A Wizard’s Yarn

How Raggedy Ann
Taught the Wizard that
Healing is Love and
Love is Healing

Tuesday, March 7 through Friday, March 17

The Queen of the Dolls

There is an old tale that tells how one night each year the Queen of the Dolls journeys across Oz in her carriage pulled by a team of tasseled white mice, picking up forlorn and injured dolls to bring to her Royal Hospital where they are healed. This is a true story, because the Wizard read it as a child, and the stories we read as children are true.

But the Queen of the Dolls also brings their dear, darling owners with her. You see, a doll never becomes forlorn and injured if it is loved. But sometimes a Little Girl stops loving her doll, and throws her under the bed or behind the dirty clothes hamper. And sometimes (but not often) she must leave her doll behind when the Little Girl’s family moves away, even if she loves her doll very, very much. Then her doll will become bent and dusty and broken-hearted. It is a sad thing, and even sadder is what happens to the Little Girl. She loses a smidgen of her Child’s Love for All Things that she needs to live in a Harsh Cruel World, and each smidgen is precious, and when she loses too many smidgens, well, you will learn what happens in this story.

On that one magical night, the Queen heals the dolls by healing the Little Girls, for this is how the Queen’s healing works. But it only works for Little Girls who still believe that their dolls walk and talk and drink tea and eat scones at tea parties, even if the Little Girls end up eating all the scones and drinking all the tea themselves.

If a Little Girl no longer believes that her doll is alive, the Queen shakes her head and sheds a sorrowful tear, and invites her forlorn and injured doll into her carriage, and takes her to the Royal Hospital, and when the doll is well lets her live with the Queen forever, and the Little Girl grows up and forgets her doll and never sees her again.

But the Queen and the doll never forget the Little Girl.

Knitting and Tatting

At a meeting of the Fellowship of People Learning How to Become Human, a woman sat next to the wizard and knitted. Knitting is a common thing lately in Oz. Even many men do it. The wizard has never had the patience for it, or perhaps he lacks the manual dexterity to manipulate two long needles at the same time, each with yarn wrapped around it in some complicated way. The wizard respects the craft, though, and even more since on a trip back from the United Kingdom (where he conferred, consulted and confabulated with his fellow wizards), he saw a woman tat a beautiful tablecloth about 4’x 5’ by making small circular doilies out of string. It took her the whole flight.

Anyway, this woman was making something or other out of orange yarn, perhaps a sweater. Now, the wizard habitually closes his eyes and listens to the people talking about becoming human, and when he opened them midway through the meeting he found a braid of orange yarn about six inches long in front of him, laying on the table.

It was a small and rather odd gift, but it was there for a reason. After the meeting the woman asked for a healing. Another person had told her about them. So the wizard explained what would be done, and she wrote her true name on a handy 3x5 card, and the wizard carefully put it into his pocket, glad to have an opportunity to be of service.

Rag Doll

The wizard made a divination journey and a tarot reading. Switching to Grandmother was accompanied by the instantaneous appearance of a young girl, about 3 to 5 years old, “right there,” bang! No one had ever appeared so quickly, inside Grandmother’s house, right there in front of her apron, almost underfoot. The little girl was carrying a rag doll. She was lonely, not understanding why her Daddy had to go away. At that young an age a child cannot understand why Daddy will tell them that they love them, yet go away, and thus seem not to really, truly mean it. The wizard sensed that her father had gone to a very regimented place, perhaps the military, or possibly a prison.

So, before taking the healing journey, the wizard called the woman to check and see if this was on target. Yes. Her father had joined the U.S. Army Reserves when she was two, and had to leave home frequently. She could not remember if she had ever had a doll, but thought it was possible. When asked why she had given the wizard a gift of braided orange yarn, she had no idea. It just “felt right.”

Indeed, it probably did.

After this healing journey, the wizard drew a picture of a rag doll. It was a dolly to comfort a lonely little girl who missed her Daddy terribly. A soft cuddly doll to take to bed with her at night. A dolly safe enough for a two-year-old to carry everywhere with her. One with a blue-and-white checked gingham dress and orange hair, just like the braided yarn.

Raggedy Ann.

