I have been writing about an upcoming
Speaking with Stones workshop in Edmonton, Alberta where I will be teaching my way of talking to stone teachers. But what is a stone teacher? And how do we know we have one? This
shamanic painting titled
Blue Rain is a portrait of my stone teacher and my story with it will give insight to these questions.
Stone teachers find us more than we find them. For me this often means that something about the stone captures my attention when I am not looking to be captured. I also find that quite spontaneously I try to give away the stone in a significant way only to find that it comes back to me in a way completely unexpected. In the stories that accompany my
Journey Oracle cards, I wrote about this stone teacher in a story titled
Giving Away what is Dearest to the Heart. If you have my
Oracle card deck it is story
#27.
A stone teacher wants a house. This might be a pouch or a basket, a small jar or an egg cup filled with powdered incense. Any sort of container might be appropriate; and again it seems that the stone itself shows me in some intuitive or dream like way--what to make or arrange.
My stone teacher treats my attention as a kind of food. and the time we spend together in ceremony nourishes it as well as me. Once a week I give the O'Kocho'la a special song while holding it in smoke, and a story while wetting it with spirits, and I sprinkle
vibhuti into each mouth of its 6 faces. The discipline of caring for a stone teacher is the tuition I pay for being able to receive its teaching.
