Sometimes the most important things are hidden in plain sight…
As a mystical being (with my 19-49 Channel of Synthesis being the root of The Mystical Way), I don’t remember I time when I wasn’t on the spiritual path. Somehow, even though I grew up in a small town in Western Kentucky, I was blessed by the most amazing parents who supported & empowered me on the path.
My mother, a mystic herself with the 51-25 Channel of Initiation, was always talking about the fairies in the garden. After going to Barbara Brennan’s Hands of Light conference when I was in elementary school, she came home to teach me about how to sense & work with invisible energies.
My father, a true Sagittarius, studied Metaphysics in college, was a member of the Theosophical Society, and worked intimately with a Lakota Medicine Man for many years, even taking us to the Reservation when I was in middle school when he did one of his many Vision Quests. In 2021, he sent me all of his volumes of Helena Blavatsky’s works (The Secret Doctrine & Isis Unveiled), his books on Theosophical Symbolism, and his textbook & notes from his studies in Metaphysics (I was so stoked!).
Growing up around Native American Spirituality (in addition to my Episcopal faith & Catholic School education), I did my first Vision Quest (that also resourced Jungian Psychology & dream work) when I was 22. Over the years, I became interested in Western Astrology, Indian Spirituality (through yoga, Ayurveda, and Jyotisha, Hindu Astrology), Chinese Medicine (I was a practicing Acupuncturist in San Francisco), and Amazonian Spirituality (I mentored with an Ayahuascero for over a year).
However, of all the spiritual traditions I’ve worked with, the symbolism of the Qabalah & the Tarot have spoken to me in the deepest & most profound ways.
I was first formally introduced to the tarot in 2007 through the Thoth Tarot (or Crowley Tarot) that my then boyfriend had been gifted in a used bookstore. It was through him that I also became familiar with the works of Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune.
After that relationship ended, I still felt called to work with the cards, and became fascinated by the imagery on them. Diving deeper, I found that the Qabalistic symbolism on them pulled on my psyche in a way I hadn’t experienced before. I began amassing quite a collection of books & literature on the Qabalah & Ceremonial Magick.
The first vision I had about the Qabalah, was during a massage from a friend in 2013. In the vision, my roommate (who was Jewish) texted me a single Hebrew letter. I had seen the letters on the bottom of the tarot cards, but hadn’t looked at them very closely, so this felt quite strange. Later, when I looked up the letter, it was Gimel ג, which is connected to the tarot card of the Priestess, which took me down a whole rabbit hole.
Later, another friend who was also Jewish knew that I was into the Qabalah and invited me to go to Shabbat Dinner. The Rabbi was around my age & I had a wonderful time with him & his family, and ended up going back for several months. We would often end up sitting around the table until the wee hours of the morning, talking about religion & philosophy.
Then one night I had the most interesting dream… I dreamt that I was at Shabbat dinner, but it was after everyone had left. I was floating above the table, looking down. The plates had been cleared, but the wine glasses were still on the table; most of them still had a bit of wine inside. From my perspective above the table, the wine glasses appeared to be arranged in the pattern of the Tree of Life, and looking directly down at them, they resembled the image of the 10 of Disks in the tarot pack.
Moshi (the Rabbi) was there, sitting at the table, leaning back in his chair with his ankle crossed over his other knee. He knew I was there, floating above him, and he knew what I was seeing (the 10 of Disks). He looked up at me and said, “No, need to come down here. You have to look at it this way.”
I floated down to where he was to look at the table again from his perspective. Now the wine glasses looked more like wine glasses (instead of disks), and appeared to resemble the image of the 10 of Cups in the tarot pack.
Not long after this, I was walking home and crossed in front of the JCC (Jewish Community Center) as I always did. But this time, Moshi was standing outside with some friends. I couldn’t believe it, and after greeting him, I told him I’d had a dream about him recently. He invited me inside for the celebration of his son’s birth, and I had dinner with him & his wife, telling them about the dream. Afterwards, Moshi suggested that I get the book “The Practical Kabbalah Guidebook” – which of course, I immediately went home and ordered.
