Start the New Year off with INTENTION:
~Write down five goals
~Forgive Someone
~Express your Love
~Make a Vision Board
~Perform a Sacred Ceremony
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JANUARY
EARTH MAGIC ORACLE CARDS
EAGLE: Communion
"Whenever you experience a heartfelt communion with some physical expression of Life-plant, animal, human or anything else-it is only then that you can truly feel how your life force is similar to the life force that is all around you. It is only a matter of the differences in form."Order
Earth Magic Oracle Cards HERE.
Receive your FREE Online Reading with Dr. Farmer's Messages From Your Animal Spirit Guides oracle cards today.
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Power Animal
Oracle Cards
iPhone, iTouch or iPad
App
Power Animal Oracle Cards by Steven D. Farmer, Ph.D. is now available on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch through Oceanhouse Media and Hay House Publishing.
Stay tuned for the Messages From Your Animal Spirit Guides Oracle Cards
App coming soon!
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Dr. Farmer
Upcoming Events:
 Messages From Your Animal Spirit GuidesFriday, January 21st 7-9pm @ The Reiki Center Redondo Beach, CA To register go HERE How to give an Oracle Card ReadingFriday, February 11th 7-9pm @ Awakenings Center Laguna Hills, CA To register go HEREAdditional locations to look out for in 2011:
Seattle, WA
White Rock, BC
Atlanta, GA
Harker Heights, TX
Baltimore, MD
Nutley, NJ
Nanton, Alberta
For Details go
HERE
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Greetings!
Greetings from Laguna Beach, home of the floods of 2010!
Well we here in Laguna have recovered from the severe flooding and mudslides following the highest level of rain in over 100 years! Other parts of the country  have also endured record rains, snowstorms, and even a 4.2 earthquake in Indiana.
These kinds of events cause me to pause and consider the awesome power of Nature and how she just goes about doing her thing, adjusting the surface of the Earth through these various events. As well, I'm continually impressed with the indomitable human spirit and how we we're able to recover from Nature's seemingly capricious and destructive acts.
It strikes me that each of us in our personal stories can see these events as metaphors for the various challenges we've faced in our lives. I'm sure you can recall at least a few times when Life seemed to randomly throw unexpected calamities your way, ones that at the time seemed insurmountable, yet you faced them head on and not only triumphed through the adversity, but learned and grew from them.
At the time these unwelcome events made no sense, yet often when we look back on them we can discern God's hand in them and how they fit our soul's purpose. Relationships in particular, being our greatest spiritual teachers, create the opportunity to become aware of repetitive patterns of behavior that have their genesis in our ancestral influences and our soul's path. We become keenly aware of these patterns and come to know we have choice OR fall into repeating that pattern in other relationships, remaining unconscious to it. By remaining unaware, we typically then feel victimized by the events we find ourselves enshrouded in with the resultant denial of responsibility while placing blame on others for the circumstances.
So this coming year we all have the opportunity to assess not only our personal goals but also set the intention to even more closely examine those seemingly elusive and repetitive patterns we find ourselves in and take full responsibility for them. It's only with awareness that we can truly make clean and clear choices, though that awareness may come as a result of challenges you're facing.
May you all have a bountiful, loving, and peaceful 2011!
Love & Blessings,
Steven
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Ingredients for the Ceremony
By Dr. Steven Farmer (excerpted from Sacred Ceremony)
It's not necessary to use each and every one of these in any particular ceremony, and as you explore the use of these tools and procedures, you'll discover which ones fit best in the specific ceremony you're performing.
Altars
Designed to be the focal point of the ceremony, this altar is constructed just before its start. If the ceremony is performed in a circle, the altar goes in the middle. In any other arrangement, it should be set in a place that's clearly visible to participants, such as in front of the room if it's a larger group set up theater style. If you're doing the ceremony at home, you can make the already existing altar the focal point.
