Held by the fore-mothers. Relax into the cradle of their being, the cradle of the universe. Listen, learn, we are connected to all things.
Access is through lines of ancestors holding you and your spirit body. The energy field extends out beyond. Is there willingness to walk an authentic path? She is stretched into the universal web behind us, plugging into the energy both above and below in the matrix of all Beings, the conduit for transmission. Access is through being conscious of being plugged into the Divine Source.
The grandmothers bring the bowl of inspiration that you may drink deeply of their wisdom, knowledge and magical gifts. The three drops of inspiration show on our face. Remember the path, remember the journey, here is the bowl – drink
Unwind the bindings clip the tight stitches release everything from bondage allow it to move. Let the song erupt, the tears to flow move and shake hear the heartbeat of life gyrate, slide and listen sway slowly to that unique rhythm of walking your own path. Know the spirals of life follow them into the centre of the deep mystery let it explode like stars into your being wear the galaxy like your favourite dress go on, let her out, bursting forth this foot stomping, hip swaying, light bearing Mystery of life. This is what the Divine created a coded map, a blueprint, a light in the world that cannot be hidden. Come on, the sea is calming The wind is steady, unfurl the canvas and light up the world.
There is that time every day when the light dims and the door sighs softly as it closes on the day.
When the bright moon hovers under the horizon not yet ready to leave those over the curve of the planet to the rising light.
The mysteries begin to gather waiting, shuffling into play order in which to be told. Taking time, allowing space for each other.
She, Wisdom Winder collects the playlist tugging the thread back to ancient libraries gathered by generations of women, Wisdom women dancing.
Shadows grow longer, fires are kindled for warmth and the scrying of the flame gazers. She Who holds the scroll begins to unwind Playing out the mysteries of deep story.
There we are Smack in the middle of the wisdom line drawn from the mystery lines through to our frontal cortex. Excitement shaking us hanging onto every word, every action and expression as the Legendary Self is storied into Being.
‘It’s in the stories”, she whispers, ‘After the light dims and the fire is lit and the women settle to listen, only then will She dance her feet stamping the rhythms of women’s wisdom throughout the cosmos.
It’s in the legends of all Legendary Women who have gone before.
An earth that brings abundance is sacred to all Beings, Dragonfly spreads messages whispered from gossamer wings. In the endless cerulean skies she floats upon the winds that swirl and flow around our star to come to rest in the ears of those willing to hear.
Compassion, Hope, Wellbeing
To nurture, one first has to have the ability to nurture one’s self. This is important in order to be of actual help and not leech others energy through your own wounds. Compassion for others at the expense of self leads to abuse of the self and the introduction of non-nurturing support systems. This in turn leads to bad health and the inability to have compassion for and support or nurture others. The Self is First, then all can be supported. Acrylic on Canvas. 24×36
She Who Spreads Leaves of Compassion
Compassion for one another is a two-way street. When receiving compassion we are charged with not holding it to ourselves, but like the breezes, the winds, the hurricanes; to scatter compassion like seeds to the far corners of our existence.
Wellbeing for ourselves and our place of residence among the stars is most important. Therefore, keeping ourselves well and planet abundant is our only physical task.
Undertaking a Rite of Passage in Paint over 13 moons…
There was that time, I looked up from my thoughts and there she was, all lit up like she was wearing a robe of stars. She simply walked out of the universe, fully formed from the void of all potential as though she had been waiting for that very moment to catch my attention.
Once, she told me, there was nothing, just the darkness of a long, long, dark night. A space that went on forever. It was like a great belly, full of potential. Shadows could be seen flitting across the deep-scape of the void. Some gathered together, liking the patterns they created. Others stood aloof, floating in their own part of the void, enjoying being at one with the potential they sensed they were part of. Every shadow knew where it should be, and each was attached to its beginnings back in the darkness of the deepest night, the darkest night, the longest night of forever.
Slowly, over eons, some shadows embraced others, others embraced them, and more embraces led to the formation of mass. Over time the masses became seeds. The seeds of potential and the children of the void. The seeds were attracted to each other, as they floated through the universe, their attachments to the deep night entwined, became thicker, pulsing with energy from the darkness as matter roiled around them. Time passed, as though waiting for a particular moment, a time where something exciting would happen. The seeds floated in and around matter that is the potential of all things. They began to gather matter to themselves, growing in volume, the added weight now moving them faster across, around and through the great void.
She told me that the collision of the seeds was something to behold, igniting sparks to light up the void, forcing the darkness to recede. The sound of the ignition reverberated across the galaxy, moving the seeds. Clinging to each other, the seeds hurtled through the void, friction creating a ball of heat around them which ignited into a fire that burned gases.
