#Creativity

Ix-Chel (Lady of the Rainbow) was worshiped by the Mayans of the Yucatan Peninsula on Cozumel, her sacred island. The Moon/Snake Goddess gives abundance by holding the sacred womb jar upside down so that the waters of creation can always flow. Ish-Chel also controls weaving, magic, health and healing, sexuality, water and fertility. The dragonfly is her special animal. When she was nearly killed by her own grandfather for becoming the Sun's lover, the dragonfly sang over her until she recovered.

What does the Goddess teach?

Ish-Chel will come into your life to tell you that the time has come for creation. It's time to fan the flames and let your creative energy flow freely. Create! Go for it! But also be responsible and conscious, whether your creations are works of art or works of the flesh (children). Creativity nourishes us, creativity transforms your tears into your life force, creativity heals. It is our birthright and our lifeblood, it makes us healthy and happy. We women have the ability to create: we give birth to children. So, find time, make time, create time for creativity. Beat a drum, paint a picture, make pottery, put on your dancing shoes, write a story, explore your sexuality - celebrate your own creativity. Create what works for you. Let nothing stop you.

Do you feel like you can't create because you're not as good at it as someone else? Are your children, your partner, your family, your job blocking your creativity? Stop wasting your creativity looking for reasons why not to create. Ish-Chel says that integrity is enriched when you are open to your creativity and create.

Goddess Ritual: "The Creative Web of Ish-Chel"

Find a time and place where no one or anything will disturb you. You can do this simply before bed. Light a candle and open a sacred space. Sit or lie comfortably on the bed, with your back straight and close your eyes. Take a deep breath and exhale slowly through your mouth without making a sound. Take another deep breath and imagine how all the tension, stress of body/mind/soul leaves you in the form of steam and disappears. Allow yourself to relax deeply. In this state of relaxation, feel, feel or imagine that the atoms in your body are vibrating. Now spread this feeling to your bed. The bed is made of atoms, and they vibrate, they dance. Allow yourself to become one with your bed, just molecules of vibrating energy. Continue: now this feeling spreads to your room, your house or apartment, then to your city. Each time you expand this sensation, you feel how all other energies become one mass of a vibrating field.

Expand your awareness to an entire city or state, to an entire country, to an entire hemisphere, to an entire planet. Everything becomes pure vibrating energy. Now you are part of this energy vibrating in solar system. You feel, feel, see yourself as part of the vibrating energy in the energetic web called the Universe. Stay in this place as long as necessary.

When you are ready, you will feel what you want to create. Feel it as brightly as possible. What do you want to create? Is this a new house? Another career? Painting, music composition, book, ceramics, theater, relationships? Create it responsibly and consciously. Feel the new strand: your creation is added to the energy of the web. Then surround it with energy and release it.

When travelers from Spain P. Hernans and A. Roquero arrived in Guatemala, they expected to find here only the remains of an ancient folk tradition. Indeed, in our time, factory-made fabrics and chemical dyes are increasingly displacing from the market what craftsmen have done by hand for centuries. Pilar Hernans talks about this in the Spanish magazine “Los Aventureros”: “Until now, an Indian craftswoman can make almost all clothes on an ancient machine. It serves for years, but if it breaks, it’s not difficult to make: the whole structure consists of a few sticks. True, if you complicate the pattern, then the number of parts will have to be increased. The warp threads are stretched between the top and bottom strips. The upper one is secured to a branch, ceiling or wall of the house, and the lower strap is held on the weaver's waist or hips. Now the warp threads are divided into even and odd - and the shuttle goes to warp.

An ancient Mayan manuscript kept in the Museum of the Americas in Madrid depicts the goddess Ix-Chel. Strap loom girdles the goddess, who holds a shuttle in her hand. Ish-Chel, the moon goddess and patroness of weaving, is busy with a craft familiar to Indian women. The drawing is about five centuries old, but long before its appearance, and today in the Indian communities of Guatemala, women still sort through threads, coming up with patterns. Every time - new.

On such a loom you can weave everything - from simple linen to brocade. It is not difficult to work on it, and it is easy to move from place to place. In pre-Lumba times they wove from white and brown cotton yarn, from agave and yucca fibers. Later wool and silk were used.

For centuries, the weaver composed the dyes, spun the yarn, and dyed it herself. Dyes were found everywhere - both plant and animal origin, and mineral. The most famous dye is indigo, from a tropical shrub that produces blue and blue tones; from the cactus aphid - cochineal - they get red and purple; from logwood - purple and black. In some places in Guatemala there are still artisans who make paints according to the recipes of their ancestors.”

