To gather with like minds

There is a whole lot of noise about a group of men, across the globe, gathering. Showing up to each other, becoming known to one another beyond the screen, the digital expression that they have allowed so far. The fact that they share a deeply misogynistic world view, unfortunate.

They could be so much more to each other, with each other. They could be real Kings among men, whole and real unto themselves. Healing and willing to lead further healing of the manufactured divide between men and women. For in truth, there is only the noise that keeps us separate. In reality loving each other is as hard as we make it.

When you hold a child in your arms, witness them grow, you know we are born loving, being loving creatures, when bathed in more loving it all just keeps getting stronger. We have to learn to be cruel. We have to be taught all the ism’s our culture contains, we become what we need to become to get the loving we need to grow. For some that becomes an addictive state of attention seeking that is not met well. For others less vocal we internalize (internal lies) tell ourselves stories about just how unlovable we are, thus creating a world for ourselves we can trust to disappoint at every opportunity, becoming more hard wired into the scarcity of it all.

This is where a group of our own kind, be it men, women or somewhere in between, can share a language where we can discover that it’s not you, or them, perhaps it’s the way that we expect loving to be. Tis hard to share a free and easy state of loving if you have a whole lot of story as to who we each are, and who should be on top.

A group of men, in circle, knowing just how amazing they are from the core out of their beings, that group of men can honour themselves and thus those around them. This is not what I am feeling is happening with the self proclaimed Kings. My feeling is that these men are being weaponized for commercial profit, ego stroking and a kind of frenzy that only delusion can deliver. When you have to keep telling a story, whether it’s that your football club can win, or you are righteous in your acts because you found a bible passage to back you up, to maintain a feeling of frenzy, of fury that feels good to get out, good to be expressed… then you are living in a bubble of someone else’s thought, some would call this a cult.

Cults scare me. I have seen many from the outside, had many a friend sink into one or three only to return with stories of disconnection, disappointment, often debt up the wazoo. Those are just the easy to see ones. There are so many thought bubbles, delusions we keep telling ourselves to try make it ok.

I have never ever wanted to create cult.

I want to build community.

A community of human, all of the ways we wear our human, that reach for what is real. Trust that love is real, an honest part of who they are. Know that our Earth is sacred and creating sacred is a muscle group we can exercise. Recognize that every solution we need, we have, we just need the will to use it.

Being in circle, your circle, the humans of your world that you trust, have built your world near. That circle, connected to other circles, woven like a huge flower of life pattern where each intersects with each other. For me, that feels like community. Each human unique unto themselves. Each circle able to hold themselves and each other sacred. All of us knowing we are part of something much larger, able to create and maintain real change.

 

 

My First Blood Rite.

