Episode Sixty-Two: The Interview - Wendy Rule

Wendy is a Witch. Born in Australia, she connects with the natural world in a profound way. In this longer interview hear how whether it's the juniper tree that saved her from sliding into oncoming traffic or the ghosts she sees regularly, magic is everywhere.

Transcript

I want to thank everybody who's made it this far to episode 62 of Bite-Sized Blessings. It is truly a labor of love. But I do want to apologize. I know that sometimes I post on Sundays. This past week I posted the episode on a Thursday. I'm trying to find my rhythm with this. And more than likely it's going to continue this way. There are some times on the weekends where I have opportunities I just don't want to miss. And I do promise there will be a new episode every week. This podcast started amidst the pandemic. I wanted to bring some light and some hope to the world. And probably because I grew up overseas with children from all over the world and got to see many parts of the world that others don't have the privilege of seeing. I've always been interested in creating spaces where those of differing viewpoints, Different religions, Different cultures can come together, Share stories, And find a common area where everyone can relate. This podcast is meant to do just that. It is meant to be ecumenical, Expansive, And create dialogue between those who might otherwise disagree. In this episode, I get to interview Wendy Rule, Who self-identifies as a witch. For an idea of just who she is, Visit her Instagram page, At wendyrule. And that's R-U-L-E. Her Instagram is full of ruminations on the full moons, The new moons, And everything in between. With joyful happenings. With photos of her gorgeous New Mexico backyard. Her Instagram feed is a lovely reminder of just how beautiful this world is. With that being said, Here is episode 62 of Bite-Sized Blessings. And we were even in a car accident once on the I-80, Which where we hit black ice up kind of beyond Salt Lake City. And we were sliding across, You know, It's a huge road, Oncoming huge trucks. We would have slid right across to the other side of the road to oncoming traffic, Except a big old juniper tree, The only one for a long way, Just one tree. Just we just glided straight into it. And it went, Here you go, I'll hold you and saved our lives. So the first question I ask everybody is, You know, How do you self-describe? Who are you as a human being? If you were to go to a party or go to an event where nobody knows you, How would you introduce yourself? Who are you? Well, I'm Wendy. I'm originally from Australia, Now living in Las Vegas, New Mexico. I'm a Scorpio. I guess I describe myself as a witch and a nature lover and believer in magic. And I guess that's what being a witch for me is. Everyone has, Every witch has their own definition of that. I think for me, It's about being in the flow with nature, Trying to stay aware of the interconnectedness of everything in the universe and then weaving my own energy, Energy through that in the best way that I can. So, Oh, And of course I'm a musician. I forgot about that one. Were you kind of aware of the natural world as a child? Was it something that you resonated with? How did this, How did this sympathy with nature come about? I was hyper aware of my connection with the natural world when I was a kid. Before I knew any labels or even anything about magic. Now this might sound a bit woo woo, But I really could communicate with like fairies when I was younger. And my mom was very accommodating and she'd talk about my imaginary friends, But they really weren't. Like now the further I go in my connection with the universe, I realized, Well, I was just connecting in with the spirits of nature, You know, And giving them a bit of a human form. But essentially that energy was just there. As a kid, I could trance out very easily. Like I could trip essentially. And I didn't realize this until I actually did first have a trip, Not until my thirties on magic mushrooms. And I realized, Hang on a minute. I was kind of scared that, You know, That I'd lose my mind if I, If I trip because I was already kind of out there. And then I'm thinking, Oh, Hang on. I've been doing this since I was a kid, Since forever. I've just been trancing out and going off on journeys. And yeah, It felt like incredibly natural, Natural to me. So one of my ways of connecting with that world of nature was singing, But very privately, Not my singing wasn't to do with performing. It was just opening up, Just being in the flow, Spontaneous, Making little, Little melodies up, Singing little words, You know, So it kind of makes sense. That's what I do now, But in a more, I guess, More conscious and structured form, I guess I kind of have that desire on some level to get back to the level of connectedness that I had as a child. Like I, Maybe we all do, But I really felt like the veil was incredibly thin. You said that your mom kind of encouraged it. So do you think that either of your parents kind of had this affinity with nature or is it genetic in any way? Your mom? I think I did hear too, That