Set up your altar on a blanket or cloth. I have a special blanket that I use, and a "portable altar," one that contains what I need for ceremony. In a cloth backpack, I carry such things as a sage bundle, an earthen bowl, a vial for water, a feather, incense, a small cloth place-setting, a rattle, a crystal, and a bag of earth from El Santuario. I add things to this as the occasion demands. In a larger group, everyone can contribute to the construction of the altar.
As a rule, keep the altar simple but significant. Ideally, each piece that's placed on the altar should have some particular meaning, and perhaps a story attached to it. It's fun and useful when doing a group ceremony to ask each participant to make a contribution. Like the ceremony itself, even though there's a facilitator, everyone present contributes to creating the altar.
Invocation
This takes place just after the signal for the beginning of the ceremony. Through strong prayer, you're asking your spirit guides to be present for the course of the proceedings. It really doesn't matter who or what spirit beings you're calling. If it's a partisan group, then obviously you'd invoke the names of the deities that this particular group worships. For most groups, there are generic terms that can be used along with any sectarian names. There are a thousand names for the Creator, and probably ten times as many for any lesser deities. 
Terms such as Great Spirit, Creator, or God seem to be universally acceptable. Ancient peoples believed that Spirit expresses itself in many forms, that the world is alive and animated by this Life Force. Many indigenous peoples don't just believe that the world is alive, they know it in their heart of hearts, and relate to the world accordingly. Even the pre-Christian Celtic tribes treated the world around them with respect for the life force that animated each and every member of the plant, animal, and mineral kingdom. The invocation can also be through sound and rhythm, such as rattling and singing or drumming.
Prayer
The invocation itself can be a simple prayer, and there can also be prayer at other points during the ceremony. Prayer can be carried out in any of the more familiar forms, with hands positioned in any one of the universal and cross-cultural prayer gestures called mudras, or it can be through a song or chant. It's useful to have specific prayers in the ceremony, particularly near the beginning or at the end of the ceremony.
Breath
We're a culture of shallow breathers. Unless you do some specific type of meditation that incorporates conscious breathing, it's likely you neglect to breathe fully and deeply. Plus, we tend to be so caught up in the intensity and pace of contemporary life that we literally forget to breathe, and as a result, we carry around a lot of tension that could be eased by conscious breathing.
A meditative discipline that has become increasingly popular, and which I highly recommend, is yoga. It's a very ancient spiritual practice that encompasses the mind, body, and spirit, and works with the breath through meditation and various postures, or asanas. It's become increasingly recognized in the Western world as a discipline that promotes greater health and well-being. While doing the various postures, students are coached to continue their breathing throughout, to release muscle tension gradually by letting it go as they exhale, while gently stretching into the posture.
There are instances of consciously using breath in the ceremonial context: One example is in a ceremony of release, where a stone or other natural object has "agreed" to take with it some characteristic of yours that you no longer wish to have. Let's say I want to release my fear of public speaking. In the context of ceremony, with your breath, build up the feeling of that fear, holding the stone in your left hand. Then, with that strong breath now filled with the fear, exhale your fear into the stone. The stone now filled with the energy of your fear is buried in the earth or released into a body of water.
Ceremonial Trance
You know that sleepy, daydreamy kind of feeling when you're listening to a boring lecture or reading a boring textbook? Or that grogginess when you first wake up or that relaxed feeling you experience just before going to sleep? All of these are trance states. When meditating, we go into a trance. The main distinctions are the form and the depth.
We associate very deep states of trance with hypnosis, meditation, and deeper forms of relaxation. Ceremonial trance can vary from mild to a very deep altered state of consciousness. Participating in ceremony takes you out of ordinary time and space, into what can be called archaic time. This is often described as a sense of timelessness. I have participants take off their watches to encourage the involvement into non-ordinary dimensions of time and space.