Locking the doors felt both foolish and oddly securing. I was shaking with the anticipation of what I was to step through. The rite I had conjured for myself felt so very dangerous, as if I was about to step into, through and beyond something that would change me forever. A threshold I could never come back from. This was the point; Really truly deeply changing something took this kind of sacrifice of fear, of terror, as the edges of it were felt through.
Who would stop me? Who could stop me? Who would know? There have been many moments of my life spent this secretively. Times where I would explore something never seen in a book. But ached for by my skin or by my heart, in such a way as to build the entire path to it. Every little detail of the encounter with self, alone and in so many ways All one, every part created with such joy and true abandon.
This here was the passageway to reclaim my blood. I had been using a menstrual cup for a year by then. I dearly loved it and the truth it afforded me, by virtue of its design that I may have such direct contact with my blood. So many questions arose from its use, so many wonderings that my bloodmind would wonder. But it would be years before I would even conjure that notion of my being… the recognition of bloodmind… by this stage I was barely able to see, to smell, to witness the bloods effect on my being… by being safe with it. This was another step along the pathway to understanding why we are so very forbidden from this blessed gift from within.
I had fashioned a simple spell working, from my basic and newbie relations to witchcraft. My sacred tools assembled, I cast circle. I created a sacred space, naked now, dripping in sweat, I sang a simple Goddess chant, The River… returning back unto She Then, taking my menstrual cup from my body, trusting it would be rather full, which it was, I opened to the blessed wonder that was this sacredness and added this cup of blood to my bowl of ochre.
I felt like an original witch. Working with the most primitive of elements, blood and earth. I made my sacred paste. Stirring and blending till the consistency was just right for painting. Singing quietly to myself as I built such an offering, to me, to Her, to the life force that engaged me to continue, to move through any resistance, anything that would tell me this was too wrong, too far away from what is considered “normal”.
Once this sacred tool was ready, I turned and faced each element to ask for the blessings of each quarter. I conjured a power-filled brew, and turned to the mirror to apply it to my being, to reach ALL the way in. I was after what ever had made this feel wrong. I was chasing the tail of the beast that had stolen my first blood and made me fetid, filthy and dirty for being a woman that bleeds. I was chasing the demon that had laid this curse, so that I may shift it within myself. As I faced that mirror, I painted a crescent moon upon my third eye with my sacred blood earth, and knew myself a blood witch. I painted a spiral upon my heart to journey further and further within to the heart of woman.
I felt then, what I do now. A peace, a profound peace where there now lives an incredible life, sharing such life giving possibility of the sacred blood.
That first blood rite led me to the sharing of blood wisdom with many women. A life led deeper and deeper into the flow of what lay within a curse, what lay within the meaning and value we place on being a woman. I have sought the source of the curse in myself, in other women, in the texts that support it to remain. Those still invested in a woman’s perceived weakness rather than making room for the rest of her to be welcome at the table.
What I was after, what I am still opening to, is the state where in my body, the menstrual cycle has the rest of its worth enacted upon. Where I reach into the emotional realms, the heart tools of being whole as woman. Being real in this bloody glory.
I still remember the mortification of realizing a small drop of blood had landed on our rental carpet and the panic of having to explain how it got there to my housemate. I did all that I could to clean it, but in the end I confessed what it was, and how it got there. In testament to our friendship she heard me, and helped me remove my exposure. This beautiful sister became the first woman that I shared what I had learnt from within the blood circle, the first of many. She was to remain a deep sister that held me sane during a time when I could have easily slipped off an edge and been lost. For it feels like there is a madness, an agreement that we break outside of our current thought … a treason we commit by turning to the blood, away from everything else, when we bleed.
I know I am not the first woman to have my attention taken by the flow of wisdom down my thighs.
I know that I will not be the last woman to re-frame my blood, my bleeding as sacred.
I hope that this story touches any woman that has felt this place and had no language for it. For where do we find such a language in the world of men that have never felt the entire dissolve that is menstruation.
Blessings of the Blood, for there are so many!
Katherine Cunningham.

For the Love of a Women’s Circle!

This. Here. Now.

I am brewing some delicious, down here on the farm… but planning on bringing a moment up to Melbourne. Tis all part of my greater plan! This first part though is for ALL the women that I have had the honour to share circle with! Whether over the years, in deep and long pagan rites, or during a StarFire, there are a whole lot of women I have shared this intimacy with.

The invitation is to share the love of a woman’s circle, for way to many women have no idea what one looks, nor feels like and we have an opportunity to shift that.

I would like to film it. To film us all in circle. Also for us to interview each other. There is a facebook event page here, with all the details. And a test video that shares the love of circle I am attempting to deliver, via a free online digital class through Udemy.

I know, as many of you do too, that when a woman is truly held in circle there a whole lot more of self that can be reached. A deeper offering of being in the world when the time, commitment, trust and honesty, an equal environment, is crafted over moons, over cups of tea,great cackling outbursts and those soft gentle tears of relief of being heard, of being seen.

