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.

 

 

A festival of women.

I have been present at each of the Seven Sisters Festivals. Each year of this journey deepened the desire to be with women more, to share the love of being a woman. Rare is that space in our culture, the space that celebrates all the beauty, power and wisdom of women.

I was there that first year, when quite spontaneously there was an epic dance in the kitchen. Each of us unleashed in that way women can when we truly dance for ourselves, without having to navigate the male gaze whilst we do so.

Watching the festival grow, become so much to so many women. For some women it is the very first time they have been allowed that totally women only state. For many of us that do work with women, it is a chance to share our love with women we would never be in front of, in any other circumstance.

Over the years, I have lost count of the amount of women that have recognized me from the festival, as the women that speaks to the blood. I have, each festival, held open a strong and important conversation about what the menstrual power can be in a woman’s life, when considered a sacred state. WHERE in our culture is that conversation?

This is why I show  up and do the work.

This is why we need a safe and sacred space for women to gather.

The very first circle I held with women to focus upon the menstrual experience was in 1999 at a pagan festival. For nearly 3 hours we, as many of the women of that small 90 person gathering, shared in circle what the blood meant to us, what we could perceive of it’s purpose, the power beyond the taboo.

There was a man that couldn’t cope with idea that we had a created a space that was women only. He invaded it, with weak excuse, three times. Many of the women there were furious with him and after the circle finished they sought him out and told him so. When I finally saw him, he thought he would cop the same from me. But I didn’t. I asked what he learnt about himself, about women and how we can go about learning about menstruation.

The next year that gathering was held, I held open a menstrual conversation that men were invited to. It was ok, we learnt a few things. We learnt about what men thought of it. As a group though, we didn’t get anywhere near the sacred, deeply felt, shared experience that we had achieved the year before. The men being present, just present, not disparaging, or negative in any way, it felt like we couldn’t go there, get there with them in the room.

The next year, I returned to a women only format and again we were able to access what I now understand to be a collective blood mind. A red thread that connects us all as we share the story of our first menstrual experience. A curious and slightly apprehensive laugh as we pass around a menstrual cup and discuss the experience of using it for the first time.  A shared knowing smile when we compare notes on “the blood horn”, a pre-menstrual sexual state that many women have discovered.

The validity of the female experience. In our bodies, uncensored, truly free to express what is actually happening in our women’s bodies that we may comprehend that reality so often ignored in a male centered world.

That is what we afford ourselves at the Seven Sisters Festival, a women’s festival.

I have no intention nor desire to exclude trans women from anywhere, but how do I include trans women in this conversation? Does your presence in that circle, by you not having shared experience, inhibit other women in accessing their menstrual understanding, often for the first time? This is an honest quest/question. Please allow for a learning experience.

POSTSCRIPT:

Upon a day of further exploring this conversation I now understand that “WE”, means any woman, in the body they are in… hopefully uncensored and truly free to express what is actually happening in their broadly experienced women’s bodies! I look forward to sharing Seven Sisters Festival with ALL the women that choose to join us there. Trusting that sharing experience ultimately  inhibits no-one.

 

 

 

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!

 

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.

 

Giving permission

There is something quite profound we can give each other that often we don’t even know we have made the gift. When one is living their life, as deeply sourced as they can, with all the juicy that flows comfortably through them, their actual presence becomes freeing. Their lives become the beacon, the gold standard, the possible. Just by being themselves we can perceive our own possibility.

This is the kind of freedom we can afford each other in the circle, that most of us have not met before. The kind of vulnerability that feels like it would be deeply dangerous… any where, let alone out loud in front of other women, those dangerous women, the ones that can rip one to shreds… yet, these are the women that can use their power, the Kali Sword of our word, our spoken out loud truth, to set us all free. When we give ourselves permission to sit in circle with the kind of dedication to truth that we are capable of. For perhaps some of the most damaging lies we tell, are the ones we tell ourselves.