her mom read tea leaves, Which I found out kind of later in life. I mean, I think, I think just being part of the universe is we all have a birthright to that access to magic. I don't necessarily subscribe to the kind of like, It gives you more validity to have a, To have a genetic line. I think maybe it gives you more opportunity and more support. Mom was never out, You know, She was never like, I'm a witch or she was never, She probably didn't even know about it to tell you the truth, You know, But she was pretty out there. She was hilarious. And she also just loved nature. And so we just had a really shared love of, As a little girl, I remember her taking me for walks in the neighborhood and telling me all the names of the flowers and, You know, We'd pick bouquets of flowers, We'd make little fairy gardens. And she had a very, A very mystical sense to her and otherworldly sense to her. Yeah. In Australia, Obviously, Because it sounds like you grew up in Australia, Did you grow up in a religious household? What did that look like for your family? It was very low key Christian Protestant. So started out as Presbyterian and then because of the low numbers at that point in Australia, The Presbyterian and Methodist churches combined to create the uniting church, Which ends up now being the most liberal of the Christian churches in Australia. So anyway, Mom and dad, They were, They would go to church and stuff like when they were like, Definitely not very formalized by the time the time our family came around, We'd do church at Christmas and Easter. And sometimes mom would go through kind of a religious fervency. And then we'd go to church every Sunday for six weeks. And then she'd decide that maybe just pancakes and sleeping in was a better option. So I guess I got it, I got enough introduction to kind of be able to be relatively fluent in that language of Christianity without any of the biases and restrictions and guilts and all that stuff that is often the downside. But I also, I felt a religious or not a religious, But a spiritual calling from as a young child. And, You know, I didn't have any access to even think about alternative spiritualities or Eastern spiritualities or anything like that. I didn't know about them. The only thing that I knew about was this church that we had just a little bit to do with, You know, At one point, I think I was about 12. I was really craving, Like spiritual growth, Obviously, And I actually enrolled myself in Sunday school. And I was the only one of my sisters who did it. And I'd go along and you know, And often it was craft things. I'd come home and I'd make altars to Jesus and Mary, But now they really don't look very different to my witchy altars. It's the same thing. All spirits one, So. I feel like I got enough of an insight to kind of know what ritual was. But when I was actually in my 20s, Early 20s, And I met my first husband, Bob, And fell in love, And I felt a great sense of that wonderful epiphany that you get when falling in love with your heart opens. And it is a spiritual awakening in so many ways. I felt a need to really go on the spiritual path. And I didn't know what I'd like. I kind of read up on a bit of Eastern stuff, But that wasn't going to really work for me because I'm very much of the physical world and anything transcendental. But anything that denied the processes of the body, I didn't know about Tantra back then. But, You know, Anything that was about you have to move away from this world just never felt right for me, You know. Anyway, So I did this weird thing, Which I look back on now and think, OK, That's what I did. I spent a year studying every week with the Jesuit priest from our local Catholic church. And it was wonderful. I was also I was also I was doing my literature degree at the time, So I was very outspoken. And if I if I read something conflicting in the Bible, I'd go, Oh, What does this mean? This is what just this is ridiculous. Why did this happen? He'd go, Hey, Wendy, It's OK. It's symbolic. It's symbolic. You don't have to take it literally. You know, So I did a year of that and actually got christened or baptized or whatever you call it as a Catholic. And I think really what I was after was ritual and the ritual, The Catholic rituals are incredibly successful. You like that. They really know what they're doing with all the clothes and beautiful churches. And, You know, It really works. And then that led me to witchcraft. I found a mother, Mary, Who I loved and because, You know, In the Protestant church, You don't really hear much about her except at Christmas. And so I found Mother Mary and I already knew the mythology of so many different goddesses as story. And then all these goddesses that I that I knew, Like Demeter or Persephone or Aphrodite, They all came to life. They all actually were like, Oh, They're just as real as Mary is. I kind of just gently moved away from Catholicism into witchcraft and into paganism and learnt a lot about ritual from the church. But yeah, You know, It's a strange little development. I guess I would love to know how you define magic. What does