Please, come along if you can, share a whole day of the Love of a Woman’s Circle…   If you can’t make it along for the day perhaps consider making a short film of you and maybe another sister you share circle with, interviewing each other on the love of a circle. There are some questions outlined in Facebook post to the event, but really, just share what you can! Once made, please email them, or a dropbox link to them, at livinggently@gmail.com and I can get them into the conversation to be created.

I am bringing a large map of Melbourne on a cork board, with the intention of sharing where we all are, and what circles are currently running. If you can’t make it, but have a circle that is open, please contact me and I will get your details on to this map. Tis my hope that every woman that wants a circle to be a part of, goes home with contact to at least one!

I do hope you are being held!

To Trust the Truth.

This is me, Sharing my Truth.

Tis a power-filled moment in time I wish to share today. It happened whilst I was teaching my Introduction to the Tarot class and it was delicious. We had made it, through all the 78 cards. We had been introduced. Each of the 4 students now had their completed decks in front of them. We had explored some basic spreads, and their purpose. We determined what would work for us to set some space, to create that “rare” area that is conducive to the Tarot read. We were there, in that moment, where the only thing left was to read. To give ourselves permission to read. I found the moment to be palpable. And then process arrived, and I am sorry that I don’t know if it was sourced from Caroline Myss or Seth Godin, but I am not sorry that the core of it has set up a home within me so clearly that I felt that I could walk us all through the center of this profound understanding of why we don’t trust our truth.

I asked everyone to remember when they were a child. When they had no reason to lie to themselves. When they knew the truth, and often spoke it, (out of the mouths of babes eh?) for as a child the notion of duplicity had not arrived. There just is when we are young enough to just be. There is a moment, an incident when you first lied to yourself, when the Truth of self became unsafe for you. When you didn’t trust it any longer, and you fabricated something to fill in the gap. We learned to make it ok. To ourselves, to each other. We placated something, someone, did what we felt they wanted us to do, told them what they wanted to hear. It was such an incredible place to hold our child within our inner gaze and witness this beginning.

Maybe we agreed that there weren’t any faeries…

We stopped knowing how to be moved by the play, and began to be governed by the external forces of our world… it was easier, to do as we were told. For almost ALL of us, were denied that opportunity to listen to our Truth. What we really want, where we really want to go, what is real for us. Wait, please before you feel yourself race off into the justification of keeping your child safe as you parented, or that place of knowing our parents did the best they could with what they had, for it is all true, all those justifications… all those things we tell ourselves to make it ok… I am there with you, but I want to give that young girl in me a chance to be heard, to feel what it is to have Her truth honoured. WOW… this is big juicy place I have stumbled into and I am deeply grateful for ALL that I have lived to create this opportunity.

As I step into the land of where this Truth lives, where I learn to trust it, with my life… I am guided, not governed and there is where the love lives… when we all moved into that spot, when we as a small group of heart warriors chose to feel our Truth’s we needed to hug, for there were lots of tears… I can only surmise that it is about coming home… unto our self… our whole self where nothing but the Truth lives.

Thanks for reading… I really needed to write that… please Share if you feel to.

 

The Red Tent… such a classic of our times!

The Red Tent. by Anita Diamant

In an op-shop yesterday and I found another copy of the Red Tent… I always pick up any second hand copy I find, as I am forever giving them away! Re-reading the introduction, so many moments that grab me, but this…

” The more a daughter know the details of her mother’s life – without flinching or whining – the stronger the daughter.”

So very very real that, hits something right on the top of my head. Tis the core purpose of the meditation that I offer in the ovulation section of Harnessing the Fertile Force… Mother line work I call it… being able to be with the truth of the woman that raised you. All of her, in her real shit and glory, how she has been forged and cooled.

