Happy Halloween!

It's an orange and black day. I stood in line in my orange shirt and black jeans and voted today. It's the first time I've ever voted on Halloween!

Before I went to vote, I stopped by the Boynton Woman's Club to make a deposit for the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull Event that I'll be providing there on January 22, 2009. It was so cool to step into this historic landmark building and find it decorated for a Halloween wedding. There were many pumpkins around. Of cours, I whipped out my Blackberry and starting shooting photos. Here they are for you now.

Photos of Crystals - Just Because

The store is looking so sparkly now that I wanted to share photos so you can enjoy the energy of the gemstones through this blog.

Recreating Yourself

Sometimes it takes a cosmic 2 x 4 to recreate yourself. In that re-creation you just may find your authentic self pursuing your Divine Purpose. I believe that is true for me. It took many years (20) to really create a well established business but the journey was worth every moment of challenge and lessons. There were definitely moments when I stood in the middle of my store and exclaim to God/Goddess/Great Spirit - "Hey! if you want me to do this work, you need to send me customers so I can pay the real estate taxes, the staff and my vendors! I also would like to get paid some day!"

It was interesting that every time I did my exclamation someone would come in and make a very large purchase on that same day. Usually within a few days, I would also receive a letter giving gratitude for all that The Crystal Garden provides. So I would say, "OK, I guess I'll keep doing this, but please help the store not to struggle to make ends meet." Now I am more proactive. I am blessed with a phenomenal staff. We are all good at holding a vision for meeting our daily sales goals. I am attracting more wholesale clients. And, I am also attracting larger events, like Dr. Eric Pearl with 150 people and the Crystal Skull event in Jan 2009 with 300 people, which definitely help us with our sales and making the rent and all that is due to everyone.

Yes, I did just mention wholesale. I've created a wholesale division over the last couple of years. It started as a publishing division and is expanding. I published my own guided meditation CDs in 2005 and I've added Smudge in Spray to the line. I recently realized that it's time to add my whole line of medical grade essential oils including my proprietary blends called Euphoria, Lift Me Up!, and Auntie M's Anti. I am in the process of creating a really amazing Oracle Deck which will be self-published. The graphic art and the photography is being done by Victoria Rose Martin. I love working with her. I also have a new CD coming out to use to instill positive thoughts into your consciousness. That should be out by Winter 2009.

The thing to remember here is all of this was birthed out of 20 years of being in this business. I started The Crystal Garden with Carol Lonsdale in 1988. She left in December 1996 and continued on to grow my business. But we had humble beginnings. We started with just one small room of merchandise, much of which was consignment. I had gemstones from Arkansas and one Brazilian dealer. We had a few books, some incense and a lot of enthusiasm. I still have extreme enthusiasm for my work. I am so grateful for my career and the many facets of it. I like running many companies (I handle my father's real estate companies as well.) It's all very rewarding. And I am never bored!

Finding the Good Out of Devastating Circumstances

I received an email from a customer asking me to pray for her and her family as they may be losing their home. So many people are experiencing this right now. It's so close around us that we may have a tendency to step into fear. Please try not to allow fear to take over.

When I was a mortgage banker, I lent according to the then-in-place Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lending requirements. I was an approved lender for jumbo loans which back then was $250,000 and that was a really big deal! The requirements for FNMA and FHLMC mortgages were very strict where all income had to be verified and in place for at least 3 years, savings balances had to be substantial and not used for the down payment and 20% down was imperative in most cases. I was taught that to be a responsible lender you had to be sure that at least these basics were in place in order to ensure the repayment of the loan. More importantly, the way I was trained as a banker, these strict lending policies were also in place to be sure that the borrower could continue to live comfortably while meeting their mortgage obligation.

Back in 1987 I was enjoying a very prosperous Mortgage Banking career. In October of 1987 the stock market crashed and my career ended. I was the Senior Vice President of a Boston S &L held mortgage banking firm. They closed their Florida offices of which I was in charge of. Thank goodness I had months of salary still coming as I was under contract. Regardless of that financial security for about 5 months, my career and my world tumbled around me. I identified myself as a banker and part of the corporate world. Suddenly, I had nothing to do and no where to go with my career. Head hunters found me to be over qualified and couldn't place me. I begged for even a mortgage processing position and they wouldn't put me in it as they knew I was way beyond that.

So, after months of the dark nights, I searched my soul and eventually what emerged was The Crystal Garden in August 1988. During that time though it really was challenging. I went from buying Nipon suites at Neiman Marcus to t-shirts at K-Mart. I collected a tiny unemployment check and ate at my parent's home often. Thank God for my parents! They really helped me.

And if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have been able to afford to open The Crystal Garden.

I'll write more about the adventures of opening The Crystal Garden soon. I'm off to celebrate my birthday with Vincent!

Crystal Skulls

It looks like I'll have to go see the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark" - the latest one that includes crystal skulls. I'm sure my personal experience with Crystal Skulls is much different from Indiana Jones - well relatively speaking, that is!

The Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull shown here on the left will be presented through me and The Crystal Garden,(due to a connection with Liz Alpert who is connected to Eric Pearl - talk about "reconnection" -woo woo!) YOU will get to see this amazing gemstone - this Crystal Skull in person on January 22, 2009 in Boynton Beach, Florida! It will be another off site event by The Crystal Garden at the Boynton Woman's Club, a Mizner historic landmark building.

My first experience with a crystal skull evolved from a journey I took to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Back in about 1993 I had a vision that one of my "jobs" here on Mother Earth is to connect the grids of light around the planet to accelerated Love, Peace and the raised consciousness of all beings here.