Tis interesting to consider what we may need permission for, and yet our obedience is assured in many ways, due to the training we have endured to participate in our current cultures perception of approval, acceptance… to live the life that doesn’t make any one uncomfortable in theirs. To be easy, low maintenance, going with the flow… which is fine, till you can see the cliff that we are all about to “flow” over. Then, to be the one that says it out loud, what perhaps a whole lot of other people were thinking.

The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but [to say] what we are unable to say – Anais Nin

… this is the permission we can afford ourselves and in doing so, we make room for others to perceive it too, tis the power of the now, to say it as we see it. To get as deeply comfortable with what is, what truly is going on, thus be able to shift and change what is possible in our own lives.

May your life, lived fully, as whole as possible, as real as possible, for you, here and now… to be what you choose.. or not..

I give you permission to share in these comments… what real and whole may be for you, for it is different for us all.

In the Company of women.

The Amazing Ebony Kate … http://ebonykate.zenfolio.com/

To share the company of women, only women, just for a while… tis a blessed thing. What we can afford each other in this moment, where we share what it feels like to be a woman, in ourselves, in our worlds… Sometimes it’s about men, but mostly it’s about how we feel about other things… life, death, sex, children, mothers… Veet hair removal gel for men comments on Amazon…  we were going to do readings for each other, but that didn’t happen, even though there were about a dozen sets of cards on the table, we didn’t need them to start any conversations, open us up to what was going on within. Seems we have found that delicious space to trust each other, where we just need to be together and it starts to flow, the words, the rarely spoken words of self, safe in the “cone of silence” that is the agreement to keep each others secrets. To just hear each other without judgement…. YUM, I truly Love the Company of women! May you know the Delicious state that it is to be held thus beautiful woman.

OH, and the Food…!!

This Sweet Black Earth Lodge.

 

The Grandmother lodge site, just the edges defined, the hole dug.

I have been promising a real description of the Black Earth Lodge… and here it is.

I hope that most people reading this post have attended at least one sweat lodge in their lives, if not SOTEMS, a wonderful organisation, is a powerful place to get to experience a sweat lodge at CERES on a regular basis, both mixed lodge and men’s and women’s lodges.  I am writing with an assumption that you have been to a sweat lodge, if not, there is descriptions of the experience here. 

Ever since I moved out to the Farm, I knew I was to build a lodge… but I was unsure if I was to be delivering full sweat ceremony, it didn’t feel like I was to be doing so. I even went to a dear Shaman sister to ask if she could assist in my training to be able to pour lodge, and together we recognised that what was to be built was not the most traditional of lodges… which being that I am not the most traditional of shaman’s is probably why.

Then, during a deep blood about 6-8 months ago I found an option I had never heard of before, but feels amazing. Here is the theory; there is profound alchemy in the movement between the elements that are in the lodge, between the earth the air the fire and the water, deep spirit is accessed. The intensity of the heat, the dedication of self to keep breathing through the heat, allowing all else to fall away, is part of the journey.

The Sweet Black Earth Lodge is still an alchemic process, we are still in strong relations with the earth the air the fire and the water, tis the configuration that is fundamentally different.

Instead of heating the rocks for the centre of the Grandmother lodge, we heat loose black earth. As it is moved from the fire to the lodge in a wooden yoni shaped vessel, we are taken deep into the belly of Her. Softly. As we are all placed in the dark lodge as we would a sweat lodge, we rest with our feet in the centre, in the hole, and the blessed black earth arrives to bury our feet. Gently filling in around our feet with this warm earth, the soft warm earth. Allowing ourselves to sink further in as the darkness consumes us all. Sinking deep within, letting it all go, allowing oneself to die, unto themselves.

In lots of ways this is a very familiar place for me and my blood practices, tis the process really of bleeding and I deeply look forward to entering the lodge as I next bleed as it will be finally ready. Perhaps it is the invitation to my man, to join me in this sweet black earth lodge that will be the most profound. My feeling is that I will be able to share just a small taste of the descent that is bleeding, the surrendering that is slipping off this mortal coil for but an instant, an hour or however long it takes for the earth to go cold, and the return begins.

