A Wild Dare Field Guide Adventure

It’s an absolute age since we wrote a combined article, with both of our voices weaving together to tell you a story, but we’re working on joint project right now, so it seems like a perfect time to write something together!

So, Lizzie here … I’ve got to tell you that describing this epic adventure we are on as a “joint project” just doesn’t do it justice! This is a quest, a year-long journey into magic and the mundane, into the heights of the Siddhis and the down-and-dirty baby birds having a dust bath messiness!

Meghan and I talk every day on Voxer, leaving long, rambling voice notes for each other about where we’re at in the inner work, what’s coming up for us; sharing our Shadows as they’re triggered, sharing our breakthroughs and our insights.

We have the most symbiotic relationship. The mutualism we experience between Meghan’s far-seeing, ever-the-visionary Line 6, and my down-in-the-roots interior Line 1 is really quite remarkable. We complement each other in the most nourishing and enriching ways.

For a while now, Meghan has been talking about bringing more spirit into her life … more spirituality, more sanctity, and after much pondering and playing with different ideas, she decided to try the Dare to be Divine course again.

Now, I knew nothing about Dare to be Divine, except that I felt kind of intimidated by the name alone! I’ll be honest with you, for a bit of background, I’m kind of out of my depth with the whole “spiritual”, “divine” aspects of the Gene Keys teachings. I would not have defined myself as “spiritual”.

Yes, I believe in the sacredness of all life.

Yes, I believe in the soul, in higher purpose, in divine timing.

Yes, I believe in the interconnectedness of all beings.

Yes, I believe in dharma and karma.

But … I always used to feel as if my spirituality and my beliefs in the sacredness of this work is very internal. It’s between me and me. I am married to Mr Logical Science Guy, who is at best bemused by the inner work I do, by my altar, my vision board, our website, A Cauldron of Crones; (at worst I think he’s rather horrified by how witchy woo woo his wife is!!) But luckily he loves me and he knows how much all this helps me!!

So, there was Meghan, starting on this Dare to be Divine journey, and I was immediately enthralled. Meghan is a magician, and the way she was weaving it, and the Dream Arc, her images, her words, her prayers and invocations was intriguing, inspiring and just plain exciting.

I simply had to buy Dare to be Divine myself (it would have felt like cheating to be listening to Meghan talk about it without me actually owning the course!).

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Meghan here… Lizzie is right. I’d been wanting more spirit in my life. More sacredness. More of a way to stay connected to my Soul in the middle of an ordinary day, instead of managing the practical bits and hoping the Soul would catch up later. But the usual spiritual clothes never quite fit. I don’t follow a religion. Rituals feel awkward. Petitions to a higher power feel clumsy. Still, the longing was real. I wanted the sacred to be something I could live, not something I admired from across the room like a very beautiful but impractical vase.

When Dare to Be Divine first came into my life a couple of years ago, I don’t think I was ready for it. I was curious, but I didn’t feel steady enough yet, certainly not worthy enough, to walk straight toward the Siddhic, divine-light deep end of the Gene Keys. Since then, I’ve done a lot of inner work. My relationships have changed. My sense of myself has steadied. My worth feels less theoretical and more real in my body. So when the course called me back, I finally felt able to say, all right, maybe I can go near the sacred without my fear immediately asking for a permission slip.

At first, I still didn’t know how to approach it. I waited for the right way in, which sounds very mystical, but mostly meant I kept wondering how and when I was supposed to do the thing. Eventually, the answer came while I was in my art studio (which I call my art hut). Not on my walks. Not during meditation. Not while having a grand spiritual breakthrough over herbal tea. Of course it was the art hut. The art hut is already full of Dream Arc creatures, feathers, scraps of paper, paints, half-finished ideas, and the kind of mess that looks questionable but is actually a highly advanced creative ecosystem.

Apparently, the art hut had already made the decision: make an oracle deck. I’ve made personal oracle decks for years, so I knew how to play in that sandbox. And if Dare to Be Divine is working with the Siddhis, and the Dream Arc birds carry those visions, then why not let the birds do the talking? Birds are perfect for this. They’re totally of the earth — feathers, bones, appetite, nests, little dinosaur feet — and also somehow touching heaven every time they lift off. Very efficient. No special spiritual outfit required.