Rhythm, movement, chanting, singing, storytelling, praying, and silence can all induce a rather pleasing altered state of consciousness. When all the participants are in unison in any of these, it further encourages this ceremonial trance. All the elements and activities that occur within sacred ceremony combine to touch into a deep race consciousness, a mythological domain that stimulates this trance state. It can literally make you swoon, and often can induce a rapturous, ecstatic state.
Symbols
Symbols are those objects that carry both personal and archetypal meaning. An object becomes a symbol when it's imbued with personal meaning. It's not the object itself so much as what it means, or symbolizes, to the individual. Another characteristic of symbols is their archetypal significance. Archetypes are those prototypical characteristics of a symbol that have universal and cross-cultural meaning. For instance, the archetypes of mother, magician, princess, or king typically have distinctive cultural articulations, yet the fundamental qualities in each of these are in our species-consciousness and are common to all humans.
 Within any personal or cultural symbols, we'll find archetypal meaning. The concrete symbols we use-a stone, a feather, a bowl of water, a candle-touch an instinctively familiar chord for everyone. These symbols may be used in ceremony for the Four Elements, and you may find some slight variation of each of these whether attending a ceremony in Nepal or in your backyard. As you prepare the ceremony, consider what symbols would be appropriate for the ceremony, in addition to the four elements.
The Four Elements
The four basic elements of earth, air, fire, and water should be represented in ceremony. You can use the actual elements or symbols of these elements. The obvious exception is air, which you can symbolize with a feather. A stone or bit of earth itself can be the element earth. Since the earth from El Santuario has been such a valuable asset in my healing work, I'll often place this on the ceremonial altar. A vial of water or a seashell will do as the representation of water, and most often a candle will represent fire. These powerful and basic symbols are profoundly familiar to everyone present, whether or not they have an awareness of their potent symbology. They're the basic stuff of which all life is made.
The Four Directions
To each of the four directions-east, south, west and north-there are attributed certain characteristics. When you're honoring these directions at the opening of a ceremony, you're honoring the spirits of each direction, as well as perhaps invoking their assistance for some matter. There are various meanings and qualities attributed to each of these directions, depending on the interpretations of any particular tradition.
Offerings
An offering is anything that you give up to Spirit. In the feast that often follows a group ceremony, food is first taken outside and offered to the spirits. During a ceremony, another type of offering is to place one's sacred objects on the altar. Because the altar holds the spiritual focus and is imbued with spiritual power, once these objects are taken back, they're then similarly imbued with this spiritual power.
Food as an offering can have two purposes. Placed on the ceremonial altar before the ceremony is initiated, it's then considered to be endowed with the blessings of the gods. When the ceremony is completed, typically the food is then placed somewhere out of doors as an offering to the spirits. Sometimes the remainder of the food is shared among the participants.
For more articles written by Dr. Steven Farmer - Go HERE.
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"Dear Doc" - Email your questions about Spirituality Animal Spirit Guides, Shamanism, Soul Healing, Earth Magic or everyday issues... and If we pick your question, you could be featured in Dr. Steven Farmer's next newsletter!
Email your submission HERE.
Dear Doc,
I have been seeing many symbols of mammoths and mammoth tusks recently. I can't seem to find any information regarding mammoths as a spirit animal in your cards or books or even on google for that matter. Can you please provide some interpretation on what the message could be from this extinct animal? SincerelyJenni
Dear Jenni,That one is a rather unusual spirit animal, but still fits as an animal spirit guide. Mammoth is about digging out old stuff, material, emotional, etc., and releasing it. Apparently you still have lots of attachments to things that are actually "extinct." It's also related to the contemporary version, Elephant, which suggests you can overcome any of the seeming obstacles that are in your path right now. You're feeling weighted down by all the old stuff, so a good time to release it would be a full moon ceremony, where you write out what you want to release, pray, burn the paper, and thank all the spirit guides who help you do this, including Grandmother Moon.
Many Blessings,
Steven
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