Once the fires were ignited, all manner of things were revealed and as the darkness receded, planets, suns and moons were strung across the dark-scape. Some were shining, some were reflecting and some were developing from seeds with the help of the elements. Earth created beings, fire ignited spirits, air helped breath life into them and water enabled them to flow together in synchronicity.
Eons later, after the fires had cooled, water had washed everything clean; the earth was verdant, growing and sustaining life. There came a moment in time when the stars aligned, gathering above the good creation like a jewel shining brightly in the Milky Way. Under a Libran moon that was full and fat and glowing I arrived, folding my wings very carefully and tucking them away. They flutter a little under the night sky, especially when the constellations align in the same patten they were in on the day of my birth.
The universe spat me out here! After 13 billion years in the making, there I was, just hanging about on the edge, surfing the waves or being tumbled about by the Holy Ones, shaken up, turned around, taken apart, and reconfigured to fit this world.
When colour explodes across the stars, ancient ones reach out to touch the connection that winds back to the void, pulsing with magic and secrets. As they watch She that is me, wings furled behind the shoulder blades of our earth form, walks slowly with fear and uncertainty and the elders’ smile for they know the truth of her courage.
We step quietly into being, chin tilted, savouring the warmth of the sun and the gaze of the grandmothers. Accepting that the peat bogs, fairy mounds and cold Celtic seas of her racial ancestors are not hers, they are an echo of what was once in her lineage. Displacement and lack of Belonging is an emptiness I know well. It was there in mothers’ heart as we listened closely to the pulsing universe before arrival. It entered my heart as a question with no answer and kept me busy, puzzling it for a lifetime. No claim to culture, only guilt and shame at forebears for their part in the colonisation of this sacred land that sings this soul even though it will never be our land. Six generations deep here, we belong only to the universe.
At the very edge of vision lurks the answer if I could just face the mystery of what is there. We let go, and let go and let go again and again into the mystery, Becoming a willing part of creation. Now She that is me walks as a pilgrim, the half shell a symbol of a vigil, a search into the self.
The map of life can be smooth or rough. Once our wings are folded, they do not open to save us from falling. The wastelands laid us bare to the raw bones. The grandmothers allowed it to bring me to my knees, tossed me/us into the river, carried us to the great ocean with no life raft. The only anchor point, the umbilical cord that provides an anchor back into the darkness of the great void. Somewhere there is a garden flowering with need, love, trust. Can I swim strongly enough through the depths of sorrow to find it?
You laid me bare
No muscle or sinew
To cover these naked bones.
You held me by the throat
Choking the life from me
Your name was grief.
You took me prisoner.
In Becoming more Human, she became the Malkuthah
My truth is written in large letters, scrawled along the pulsing red walls of a heart well used. I am unique, people may judge me, but they cannot BE me. Only I am created in this particular Being by the Divine Breath. I am the right shape to hold all this stardust. This star-scape is co-created with my blood.
It has taken so long to find my marks, shapes and voice on this journey of Becoming. Slowly a thread emerges, a part of the intricate weave of life, connecting back to source. I have a place in this universe.
In this moment I both remember and forget the connection to self, to life, to the etheric world. For anything to rise up, something else moves downward, becoming compost on which the risen rests. A conundrum; for how do we rise, without sinking below the surface of shame and appropriation or forcing others to sink?
She that is me, tugs the cord that stretches back into the void and holds my hand to remind me that forgetting is a default position. Tugging on the weave that has secured my heart back in the deep void to remember. By the radiant arms of the Universal Truth, I am undone, naked before the suns and moons in the belly of the great mother. By the heart of the nova that explodes my myths, I am cooked to perfection in the great ovens of the mother-father Being. As I am here sliding through the portal into the next adventure, she holds my hand.
There comes a time when understanding that the universe resides inside each of our souls is a disturbing thought; that it is here that all the prayers of longing live. Hope and love live here also; anger and hate have no chance in a universe filled with beauty such as this.
To love this earth and see the devastation wrought. To love this earth and notice the deafness of corporations is to be awake. To love this earth and know her heart beats ever stronger for our love is to understand She is our mother, birthed of the great void.
There she is, she that is me. Her skin covered in the markings of the universe, flinging her hair to the sun. She strides along, through the stars, having a great time, not held down by human failings. She that is me, my large divine self has courage and my small human self, envies her that.
She that is me walks through the stars, using them as stepping stones to move from galaxy to galaxy. She is larger than breath and lighter than air, She moves with grace sprinkling courage in her wake. From the Celtic lineage, the Awen arises, like the three ketes of knowledge from this land of Aotearoa, as a symbol of mind, body, spirit or love, wisdom, truth. It appears – to remind me that the number three is sacred and the three drops of inspiration from the cauldron of Ceridwen has followed me from the lands of my ancestors.