From this book, I learned many things, and even sat out to construct my own Ladder of Light (made up of several images of the Tree of Life) and studied the different expressions of the Tree in the different worlds on the Ladder. I continued to work with the Tarot cards, even offering readings at one point. Even as my interests drifted to other things, I always kept them within arms reach. They would always find a way to bring me messages even if I wasn’t working with them directly – one time a Hebrew letter even appeared on on of my orchids! (This time it was the letter Daleth ד, which corresponds to The Empress card, which is coincidentally the card after The Priestess).
In 2019, I found Isis Indriya and saw she was working with the Qabalah. At this time, she was only offering classes in person in Nevada City, and I reached out asking if she ever taught online (she didn’t). But then covid happened, and she began teaching online!
I did several classes with her (Egyptian Cosmology & the Serpent Path – highly recommend), and when she opened up an online option for the Apprenticeship through the Academy of Oracle Arts in 2021, I knew this was my next step. I was so excited to have a group of fellow explorers of the Qabalah, as well as a human teacher (after having studied on my own for so many years).
After the first immersion, I dreamt of walking the path between the spheres of Malkuth and Yesod on the Tree of Life, as if I were walking down the hall inside a temple.
It was around this time, that I also found out about the correspondences between the 22 amino acids in the human genome (which are connected to the hexagrams of the Chinese I Ching – Book of Changes in Human Design/Gene Keys), and the 22 Hebrew letters (which are connected to the Tarot cards & the paths on the Tree of Life).
On a cold morning in February 2022, my brain couldn’t contain the connections & correspondences between all of these different systems anymore, and I printed out all of the charts & notes and taped them on the wall in my office. I have continued to do this practice, each time adding more connections, in all of the last 3 houses I’ve lived in.
For the past 18 years, my journey with the Qabalah & the Tarot has felt deeply personal, and it never occurred to me that it would one day weave itself into my professional work. Until now…
I really do feel Dion Fortune was on to something in 1934 when she wrote “The logical method of the Qabalah is the logical method of dream association; but in the case of the Qabalah the dreamer is the racial subconsciousness…” (I shared more on Fortune’s perspective on the value of Western Esotericism for Westerners and the Kabbalah as the root of the Christian Mysteries in this article here).
After working deeply in spiritual traditions that are not of my own culture or lineage for many years, I have found that it is the symbolism of the Western Esoteric tradition (Qabalah & Tarot) that has been able to penetrate my psyche and work deep within my Subconscious in ways that other spiritual traditions have not been able to touch.
It is for this reason that I am so honored and excited to bring forth the offering of Prismatic Perspective.
I thought I was going to create something that would be braiding together Astrology, Human Design, and the Gene Keys, which was going to be called The 3-Way Mirror (a metaphor I’ve often used to describe working with these 3 systems together).
However, when I returned from (one of) my ancestral homeland of France, my work & experience with the Qabalah & the Tarot jumped to the forefront.
Now we are no longer braiding; we are weaving a beautiful tapestry. We are no longer looking into a 3-way mirror, but have entered inside the prism itself! From this perspective, we can see so much more.
If you grew up with stories of Greek Mythology or Christianity, but you’re not called to go back to the Church, and yet you find yourself longing for a spiritual system that feels more authentic & practical for you as a Westerner, you are invited to join us for Prismatic Perspective. As of this writing, 9 spaces remain. 💎✨
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Thank you so much for taking the time to read this article. I’m so loving long-form posts as an antidote to the culture of distraction we are currently steeped in.
Rakai’el
*AI free zone. Everything on this page was written by me. If you see any mistakes, they are genuinely human, and the result of my Receptive Mind (I can’t see the details). I hope you enjoy!
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