The Ring

Many people know the lore of using a ring to determine a baby's sex. You hold the wedding ring by a thread over the stomach of the pregnant woman and depending on the way it sways, you can "tell" the sex of the unborn child. If the ring goes in circles, you're expecting a baby boy. If the ring goes side to side you are expecting a girl according to this old wives tale.

This is similar to using a pendulum to get yes no answers to questions. Sounds a little witchy, huh?  Some people believe its a means of communicating with the spirit world and therefore questionable in its safety. But although my mother had a BAN on Ouija boards, she did sometimes dabble with the ring.

There are different ways to interpret the swinging ring for yes and no questions. Some believe that North to South is yes and East to West is no. Others think that counter clockwise is yes and clockwise is no. We always read the ring as back and forth being yes and if the ring moved in a circle it meant no.

As a card The Ring will be interpreted as possible confusion, indecision, seeking answers, as an indicator in the reading of a need for clarification of the issue or question. It might suggest that there is something that is hidden. The ring may also represent a connection to someone who has passed on or a message from them.

Working on the Cards

I woke up this morning with this urge to get to work on The Journey/Silent Woods cards. It hardly seems a "pressing" matter but I decided to add a couple cards to the deck today.  I have the Ouija board image ready and will adhere it to the card later.  I'd like to add two more cards today but I'm not sure which ones. The photo above shows the cards I have created so far.

 

I'm going to pencil in the card names on each card and therefore even without the images I can start reading with it!  I'm sure its much more exciting with the images but for some reason I am anxious to read with it. NOW.

 

I'll pop back in later with more details!

Roots, Robbers, and Living

I wanted to post today on The Silent Woods, not just because it's my day of the week to post but because I've been thinking a lot about history and family and things that only make sense to people who lived them with you.


My sister is quite ill and it brings about the stark realization that time is fleeting and if one isn't careful there comes a point in time in life where no one truly "gets" exactly what you're saying. Not having lived it there is no way that one can nod in understanding.


I totally remember the time there was a "robber" or at least someone traipsing around the farm late at night and my mom sat up all night with her pistol on her lap and we laughed about her shooting a mouse if it ran across the floor. She was a woman to be reckoned with. No one would "get" the absolute picture of this situation without having lived on the desolate farm, alone most nights as my dad worked second shift.


We were talking at the hospital yesterday how people didn't used to have "text" relationships. Heck, back then we didn't have a phone let alone text messaging. In some ways it was a whole lot easier. If you needed to talk to someone, you went and found them and had a face to face conversation.


The girls and I went by the hospital the day after Christmas and it still makes me smile thinking of Shirley bursting into song when we were making fun of her crazy talk....


" You may be right
I may be crazy
But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for
Turn out the light
Don't try to save me
You may be wrong for all I know
But you may be right"


Kelsey promptly came home and ordered a Billy Joel record with the song on it to play on her new record player that she got for Christmas. Again, having "lived" it with someone (the hospital episode) made it all the more meaningful. For years to come, no one will really "get it" when we decide to belt out that single verse and laugh at our craziness!


I'm rambling and feeling a little melancholy. In the end though we all just want to say we did the best we could to live this life. At the end of a dusty road full of pot holds, perhaps the farm made life all that more special. 

Seeking the Right Questions

I was thinking today about the past, about the house, the lane with bramble bushes hiding things that made noise in the grass, the lights, the opening doors. All of it. I was wondering what did it all mean and will I ever have the answers? Then it dawned on me that maybe I really shouldn't be seeking answers, perhaps I should be seeking the right questions to ask. After all, aren't questions what define our knowledge base.

Bear with me while I ramble on a bit about this because it's just an newly born idea. One I haven't had a lot of time to ponder.

So let's say instead of asking what was lurking behind the bramble bushes? and where did it come from? perhaps the question should be What was the thing behind the bramble bushes here for?

What it was and where it came from will probably never be known. What was it here for?   It lurked there several times just out of sight. Moving with a person as they walked the lonely lane, giving the impression that it might pounce at any time. Yet it NEVER did. Was it because we were swift and fearful or was it because it's purpose never was to pounce?  Or was it perhaps that the other oddities on the farm kept us safe?  Was it about us at all or some hidden agenda between forces that we could never define or control?

I've written before that perhaps it wasn't "supernatural" at all but perhaps a blurring of two realities. Or a place where the veils between two worlds thinned and bled into each other at times. I do admit though that the thing behind the bramble bushes struck fear in my heart where many of the other things never did. And so that brings up another question: Why? It didn't happen "inside" the house whereas many other things did. You would think those would be more worrisome, inside a home where I slept.

All of these are good questions to ponder. And what if we had dared to jump boldly through the bushes to confront the thing on the other side? What would have happened then? Perhaps after all these years, the thing on the other side of the bushes was a missed opportunity.

Seekers, Destroyers and Disbelievers

There's a lot I think about, from back in the day, from when the dusty road that led to the farm was not only a means of travel but also a means of connection. Connection to a life outside of the weird, the troubled, and the oddities that plagued our own personal world.

It doesn't surprise me that people scoff at the strange or perhaps some might say the paranormal. I've often talked before about not knowing for sure whether the events on the farm were really paranormal or some other manifestation. One thing I do know though, is it was not simple imagination. That's usually the "go to" thing for disbelievers, an over active imagination. Yeah, right. My imagination created lights, and opening doors and visions of a little old woman.

