Nefer wrote:Raven that definitely sounds like you will be getting an apprentice ^^ She came back into your life for a reason. Now you must hold up your word and teach her since she is over 18
We had her first lesson this past Saturday. It went well - I was teaching her about her chakras, how to read with the palm chakras, how to sense and see energy and auras. She was very quick to pick it up, and very accurate.
I had her feeling energies from my two athames (one is for flesh magicks - blood donations and the like, and it has a dark energy to it because of this, and the other has only ever been used to cast circles and call the elements) - she had a blindfold on, and told me that the dark athame felt heavy, and the other felt uplifting - I had her test my two selenite wands - one which I used for healing clients for a long time, which has made it... not as clean and pure as selenite normally is, and the other which has only been used in crystal grids - she said the healing wand felt 'itchy' and that she got absolutely nothing off the clean wand except that she could feel her own energy changing in response to it - I had her hold Mena, my cancer kitty, and she almost burst into tears - I know, bad teacher, but I wasn't expecting her to open up quite that much on the first day, you know? - and then I had her read my aura - she picked out my two most prevalent old colors AND picked up the new color, as well as a color that is potential but not manifesting yet.
I also had her working on her chakras. I showed her how to open them, and how to close them, and I showed her how to soothe one that was overactive, and how to wake one that has retreated.
She did really well, considering before Saturday evening, she'd never seen energy, sensed it, or worked with it, and started with not even knowing what a chakra is.
I sent her home with homework - she's to get two notebooks, one for notes on what she studies, and the other a book to keep track of her personal experiences, such as when she sees colors or senses energies and the way she senses them. Because she's just starting, she's not quite sure what that synesthetic experience that is unique to psychic input actually IS, so that second notebook is probably more important than the first. You can always make new notes on study material, but learning how your particular psychic synesthesia manifests... that takes so much practice and work and attention, documenting is VITAL.
Her other homework was to read three books I loaned her from my personal library that discuss the chakras - one discusses the esoteric nature of chakras, and gives a very good basic understanding of each. One teaches about psychology and how the chakras and your psychology interact, how childhood development affects chakras and how to heal such wounds. The third book is the book I suggest to EVERYONE, Genevieve Paulson's Kundalini and the Chakras.
I also, of course, sent her a copy of my blog post about chakras, the aura, and empathy - she's not an empath... if anything, she's actually got the opposite issue, but the majority of the information in that post is good for anyone, whether they're an empath or not, because it covers so much about chakras and the aura.
And then I introduced her to my favorite "after-magick" snack, Yoohoo.

and explained about how energy work depletes the body, and affects the bloodsugar, and told her that grounding and centering have their place, and when I teach her those techniques I will explain them, but eating after an energetic workout is actually more important than even cleansing.
So... next lesson, I will be checking her aura and chakras to see how far she's gotten with her studies (she's not just to read the books, she's to practice what she reads and come to me if she has any questions) and testing her energetically and through questions, and then we'll talk about grounding, centering, cleansing, shielding, and warding. I normally start with those, but I also normally teach people who have already been studying on their own, and are pre-sensitized to their own energy and the energies around them... for her, I'm doing it a little differently because she doesn't know how to work with her own energy, or even what it looks or feels like.
It's not a bad beginning. I'm pretty pleased with her speedy pick-ups. She reminds me of my last apprentice, who, by the way, just took his FIRST apprentice! I need to bake him a birthday cake.

"She’s all the unsung heroes who... never quit." ― R. A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” ― William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: First Series