10/17/21: The Forest Speaks to Us

OCTOBER 17, 2021 (Note: the date seems so much later than what I recall. I thought these sessions started towards the end of 2020)

Today we went to Memorial Park by Pescadero, a place we often call the “Fairy Tale Forest” because it’s very pretty and magical feeling. One thing we like about this park is its large amount of secluded picnic tables and the way it’s relatively uncrowded. It’s easy to get a picnic table surrounded by redwoods and hidden from the rest of the park, and then we can write, draw, whatever for long periods of time. It’s a perfect place to work on magical projects, and I’ve drafted many sigil targets there and even drawn them with paint pen on card stock.

Today we were discussing our goal from about this time last year: abundant optionality. I had some ideas on how to refocus on this goal. In short:

• Make it more of a relationship so that it’s regularly added to, refined, etc. For instance, doing a sigil shoal every couple of weeks that focus on abundant optionality as it’s currently manifesting in my life, and how I want it to unfold in the near future
• Bringing in spirit allies to help us go from the obvious path (which is to buy a home but then have less optionality because of a large mortgage) to a less obvious but more desirable path (buying a home we love and not being saddled with giant mortgage, getting sufficient income that doesn’t rely on jobs or welfare, etc.)
• Focusing on improving health, which will increase the options of where we can live and what we can do

We were talking about this, along with some thoughts around magical theory and community. I read Dave something that Brother Richard wrote recently in the Strange Familiars Discord. It was about blessings vs. cleansings in the Catholic tradition, and specific places you might want to “smudge” (not a term he used but that’s pretty much what he was saying). One thing that popped up was the concept of blessings being a way to make the home a conduit to the divine. He said this is really the natural state of everything, and that if you are in a blessed state then lower level negative entities can’t invade.

After awhile, Dave had an urge to use the spirit box. It wasn’t exactly an Estes Method session because he couldn’t block out my voice with the cheap headphones we had available, but actually that might have helped anchor him in a coherent conversation.

What he got was:

• We are the forest
• Thanks for the treats (I had made a casual offering of a bit of an Epic Bar and mushroom jerky I was eating, mainly because I’d seen a squirrel in the area and realized we’d frightened it away)
• The date (October 17th) but it wasn’t said as a phrase but rather “17” and I repeated it, and then it said “October”
• It said something about me being the most experienced on (something) and healthcare
• It kept repeating phrases about “home” and “your house” and played phrases of “Major Tom Coming Home” by Peter Schilling, which not only matched the theme but has special personal meaning to Dave and me
• It said words like protection, protect, secure the perimeter. When I asked if we needed special protection from something, it said, “Around the Bay Area” which made me think no, it’s just good to have protection at your home.
• It said “fire” a few times but I didn’t get anything more than that – did not get the feeling of a warning, for instance.
• It said “dirt” a couple of times and was urging me to look below, at the ground, etc.

Eventually we got the picture that “the forest” was urging us to take some dirt home with us. I asked how much and it said 500 milligrams. Dave had the impression that it wasn’t an exact amount, just an indicator of a small amount. It said, “Like your brother said!” and this puzzled me because my brother is estranged and hadn’t said anything. Then Dave realized it meant Brother Richard and his advice around blessings.

The forest was saying to take home some dirt, place it around the perimeter of our home, and we could then have, in essence, a forest blessing or a conduit to the energy of the forest.

The other impression we got is that it recognized us as people who gave it “treats”, communicated with a box, and did protection magic.

So we got some dirt and will probably place it in vials at the corners of our home, and have one for indoor use. Which is a pretty wild conclusion to come to from bits of radio talk, but that’s how the Estes Method works.

A few new observations:

• I wish I had recorded the session
• Dave specifically had the sensation that he should use the spirit box, which suggests that we may want to pay more attention to those compulsions when they come up
• Offerings matter! I now want to consider them in more detail. Again, it’s part of establishing a relationship. I have never done them much because I don’t often understand how a physical object could possibly be valued by a spirit outside the material world. But clearly it did matter.
• It was listening to us talk long before we had the idea to get the spirit box out.

Dave adds “The only thing I can think of to add is that I was trying to say something at one point in our conversation and suddenly got distracted by the impression of a unicorn made out of branches in the tree and bushes behind you.”

[ETA on 5/8/22: about a month later, we did a sadly unrecorded session that left Dave with the strong impression that it needed to be scattered in the yard, not put into vials, which is where we had them. So we scattered the dirt in the yard on 41st Ave instead, front and back.]