We don’t see our mothers that closely any more, they are so very busy being the best mothers they can be, a cloak we all have thrust around us, in case the kids see… Just for the record, our “kids” see EVERYTHING. Didn’t you? You felt her, perhaps she, your mother, had no words, but you felt her. Her frustrations, her inner berating, her attempts to make your life so much different to hers… or not. Maybe you had a perfect setting, with clear and open communication at all times… YAY for you if you did, but rare… Most of us have a murky state to witness as adults as we turn and feel through our childhood… lots of places where we are unclear on what we did wrong…

For you see, we didn’t share the Red Tent… We would have had a completely different view of our mothers if we shared the Red Tent together… Can you even imagine that? A place where we as a collective of women would go to bleed, to birth, to grieve, to die. A sacred place stripped bare of all the doing of our outer worlds, so that we may sit and be with what truly is… in that space between Life and Death, where a mother could drop her mantle long enough to be seen by her sisters and daugthers for the truth she was feeling. an honesty we have rarely known.

This is what the Red Tent gifts us… an opportunity to glimpse a place where we used to live. Where we were raw, so close to life and death, blood and milk, that we knew it’s scent so clearly. Obviously we cannot live, nor would I want to, in such small tribes, with such woven lives, so dependent on each other for survival. Our times do call for the circle though, a space where we can call ourselves to our edges of truth. Can you imagine a circle with your closest sisters, and all your mothers?

I intend to offer the space for this… Mother line workings, where our womanhood is truly honoured!

 

When it is time…

My scratching of a lodge structure, the one we made with Kerryanne Ansuri.

I have been waiting for a long time for this… to wake and know today is the day. Our dark moon circle women and our children it seems too, are gathering today to build the earth lodge.  Tis an earth lodge, not a sweat lodge in that we will be enclosing it in earth over time. Wattle and daub the walls once we are truly happy with the placing, the movement of the rite. My feeling is that we are only ready now, after all these eclipses and movement in our heavens. As we ready ourselves to build such a vessel, the contents arrive. I have been holding open the space, the idea of the ritual, the notion of a Black Earth Lodge, in that I understand what its purpose is, where it would take me and any one else that would journey with me into these the dark inner sanctum of the earth. For as I was recognizing we had the means to move forward, the very first draft of a ritual that is sitting in such a lodge arrived too.

Holding open the space, to trust that there is something here, like the fable of the south american shamans sitting on the waters edge, with no idea what is making that shape in the water, for there was no reality that was a tall ship in their world, but staying with what is, even if we don’t know what it is, to be with what is in front of us… trusting that if we don’t have the language, we will will make it up… like these new deformities in Iraq that children are being born with, we will find the names to call these new and real places. My intent is to stay with what is, in earth, in the decay and death and fecundity that is black earth. To be with so deeply, so gently, so honestly so as to hear Her.

The first draft of the process looks like this: Unlike the Sweat Lodge, there is only one long deep round. We are ready, comfortable, with our feet in the center hole flat as we are able, spine straight… bum on something that is soft? maybe… I would like us to be able to descend profoundly, so we do need to be comfortable, at ease.  Once we are ready the fire keeper will bring in the warm earth and fill the hole that our feet are in. Then we close the door to the light outside and let go.

This is the beginning, we surrender ourselves. Firstly the self, the noise that is in the head, the words that are keeping us out here an not in… maybe rather than give any of it our full attention we can all just keep making the noise, what ever noise is there, in the head, in the body, keep expelling it till it’s all gone. A silence will instill itself. We will be able to reach beyond our self to the collective…

From the collective and the voice we give that, we can descend even deeper to the animal, the part of us that is a part of the earth fully, instinctively, aware of its death. All life knows it will die, thus the strong and powerful quest for life. The sapling that breaks through the concrete shows us just how determined life is to live. BUT we have been moved away from this power-filled state of truly choosing to live our lives, with that fierce determination, and I consider the fear of death to be at the core of it. (Terror Management Theory perhaps the writing on the wall of the core..)  Here in the Earth Lodge, deep within the belly of earth, I trust that there is a place to be found that will help us shed the fear of death… therein find the power to truly live, as ecstatically as we can!

