In our meeting tonight we decided to focus on sending healing to the Hanford Nuclear site in Eastern Washington. However, given the extreme level of pollution there, we are going to do divinations first and gather information in order to understand the scope of the problem and see if we can discern what kind of aid would be most beneficial.
Please post in this thread any insights, divinations, and resources regarding the Hanford Nuclear Site.
A title that came up during tonightās discussion:
Frank, Joshua. Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2022.
Two groups working on this place:
Hanford Challenge, Tom Carpenter, an attorney working in Seattle using legal means to make Hanford safer.
Yakama Indian Nationās Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Program (ERWM). An organization started by Russell Jim (Kiiāahl). He passed on in 2018. He is considered by many to be the spiritual leader of the Hanford restoration effort(s).
Frankās book mentions there are river protectors in Washington state that are working on the Hanford situation, but he does not name them.
One thing I have found that may be useful for us in experiencing and understanding the location at a distance is this Hanford Virtual Tour.
Itās not that I āloveā the link, but what youāve posted will be very helpful.
Thanks so much for sharing these resources. Iāll be working on my divination this weekend for the site!
Thanks to you and Breanna for the details about how to stay safe engaging with these energies. I am also working with divination practices this weekend 
Tarot reading on 10/6/23 at about 1 p.m.: A three-card spread, immediate past on the left, present in the center and likely future on the right. I also use a fourth card in the center to see what the crossing or supporting energy is for the center card. The question was if and how we could focus our land healing on Hanford.
Left: Ace of Wands; center: King of Wands crossed by Page of Pentacles; right: VII The Star. I read this as a layout that encourages our work on the Hanford land healing, with a caveat. Within our group or within ourselves, there may be some discussion or controversy about how to design or focus the work. I also found it interesting that the stirring of the unconscious that accompanies The Star is also associated with creative or artistic work.
I use a Rider-Waite deck and consult Rachel Pollockās 78 Degrees of Wisdom for broader and/or deeper ideas about the cards.
Thanks for sharing your reading, @Goldenrod! Since you asked for feedback, I might be inclined to interpret the Page of Pentacles as our efforts and ones that are supporting rather than crossing. The efforts we are making to learn more about and do more land healing feel very Page of Pentacles to me. Thatās just what stood out to me, but Iām also happy to be wrong if you feel strongly otherwise. 
I really appreciate your thoughts on this, @amychutchinson . Especially on Page of Pentacles, who doesnāt visit me very often. This is very helpful 
I performed a divination this morning, 10/9, using the Sacred Geometry Oracle. This is the oracle deck JMG developed for the Golden Section Fellowship. The deck consists of 33 cards with geometrical figures on them, arranged in 3 groups of 11 cards, with interpretations for the upright and reversed version of each card. Iāve been working with it for 9 months or so and find it works well for me.
The process of divination with this deck involves developing a set of subtopics regarding the topic of the divination, drawing one card for each subtopic, and then interpreting the cards. For me the topic is the potential land healing we are considering for the Hanford site. The subtopics with the cards I drew and my interpretations of them are as follows.
(1) Myself: 5, Flow. Iām moving in the right direction to participate in an action of this kind.
(2) The Hanford site: 13, Cooperation. The site needs more than one personās healing attempts, likely more than all of us put together.
(3) The land healing work: 8 reversed, Conflict. We canāt achieve all we would like to do. If we are to do anything, we need to keep it very small and focused, and keep clear of potential conflicting processes or energies.
(4) Positive responses to the healing: 30, Reconciliation. There appears to be something we can do that blends our efforts with ongoing efforts to repair the damage to the site.
(5) Negative responses to the healing: 23R, Risk. There is also a significant risk involved in the healing work which we need to understand better.
(6) My best choice of action: 22, Approach. The healing is pointing in the general direction of something I/we can do to aid the site, but it needs to be better understood and targeted than weāve done so far.
This suggests the possibility for more divinations and other investigations of the situation.
So much information, @cschosser. The more I meditate about this work, the larger and more complicated it seems to be.