that mean to you? Well, Magic is to me being in the flow. I guess it's like, You know, When you have different wavelengths of music, Maybe two violins are playing the same note. Or what happens is those two wavelengths join together. They entrain, You know, And then they amplify each other. So I think it's about somehow sinking in and in training, Finding entrainment with the vibration of the world around you. So being in that flow, Being open to it, But also kind of directing, Directing that flow as well using thought, Mind, Word, Gesture, All those kinds of things and directing it for a positive outcome. And for me, It's always for the good of all and according to the free will of all, It's a mysterious thing, Magic, It really is. But you know it when you're experiencing it. I have to say that I completely understand your what you're talking about with flow, Because I've had that experience multiple times in my life. And it's, It's so hard to describe because it almost feels otherworldly. It feels like your vibration has been taken up to this level that is outside of our reality, Outside of our time, And what's happening here. And it's like riding a sled down a hill, You just go with it. And I mean, It's really beautiful. It feels so good. But then when you drop out of it, It can be kind of depressing. It can be, But I think the more that you do it, You're just in that state, A lot more often. You know, For me, My easiest way to get into that state is go for a walk in nature or just go hang out with a tree or do some gardening or something. For other people, It might be dancing or cooking or lovemaking or whatever it might be. But it's about being in the zone. And then I think it's a series of conscious actions that direct that, Yeah, That direct that flow, Amplify the things in your life that you want to amplify and then move your energy away from those things that you're finding less agreeable or harmful. I don't really get that feeling of depression anymore from when I'm not in that state, Maybe just because I've been doing it for so long. But I do notice it's very palpable when I go through periods of time again where I'm back in the flow. You know it. And it also it's creative, Too. When I'm in the flow of magic, I'm also writing songs. You know, It just feels like everything's a bit easier. You're going with the flow of the river rather than swimming upstream. I realize it's a bit hard to find a story. I do have one, But I have two actually. But mostly all those miracles happen in a very subtle way. I'll be in need of something and then I'll find it and it will present itself in an unlikely way. You know, I'll be thinking about a book and then there it is in a thrift store the next day. You know, That kind of thing. That's just all the time. That's just what my life is like. Even finding this beautiful house that we're living in up here. It was just a lovely series of coincidences or serendipity. And I think part of the part of the lesson in magic is take heed of them. Be present enough to be reading the universe. Omens are everywhere. Just take it in and trust and also just send a message out to the universe and and be open to receiving the gifts that come. You know, In your 20s often it's a kind of cynical time. You're sort of you know, It can often be very rational. And so maybe I was going through a period like that, But it was in my 20s. But I started having this series of precognitive dreams and nothing big would happen. It wouldn't be like, Oh, A great thing's going to happen and whatever. It would just be these visions that I'd see and then I'd see them in the physical world a day or two later. So one example, I was living in Melbourne and out the front in my little garden, Little city garden, There's one of those lilies that comes up. In Australia, They're called Easter lilies. One of these had grown in my front garden. And because I was aware of everything that came up in the front garden and it was so noticeable, So fragrant, So beautiful, I was incredibly in tune with it, You know, Watching its development, Watching as the bud opened. And then I went to bed the very day it really fully opened. I went to bed and that night I've always been a big dreamer and can remember dreams pretty well. So I'm in the middle of a dream and then just a flash image came of this lily snapped in half. Right. And I'm like, What's that? You know, I woke up the next day and I'm remembering my dreams and like, Oh, Yeah, A picture of the lily. I go out to the front garden, It snapped in half. So then what that taught me was all is not as it seems. Everything isn't rational. Time isn't linear because I saw something that occurred in the future. So that really taught me that time isn't linear, That that's a complete illusion, Which we now know from, You know, Science and Einstein and all that kind of stuff, You know, That, Oh, Don't just rely on your the limitations of your physical senses. There's a whole other universe out there that we don't understand. We don't necessarily have to understand, But it opened my mind maybe at the point I needed just to be shown magic, Magic, You