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Shards in the aftermath
_New Year, new beginnings and what this has brought to the UK is a
barrage of winter storms.  The Element of Air has been stalking the
land, throwing around cars like toys, wreaking havoc, destruction and even causing two deaths, in fair Albion.
_As someone who has grown to identify closely with the element of Air this has been an interesting time for me. Most lunchtimes I take a long walk down by the canal and despite the wind and occasional rain Thursday was no exception.  I always find my lunchtime walks essential to calming my mood, lifting my spirits and reinvigorating me for the afternoon but Thursday was something very special.  On reaching my usual avenue of trees I could see the devastation of the last few days; many big, old branches had been torn from the trees and in one case a venerable old tree had snapped in half, it's whole
top-heavy end lying on the ground.  Looking at the cast off branches
and the corpse of the shattered tree I could see they were often dry and brittle with the heartwood rotted out.  Heavy, ancient
branches that no longer served the trees they clung to were swept away by Air and… it made me start to rethink the element of Air.
_It is usually Fire we think of as active and destructive, burning away
that which no longer serves us.  Fire is the element cleanses and
purifies even as it lays waste.  But here I was watching a more
selective, yet still very destructive cleansing.  The air was ripping
away those branches which could no longer bend and move with the
flow, but the rest of the tree remained intact.

When we think of a cleansing with Air we tend to imagine the gentle incense or smudge smoke curling up and around our tools, homes and ourselves permeates and surrounding us. The image is not one of a gale force wind literally blowing away the deadwood.  But as I took my walk and felt the wind and saw the trees I took a cleansing as well.  I saw the wind blowing through my aetheric self, stripping away any negativity that clung to me, polishing my aura until it was a bright shiny thing.

I would love to hear of non-traditional ways you have worked with and used the elements so let me know below!