I live in Washington and so this site and the work being proposed is dear to me, even if Iām not fully joining in this work. Iām sorry if my comments are ignorant or misdirected, given I havenāt been following the live conversations or the collective work you all have been doing.
But when it comes to Hanford, The thoughts that come up for me are: cancers. Thyroid cancers are common in folks that grew up north of there, because of the years of exposure that traveled via the winds into the fields then into the cows then into the milk that was sold on that side of the state. I have lost friends because of that.
The next grief regards the complexity of its impacts on ground water, water tables, and eventually the rivers. The health of salmon populations in the Snake and Columbia rivers are always a concern.
Historically, as the containment systems of past eras fail, Hanford seems like a failure borne of a lack of political will, plus a lack of technical know how, plus a lack of full financial commitment, which together have lead to a variety of questionable decisions on what to do with nuclear waste and no answer is ever a very good one.
With the land healing and earth healing work generally, I keep thinking about the many harms that could be ameliorated if we were a culture/civilization that actually cares for and about this earth. Human culture and economic values need to shift. But thatās not exactly a clean prayer, changing the values of the people in power to uphold the right to life of all the creatures in our ecosystems and biosphere.
Anyway, glad you all are considering this site. 
I havenāt had a chance to perform a divination yet, but I will do so this weekend (we had a mass shooting just off campus last weekend, and needless to say, I was not in the mindset to do this kind of work or connect with that energy.) But things are a bit settled and Iāll work on it this weekend.
@DanaD, I read again your latest Druidās Garden blog post āSoul of the Soil: Soil Honoring and Dirt Worship.ā https://thedruidsgarden.com/blog/ Do you think this post has ideas for the land healing work?
In thinking about what youād written about the mycelial network, I thought I remembered that some contaminated sites have had fungi introduced there to remediate the soil. So I went looking on the web. Here is a link to just two of the articles Iāve seen: [Do Fungi Feast on Radiation? - Scientific American] and (abstract only) Melanin, Radiation, and Energy Transduction in Fungi - PubMed. At Chernobyl where a terrible nuclear accident occurred, black fungi are growing thickly inside the broken reactor. And at Fukushima, the site of another nuclear accident, scientists are introducing fungi to the surrounding countryside.
My question is: is meditation or prayer focused on the mycelial network a possible focus for the Hanford land healing work? Thoughts?
Also, very sorry that such a shooting happened so close to youā¦
Iām so sorry to hear about a shooting so nearby to you. 
sending healing thoughts - all this violence is not healthy.
Hi Goldenrod - Yeah, the soil rituals and activities are absolutely land healing work! :). I was actually thinking about that after I posted it. Mushrooms can remediate really damaged soils, can take up heavy metals, and it is certainly one really interesting approach.
So here are my results of the divination - I think it is in line with what others have posted. I used a combination of Tarot + my own (very extended) Allegheny ogham:
Judgment reversed. - Upright this is a good card for land healing because it says that while the land is damaged, it is also ready to heal again. Reversed, Iām reading this that the land is still actively damaged and we may not be ready to send healing energy in terms of regrowth/regeneration
10 of wands, upright - I feel this card confirms my read on Judgement, as this is about being stifled. Interestingly, in both cards we have the seed trying to grow, and failing.
Inverted Tree (hanged man) - Note again the theme of being in the ground and not yet on the surface. Seeing a new perspective or trying something new.
All three of the tarot cards speak to the current situation and offer some guidance for healing work: the land is not yet ready to fully heal because of the ongoing toxicity.
Ogham: Mulberry and Cherry speak to the future healing- the promise of the future, of joy, and of abundance at this site. They also both speak to the need to have this site be acknowledged, recognized and sent prayers and healing. Rosemary tells the timeline: she is speaking of the cycles and generations it will take to see this fully healed. This is a long-term process.
So, putting all of that together, I think sending some energy towards the land in an unspecific way (do what you will) as well as Goldenrodās idea of mycelial network support could be a really great idea. What we donāt want to do is blast this site with solar energy for immediate healing, Iām not getting the sense the site is ready for that.
