Last night I had my first mentoring meeting with Cedar and I think it went really well. She sent me an agenda and we managed to cover it all, including the planning of a very cool full moon ritual on Friday that I am really looking forward to. This year we are working with the Arthurian legend, particularly the Ladies of the Lake (our reference for this is Caitlin Matthews “Ladies of the Lake” appropriately enough), and this month’s lady is Argante.

Friday night our ritual intention is “Magickally empowered, we nurture our vision.” So the ritual revolves around that, with an aspecting of Argante that I have volunteered to do and a trance to the Underworld to find more about our personal vision. It ties in with a class we had earlier this week and also connects to last month’s ritual where we gave birth to our hero self. Now we are finding our quest.

I volunteered for the aspecting and trance leading. It will be pushing a growing edge for me, but I’m up for it. Jasmine’s death has deepened my awareness of so many spiritual things. The cycle of death and rebirth is more than a metaphor for me now. Many things we do — like building an altar — have become more intensely spiritual. Even sayings like “Merry Meet, Merry Part and Merry Meet Again” have taken on new meaning. So aspecting Argante, who stands at the doorway of the Underworld, between this world and the next, feels in many ways like what I’m doing right now anyway. Aside from shepherding Jasmine through the gate, I feel as if I am also standing at a gateway between the Before Jasmine world and the After Jasmine world. It is a painful place to be, but again, a place that helps me to consider my quest, my journey.

It is interesting to me that so many of the things I chose to work on this year are just the right things for me to work with in the aftermath of Jasmine’s crossing.

The other things Cedar and I spoke of are the web — our website (http://www.prairiefirecoven.org) is good, but we want to expand on its outreach abilities. Cedar is taking this on as a community leadership project for this year and I am so glad to have someone else with web interests and abilities. We also talked about the organizing mentorship specifically. I told her I would need to do some work too because most of the time organizing is intuitive for me. We set a regular meeting for this and also for belly dancing, which she and I have discussed doing together for some time. We also both have drumming goals, so maybe we can work on them at the same time we dance. Hm…