerts and theater tickets and the joy of autumn!!! I love autumn -- the season is just so deliciously gorgeous and full of so many of my favorite seasonal things!!!!!!

O!!! And Aunt Geeta is coming to visit Oct 15-21 during the South East Asian Conference!!!!! She comes to Madison every year for it, but it's always exciting. (I still haven't visited their place since they moved to Charleston from Boston....though they're always trying to get me to visit...)  I'm so excited to see her!!! I love her so much!!!

O and these thunderstorms tonight!!!!! They're glorious!!!!! And bringing a few days back in the 80s before we return to our nights in the low 50s (even some in upper 40s) and days in the 60s that the last week or so has been!