Please, I would really be honoured if you would share what this theory feels like to you…? Would you join me in the deep dark sweet black earth?

The Returning…

Temple of the Blood Menstrual Meditation CD is a powerful part of the education that is StarFire.

Ok, so that’s 2 and a bit weeks since we all shared some delicious time together… Who else is feeling it’s almost like a dream? So far from where we one is now? I’ve been talking with people about what I experienced.  I’ve been sharing with people what it was like to walk with so many women. How I noted that with all those women there, just us women, and why we were there, it was interesting that I saw not one drink, smelt not one funky cigarette… No one was there to get out of it, we were there to get ALL the way IN to it. That was a powerful intent to share with so many others.

When ever I have entered a circle, when I have cast it and called the edges forth so that I can slip in between the veils, beyond this time and space to where the magicks live, I have had a reason to go. And Seven Sister’s circle was no different. I had a very real and important reason… To share what I know to be real… to open and bring forth an opportunity for other women to taste the power and wisdom found in the belly of the blood, the blessed beauty of a circle of women.

When one returns from a journey within, tis wise to make something real from it… otherwise it can get lost like a dream. This is me making it real…

I have an invitation to extend… There will be aStarFire and a Harnessing the Fertile Force held in both Selby Community House and in Melbourne, at CERES.

They are open to any woman, even if you are no longer bleeding there is still wealth here. Very open to our young sisters along side their mothers, although not dedicated to that space. We will be holding these three very power-filled days of profound menstrual education over 6 weeks, fortnightly, so that you can take it in, go away, feel it through, come on back and take a deeper swig of the juicy Mama loving belly succour that is my blood work, my passion, my offerings.

So, the details? Just in the middle of this page.

May your Return be treating you well… May you make something real from what you felt and shared!

Blessed BE on this Delicious Samhain

Breaking through…

Tis been a long time coming, but I made it through.

There is clear pathway now to the building of a lodge, a black earth lodge… which needs some explaining… later.

When we stay with something, even when it’s hard, or feeling pointless, or not working yet, we don’t know why… sometimes, we get the break through we are waiting for, sometimes… the patience the persistence, prevails!

Tis a blessed feeling! When we can feel movement on something that counts for us, something that matters. I have held this image in my heart, in my body for quite some time now… of where this lodge can be held, how it can look. To have the path clear! WOW… tis a great feeling.

I hope that your world is also feeling the clearing of the path… as we descend into the next dark moon of our current cycle,  I hope that the pathway to your sister circle is clear and open to you… that you know them, have a safe space to meet, that everyone has made the time available, maybe even had an opportunity to have the menfolk and children have some communal space too! Breaking through all that is in our way for good, strong women’s circle… that is why I am here, doing what I am doing…

How’s the pathway to your circle feeling?

The Women are arriving…

There is a new feel to living in East Gippsland. I used to resign myself to only sharing in good deep community experiences when in Melbourne with my long term, and more recent, sisters that I have shared circle with so deeply. BUT, in the last week, three women have arrived, just on the edges of me, that I know I will be sharing circle with… prompting me to get on with the building of the Black Earth Lodge… for that feels like why they are on their way. That the sharing of the Black Earth Lodge may begin. Ahh, I hear you ask… but that will have to wait for another blog post.

Do you have that feeling with women in your world? That there is a deeper exchange that is possible if only you would make the space? Create the time available for the sinking in, being with in a more ritualistic, or just softer time. I have found often that there are people that show up in my world precisely for the purpose of being in deep circle space, that we don’t actually have much else in common, just that we both/all seek this realm, and together the access is stronger, the consistency of returning on a regular basis creates a stronger connection. Shared experience builds a more power-filled current. What are women capable of when we commune this deeply with the inner plains, together? Is it the compounding of intensity? In awe I have  studied the possibilities of why women would en-train their cycles… Why would we begin to bleed together when we live closely? Is it about the collective unconscious? That ocean of humanity that we are all connected to, no matter our language or socio-economic status.

Are the women arriving in your world? Is it time yet to begin circle?