Disbelievers are simply not informed (through no fault of their own) or closed people. People who have perhaps never observed anything remotely close to unexplainable events. They rely on science or their own strong closed belief system which does not open doors to the kinds of things that lurk in the silent woods or on the haunted farm. If one never acknowledges them then they do not exist. There can be protection in this approach. For when one looks deep into the eyes of something...anything....that thing is looking back into your eyes. You open yourself to it and that can be dangerous.

Oh, if I could have lived as a disbeliever, I might have very well done so. Disbelievers never spend any time wondering, or questioning, or figuring out what lurks behind the bramble bushes of the lane. They don't have to. I didn't really have that option as there were just far too many things to "look the other way."

Now some disbelievers, (and actually some believers) can be destroyers. What are destroyers? They are those that "influence" things so much that the thin line between survival and crazy gets pushed just a little too much. Destroyers destroy the safety net that has been so carefully constructed so that one can survive in a slightly crazy, always unpredictable world. Some mean well, they attempt to guide or influence and in the process end up making one question their own sanity. That's why we seldom openly discussed the bizarre nature of our home place.

Believers that are destroyers are those that push in the opposite way. They want to know details, the want to "live" what you are living, they become obsessed with your experiences and in doing so they push you deeper into the chaos. Sometimes it's hard to find your way out. Balance is always necessary when you are walking a thin line.

Then there are seekers. Seekers work to understand without immersing themselves in it to the point of "crazy". Again balance is key and a certain sense of holding onto normalcy. Seekers are seeking for information, understanding, for plausible explanations. They close the door on no possibility and in doing that they create an energy flow of connections. I never had a seeker in my life. I wish I had because as time passed there were so many times a objective sounding board would have been a good idea. But I am a seeker, a historical seeker, weaving together folklore, observations, readings, family tales and anecdotal evidence in an effort to comprehend that which seems incomprehensible.

Card: The Ouija Board

 

 

So here's a piece of advice my mother always gave me and I've lived by it. "Never use a Ouija board". Now she gave me this little tip long before the Exorcist became a major movie, or any of the other 101 movies aired that had a Ouija board as the crux of the storyline. It was before the internet put thousands of hits on the word and before a Ouija board even became something almost everybody knew of.  It was sage advice, wise advice born of what I consider common sense. Some call it superstition but when you live the daily oddities that we did you never really questioned, you simply understood, the underlying message: "Its better not to tempt things."

 

I remember once when my youngest daughter was about 12 and we were in a toy store and she picked up a box containing a Ouija board and said she was going to use some of her money to buy it. I about freaked out and she had no idea why. Later outside the store I explained what her Grandma Annie, whom she never knew had said about such things. They open doors that are often best left closed.

 

There are those that scoff at such "nonsense" and I certainly understand. When I access my logical, well educated and "modern" mind set I understand. But there is something primitive about the experiences I've had, a darker underlying sense of understanding that others cannot access. It is on that instinct I rely.

 

We've used other forms of communication, cautiously. I even remember a séance of sorts. Currently I own some dowsing rods. What's the difference some ask. I'm not quite sure but there is a difference. That I know. Perhaps its because the dowsing rods offer a basic yes no form of communication whereas the Ouija board itself opens up the communication to a level where evil could twist the words and messages.

 

As a card the Ouija board warns of danger or possible danger. It also represents things perhaps best left alone. It speaks of a primal fear. This is definitely a card that would send energy through a reading and depending on the other cards on either side of it could forewarn of evil intent.

 

 

 



The Music Box

 

So today I want to tell the story of the music box card.  The picture above isn't a picture of the actual music box but it is almost identical.  The story of the music box happened long after I moved away from the haunted farm and the silent woods.

 

It was March in the year of  1993 just a couple months after my sister, Connie passed away quite unexpectedly. My niece Christy was getting married and I had stepped in to try and help with things, as her mother would have, One of the things I planned was the rehearsal dinner in the basement of the church.

 

I had gotten home, tired but satisfied that the dinner had been nice. I was walking around my bedroom preparing for bed while my husband was in the living room. I was thinking that I was pleased with how things went when suddenly I chastened myself because I was feeling good about things while my sister had not been around to enjoy the moments of her daughters wedding rehearsal.

 

 As I am thinking this I reach my hand up and switch off the bedroom light. Immediately I hear a sort of twisting or winding sound and as I stand puzzled, I reach for the light switch. As I turn the light on the music begins to play from the jewelry box/music box on my dresser.

 

I walked over to examine it and as I touched it, it stopped playing. I picked it up, puzzled and turned the knob on the back. Yes the same "winding" noise I had heard only minutes earlier. I knew that it was a message, a message from my sister, saying that it was "ok" to be happy about the evening. I told my husband what had happened and then calmly went to bed, which is not like me at all. I'm usually jumpy around things of this sort. Yet I knew I had nothing to fear.

 

The next day I tried to experiment with different things to see if I could "make" the same thing happen again. The music box stating to play. I set the door of the box slightly ajar as I walked across the room. I pulled the drawer out. I walked softly. I stomped across the floor. Nothing recreated the music and most definitely nothing could recreate the fact that the box had to wind itself up before it could play the music.

 

The music box cards represents messages, reassurance and comfort.