The idea of the first grid came to me in the form of a vision around 1991 while I was voice channeling with and for my friend, Melissa. I rarely voice channel in semi-trance yet in that moment in time, I was practicing the gift of voice channeling. The information that came through was received as a vision in my mind’s eye. I thought the information was for Melissa, but as it turned out that she was holding the vibration for me to receive the information as she was a practiced voice channel already.

That first realization of creating crystal grids was revealed at my third eye center in a true clairvoyant fashion. Remember – clairvoyance is the ability to see visions that someday you may need to act upon. I saw myself facilitating a visualization process with a group of people that I brought with me at the pyramid site of Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. I had never been there but as I described it, Melissa recognized the description of that Sacred Site and was able to tell me where it was located. I knew at that moment that I would be bringing a group to Chichen Itza to re-activate the grids of light.

The vision revealed the specific placement of people at various points within the site. In the vision, I saw the grounds or compound of Chichen Itza, but I didn’t know the magnitude of the vision until I arrived at the site many years later. Everything was exactly how I saw it and I was able to place people and their crystals around the site just as if I had been there before.That vision was around 1992 and it wasn’t until January of 1994 that the first tour to the Yucatan occurred. It was called Ruins and Rituals: Explore the Yucatan Peninsula, a spiritual learning vacation.

The interesting part unfolded between 1992 and 1994. There were many spiritual journeys that took place during that time and since then but hopefully the details and realization of all those trips will be published in one of my books one day. (It was cut out of the book on crystals that I'm currently working on so it will have to be in another book - perhaps one called Activation of the Grids of Light.)

During the second visit to Chichen Itza after the completion of the grid process, I was waiting for the group to reconvene with me on top of the Venus Platform. While I waited, a very handsome man arrived and asked what we were doing. As I explained, I came to the realization that he would become part of the group for the day. He joined in for the rest of the meditations and became friends with us. He lived in Miami and he had a mission in our lives. Because of connections that he had, he arranged to have Max, the Crystal Skull to The Crystal Garden about a year later. It was profound to have Max - the crystal skull - in our Angel Room with about 50 people squeezed in. Even Nick Nocerino was there. That was a real surprise. Life is interesting!

As a side note, it was while I was waiting for everyone that the "handsome man" told me about the Internet. I hadn’t even heard of it until that moment on the Venus Platform. Now, that really is in alignment with connecting the grids around the world. I remember that I really didn't believe him when he told me of the technology. At that point, the Internet had been out for a while but for some reason I just didn't know about it. But I digress . . . .

Years later in 2000, I went on Sacred Sites tour to follow the Ley Line of Michael and Mary through France and England. During that trip, we went to Tintagel which is the birth place of King Arthur. On the drive to Tintagel, I kept hearing Marcus, our spiritual tour director, say that we would go see the Crystal Skull. I kept asking him, "Marcus, there is a crystal skull in Tintagel?" and he would say, "No, Margaret, there is no crystal skull in Tintagel." As he continued to speak with the other facilitator, I kept over hearing him say that we were going to go see the Crystal Skull. Finally, this mild mannered man, lost his patience with me and really told me strongly, 'MARGARET - THERE IS NO x!$#%%!!! CRYSTAL SKULL IN TINTAGEL!!

I sat back in my seat bewildered as we drove through the English countryside of Cornwall and pondered on why I kept hearing the words Crystal Skull. When we arrived in Tintagel, the first thing I did was visit a crystal shop. (what a surprise, right?!) And the first thing I saw was a collection of all sizes of crystal skulls!!!! I now have one - Baby- who is very clear with a rainbow infraction at the third eye center. It's an amazing piece. Last night I was reading a bit more on crystal skulls through a Google search on my Blackberry (that I really love) and found this link http://www.crystalinks.com/crystalskulls.html As I read through, it confirmed much of what I already know, but one more dot was connected.

I've always known about the 13 Original Skulls that are to come back together one day. Jamie Sams book, the 13 Original Clan Mothers, outlines this information very well. As I scrolled my way through this link above, I realized that there were 12 knights of the round table and King Arthur was the 13th. And Voila!, the connection of the Crystal Skull. I'd have to go into quite a dissertation to continue to speak on the important significance of 13.

More recently, I believe that I blogged in an earlier post in June 2008, about meeting another skull called Sha Na Ra while I was touring in Bellingham, Washington this past summer. I was scheduled to teach at Wise Awakening. As the universe would have it, the class didn't fill up and instead I had a private session with this amazing skull, Sha Na Ra, which was Nick Nocerino's Crystal Skull. (Aaaah - connect the dots back to Nick's visit to The Crystal Garden with Max in the mid-1990s.)

What does a person do when having a private session with a crystal skull? For me, it's a time of sacred connection with ancient wisdom of ancient cultures. It's a meditative time of being in no mind with no expectations. Going into silence and having time of staring into the eye sockets and the third eye center of the crystal.

Ancient crystal skulls help bring light, consciousness, and connects the grids of light from other Sacred Sites and ancient cultures. This amazing artifact contains the potential to be a catalyst to awaken consciousness by activating seeds lying dormant within people’s brains and sleeping awareness.

Well, as life would have it, I get the honor and privilege to be a hostess for the arrival of the Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull through The Crystal Garden. I am so over-the-top excited! I do believe that people will drive from all over the place to see it. So get your tickets early. E-tickets are available online.

Visit their website at http://www.mitchell-hedges.com/ to read more. And visit Liz Alpert's website at http://www.lizalpert.com/ as she is the one who found me to make this happen! Her jewelry is outstanding!

Tell me your experiences or thoughts on Crystal Skulls. Post a comment now. It's easy!