I know with the deepest knowing connected back to the great void of the beginning of all things, that the ancestors watch me, knowing that I only need listen to myself and my own wisdom to find the courage I seek. When the pain of not knowing is too much to bear, the wisdom will come unprompted to save me from myself. I am made for these times; my fears have made me dry and shrivel, requiring tending the Soul to fill me with her essence. Finding myself is a lifelong quest, the work is in the reclaiming and reshaping of the space I occupy amongst the stars.
By the grace of knowing my pilgrim path and the inspiration of the Goddess I will continue to find the seeds of courage.
When I forget and fall unwittingly into my default position, the time will come when deep within She gives me a nudge and retracing my steps, by remembering the journey, is always an option.
13 moons, 13 billion years, 13 seeds.
Note: As this work was birthed, a line of the Aramaic Lords Prayer kept repeating over and over in my head. As it sang me and my brushes of colour, I knew this was my starting place, place of holding, and ending place. “Tey Tey Malkuthakh!”
Malkuthakh definition from the work of Neil Douglas-Klotz, Prayers of the Cosmos. 1990.
Mulkatuh, based on the same root, was the name of the Great Mother in the Middle East thousand of years before Jesus. The ancients saw in the earth and all around them a divine quality that everywhere takes responsibility and says “I can.” In a collective sense, Malkatuh can also refer to the collective ideals of a nation or the planet.
She who is the weaver balanced on the edge
Pulls each thread tight as it passes under and over
Under and over again without tangling or leaving snarls
As she wraps the thread of Being in and out of the line
Dividing darkness and light.
Balanced like a tight rope walker above the abyss
Of the endless void with its sparkling darkness
And the bright heat of molten suns crucible
Warming the bright blue fabric rippling beneath
The veil of the universe.
She who gazes with compassion at the colourful threads
Her fingers flying to gather the breath of the dragon
Weaving, over and under, the ethereal magic into the hearts
Of the brave that waver on the edge of the wide mouth
Waiting and open to her ministrations.
She who is the Weaver of Hearts casts about
Gathering those souls broken perfectly open
While the spirit still soars above the darkness
Keening its anguish,
There is strength to mend and mend she will.
When She who is the weaver of hearts hears that brave call of the soul
Taking more of the dragon’s breath she threads her needle
Aiming at the rift with quick stitches making intricate patterns
Tenderly pulling the edges of the gaping wound close
Then allowing the heart to back gracefully off the edge between darkness and light
She who gathers the shadows as she weaves
Picking them carefully from the lips of the wound
Tenderly sitting each pool of tears on the rim
Ushering them after the mended heart, creating a cushion to cradle
The heart that birthed it against the next rending of the fabric of Being.
She who is the Weaver of Hearts of the Dragon Hearted
Invites those who are not afraid of teetering on the brink
To embrace their brokenness and allow the light to shine
Through the weaving that will hold it together
While never quite closing the gap of lessons learned.
Then she settles,
to watch and wait,
for your next visit
To the edge of the Universe.
The first creative project of my CoW teacher training. She, who is Brave of Heart has a never-ending story to tell. Of hope and dreams, laughter and tears, love and commitment. She who does not need frills and embellishment, just honesty, truth and a path that aims toward the light. A desire to walk in step with my own tribe. Those who come and match their step to mine. Breathe deeply, courage is simply fear that has said its prayers. Courage is attained by first being vulnerable, putting yourself out there. So I did
A great adventure! In 2019 I took a journey in paint to train as a teacher of the Colour of Women method of creativity with Shiloh Sophia McLoud.
Bringing intention, thought, prayer and fear to a canvas as a way to work through, dream into being, access new ways of thinking and being. My art page holds the images and stories of this year – and tried not to take on anything else as is my habit to do too much at once. I had no training in technique so had to learn along the way, which is a good thing because when teaching others it is good for them to see I am not full of talent and ego, that I am just like them with a desire to let my sub conscious and conscious have a party on the paper or canvas and hopefully work some stuff out.
Now a Colour of Woman Teacher in NZ. I will be designing and teaching workshops to women who are brave enough to listen to their hearts and say ‘I Can.’
When asked to consider how my brain functions, the left and right hemispheres, the flow and the structure and how they work together, the resistance to structure was quick fierce. It was a struggle to finally understand that without structure there can be no flow. Like the riverbanks guide the river, the frame contains the creation and the tube contains the paint, so creativity needs a container to flourish in.
Visions of Clarity 