...none of which got written, because as I was sipping a new, healthy probiotic beverage and exulting in my cleverness, my truck got smashed into by a man fumbling for a cigarette. And I had something to actually heal (a broken wrist bone, contusions, and a scared and scarred spirit) as opposed to merely improve (my fat content and muscle tone).
So I've been thinking a lot about how we put ourselves back together again after life's Humpty-Dumpty incidents. The car accident was firmly in the realm of Air and came after five weeks of Air craziness and the worst. Mercury. retrograde. ever. Yet my healing began with Air, also: the first thing I did was invoke the power of relationship, by calling two friends to help take care of me while my husband was out of town.
I also thought about the torn ligaments and fragmented bone under the cast, and how every minute, cells were dividing, enzymes were switching proteins on and off, old bone fragments were being broken down, and blood, lymph and nutrients were being shunted over to the fracture. How does this happen? How can you take a bone that is broken, and six weeks later, voila! it's no longer broken! That's hard to do, as anyone who has ever tried to gorilla-glue the handle back on their favorite mug will tell you.
For that matter, how can we grow new humans at all? How does a an egg and a sperm come out to be a baby? Yes, genetics and all that, but that infinitely intricate process of switching on and off, of cells "knowing" where to go to make toes, which differ from ovaries, which differ from eyeballs, which differ from hair: what is that intelligence?
From this occultist's point of view, it is the Archangel Raphael*. Raphael's name means "God who Heals" or, as I prefer, "Healing of the Divine" (because it is a gender-neutral term). Angels are messengers of the Divine. A message is a thought or a communication, so I often think of Them as Divine thoughts that are tuned to particular purposes. Thought is Intelligence, and so over the past few weeks, I have come to regard Raphael as that Divinely Intelligent agency within my cells that knows how to mend an injury and restore the flesh to more-or-less its original form.
And it is Raphael that can help the worse injury: my newfound tendency to jump and hyperventilate whenever I hear a loud BANG; my occasional worry over sending my clients elsewhere. In the Western Mystery Tradition, Raphael is often associated with the Element of Air, which is also thought and mental issues, and travel, and relationships. May Raphael's Divine Intelligence continue to heal my thoughts and strengthen my relationships along with the bone in my hand, and may I remain mind-full of the miracle of mending and healing taking place in my body right now.
*This image is from an Archangel series by a fabulous artist named Briar. All Briar's art is amazing. Go check it out.