Finding Ann

Finding Ann opened a new phase or level in his healing work for the wizard. As usual, it was preceded by a brief period of depression and aimlessness. But after it passed (that Wednesday the wizard wanted to crawl under the covers and cry and cancel his class, but he didn’t, and the feeling left him in a few hours), the key to the new phase arrived in the form of a gift for another person.

Now, you may know that the wizard gives away crystals, and sometimes fetishes or sacred pipes or healing stones or pictures, as a part of each healing. Some of you may have received one of these gifts yourself. However, all of these things have a “shamanic bent” to them. This time Spirit brought him to a different place, and the realization (which you probably already know) that to be a modern shamanic practitioner in Oz is to have access to a fantastic variety of healing tools via the Web of the Internet Spiders.

In this case, the woman who had braided a strand of yarn into a lock of hair, which seems to have “seeped” into her fingers from a Raggedy Ann doll (so we will call her Doll Woman), was asked when her healing was completed if she would like a doll.

She got an amazingly beautiful, big-eyed, little-girl look and exclaimed “Yes! Oh, yes!”

A package came a few days later. When the wizard opened it, he found Ann inside.

The wizard was enchanted! This is the kind of doll a father would give his darling three-year-old daughter to keep her company while he was away, a doll that is soft and cuddly and just the right size for a little girl, a doll that has an embroidered smile as big as the world, a happy doll! The wizard could not keep from smiling back when he saw Raggedy Ann’s warm, loving smile. She was almost alive!

Raggedy Ann came with a tag on her hand, put there by her manufacturer. When the wizard turned it over to read the other side, he read:

3+

Spirit laughed silently within him! Ann is a doll made exactly for the age when Doll Woman couldn’t understand why Daddy had to go away. And The Light filled the wizard with an overflowing love, a father’s love, which he had only felt so intensely once before, for one person alone.

His own daughter, the day the wizard delivered her.

That love finally burst out for others, and it is indeed a new level of spiritual ecstasy. Healing, you see, always heals the wizard as much as it heals others, but now he can continue to be healed even more so he can be a better, clearer, brighter healer—a father!

Barbie and Ann

The next day Doll Woman and the wizard were talking late at night, and they ended up taking Barbie’s and Raggedy Ann’s inventories, which means they compared the two dolls without telling them that they were doing it. Why, the two of them were gossiping! But, after all, Barbie and Ann are “only” dolls. Of course, neither Doll Woman nor the wizard believes that for a minute!

Now some of this is girl talk, because it is natural for little girls (and even big girls) to compare their dolls, but sometimes little girls have to grow up to become big girls so they can remember what they forgot as teenagers!

Here is what these two “little girls” came up with. You may not agree, and that is OK!

Barbie is all about her boobs and her butt and her legs.

Ann is as flat as a pancake and has no figure at all.

Barbie is glamorous and has the face and hair to prove it.

Ann is cuddly and comfortable, and when you hug her you know it.

Barbie’s nose is absolutely perfect.

Ann would need a whole new nose if she thought about it, since hers is a bright red triangle.

Barbie’s arms are posable, with hands ready to grasp material things.

Ann’s hands look like mittens, and her arms are always wide-open, ready to hug you.

Barbie has bare feet for the thousands of shoes she got from Imelda Marcos.

Ann has one pair of plain black shoes. They are sewn on.

Barbie is about stuff: her Ferrari, her boat, her dream castle, her clothes.

Ann has a gingham pinafore and a little apron. She can be dressed in two styles: with her apron, or without it.

Barbie is about control and being adored: Ken (a lover thinly disguised as her boyfriend), Skipper (her little sister), her friends (they are all clones), her dog, etc.

Ann has a friend and brother, Raggedy Andy.

Barbie needs the stuff you buy so she can dress for skiing, scuba-diving, beach parties, etc.

Ann has everything you can imagine for her adventures. It is all free.

Barbie is better than you will ever be.

Ann cheers you on to be the best you can be.

Barbie is hard plastic.

Ann is soft cloth.

Barbie loves her stuff.

Ann loves you.

Any questions?

