11-11-11: An auspicious time to begin a blog about my life in Spirit and my ministry.  The picture above can be found on my website, theopeningofways.com.  It is a photo of a road in Africa.  It is a metaphor for my life.  Certainly, my life has greatly been about Africa.  I've never been there in this incarnation.  Have only known a few people from that continent.  But as far as spirit contacts, so many have come to me from the good soil of Africa.   Each of our lives is a road. Mine.  Yours.  What soil makes up your road?  Sometimes our blood talks in our consciousness and we find ourselves responding to mysteries that arose in a particular geographic area because of the "blood song," the ancestral memory that is informing us.  Other times, our spiritual lineage speaks through geography that we have only accessed in other lifetimes.  Both of these influences are our heritage, our destiny, and our means of connecting with the inner worlds.  Whether it's the Netjers of Khem, the Loa or Orishas of Nigeria, or the Eggun and place-spirits of the Congo, my life has opened mostly on a road like that depicted in the photo.  What can you see in this photograph?  Brown and green.  The red-brown of the earth and the green of the plant world.  The earth:  made of those who have gone before us.  The plants, arising out of the remains of ancestors.  One can't be without the other.  It is the same in the Sidhe Faith of my biological ancestors.  These major mysteries are the same the world over.  The living riding on the dead.  The dead the foundation which the living are rooted in.  We've just finished Fet Gede, or as some call it All Hallow's Eve, or Dia de los Muertos:  a time for honoring and remembering the dead and our connection with them.  In our Guides meetings we have experienced a phenomena of 3 different Fets for Gede:  these were conducted by the spirits and our response to each night was different.  The first night, it was about the death of our lives:  the ending of cycles in our lives:  failures, loss, wounding, and how to respond to these manifestations of the ray of destruction.  The second night was all about the preservative ray:  remembering, resting with, and honoring the spirits of our ancestors.  It was about ease and laughter, and easing heartache.  The third night was all about the creative ray:  resurrections, the Pert Em Heru (not the "Book of the Dead" but of "Coming Forth By Day".  It was about starting up the engine of our lives in a new way.  This time of year tends to take us through these cycles rapidly.  Destruction :: Preservation :: Creation. And the message is:  you are going to oscillate and shift, always,while in incarnation. That is your destiny:  everyone's destiny. There is nothing wrong with it.  Don't fight it.  Cooperate.  So here, right after Fet Gede, I see the presence of a new start in the light of the three 11 day:  11/11/11.  11 is a well known number of Thelema.  In the tradition of Thelema it gematrically equates to the Great Work.  Did not Nuit say in Liber Al Vel Legis that it was her number?  There are many other gematria that indicate a connection between the power of Thelema and the number 11. So, today, 3 of the 11s are representing a trifold formulation of Thelemic power.  This calls us to reach up, to look up, to climb up into a higher creation, having just arisen from the tomb of Oct. 31.  In the words so familiar to my Will, I say, as token of this:  "Let us open a way and go in upon it."  Best blessings on 11/11/11!  Rev. Stephen Carroll