know, Just here it is. For many, Many years had an affinity with the juniper tree, And when Tim and I met in Portland, I was playing at well, I was actually performing at the Oregon Country Fair. Are you familiar with the Oregon Country Fair? Yeah, That's where we met. And he was working there. He was on the building crew and I was performing and that's where we met. You know, We fell in love and everything was lovely. And I was performing on the community stage and whilst I was singing, He was sitting down by the side of the stage and he was weaving a little love charm, Which was taking a needle and thread and making a little necklace out of juniper berries. And I didn't really I wasn't really that aware of juniper berries. But anyway, I still got that necklace. That was 2007 that we met. And then I wrote a song on, Wow, My album Black Snake, Which came out in 2016 called Juniper and it was a love song for the two of us. And it was has the line and we'll build a home in the juniper trees. And it's exactly what we've done. We've built our home and we're on four and a half acres of pretty much just juniper trees. And I think, Wow, He called that in, You know, And and we were even in a home. In a car accident once on the I-80, Which where we hit black ice up kind of beyond Salt Lake City. And we were sliding across, You know, It's a huge road on coming huge trucks. We would have slid right across to the other side of the road to oncoming traffic, Except a big old juniper tree, The only one for a long way. Just one tree. Just we just glided straight into it and it went, Here you go. I'll hold you and saved our lives. So, You know, This connection with particular plants, Juniper is a really big one for me. I was just reading last night that if you start talking to your plants and having conversations with them, Real conversations, They'll feel heard and they'll start communicating back. That's what this healer in Puerto Rico says. So it was on my first trip to Mexico, I was traveling with my son. My son is now twenty nine. We're in the town called Merida and I was very much a tourist. I didn't know anything. Didn't speak any Spanish, Nothing like that. And we were going out and about and going to all the remote pyramid kind of sacred structures. Around that area. So I went to one of these places and it was actually up along the Guatemalan border. It was really remote. I remember doing 60 kilometers along a really rutted dirt road to get to it. And at that point, Maybe not now, You were able to climb up and get to the top of this pyramid all overgrown. So I went up there and the day before I had learnt just the names of the gods that relate to the four elements. I don't remember them now. I stood on top of that pyramid and I wasn't trying to do any magic or anything like that. I just thought I will pay my respects to the gods of this land. And I turned to each cardinal direction and I kind of curtsied or something and said, You know, I acknowledge and I honor you and I know that I'm here on your land and thank you for welcoming me. That's it. That was that. I went back to town and the next day I met there was a Mayan man wandering around and he was selling cigars. And I thought, Yeah, I'll buy some cigars. Why not? So I bought some cigars and he said, Oh, You're my first customer of the day. And he gave a blessing and I've been working for hours and no one's bought anything and la la la. And we began talking and then he brought out this photo album of him and he's a Mayan priest. And he invited me the next day. He said, We're having a ceremony tomorrow. Come to the ceremony in the square. So from two days before I was I was honoring the gods on top of the pyramid. Two days later, I was in the main square of Merida, The only tourist, The only non indigenous person in the ceremony blowing a freaking conch shell and being part of it. It's like I opened myself to the gods of the land and then the priest, He was the one doing this annual ceremony through a series of also just being open and being kind and seeing that this guy needed some support. He was selling this stuff. Why not support him? That this beautiful flow that just led me there. And part of it was just being kind and being open and letting magic flow, Being, Being, Being willing to be there at the right time and right place. You know, Your first story about having the dream about the flower. I think I had one of those dreams when I was in high school and you know, I woke up and I thought, Oh my gosh, That's never going to happen. And I've talked about it in another podcast, So I won't go into it here. Then it came true a year later and it was, So it blew my mind and I wrote about it in my diary and then I forgot about all that for a while. And then I was probably in my late twenties, Early thirties. And one night I had this dream about this blouse that was fabulous. It was so fabulous and simple and rustic and so cool. In a week later, An old neighbor, When I went to go visit my mother in Illinois, Came and brought me the exact blouse. Exactly. And I thought, Okay. And I think we have those dreams because