That changed everything. The divine stopped being abstract and started showing up with wings, color, beaks, calls, moods, and opinions. Cockerel could crow me awake. Crow could hop into the compost of my life and look completely unbothered. Magpie could flash a stolen bit of gold at my victim story. Nightjar could make the dark feel less like a problem to solve. Wild Turkey could remind me that sometimes the most spiritual thing to do is cook, clean, carry, listen, mend, or help someone without needing a tiny parade afterward.

The Field Guide has become my sacred practice because it lets me meet spirit by making things. That is apparently my chapel. I make the images. I write the card messages, inquiries, invocations, blessings, and little maps the birds offer for each dare. I also love that the whole thing is brief. A bird visits, drops a bit of medicine, and flies off. No twenty-seven-step ritual. No spiritual spreadsheet. Just a feather on the path and enough sense to notice it.

I’m realizing that my spirituality has apparently been this all along: creative, earth-based, feminine, embodied, and a little irreverent. Maybe what I’d been missing wasn’t a better spiritual outfit, but a clearer way to feel my own Soul as my connection to something larger. I come closest to the sacred when I’m making something. The deck gives me enough structure to keep me from wandering off into the mystical weeds, but inside that structure, the material gets to be alive: birds, symbols, art, intuition, words, and actual magpies at my feeder while I’m writing about Magpie. That’s the kind of spirituality I can work with. It doesn’t require me to become someone else first.

One of the best surprises is how much this project has helped me find my written voice. I needed the structure of the cards and booklet entries, but once that structure was there, something in me relaxed. My writing came through: practical, funny, grounded, a little cheeky, and yet sincerely reverent. I’m learning that seeing the sacred in everything doesn’t mean I have to become solemn, which is excellent news. Sometimes reverence shows up in rumpled clothes and makes a joke before it says anything profound.

And doing this with Lizzie makes the whole thing much more alive. We talk every day. We leave long voice notes. I put the next bird image or message into our shared space, and then I get to hear how it lands in her. There’s real chemistry between her Line 1 Interiority and my Line 6 Integration. I tend to see the pattern and the threads that want to come in; she can get right inside the material and actually sew the thing together. And it’s way more fun to make a magical bird oracle quest with your best friend than to sit alone in your art hut muttering about quintessence.

So yes, this Wild Dare Field Guide is shaping my spirituality. It’s teaching me that the sacred isn’t somewhere else, hidden behind a ritual I can’t quite perform or a tradition I don’t quite belong to. It is here: in the art hut, in the mountain woods, in the voice notes with my best friend, in the birds at the feeder, and in the creative practice of staying connected to my Soul, one feathered guide at a time. And when the deck is finished, I don’t think I’ll be finished with what it taught me. The project may end, but the birds, the questions, and the habit of listening for spirit in ordinary life are coming with me.

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Lizzie here again … I’m pretty new to working with the Dream Arc, and I really haven’t done much contemplating around the Vision Birds for the Siddhis, but I’d love to share just a few of the things that have been coming up for me in the last few week of playing in this Wild Dare Field Guide realm with Meghan … I’ve been combining contemplation, my usual journaling practice, and also making art journal cards inspired by Meghan’s Playful Pondering course inside Gene Keys Unleashed with Hayley Curtis, where we are both guides. I immediately felt at home in this world that Meghan is creating with her Oracle deck and with her Guidebook. She speaks the language of archetype, she speaks the language of mythic quests, and that, my friends, is MY language. So, I gave myself to it. I have no idea where this Wild Dare Field Guide is leading me, but oh my goodness, I am enjoying the journey! You will hear me allude to struggles and pain that I am experiencing with my body at the moment, and I have to tell you, that having this lens of Dare to Be Divine to look through, is changing my whole attitude to this.

Cockerel … Where have I forgotten my own inner beauty, and what small dawn is trying to find me?

