windinthemaples

Yesterday, I hosted another big MLP collector here at my home. She drove from Wisconsin to hand deliver a big private swap box she'd put together for me. I got some awesome stuff! :D <3 I can only hope she was happy with what I gave her, too.

Including, the most exciting, Sunburst--a UK/Euro exclusive Mountain Boy Pony. I only need to find two more of these guys to complete my set. :)



( Lots more ponies under the cut! )

This weekend, Daniel is celebrating my birthday and so I've got the place all ponified and decorated now. It's certainly feeling a lot more festive than it was this time *last* week. :)

Also, sometime this week the Fair staff will be announcing the host city for the 2014 Pony Fair. There was a lot of talk about remaining in Indianapolis but I am guessing that, given my luck and the fact that I'm moving before it, that it'll be in the Chicagoland area this year. You never know, though. The past few years have been Rhode Island (at the Hasbro Headquarters), Orlando, and Indianapolis.

Have you both sent and received a token package in the mail this month?

Please let me know so that I can rest easy knowing everyone is covered. I sent mine ( and got word it was safely received) and received a package in return. :).

How about you?

Emails have been sent out to the seven students participating in this month's Temple of the Twelve token exchange with the identity and information about the person whose token you are providing. Please check for it and get to work! All tokens must be shipped *no later than* Saturday! :)

(As the creator of Full Moon Swaps, you might not be surprised at my idea.)

With so many of us beginning our Temple of the Twelve journey together, I had an idea that would bind us together more firmly. Each month in Caroline's Temple training, she is gifted with a token of the color whose task she has successfully completed. (In the case of the novel, I believe they're all feathers.) This is a gift from the Divine themselves to acknowledge her progress.

What if we, a handful of students, performed the same task for each other? I was thinking that halfway through the month (by the full moon), we could wrap up and mail to whoever our partner is for the month a small, inexpensive token of that color's teachings. Something that could acknowledge that month's success and be something the person can put on their future altars, if they so cared, to represent that month's work.

I mean it to be quite different from a mail swap. We could package those tokens in such a way that the recipient can choose to open them at the end of the month's work if and when they feel they've completed the material and come to earn it. And the sender, I hope, would use their intuition to find the right thing, to act as the Divine's hands in getting it to the student who earned it. Also, I envision it being quite private and sparse. Maybe most of us would choose not to share what our tokens had been and the sender wouldn't be including cards or extra gifts or other stuff in their packet.

So imagine, the way I have, that sometime before your month working with a color ends, a small packet arrives in the mail. Inside, there is a small bundle wrapped in black paper. You put that small mystery on your color altar and get back to work! :) On the night before the new moon, when you're going over the month's growth and accomplishments, you may come to a point where you know that you've earned the token of that color and are ready to move on to the next. You unwrap that black paper and there, inside, is a black river stone shaped like a teardrop or a tiny snippet of black lace or a black glass bead or a black artist's pencil or a tiny pot of black glitter or, in your case, the token that was meant for you, a ____________. Know that gift, while shuttled through another student's hands, was in fact from the Divine as a symbol of the month's completion.

We could discover our own tokens, just as we can perform our own divination, but I think there is a magick in allowing someone else to contribute to our spiritual work and being surprised on each "graduation" night with what we've learned and even never realized we'd learned (and earned!) along the way.

Would you like to participate in Black's token program with me? The full moon ship-by date, to ensure the packet arrives in time, would be no later than June 26th. If this idea resonates with you and you'd like to try it, let me know in the comments and I will happily arrange things so that everyone has someone on the lookout for their token.