I mean, Something in us is, Is either saying, Hey, Wake up. There's more to this than you understand and realize. And by the way, It's time to embrace it and maybe do some work so that you can get more in the flow or understand more of this reality that we're in. It's that's right. But it took a couple knocks on my door for me to start paying attention. I mean, Thank goodness spirit or the universe that magic doesn't give up on us. No, It never does. It never does. It's just like the flow is always there. It's just about dropping into it. You know, I don't want to create the illusion that I'm always in this state of magical connection. I'm not, But I just also have cranky days and days when I just feel like disconnected and or full of despair or whatever. But for me, It's always helpful just to do whatever I need to do to reconnect with nature. Nature's always my gateway, You know, Whatever that might be hiking or even watching a nature doco or something like that. It's just about coming back into that zone of remembering the incredible miracle that we're part of. It's about opening up and remembering that we are spirit, That spirit isn't something outside of us that in my in my view anyway, That spirit is everything. It's not even a spirits within everything. Matter is spirit as well. It's not separate in my in my worldview anyway. So recognizing and remembering that we're not separate from this great miracle. We're not separate from the stars. We're not separate from the flowers. We are them, You know, It's all part of the one thing and the more that we the more that we recognize that, Then the more that that magic can flow. And yeah, I think these kind of things like those precognitive dreams or a wake up calls are just like, Hey, Hey, Don't forget. This is a miracle. Don't think everything has to be logical. Don't be limited by your physical senses. I have seen ghosts. There's no doubt about that. I've had some good experiences with ghosts, Especially in that old house I lived in in Melbourne. I used to see an old just a man who an old guy could just often stand at the end of the bed and, You know, Kind of started out creeping me out. But then it didn't. And and I used to run witchcraft workshops in my house in Melbourne. And there's one girl there. I don't really count myself a psychic. I don't know what I am, You know, But there's one girl there who really was psychic. Like she just saw and heard a lot of things that the rest of us aren't seeing and hearing. And during one of these lessons, She got up and we were in the front room that used to be my bedroom where this ghost man used to sometimes appear. She got up to use the bathroom and she came back, Walked down the hall and came back and she said, You know, You've got an old man standing down down the hall there, Don't you? And I'm like, Yeah, Yeah, I've met him. He's cool. He's fine. It's like I hadn't mentioned anything. And she specifically said, Old man. I had a scary experience of a ghost like entity when I was in my house in Santa Fe, Where I woke up really terrified. It like it. And I really felt that person, Right? Like it wasn't a wasn't a pleasant experience. And like I was really shaken afterwards, Which is incredibly rare for me. I never have nightmares or anything like that. It was weird. But I think the land itself, Like I was saying before, Before we started the interview that when I was living in Santa Fe, I would hike every single morning and and and I would connect deeply with the land. And now I'm here in Las Vegas. I'm doing the same. I'm wanting to know every tree. I'm wanting to explore the details. You know, I often sign up, Sign off all my emails, You know, Love and magic, Wendy. And to me, That's it. They're kind of just so intertwined. It's that that same feeling of recognizing what's love other than opening your heart and recognizing the other in yourself and then extend that out to the cosmos. And and that's magic to me. Right about now, I'm usually thanking you for listening to Bite Sized Blessings. But this time I'm going to do something a little different. I'd like to ask you to consider rating and reviewing the podcast wherever you find it, Whether it's Apple, Spotify, Stitcher or Amazon Music. Please consider leaving a rating or review. It helps others find us. And now back to your regularly scheduled programing. Thank you for listening to Episode 62 of Bite Sized Blessings, The podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us. If only we open our eyes to it. I'd like to thank my talented and lovely guest today, Wendy Ruhl, For sharing all of her stories with me, As well as the creators of the music used. Alexander Nakarada, Chilled Music, Music L. Files, Raphael Crux and Sasha End. For complete attribution, Please go to the Bite Sized Blessings website at BiteSizedBlessings. Com. On the website, You'll find links to books, Music, Magic and miracles I think will lift and inspire you. Thank you for listening. And here's my one request. Be like Wendy. Find your flow and then use that flow to connect to not only your own magic, But the magic that's all around you.