Blog

During Winter this year, I had the good fortune to be able to sit in Circle at Mullumbimby for the
first Winter Woman/Bone Wisdom workshop with Jane Hardwicke Collings (Founder of the School of Shamanic Womancraft) among sistars of the Four Seasons Journey. Jane isn’t yet a Crone, but is closing in and preparing herself, what we call a Baby Crone.

Potent Questions To Ponder

Questions on this day started with:

• How do we want to meet our Death?
• What makes us valuable?

Crones are the Truthtellers, the Myth-busters, the Storytellers... This is the ultimate right of passage. A total unconditional space of holding. Susun Weed says:

The Crone speaks first and for as long as she wants.

Today we are holding the Crone in her most exalted form...

• So what does she have to say? 
• Who are the wise elders in your life? 
• What are the messages you have received in your life about getting old?
• And if you have an opportunity to sit with an older woman,...

I have inherited a garden of rose bushes – wiry, woody and pest ridden. Arriving to my new house in the middle of winter meant the great unveiling of the colour and perfume of the rose would have to wait till the spring. A self-confessed novice, I began tending the roses, removing aphids and curly leaves. I read roses needed food, water and sunshine – easy enough, I thought. Roses are frost tolerant and hardy – great! That will work here, with evening temperatures throughout winter settling below zero.

Beauty for Beauty's Sake

As spring arrived, I awoke one morning to see a tiny bud on the bush outside my window and so began my exuberant quest to know and understand The Rose. Early on in my life, I thought flowers were pointless. Why would I want a garden full of pretties that didn’t provide food? I was practical, purposeful and there was no time for flowers that were simply just sitting around looking...

Through life, we often hear well-intentioned advice to; stay focused, complete one task at a time, plan ahead, stay on track, be methodical and that it is best to specialise in just one particular area. It's like a drumbeat echoing in our minds, a rhythm that promises success through order and structure. To my Virgo Moon and my orderly, list-making mind, it all makes perfect sense. Yet, as I dig deeper, I realise that this isn't how I best stay in flow and I have been forcing myself to be something I wasn’t and unjustly judging myself harshly along the way.

Growing up and well into my adult life it was challenging for me to ever question authority, I was a rule follower, I never swam against the mainstream, or allowed myself to follow my own instincts. The echoes of words spoken to me as a teenager still reverberate through my body. My mother's ‘throw away’ comments about how I looked and what I ‘should’ be doing about...

While looking up as I finally lay my heavy head on the pillow, I catch myself actually feeling thrilled at this very moment in time. I’m loving the fact that I can just lay here and do absolutely nothing! Nothing but just watch the flickering light dancing along the walls and ceiling. My bedroom is finally starting to feel more gentle and soothing as the light dances around in a rhythmic hypnotic way. I’m loving the fact that this room is slowly evolving into my very own Goddess Sanctuary It’s slowly becoming the canvas of my innermost personality, holding memories and stages of my life through ‘trinkets’, photos and items that I’ve been collecting like a Bower Bird for all these years. I can finally properly unpack all of my boxes and safely display my memories without fear of my little boys breaking them, as they are now grown young men living in different states. Or having the fear of my precious items being damaged or ridiculed by a...

In the beginning of my awareness journey, I can remember back to my first shamanic breathwork, where the Red Serpent first appeared to me. Thick bodied. Blood red. Translucent. Slithering out through my vulva; from between my legs and gently down into the ground. It plunged into the deepest earth beneath my savasana body. Seeping down into the core of the crystal caves' waters. A fully embodied somatic experience. From that day forward, I’ve been curious to learn more about the serpent who appeared and what it had to share with me........

The quest to my question... What do you know about the red serpent?

If I remember back further, to being a child, that was when I first learnt of the Rainbow Serpent. I was a young white girl, a policeman's daughter, living in country NSW, within an indigenous community that was first settled by missionaries. It was a small town, Goodooga. First Nation culture fascinated me. A culture...

