Here is a brief background as to why and how Stir the Cauldron came to be.

First a little bit about me. I am Lady Rose, 52 years young, happily married for over 16 years (to Teacherman), and mom to an awesome daughter (Angelgirl, age 12). I have been a practicing wiccan for over 30 years; working first with a group for many years, then running my own circle for about a decade as well as doing lectures are various college campuses, and then working as a solitary. For many reasons (life going completely choatic) I pulled away from all things wiccan and occult for about 10 years, but now in the past couple years I have been slowly working my back to actively working on my spiritual path once again.

As part of that process of recovering from a decade of stress, getting back to the "real" me and continuing my spiritual learning and growth, for the past two years I've been co-authoring a blog with my best friend and heart-sister, Mama Kelly, at 2 Witches Blog.

Recently for the past few months, I have been consciously "open" to signs of where to look for the next step in my journey of spiritual growth, and have felt for a long time that on and off at certain periods in my life that I have been "guided" in many ways. My "gut" feelings kept drawing me back to the need to learn more about making a deeper more concrete connection with my spirit guide.

I totally believe everyone (or almost everyone) has a guide or guardian angel or "higher self" or something (more on that subject at another time) -- but at the same time I take everything occult and paranormal with a large grain of salt. I have come to the point in my life that I am working around that "boulder size grain" of salt, and striving towards a deeper understanding of the connection and contacting in a more concrete way with my spirit guide. For me, I've always felt the Tarot were an excellant tool to use for opening the connection and getting messages from spiritual guides through doing readings.

The contact or inspiration I have had with my guide (or guides) over the years (for the moment suspending my doubts and setting aside thoughts that I'm just imagining things) so far have been mostly through dreams, extremely strong urges and "gut" feelings to do something, "coincidences" and "signs" in response to a need or deep emotional cry for help and at times when I'm consciously open to moving ahead on my spiritual journey, and also through tarot readings.

At the Spring Equinox this past March, I was doing some cleansing and mediating to make way for a new beginning and "asking for a sign" of what to do next. I woke in the middle of the night with the idea to start a blog about Tarot. At the time I resisted because I already have my hands full with other blogs and felt that I couldn't deal with yet another one and figured the "urge" would pass. However, the "urge" was persistant to the point of keeping me awake and my brain spinning with ideas, as well as my desire to study and work with the Tarot again was so strong it bordered on being obsessive (which was surprising because 15 years ago I gave up reading Tarot because my original deck had several cards damaged - more about that in a later post). Finally I accepted that the "urge" wasn't going to let me sleep or do anything else until I put my fingers to the keyboard and created Stir the Cauldron.

I accepted that perhaps the "urge" and the dramatically rekindled interest in my tarot collection and reading tarot again was a way for me to channel the energy that was coming through from a guide and that it was most likely a "sign" that it is part of my spiritual journey.

I gave up "control" and said to who ever it was that was inspiring or "urging" its creation that if it wanted it done, then it would have to help out because I didn't have the time or energy and a packed schedule already.

Whether it is my subconscious desire to own every Tarot deck ever made (or at least all the ones I like), or I've just lost my marbles, or there is "higher" spiritual influence of some kind behind the creation of Stir the Cauldron will probably always remain a mystery. BUT it was one of the easiest blogs I ever started, everything seemed to flow and fall into place from finding the perfect blogger theme to coming up with cute titles for the sidebar widgets and some very cool links - the blog felt like it was "creating" itself (of course sleep deprivation does funny things to the brain). As it took shape, I "felt" a calmness and a sense of a greater purpose surrounding me, and I "knew" that the creation of Stir the Cauldron was much more then just to have another blog and more then just an excuse to buy more tarot cards for my collection.

The biggest "sign," however, that whatever is at work behind Stir the Cauldron is more then "just" me or my insanity, is that my original damaged tarot deck - that I was unable to find in that printing for 15 years - has been replaced out of the blue.

That my friends is a tale for another night.

I don't know how Stir the Cauldron will evolve and grow, but I do know it will be an interesting journey. I look forward to sharing it with all of you, because the one thing that I do "know" is that Stir the Cauldron was created for you.

Bright Blessings, Lady Rose, (co-author of 2 Witches Blog and founder of Diet Pulpit)

Related Post:
One Card Reading (communicating with the Spirit Guide that inspired creation of Stir the Cauldron)