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One of the key components in shamanism is learning to see patterns in the world around us and draw parallels between those moments and our own spiritual and personal growth.
All Around Us
ManifestationDecember 27, 2007
"Raptor's Breakfast" - photographed in Salem, Oregon (December 7, 2007)
There are numerous approaches to creating change through magickal means. In sympathetic magick, we parallel what we're trying to create, such as eating a feast in the midst of winter, the bounty of our table mirroring the bounty of the harvest and hunt we hope to receive in the coming year. Through spellwork, we seek to intentionally alter the flow around us by interacting directly with the energetic strings of reality. We create tools and talismans, whisper wishes and prayers, and entrust our intent and desires to the four elements.
And then there is the simple art of manifestation.
At its heart is the concept of bringing what you speak to life. It's really no more radical or involved than that. I've needed a menu for a Chinese restaurant, only to watch the object fall from the sky and land at my feet. Finances materialize when we need them, teachers appear when we're ready, and the blessings in our personal lives, whether they're a new job, a new child, or a new lover, come along not necessarily when we first ask, but when the moment fits perfectly in the flow of our world.
That's the key, not only behind manifestation magick, but behind magick of all kinds - it appears not when we ask, but when it fits into our lives. Those of us who have used spellwork to bend the flow of reality to our will know that the result follows its own timetable, not our own. And while there are rules and concepts involved in that process (almost certainly a topic for an upcoming article or lesson) the thing we're asking for manifests when it causes the least amount of dissonance with our spirit.
The photograph above is an example of manifestation. I'd been hoping to take a picture of a hawk for years. The raptors are found throughout the valley I live in and I see them almost daily, perched on fence posts and street lights as my commute takes me through a long stretch of a farm country. Coming back from our Thanksgiving weekend with Otter and her family, I saw a hawk perched on a piece of irrigation equipment and thought, "I really want to have the chance to photograph a hawk." But with the kids in the car, pulling a trailer on a country road without a shoulder, I knew that it wasn't the time to stop.
About a week later, one of my co-workers ran into my cubicle. "Do you have your camera with you? There's a hawk right outside in one of the trees!" She was a smoker and had spotted the bird of prey carrying its breakfast into a nearby tree. I grabbed my camera and found the hawk, calmly eating in a tree right outside my office door. Camera in hand, I took nearly over four hundred photographs of the bird, almost as if it was posing for me.
"In Flight" - photographed in Salem, Oregon (December 7, 2007)
After approximately twenty minutes, I knew that I needed to head back into the office and prepared to leave. As if on cue, the hawk abandoned the rest of its meal, hopped up onto a nearby tree limb and cleaned its breakfast from its beak. Moments later it took to wing, flying off to parts unknown.
No one in my office has seen it since.