
Then, he tried exposing water to spoken words, thoughts, different types of music and sounds and then looked at their ice crystals … and the results were staggering. What he discovered was that water is alive and capable of aligning itself with the consciousness of human beings – which is to say, in so many words, that that glass of water most people pay absolutely no attention to, other than as a sure-fire method of quenching thirst, is capable of loving you. I’m telling you, I will never look at water the same way again after this book. It was truly a consciousness-altering read. In fact, I immediately began to sing songs and gratitude to my glasses of water before I drank them! It was apparently on the New York Times Best Seller list for a while, too.
The book had such an impact on me I immediately considered methods of water collection for my new home – to make certain I was watering indoor plants with rain water and not fluorinated water – and because, unlike some poor homeowners out west, New Hampshire has no restrictions against collecting rainwater on your own property. I also remembered that the home inspection had turned up an unused but possibly serviceable well on the property … which might be worthwhile investigating further.
The next object I’m going to try for my visualization homework is a container of water! (I know, I’ve lost my marbles. Go ahead, you can say it. But really, read the book before you judge!)
Meanwhile, on the train, I had begun to re-read Christopher Penczak’s The Plant Spirit Familiar. He had written of apprenticing to a (for want of a better term) green witch who had taught him valuable information on the recognition of, planting, gathering of herbs and flowers to use in potions, tinctures and other magickal mixtures. Since he’s from the Massachusetts-New Hampshire area, I wondered who he was referring to.
I can tell you at least one challenge I’m having to face this lifetime: learning to react to the loss of critically important things without panicking. Example: we just got a snowstorm Saturday. I’m estimating 6-7 inches. Went outside on Sunday to dig out my car in preparation for today. So I have my set of car/house in my gloved hand as I manually wiped off the back window and trunk top so that I could open the trunk and get the shovel out. When I finished, I no longer had the keys and had forgotten that I had been holding them. I just know I had no keys.

Like everyone else, I started calling for St. Anthony. I have no idea, now that I think of it, how St. Anthony got associated with lost things, but he did, so he’s the first spirit you call on*. I got out of the car again and started kicking away the snow near the driver’s side door, thinking I’d dropped them. I couldn’t figure out how I could have dropped them without hearing them fall – they should have jangled when they fell and I’d heard nothing.
Finally – after a good 10 minutes of bewilderment, confusion and the start of a panic mode, I remembered my “pulling things from the Quantum Sea” success I mentioned in a previous post.
I got back in the car, sat very still for a few moments and then, using the trigger, sent myself into a light meditative state and visualized reaching into the Quantum Sea and retrieving my keys. Then I spoke to the keys directly, asking them to make a sound that I could hear.
Then I walked slowly around the car, brushing aside snow with my foot as I went. Near my rear right tire, I kicked at a mound of snow and – sure enough – heard a jingle. The thing that was weird about this area of snow was that it hadn’t been touched before. The area was still white and flat and looked for all the world like no one had moved it, shoveled it, or buried snow from elsewhere on top of it. There was no indentation in the surface to indicate that something had fallen into it. In fact, just before I brushed it aside with my foot, I distinctly thought, “This snow is untouched, but I’ll try it anyway.” That’s when I heard the jingle.
How an entire set of keys on a key ring fell into this untouched snow without making a mark or a sound seemed almost ... well, magickal. When I described the incident to my long-time bus companions the next morning (leaving out the part about the Quantum Sea), one of them – a physicist - used the exact same word: “sounds like magic.” Which is what made me think that the incident was part of a learning episode. I still experienced a few minutes of upset before trying the Quantum Sea, so I suspect I still need to learn to go for the Quantum Sea immediately, rather than later. But it was a memorable experience.
*Note: I went and looked it up. Apparently a novitiate in St. Anthony’s order stole his psalter and left the monastery. Anthony initiated an intense prayer session asking it be returned, and the novitiate suddenly turned around, returned to the monastery and returned it to him. Hence Anthony’s association with the finder of lost or stolen things.

Just breathe, girl. Calm down. BREATHE. Calm down. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Okay, I’ve lost any sense of calm I once had. Pardon me for a moment while I tell his record company – or whoever runs their web site and asked for my e-mail address which raised false expectations of actually being notified about anything - what I think of them.