But let's return to our days. The yarn is in front of the weaver, the machine is set up, the skeins of thread are selected according to colors, shades, and thickness. Every village, every family loves fabrics with their own designs, passed down from grandmothers and great-grandmothers. The tones of the changing sky and the greenery of the surrounding meadows, the reflections of the evening lights. And the patterns on the fabric have meaning: they mean rain and lightning, a hurricane, corn. A variety of animal ornaments are popular: stylized turkeys, ducks, eagles, jaguars. And there are absolutely countless geometric images.

Not only every village, but also every family preserves its own style of wearing a women’s costume, preserves the colors, symbols and its own fabric making technique. Women's attire here usually consists of a blouse, a court skirt, a belt and a hemlock shawl.

The blouse, as it is worn today, was in fashion long before the time of Columbus. It is sewn from one, two or three longitudinal pieces of fabric. Quantity components, colors, lengths, patterns are countless and are determined by local tradition.

A court skirt is a rectangular piece of fabric. Modern fashionistas often prefer factory-made fabric. But in some Indian communities, for example in the department of Huehuetenango, corte is woven only on a home loom. Fabrics created using the knot method are in particular demand. The skirt is trimmed with colored stitching made of silk threads. Of course, the more complex the decoration, the higher the cost of the item. But an Indian woman manages to wear even the same piece of fabric in different ways, changing the length, adjusting it to her figure: she either wraps it smoothly around her waist, sometimes folds it, or gathers it in small gathers.

They secure the korte with a belt, there are also their own techniques: both the length and width depend on the age of the woman and her position in the community. It happens that henequin fibers, a type of agave, are added to the yarn from which the belt is made; they make the fabric denser. In Chakhul, the ornament on the belt must match the colors of the blouse; this gives the outfit rigor and harmony.

The outfit is not complete without a hemlock shawl. They carry a child on their back, place luggage in it, and in cold weather you can wrap yourself in it, or throw it over your shoulder, or cover your head.

Do not forget that a Guatemalan headdress cannot be made without weaving. Indian women wear their hair with ribbons, braids, thin silk or woolen cords woven into their hair, strips of fabric with a complex pattern, with multi-colored tassels at the ends. In Santiago Atitlan, ribbons up to twelve meters long are wound onto a braid and then wrapped around the head; women perform this procedure with great dexterity and speed.

Men's Indian costume has practically disappeared from everyday life. It can only be seen on holidays and family celebrations. Hat, hemlock, shirt, belt, capiksai cloak and sandals. Some Indians wear a hat woven from palm leaves over the hemlock. The cut of trousers and shirts is simple. But the collar and cuffs are decorated with an elegant pattern. Men living near Lake Atitlan wear short pants with bird patterns. Kapiksay, a woolen cloak, completely replaces a coat. And this is not luxury at all in the cold mountain Cuchumatanes...

Pilar Hernance concludes her report at a Guatemalan market, near stalls with multi-colored skeins of wool. The strength of the yarn, the thickness of the thread, the quality of the dye, the style of the future item, the combination of colors and the design - all this is discussed by customers for hours right there, at the trays. Finally the purchase is made. You can sit down at the machine - and the thread will run, the sticks will rattle, and a colorful canvas will crawl from under the hands of the craftswomen, heirs of the goddess Ish-Chel.

Healer

You are a conduit for divine healing power.

Ixchel's message: “Managing power and demanding it are two different things. The desire for power is generated by a feeling similar to childhood anger, which is based on fear. The ability to control power is based on the precise and sure knowledge that you are part of the wisdom and benevolence of the Great Spirit. You are like a lightning rod, capable of becoming a conductor of force at any moment. You simply need to connect to the source of power through the indestructible logic of your thought process. Don't doubt for a second your decision to be a conduit for the power that is already within you. Connect to an even more powerful source and allow it to multiply your natural power. You will become a reliable connecting link in the energy chain of the Infinite Spirit, ensuring the movement of energy in all directions."

Card meanings.

You have the gift of a healer.

You are being healed.

This situation and/or the one you love is healing.

Respect your healing knowledge and abilities.

Become a teacher of the healing arts.

Start or continue a healing practice.

Ixchel- a revered lunar goddess who, together with the Sun God, gave birth to all the other Mayan gods. Ixchel is associated with natural and biological cycles. It is believed that she controls the rains and controls everything related to water. Her name means "Lady Rainbow" as her essence is dispersed in the tiny prisms of water droplets that create a rainbow. Ixchel helps women with conception and childbirth. She is a powerful healer who remembers how human life. In her role as a spiritual healer, Ixchel has the ability to connect you with distant ancestors.