New Year’s Day 2025
The smoke was beginning to catch at the back of my throat and my eyes had narrowed almost as if by making them into slits I could stop the nicotine soaked air from contaminating them. The tarot book was in my lap as her hand hovered over the final card representing the future. I think my entire body willed it to be the ‘right’ card and a tiny part of me wished I had secretly taken the death card out of the pack before the shuffle. But who was I kidding, Helen, with 89 years of a well lived life behind her knew exactly what she was doing. She turned over the final card, her future literally in her own hands - the sun! A smoky breath of relieved giggles escaped us all.
“Imagine for a moment that you’re soaking in the warm rays of the sun. It feels nourishing and healing, all your aches and pains just fade away. The sun card brings this amazing energy into your life. Vitality and health abound, while you feel assurance and clarity in all you do.”
And that’s when I realized I was in a vortex, a wild feminine portal where the veil between earthside and other is thin, a liminal space where only the truest of truths prevails. It was new years day, 2025, four women from four continents, spanning three generations around that kitchen table in the high mountain village of Törbel, Switzerland. A tiny place that most Swiss barely know exists despite its magnificent views of the country’s highest 4,000 meter peaks. In Törbel ancient maya, (traditional wooden huts), teeter on steep hillsides, in tiny lanes looking down the Zermatt valley to the Weisshorn and the Klein Matterhorn in the distance. Törbel is a sacred place whose tendrils somehow find their way to you, wrap themselves around your heart and draw you deep into the magic of authentic mountain life, always at exactly at the right moment.