On the fourth day of a meditation retreat, deep in a meditative state, my vision took me to my sacred space.

Astride a large black horse I was calm, but I could feel "it"; that sense of huge change coming for me.

I asked, "Where do I need to go?".

And the trees told me to seek the Crone.

And I found her.

Deep in the darkest part of the forest she sat on a throne made of moss and giant, ancient tree roots. She wore robes of deep red and inky blue and a hood so full I could not see her face. But I could see her hands; hands as rich as mahogany and wrinkled like the topography of mountains and river valleys.

With one of those hands, she reached out to me and scratched the rune Ior into the skin that covers the temple of my heart; binding me to her, in service of her.

I asked, "How am I to serve you?".

And I was given a vision of a tree; an ancient tree, shimmering with gold, her roots so deep and anchored into the dark, wet, fecundity of the Earth and her limbs stretched so high and vast into the glittering expanse of the Universe that entire constellations were caught in her branches.

And I heard just two words "liminal roots".

The seed was planted.