I was able to do my divinations today. I did a series of three card readings using the Brady Tarot, a Rider-Waite variant that uses more nature imagery. All the pictures are woodcuts and all the pictured people are animals. Quotations are taken from the accompanying book.
Question 1: What is the most important consideration for offering land healing related to the Hanford nuclear site?
1: Father of Arrows (equivalent to King of Swords): Cold and hyper-intellectual, the starkness of the image makes me think of the site itself, all brutal concrete. A warning against this way of thinking.
2: Strength: A fierce mother grizzly with a rattlesnake making a lemniscate around her ankles in a landscape similar to Eastern WA. āInner character harmonizes what could be dangerous.ā
3: 8 of Horns/Departure (equivalent to 8 of Cups): Two rivers flow to where a dragonfly molts. I think this card shows that our efforts should be focused on the impact of waterways and maybe specifically on reproduction and development.
I take the Father of Arrows to show the mindset that produced the problem. Strength shows the danger and risk of the situation but offers hope for harmonizing it through our own inner strength and character. 8 Horns makes clear that waterways should be the focus.
Question 2: Containment vs raising energy. What are the results if we focus our working on containing or limiting damage versus if we raise energy to offer the land for active healing? Third card is underlying considerations.
Containment: The Hanged One. A mother opossum hangs by her tail above a river with a halo of fireflies. āSurrender, vulnerability, openness. Through attachment to the forest, she avoids being swept away.ā
Raising energy: The High Priestess. I wasnāt sure what to make of this card.
Underlying issue: 1 Arrows/Truth (equivalent to Ace of Wands). There might be something Iām missing, or this isnāt the right question.
Question 3: Mycelial networks and mycoremediation have come up in our disussions. What are the outcomes if we focus our efforts on this path?
1: Scarcity/5 Roots (equivalent of 5 of Pentacles): This depicts a family of starving moose.
2: Justice: This is very similar to the Father of Arrows card with a turkey vulture holding an arrow.
3: Mother of Arrows.
This spread recalls the Father of Arrows card in the bleakness of the scenes and the recurrence of the turkey vulture. I think itās saying weāre still too focused on the problem, too narrow.
Question 4: I took a different tack here and simply asked āWhat kind of help do the affected waterways want?ā
1: 4 Arrows/Withdrawal (equivalent to 4 of Swords): Donāt rush in, take time for inner work.
2: 3 Arrows/Mourning (equivalent to 3 of Swords): Shared sadness. The card depicts blue jays holding a funeral for one of their number who was shot with an arrow.
3: Daughter of Arrows: āA need to gain a wider perspective by rising above a situation or keeping distant.ā
I had not expected this response. Maybe the only thing to do is hold space for the pain at this stage. I would read this as a signal not to do the working at all except that the initial reading indicated to focus on the waters. I think that for myself, I will organize my ritual as a funeral or memorial for what has been lost. This last reading was by far the most coherent and it struck me deeply.
Unfortunately I did not get a picture of this one. These are the Arrows cards from the artistās site.
After reading the divination results everyone has posted, I think this might be a site we need to return to annually as we continue with these land healing projects.
I got the book @Goldenrod recommended and have been reading it. One of the points the book makes is that the site is in a desert and receives only about 7 inches of rain in a year. I doubt that soil that dry has a mycelial network or could sustain efforts at mycoremediation. This might help make sense of your divination on Question 3.
The Columbia River runs past the site. Any leakage of liquids on-site has a good chance of making it into the Columbia River eventually, and radioactivity being what it is, the people drinking water from the river and the beings who live in the river may experience issues in reproduction and development as a result. This may be part of what is behind your Question 1 divination.
Your divination of Question 4 resonates with me and what I got out of my divination, as well as what I have learned from the book so far. I knew a little about the situation before reading the book, but it has much deeper dimensions than I had realized. I plan to do another divination around your idea of organizing the ritual as a memorial for what has been lost, as that might be the direction my divination is pointing to as well.
