by Trysh Ashby-Rolls –
No bones about it, I’m a sceptic. If things go wrong and my New Age friends suggest I light a candle, I wonder what good that will do. When I mention needing a futon but funds are low, they say: “Manifest one.” Huh?
A futon arrives at my door. By coincidence. It must be.
Authors for Indies is a one-day event when authors support independent book stores. At Talisman Bookstore and Gallery on Pender Island, a thriving and fun place to visit, owner Melanie Chernyk leads me to a velvet-draped table where I am to demonstrate The Heart’s Journey: Healing Heart Oracle Cards & Guidebook. Its author, Megan Edge, is a Master Healer, intuitive counsellor and educator from Victoria, a woman who combs beaches, tromps forests searching for wild mushrooms, and lives with her partner, two daughters and a dog called Frankie.
Inside her prettily decorated box is a journal, guidebook, bookmark, matching pen and a small box containing 42 decorated cards with messages. “Used together these tools give you everything you need to navigate and heal the relationships in your life.” Really?
Edge writes candidly of her own journey through the landscape of the heart. How she went through a painful marriage break-up will be familiar to anyone who’s ever acted as if in the perfect relationship, yet inside held deep unhappiness. She knew her path was “fraught with danger and full of the unknown.” If only a signpost would appear, she thought. “And then I began to see them: hearts. Everywhere. Especially when doubt, regret or pain overwhelmed me for the choices I knew I had to make.” She photographed each heart, keeping them to herself for years, only later making them into the cards.
My reading is interrupted by a young woman interested in picking a card. She pulls Heart Space. “The perfect card,” she exclaims. Today she is literally in retreat on this Island, taking space without telling anyone where she’s gone.
A steady stream of people begins. Heart Thoughts elicits the response, “Intriguing. Right on. I love the set.” She wants to buy it but can’t think who for. “Why not for you?” I ask. “Yes!” She tells me how she has a bowl filled with heart-shaped stones she collected from the beaches when her life, too, was at a low ebb.
A mother and daughter are next. The daughter gets Embedded Heart and looks sad. Mother picks Ancient Heart and a flash of recognition crosses her face. But neither woman is telling. The following person tells me her card is “frighteningly spot on.” A man who’s just been talking about cataract surgery with two friends, receives Rainbow Heart containing the word “vision” – not once but twice. Another woman gets Heart Space. “Ooh yes,” she says, amazed. Getting Hidden Heart the next person reveals, “That’s pretty good.” And the mother of a 40-something son says she has to talk with him. “Something’s going on, but I have to find the right moment.” Her card is Mother Heart.
I try a card and get Wounded Heart Healing. Megan Edge’s “favourite sceptic,” as she calls me, has been feeling old wounds of the heart closing over for a while. Mere coincidence? I don’t know. Yet the experience of meeting people apparently empowered by, or mirrored in, the cards’ messages gets me thinking. Perhaps it’s time for a little more faith.
The Heart’s Journey by Megan Edge, published by Balboa Press (a division of Hay House), is available from www.psy-chick.net, via online retailers or at your favourite bookstore.
