Visionary Night

Depending on what time zone you're in, today may or may not be Ostara (or Mabon in the Southern hemisphere).   Where I am, the spring equinox started at 11:30 pm last night according to  archaeoastronomy , only a few hours after I finished the journal spread in the photo below. Around the equinoxes each year, I feel a strong connection to the plant spirits, since they are either emerging from the earth in a riot of color (spring) or going out in a blaze of glory (autumn) only to repeat the cycle again.   I often feel a strong desire to paint them.  This year, it wasn't a local tree or flower that captured my attention, but bamboo, a tree found on the other side of the world.  I was curious as to why I suddenly felt such a strong connection to bamboo when I hadn't really thought about it before (or realized it's actually a tree).  I did a general internet search to learn more about its symbolism and characteristics.  I was so inspired by what I learned that I wrote

If you've been following the blog posts so far this year, you probably know that I've been sick for the last 2 months or so.  It was very unexpected.  I didn't think it would be so hard to keep up with the blog posts, but I really needed that time to recuperate.  Thank you so much for your understanding. Today, I have three projects to share that you can use in your journal to document your spiritual life.  These aren't tutorials.  Unfortunately, I was still not feeling 100% when I created these pages, but I had to document the moment.  I thought I'd share some suggestions for things you can do in your journal in between the tutorials I post. »»»Page One: Expressive Trees: The page above was actually meant to be a tutorial for Imbolc that never happened.  It was inspired by a  YouTube video about expressive watercolor trees .  I figured that if a water brush can be used for this technique, then the brush tip of a Copic marker would work too.  I seem to as