The beauty of this process is the trust… that to hold open the space… we will find true purpose to live in balance with Her. If ever there was a time to find the balance to live with, tis now beloveds. Are you holding open the space? Can you hear the call to Earth? Please… Share…

Value of the Banshee.

Banshee/Cannibal From “Doomsday” the film…

There’s this joke… about men and women and relationships…. it goes like this.   Ask Ten women why their last relationship finished and they will give you a detailed map on what went wrong, where, when and what they will never do again… Ask the Ten men why their last relationship finished… they will say.., “Bitch went crazy!”

Being tarred with the Banshee brush does my head in, does yours in too… I’ve seen way too many women reduced to “crazy” when what they really are is furious, so full of fury they explode! That stuff is uber real, needing the respect we offer nitroglycerin. Normally though, what a woman will do as she feels the temperature rising is one of a few options left to her… Suck it up, shove it down, drown it out, cool it off… some of those involve eating, sleeping, swallowing, or any other form of self punishment we have conjured this week. Or sometimes we have a range of tools we use to access that rage and USE it to create the change it was sent to create.

I LOVE my Banshee… I LOVE my Banshee in my Mother and my Daughter… I LOVE it in my Sisters!  I LOVE it when the force of personal truth that will not be silenced today, will speak her total mind right now. Tis far greater than the other options. I would love to see our world where the Banshee is a valued part of every woman, where we respected her presence in a moment as necessary, as she would not be there if she was not needed. She is truly only there when she’s needed.

There is the learned emotional vomiting that many women do, the shrieking that fills your ears with dread when you hear it, but that is not what I am speaking to here. That is bad behavior, when someone has maintained the habit of making their problems everybody else’s problem… No, that is truly different to the Real Banshee. Learning the difference between the two can make a life lived in terror of our anger, or a life that has learned to harness the fire, not burn every one, mostly the self, alive… The difference between the two is the place they arrive from. The shrieking noise a woman makes to force people to do her bidding if only it will shut her up.. that is easy to spot as generally it’s in her pitch… the higher the noise, the greater the fear, the stronger the shrieking… The fury you can see burning in a woman’s eyes, that would be her Banshee, also know as her Kali… about to chop off your head, that pitch is totally different. There is a force moving through her that really ought to be heard, and if her world is her own, she will truly bring it… ALL THE WAY through… not the truncated depths that most women share with the world as that is all they seem allowed to share.

Time is changing beautiful woman. Our earth needs our Banshee! Learn the difference, and employ the fury in such a way as to burn through the dross that has encased your life… that is what she if for! To Burn away ALL that would contain you and Not have your world as your own.

Bosom Buddies with your Banshee… My latest work… a tool box for profound change…. Wont you join me?

 

As we hold them Sacred.

From My actual wall.

I have had this on my wall for over 6 years… The notion of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers gathering all over the world to do the work that needs to be done. To listen and heal, be with and inspire, this I honour. This I hope one day to be of service to…. and actually that day has come.

A Journey into Her… is all about our connection to Her, to being with our blessed earth, with other women, in the kind self care and loving that we need, to do the work that we all do, each day. From loving our kids, men and family, to doing what needs to be done to pay the rent. To holding our sisters in times of joy and sorrow, being present to the art that just wont let go till it is made real, through you.

The film, “For the next 7 Generations, weaving a world that works”.. This is on the Saturday Night… open for our men and children to join us, so that they may understand why we are here, gathering doing the work that must be done…

I am finally going to sit at the sacred fire with these incredible women, and just be with, in the edges of love and grace and listen to their wisdom, be with their core intent.  To serve our blessed earth. To find Her Sacred and all the life that is with Her. If you feel to join me, please do, the tickets are only on sale till the 1st of November. If you are already going, please join us in the journey of fundraising to help send some of our own Aunty’s, from our sacred lands, to join in the fire.

There are still so many tickets left to sell, for both the weekend and the Raffle… could you please assist us in sharing the love. We need to sell tickets, we need to get the word out there… How can you help?

As truly, as we hold these incredible women and their vision sacred, they hold us.