This message from Cockerel was the first I read, and it spoke straight to my heart. I have been so caught up in feeling like a victim that I have forgotten the beauty of all the Gifts and Siddhis that live inside me. I have forgotten the beauty of the warrior who fights for right. I have forgotten the beauty of the story my inner author is writing. I have forgotten that Illumination, Awakening, Freedom and Romance live inside me!
Victimhood is a choice and so is beauty.
I can choose the beauty.
I do choose the beauty.
And the dawn that is trying to find me is the remembrance that I do hold all of these Siddhis inside me.
The sun shines inside me. It is the fire of my Dynamism, of the Interiority and Affinity. I must not lose sight of the light that wants to break through me. This is just a small pool of darkness, this pain and this fear that I am feeling in this moment. This is just a shadow, a shade, that will dissipate when I let the sun of my love shine on it.
I have all the love inside me and it is beautiful. You know, I never knew what real love was until the last fifteen years.
And look how much beauty it has brought in its wake … my one true love, the Gene Keys, Hayley, and of course Meghan, the greatest friend I’ve ever known. She has brought so much beauty into my life.

Crow. What am I being asked to bless, thank and release instead of dragging it behind me with tired little feet?

The fear of what these changes in my body may bring. That’s what I am being asked to release. I can bless it and thank it for opening me up to this whole new inquiry that has come since I started to acknowledge how scared I am.
The inquiry into how I can find the beauty in the pain.
The fear opened the door into me diving into this pain, it opened the door into acceptance. The fear and the anger were what spurred me on to ask for help. And look at how the universe responded! Meghan did not create this Wild Dare Field Guide for me, I just asked if I could ride along; and lo and behold it is giving me the help I asked for. It is giving me a way in to healing this pain and struggle.
I would not otherwise have opened this door into the grace of suffering. For isn’t that what finding the beauty inside the pain might open for me? A way to step into grace. A way to step into acceptance. Crow is inviting me to release the fear and step through the doorway into beauty.

Sparrowhawk. If this situation is a symbol rather than just a problem, what is it trying to show me?

It is trying to show me that the least important part of me is the external body I wear. Yes, it is important, it is the vessel that holds me, so I will love it and cherish it. But it is not me. It is not my essence. My true self is the beautiful soul who inhabits this body. And I am beautiful, and compassionate, and wise, and good on the inside, no matter what my external body is doing.
The Sparrowhawk is showing me that I must hunt for the beauty, and all of my gifts, inside. I’m getting caught in the thicket of fears and ideas about what is happening to my body and what it should be like. This situation is a symbol of acceptance. Don’t I already know that acceptance is key to all of my Gene Keys … it is the Gift of my Culture, and I can only unlock Universal Love if I am in full and absolute acceptance of what is.

Quail. Where is my gift asking for resonance rather than protection? Beauty becomes fuller when each note finds its place in the living orchestra.

This is resonance … finding support in Meghan and Hayley, finding belonging and shared fears, but also shared celebration. I am not asking for them to protect me from the pain. I am opening my heart to them singing with me over the pain.
Resonance rather than protection is also what I get from Steve. We sing the same song. I know that I am safe and in harmony with him. I know that I can sing my song, even if there is pain.
I belong in the living orchestra of my life. I belong in the living orchestra of the people I have come to travel through this life with.
I belong here.
My beauty is seen by these people. I don’t need to be performing. I don’t need to always be doing.
I just need to be me, playing my piece, playing my own clear notes.
And then the whole tune resonates through us all.

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We don’t know exactly where this Wild Dare Field Guide is taking us yet, and that’s part of the magic. We’re only at the beginning of a year-long adventure, and these first four birds are just the opening notes of a much larger song — four feathered guides out of sixty-four. Already, though, they’ve changed something in both of us. For Meghan, it’s become a way to make the sacred with her hands. For Lizzie, it’s become a way to meet pain, fear, beauty, and belonging through the living language of symbol.

So for now, we’re still mid-quest, still listening for the next bird, still sending voice notes, still finding feathers where we least expect them. The path ahead feels mysterious in the best possible way, not fully mapped, not neatly explained, but alive. And perhaps that’s the point. One bird, one question, one small act of noticing at a time, we’re learning that our version of the living orchestra may be less grand symphony and more sacred duet: two voices, two paths, listening for where the next note wants to land.

The sacred doesn’t always arrive with trumpets. Sometimes it scratches about in the dust, flashes a bit of gold, sings from the hedge, and waits for us to notice it’s been here all along.