Introducing Eleni Nicholas
Strega Tree is proud and honored to introduce the most recent addition to our team of diviners: Eleni Nicholas.
Eleni is a joyful, compassionate and wise woman who brings years of immersion and training in spiritual work to her role as a diviner. Read more about Eleni below and if you are local and you want to meet her sooner rather than later, come to the Winter Witches’ Market in Santa Rosa this Saturday December 18 where she will be offering 20 minute divinations for $30. Find the Strega Tree Apothecary Booth and we will direct you to her. Read more about the market at the bottom of this post. To contact Eleni go here.
Finding a Connection to Bear
One of the amazing gifts of tending to the Dagara lineage is that its tools and listening technologies are allowing our community to tap into the wisdom of this land that we live on. This land in California is vastly different from Africa, so it would make sense that a new language might develop along with some different shrines to the beings of this land. We have been nudged, ever onward by our guides to begin the journey of connecting to a spirit elder of the First people of the land here.
Leaning into a Philosophy of Divination
Ursula K. Le Guin’s popular and beloved novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, is an amazing book for many reasons but what caught my imagination in a very personal way is a form of divination, called “Foretelling” in the novel, and the wisdom brought forth by Le Guin in the scenes and characters portraying this practice.
Read a full post on The Left Hand of Darkness here.
The foretelling takes place in the land of the Fastnesses: The land of the Foretellers and the tradition of the Handdarata. The Handdara is described as, “a religion without institution, without priests, without hierarchy, without vows, without creed: I am still unable to say whether it has a God or not. It is elusive. It is always somewhere else. Its only fixed manifestation is in the Fastnesses, retreats to which people may retire and spend the night or a lifetime”(54-55).
In rituals of intensely heightened sexual energy, nine Foretellers create a web of charged connectedness, then listen for an answer to the question they have been presented. It is an enormously expensive undertaking for both parties. Those who ask must pay a lot because those who are the Foretellers expend large amounts of their life force in the process.
The main recipient in the group listening ritual is the “weaver.” In an astoundingly profound passage, the weaver explains that for Foretellers, the nature of the question is extremely important. “The more qualified and limited the question, the more exact the answer… Vagueness breeds vagueness. And some questions of course are not answerable”(60).
Full Moon Release and Renew Ritual
This ritual will walk you through a release of what is no longer serving you. This ritual is designed to help you shed excess that you have been carrying around. You will need:
A bowl of water –glass bowls are preferred but not mandatory
A small crystal that you do not mind giving away
Some flower petals