 

Where to from here?

Like many that have been witness to these past elections in Australia, I am rather numb now. I’ve passed through the disbelief, the rage, and now I am numb… Three or more years of this void of humanity… one woman in the senior cabinet… SO.. Where to from here, for my Aries Moon will not allow me to sustain such numbness.

My feelings are that we need the circle now more than ever. To look after our community, to be listening at a deeper level to the other worlds around us.  To be with our earth as much as we can, for Goddess knows we don’t have a government listening. In fact these next years are really important for learning to listen to the vibes that are surrounding us. The art form of  discerning truth, staying grounded in real information and being present to what IS.

When a circle of women is the core of a community the menfolk start to bond too, as well as the children. This starts things like food co-op’s and community gardens, clothes swaps and sharing resources. Sharing celebrations as well as being mindful of crisis that is within the family unit. Most of the sub-culture I belong to have an openness that means we can reach for each other when we need to. We worked for that, we broke down the constraints and said yes to things like Confest so much so we now have a Deepen gathering of our own… a private Confest.  But our connectivity is not the society that most of our population live in.

So, to begin the process of building your very own sub-culture. Start with a women’s circle, the more local the better. Meet regularly and do the work to create a safe and honest place to rest and love in. From there create some opportunities to gather outside of the circle with your families.  Grow gardens together. Tend each other during bleed as well as babies. Hook into the here and now, with your tribe. Knowing your tribe right now, tis the real antidote to all this national noise.

WE will survive a Liberal government, perhaps by really turning to each other and ignoring them as much as possible. If the rage grabs ya though, make sure you have a great way of shifting your fury… maybe the “Bosom Buddies with your Banshee” can help… maybe not, but don’t let the despondency eat you! Your attention is one of your greatest commodities, spend it well!

Artifacts: Creating the tools we need when they don’t already exist

I am eternally grateful to Kathleen Agius (https://www.facebook.com/kathleen.agius.9) for her artistry and that it lives in my world.

When I share my beautiful “Fragile Please Touch Me” Teraphim with the circle, I feel the ancients holding her with me. This tool, I explain, comes from a time when our Goddesses where close enough to touch. When we built forms we could hold on to when the shit got real! Something power-filled to walk with us as we stretched open in a thousand directions to allow our daughter’s birth through us. Our Goddesses were for support, like we were as women to each other, like we can be now if we let go of our shields and use our swords with respect and tender loving care.

Artifacts are those things that embody what you are investing your whole self into. They are the shapes and vessels to pour oneself into, that maybe others may share, or maybe we get to really anchor our self into a moment for future application.

A telling part of an artefact is time… when I build something, and I don’t really consider myself an artist, so I don’t often call it sculpture, but once built, do I find that it becomes something I reach for, when I am doing the work. For emotional work, is work, and every field of work has its tools.

You know, when we realized we are now in the realms of “Knowledge Workers” where a lot of our day is spent digging a hole in data not the earth, we recognized that we needed to be with this type of workflow differently than you do when you are digging a hole. I feel the same about the emotional workings that many of us do, whether by our self or working with another, there is a whole lot of digging that can be going on, and a lot of “work” that is real and good and the whole we are after has a different expression… but perhaps we have yet to acknowledge the process that we are utilizing, like we have with “knowledge workers”… I bring this up, because I feel we were building emotional tools, physical ones, like sigils but in 3D form, back in the days of the Venus of Willendorf. We called them Goddesses and Gods, but for me, they are applications of the human experience, and can be held in a form.

These tools, these artifacts are often unique unto the practitioner, depending on the language they are using, the flavours and colours that are their style. For me the exciting bit is when we have the impetus to make the tool, sometimes with absolutely no idea what it is for, and the trust it takes to make something for as yet to be experienced intent… well perhaps I am an artist, for that is the artists edge, to just begin, allow through what will be made today, through you.

What artifacts have you built? How do they assist you to do the work?