Showing people how to navigate their lives so they can live the best version of themselves is an objective shared by members of Salmon Arm’s The Luminary Collective.
Formerly the Gypsy Moon Collective, The Luminary Collective shares commercial space at 201-40 Lakeshore Dr. NE, consisting of numerous private rooms used by the collective’s 16 independent practitioners, a gathering space and a space set up for podcasting/videos.
The practitioners collectively offer a holistic approach to healing and personal betterment through a wide range of services that include Reiki, chakra balancing, hot stone massage, craniosacral therapy, intuitive energy healing, live blood analysis, nutritional counselling, whole-body reflexology, yoga, alternative medicine counselling and more.
Heading up the collective is founding director Rose Dupont, aka The Witchitarian, who is an ascension guide and energy facilitator and provides tarot readings. Dupont explained the collective came together about two years ago following a personal leap of faith, when she decided to leave her job as a food and beverage manager at a local golf course, to pursue a growing passion for tarot reading.
“One day I just decided I was going to quit my job and become a tarot reader and so I did, and I just rented this little room on Hudson and two months later I met my business partner who also rented a room… in the same building. And then we just decided we were going to make a collective…,” said Dupont.
“I had salary, I had benefits, I had time off, and I was just like, I’m just going to – not throw it away, but more step into something that was exciting for me. And when I did that, everything just started lining up for me.”
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Asked about tarot readings, Dupont explained it is a tool for your intuition.
“It gives you cues to help you intuitively solve a problem or give you guidance to another person,” said Dupont.
After spending weeks fixing up the space on Lakeshore, Dupont said it took about four days to fill all the rooms with practitioners. In addition to keeping busy with their own schedules, Dupont said collective members are encouraged to use the gathering space for such things as teachings, workshops, collaborations and more. Starting in April, on the last Saturday of the month, a TLC Mystical Wellness Fair will be held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with readers and healers for one-on-one sessions.
There’s also the podcast/video room that offers the tools needed for practitioners to host online sessions and events.
“We want to bring on astrologers and numerologists and people that read human design and things like that,” said Dupont who, with fellow practitioners Charla Hoffos and Paul Hopkins, has been creating live podcasts for YouTube called the Shake-n-Wake Show.
“We do it every Thursday evening…,” said Dupont. “Everything we’re doing right now is kind of under the radar in the sense that we’re practising, we want to see how it goes.”
Asked about the name, The Witchitarian, Dupont said it came after she identified herself to a friend as being both a witch and a vegetarian. Dupont said she’s embraced being a witch and people have thanked her for stepping out.
“For me, I see being a witch as somebody that’s in alignment with themselves and with nature or with that higher power, as above so below,” said Dupont. “It’s not like I go around, ‘Hey I’m Rose the Witch.’ That is my persona that I’ve taken on for my business, and it seems to draw in a lot of people because people are very drawn to all the stuff.”
Dupont said she’s seen how the events of the past few years have prompted people to gravitate towards alternatives to traditional counselling and therapy.
“We really do try and support people in a way like, you are the governing power of your own body, your own emotions,” said Dupont. “We show you the tools and the things you can do to shift it, but we’re not like, you have to do this, you need to follow this regiment. It’s more like, ‘listen, we know because most of us have lived through it.’
“So we are seeing a shift, we’re seeing more people guided to esoteric ways because traditional ways haven’t been able to support them, or they’ve only taken them so far.”
For more information, visit theluminarycollective.com, or The Luminary Collective on Facebook.
lachlan@saobserver.net
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