🐢 When the Turtle Headed South: A Soul-Sighting at 1:11

As soon as I realized what I was seeing, I scrambled like a barefoot oracle on a mission, tripping over my own awe as I lunged for my phone. You’d think I was trying to catch a glimpse of Bigfoot or a celebrity sighting in the backyard. I didn’t want to scare it. I didn’t want to blink and miss it. I just knew this turtle was delivering a slow-motion sermon and I needed to document it before it vanished like all wise things tend to do when we’re not paying attention. It was exactly 1:11 PM when I caught sight of this little fella from my west-facing sliding glass doors.

Because sometimes the holy arrives on four quiet legs, and the only altar you need is your open eyes, your quick hands, and a moment of pure presence to say: I see you. I’m listening. I won’t forget.

It was leaving the cool hush of our porch and heading steadily south, crossing from shadow into sunlit green. A quiet movement. Unhurried. Ancient. Rooted.

It wasn’t just a creature passing through. It was a message. A mirror. A moment.

The west is the direction of the setting sun, of endings and integration, of things returning to the dark womb of mystery. It is the place where grief becomes compost, where stories learn how to close with grace. And yet—this turtle didn’t come from the west. It appeared there, in my line of sight, only to move southward.

South is the direction of the body. Of warmth. Of blood wisdom and survival. It’s the land of summer fullness, of sacred hunger, of remembering how to live within the skin.

And the time?
1:11.
A trinity of beginnings. A whisper from the unseen that something is aligning. Something is asking to be noticed.

I didn’t plan this moment. I didn’t call it in.
But it came. And I saw it.

And that’s the part that matters.
Not that I understood it immediately.
But that I witnessed it.
That I received it.

There’s a part of me that knows I’ve moved too fast for too long. That part of me watched the turtle and said: Yes. This.
This is the way forward.
Not in a rush.
Not toward everyone else’s fires.
But slowly, steadily, toward the heat of my own becoming.


🌿 Reflections for the Road

  • What sacred messages might be crossing your path right now, unnoticed unless you pause?
  • What might it mean for you to walk “south” — to root, to nourish, to come home to your physical truth?
  • What part of your journey needs turtle medicine right now — patience, protection, and peace?

The turtle didn’t speak.
But something in me understood anyway.

And I’m still listening.

🌀 Invitation

If something slow and unexpected crosses your path today—pause. Don’t just look. See.
Let it interrupt you. Let it reorient you.
Even if you have to stumble over laundry baskets or your own disbelief to grab your “record-the-miracle” device.

Sacred moments rarely show up with fanfare.
They arrive like turtles.
Unassuming. Ancient. On time.


🌿 Closing Thoughts

I don’t know where the turtle was going.
But I know it passed through my world on purpose.
And I want to live like that too—slow when needed, sure of my direction, and unbothered by how odd my timing might seem to anyone else.

Maybe today, that’s enough.
Maybe witnessing is enough.


With wonder, wit, and wide eyes always,
The Inspired Imaginative | The Devoted Mystic

🌀✨
“Seen from behind. Known from beyond.”


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