Krakatoa

Tuesday night, after a session teaching another woman to journey, the wizard was very “open” or “out there” or whatever you want to call it. It was easy for him to “look” around the room, not looking into other people, but at them in non-ordinary reality.

Then his focus “snapped” and he saw a mountain range, with everyone in the room presenting as a peak, but with a volcano off to his right in the middle distance and the phrase, “Volcano–she’s going to blow!” The wizard wondered what it meant.

Five minutes or less after that, Doll Woman came up, hugged him, thanked him for her Raggedy Ann, and handed the wizard a note that did not sound too good. And several days later, since he hadn’t seen her, he asked one of her friends how she was doing, and was refused an answer (that is bad), then told that “things change” (and that is worse).

So the wizard started praying for Doll Woman. He was grateful that she had accepted a healing before whatever happened, happened. He was also grateful that she had gotten to spend some time with her Ann. If anything is true from his experience, it is that a healing can help shorten and soften a relapse, if that is indeed what happened—and maybe it didn’t.

Fathers do everything that is in their power to do, and then let go in trust, and never stop loving their children, ever.

But not knowing is hard.

The Easier Softer Way

Earlier you read:

If anything is true from his experience, it is that a healing can help shorten and soften a relapse

It does.

It did.

The wizard learned that Doll Woman had chosen to place herself in a safe haven, and was doing well. Indeed, it was a very short and gentle “eruption.” The person who let him know about this has been helping her also, in a different but valuable way, and for them, felt the effects of the events and was puzzled by the way they had been affected. So they had “The Conversation” with the wizard, and they kept nodding as it all made sense to them. They realized how their spiritual gifts work, and want to use them.

It is beautiful!

And what about Ann? Ahhhh!

She is with her “sister,” and is comforting her through this. In the end, it is the love from The Light that heals. And what is healing but a chance to love another selflessly and unconditionally? You may remember that the wizard has often written about “being healing.” Tonight he knows what that means.

Because the wizard is a professor, he has even written it down in an equation.

Isn’t that just like a professor?

Equation

Being healing is being loving.

It is not done alone, but needs a community. It is not an act that can be forced by one person upon another, but must be offered and accepted willingly. It is an action.

Love is an action of The Light.

The wizard had been so blind, but he was allowed to see this simple truth by Doll Woman, and some cloth and stuffing named Ann:

Love + Light = Healing.

The Wizard Gives Himself a Gift

Wizards may be given gifts, but they may never ask for them. That is a Law of Oz.

Wizards may also give themselves gifts, and that isn’t a law of anything, except human nature. Most wizards have been lost themselves, and have never forgotten the cold, frightening, homesick feeling that “lost” hollows out inside us. So wizards often keep friends around the house to keep them from feeling too lonely, and mostly it works.

This wizard has two Siamese cats named Isis and Osiris. Although they are usually cutting twin swaths of destruction—owning a Siamese cat is like adopting a two-year old armed with twenty knives and an insatiable desire to whittle—the wizard caught them napping. Isn’t their sultry look of malevolence adorable? They are being very quiet at the moment because they are thinking of more things to whittle on while the wizard is away from The Friendly House at a meeting of the Fellowship of People Learning How to Be Human. They are also disappointed. Why?

Isis and Osiris are disappointed because when the wizard was taking a picture of Ann they got a little bit too interested in her red hair. Some of you may have wondered if it is customary for the wizard to take a picture of a gift before he gives it away. It is not.

The pictures of Ann are of the second Raggedy Ann doll the wizard bought. He bought this Ann for himself because he was feeling too lost and lonely for comfort, and had a great desire for a happy person in his life, even if she was only a doll. And the wizard learned how wonderful and magical a doll can be. He had never owned one before, although he did have a tattered green plush bunny rabbit when he was five years old.

But Ann is special—and the Siamese Twins thought so, too! So the wizard found a safe place for Ann where he could hug her at least once a day, and look at her warm, smiling face as he works on these stories and reads his email and writes his papers about the magic of Jell-O® brand gelatin supercomputers for his fellow wizards.

And Isis and Osiris are disappointed, because they cannot chew on Ann’s red hair.

But that is OK. They will have Levi the Parrot to annoy when they wake up!