Okay, so I know I said that I wasn't going to do any banishing spells or anything today. Focus on manifestation, I said. But it's funny how the universe leads you to do something that's good for you, maybe even that you really needed to do, even if you didn't see it.

I had some oral surgery on Monday and for the past few days I've been doing what you'd expect I might be doing - lying around, watching TV, sleeping, taking drugs, eating mushy food, trying not to talk too much (which, if you know me you will appreciate is a challenge). This morning I decided that I needed to get out of my apartment because I was going cuckoo bananas. Lucky for me, my hairdresser had an opening and I decided to change an appointment I had scheduled for Saturday to today. Get hair done = feel better.

Somewhere in the back of my mind has been lurking the thought that maybe I wanted to get a shorter haircut. I've been growing my hair out for a long time and finally had long hair admired by all. Except that it got in my way all the time and all I ever did was put it up anyway. And I've been in the mood to shake things up, change things, stir up some new energy. I polled a couple of friends. One said go for it; one said she didn't like short hair so she was a bad person to ask. I called a friendly ex of mine to get the male perspective but only got his voicemail.

I decided to consult The Faeries' Oracle using the yes/no spread from the book. This is an easy spread where you turn over three cards. If they're all upright then the answer is "very likely yes" and if they're all reversed then the answer is "very likely no." If you have two upright and one reversed, the answer is "probably yes;" likewise two reversed means "probably no." The upright cards tell you why yes and the reversed cards tell you why no. (By the way, I think this is the best yes/no spread I've ever seen and I plan to use it from now on whenever I need to answer a yes/no question, regardless of what deck I'm using.) The faeries said "very likely yes" and their reasons were powerful ones. I got the Unity card and the Ekstasis card - union, mystical experience, spiritual home; ecstasy, joy, rapture, motivation. Damn! I guess I'm getting a haircut! The other card, while upright, suggested that some people might be going against what I wanted to do and I shouldn't listen to them. Which was very interesting, given that I got a text message from my male friend a little later saying, "no, don't cut your hair, I like it long." Need I say more?

So, when I arrived at the salon I told the hairdresser that I wanted her to cut my hair - something sassy and flirty and fun. "Are you sure?" she said. "Yes!" was my reply. As I sat watching mounds of my hair grow on the floor below me, I did have moments of panic. What am I doing? And then it occurred to me what I was doing.

Imagine that, just like drugs or food or illness or pretty much any chemical thing that goes on in your body is stored in your hair, so too is the energy of whatever you have been doing, thinking, feeling, living during any given period of your life. I started to imagine all of the things that I have been working so hard to leave behind me, to move forward from, falling away from me with each piece of hair that hit the floor. Every bit of harmful energy that I've experienced over the past couple of years, lodged in my hair like molecules of some toxin, gone with each snip of my hairdresser's scissors. This happening during the Dark Moon, the best time for banishing anything, because I had a whim to change my hair appointment. It was the Universe guiding me to do something I needed to do even when just this morning I was stubbornly insisting that I didn't need to do any more banishing.

The New Moon will be here in a few hours. In celebration of my new haircut, my new freedom and all of the newness promised by this New Moon Solar Eclipse, I am going out to enjoy some time with a friend, a glass of wine, and whatever mushy food the chef can find to serve me.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 6:18 PM