Imbolc Shona Daoibh - Happy Imbolc

Imbolc originates from the Celts and symbolises a cross quarter day on the Celtic Wheel of the Year. It is the halfway point between winter solstice (Yule) and the spring equinox (Ostara). The word Imbolc means in the belly of Mother Earth. It is he quickening, the celebration of the end of winter. It is a time to give thanks for the growing daylight. The warmth of the growing sun begins to activate seeds deep within the Earth to germinate and sprout, with the quickening pace of life emerging. Imbolc is also known as Saint Brigid’s Day, Candlemass, feast of Torches, Feast of Pan and Oimelc.

The Goddess Brigid

Brigid or Bride was the daughter of the Dagda, the oldest god in the Celtic pantheon Tuatha du Danann. She was the patroness of healing poetry and smithcraft. A triple goddess and a solar deity. Her skills are all those associated with fire. Her attributes are light and inspiration. She is the benefactress of inner...

Water and the Arrival of Winter

In Western Australia, Winter is the season where we get most of our rain, and Summer sees our land very parched, dusty and dry. Water is pooling and puddling now and rehydrating the soil. In the local Aboriginal dialect this Season is called Makuru and it is the Season of fertility. The arrival of the rain is celebrated as it sees the return of Life to the Land.

Nature of Water

Water initiates seed germination and growth in the plants and trees, and it refreshes, purifies, cleanses and flushes out our creeks, waterways and rivers. All the water that falls as rain, mist or fog, makes its way by flowing downwards and out towards our coasts to expansive deep oceans and seas: massive storage sites of water where the cycle begins again. Water cannot be created nor destroyed but is always transforming through the cycle when put under pressure. When it is undisturbed it remains still.

In Winter when the days are shorter, darker, and wetter we can say...

Left-brain bias…

In a world that lays its accolades at the feet of the analytical left-hemisphere dominant perspective, ignoring the right almost entirely, we are rewarding what could at best be called an imbalance, and more accurately perhaps, an expression of collective mental illness. For in doing so, we have lost touch with a profound and, as Einstein says, sacred gift of what it means to be human.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Einstein

The right, and what is also described as the feminine, hemisphere of the brain, is responsible for accessing information primarily at a subconscious level: the invisible sea of intelligence that we bathe in daily that describes the ubiquitous frequencies of consciousness within all phenomena. The left cerebral allows us to see only the surface of things. Until the right side is awakened, ‘seeing’...

Ocean Visit ...

I have just spent time camping on Gunditjmara country at Port Fairy in Victoria. It was cold, it was wet and it was very windy. And Mother Nature was beautiful. I spent time on the beach watching the ocean being picked up and rolled by the wind. It felt like she was singing to me, telling me a story that was uniquely mine. I watched as the ocean formed waves of white foam and could see glimpses of crystal blue waters through the beautiful curve of each wave. There was a majesty and fierceness in the way the waves crashed into the water and a contrasting gentleness as the water breathed in and out of the rock pools. ‘You can be fierce. You can be gentle. And in all states, you are beautiful’ she sang to me. And I knew it to be true. There was a knowing of such depth that the Mother was indeed speaking to me through the wind and the water.

Deep Listening 

Moments like these are not foreign to me. I live...

Into the Dark

Last night I walked down to the river. It was one of the darkest nights, approaching New Moon and clouds misting the starlight to a very faint diffuse glow. Bio-luminescent mushrooms making themselves known with their yellowish blue light, evoking the feel of spirits holding space, guarding the dark creative spaces. Arriving at the river bank, I turn off my head torch, let my eyes adjust to the darkness, taking a few deep breaths, connecting with the dark lunar energy above and the magnetic creative womb of the earth. I call in the elements.
 

Water... flow, tidal rhythms, sometimes flowing around obstacles, sometimes tearing them away,  fertile swelling, flowing towards something bigger than us, following intuition and instinct.
 

Air... light cool breeze, spaciousness to allow love to blossom and healthy boundaries to grow strong, discernment and vision, deep listening to the whispers of my allies and my whole and healed ancestors.
 

Earth... aahhh,...