OBOD
(Image : “LOTR Fanbook-The Shire”, SG, 2010)
OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, UK) is structured in three “grades”, which constitute the essential Training the Order has to offer. All three grades are complete in themselves, so you go in until you feel that you´ve had enough. I would certainly encourage all Members to go through the whole cycle of the three grades, because it´s getting out of the last one as a Druid, that you really get the feeling that…”Now, to begin again! Really do it, this time!” It is the paradox : the Course is a Circle, not a never-ending journey!…Each time you complete the circle (in the next twenty years or so, lol), you will feel more complete: the Journey of a Druid never ends…
Difficulties are obstacles to transcend to be able to go beyond limits (mostly self imposed!), and grow as a person. Gandalf the Grey becomes Gandalf the White becomes…Gandalf! 
I have finished the Course, and so, am a Druid “grad” of OBOD. As such, and knowing the Course well for having gone through it all, in much detail, I can help Bards (art,storytelling, writing, etc.), Ovates (ecopsychology, Journey in the Forest) and Druids (psychosynthesis, Pathworking, and other stuff). This is also what we, as a Grove, have to offer.
The two other components of the “Lothlorien-Nemeton Grove”, Mika (my daughter), and Adam Brough (my daughter´s soulmate) are also experiencing the OBOD Course. Mika is at the gate of her graduation as a Druid, and Adam at the gate of the Druid grade. We think that by 2011, we will be three OBOD Druid grads, working together, both in the context of a Grove (the Lothlorien Nemeton), and the context of SYNERGY (I am a PS grad, and Mika as well; Adam is still studying the Will Parfitt Course (for SYNERGY, please click one of the Pages next to the title of the blog, and for Will Parfitt, please see right-hand blogroll).
All three of us, working as a “triad” or “triangle”- are clear about the function(s) of the Earth Sanctuary, as indicated in the Pages above.
Our main task on the physical level is to maintain this place, which the group that is behind the scene (working with me in the context of SYNERGY) has now bought. It certainly makes a difference in the general feeling about being “Gaian Druids” to know that you are the guardian of a land that actually belongs to you. As my daughter once said “You cannot breathe imaginary trees”, and she was so right, the Druid Journey has certainly to be translated to physical reality. That was our main effort this last decade: beginning with our (holy) roots, going through the hard process of owning the land we stand on.
Lord of the Rings Fanbook
(Images : “Lord of the Rings Fanbook”, SG, 2010)
…Revamped an old “Cultures of Middle Earth” round robin book, and created a whole new Lord of the Rings fanbook. My own tribute to Tolkien and P. Jackson. Did I tell you that I´m a huge fan of both ? Yeah. Of course. *grin*
PS.- Not selling anything, this is private art.
Fellowship of All Life
(Image : The Sanctuary, soul card, SG, 2005)
…Personally, I think that “Ecopsychology” is another name for Neo-Druidry. Some may not agree of course, and that is OK, they say that among 10 Druids there are 11 opinions! Lol.
In general and very roughly, there are four groups of so-called “Druids”, and I think that it is very useful to learn how to distinguish them, because they show vastly different ways of being in concrete reality, and also vastly different aims.
The Old Ones, of which practically nothing is known. They didn´t write down their teachings,have never built a temple in stone, and have not left a mark in History, apart from some really faint traces that have been handed down the long corridors of Time. I list them because they are the genesis, the origin, true or false, of the other three groups.
The Romantic Ones, which are a re-creation of what a past century felt about the subject, a century in which there was no electricity, no highways, no Internet – and in which nothing was really verified. That´s where you can find the robed Druids and Druidesses who know all about casting spells and calling to the ancient gods, though they often dine at McDonald´s; those are the ones that are traipsing through the new forests, or even public parks sometimes since not so many forests are left, in flimsy fake-medieval robes, and trying very hard to look ancient, though most of them haven’t even got to the ripe age of 50. (No offense meant, it is just a passing remark, that happens to be true.)I think that these people are compensating the harsh reality of modern life, the very hardship of what our society has become, through happy dreams.
The Reconstructionists, who are very serious people who think that intuition is a valid way to perceive History, (particularly “His-Story”, lol), and are very precise about a lot of rather vague stuff,
And then there is a new group, which is still largely a sort of seed-group, which is pushing through the earth, straining towards the Sun, like a very modest plant still, – The Future Druids, the Gaian Druids, or Neo-Druids.
Our Druid Grove is part of this last group. We do believe in intuition, use it a lot, but do not think that it is really a valid way to “re-construct” the past, because such an enterprise as rebuilding an imagined past according to non-verified present beliefs distorts what is happening in the present, and sometimes even veils what should be happening if we are to correct past facts that have brought us to this collective disaster of a present, (yes, a long sentence, read it again, lol); we don´t need robes and wands and staves, but yes, we care about the Future of Earth, and in midst of this preoccupation for the becoming of the human species of which we are a part, absolutely, we understand that humanity needs a new Myth, for “without a Vision the people perish”, so, having gone through a real Druid training (OBOD), we might as well be called “Druids”, OK, Neo-Druids, if you will.
…This Vision that we have been so clearly a-creating in our far away valley these last few years, is that of a Humanity that would finally consciously acknowledge the simple fact that we human beings are Children of Planet Earth. Whatever our nations pretend to be, first and foremost we are Gaians, Earthlings. From all Internet users down to Eskimos and Bushmen.
(Sorry to draw such a scale, I actually do not mean to imply that people who are not Internet users are not human, lol.)
Yes, we envision a number of people starting to live the Gaian vision, very discreetly at first, inside themselves to begin with, people living with the clear knowledge that some things have to stop, like the desecration of the planet. I´m talking about people who would truly understand, because they have been coolly trained, that things cannot go on like they are, running around in stupid circles, that something must change, and that this “something” is the very structure of the patriarchal ego, which is an extremely limited historical view, even of physical reality: since man walked on the moon (at the very least) and invented quantum physics, we do have a pressing need to get out of the Freudian back alley:
Everything in our lives can be aligned to prosperity, agape *and abundance of intelligence, which is how Nature really works. There is no real necessity to botch human evolution.
We could, yes we could. We could do it, you know. Difficult ? Yes. Impossible ? No. Anyway, what with Climate Change and Peak Oil, we may be forced to change. Change into what, is now The Big Question.
If you find it difficult to accept the idea that our civilization is still barbaric, and that we DO have to evolve as a species, don´t change anything except this basic understanding, which you have to “grok” with your very bones : we are Earthlings, and we will have to deeply acknowledge this fact. Or we will disappear. Easy choice. And a long long process. Do we really have the time?
It all boils down to the fact that all of us are collectively responsible for the welfare of all of humanity, and of the entirety of the planet.
War is a boorish, unrefined, uncultivated, churlish way of facing collective problems. Warriorship as a patriotic demonstration can best be used on an entirely different level : I mean, a mental way of tackling problems, of grappling with reality. I do think that we have enough enlightened brains on this planet to create an entirely new game.
As for us as a group, as a Project, as a Neo-Druid Grove, we have made that choice already. Actually, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, we are deep into the consequences of it. As a group we have touched the brass tacks of what it means. This sense of consciously “being on the side of the woods” (as Tolkien says through Treebeard), is what makes us Neo-Druids. We may even, if the Myth becomes as necessary as bread, sew some nice white robes and dance through our very own woods. We may as well, since we so deeply feel part of the Great Fellowship of Life on this Earth.
In this deep sense, we have the Vision of a huge Rainbow of Consciousness/Energy spanning thousands of years, from the Old Ones right down to us, the Druids in jeans. A new Ark of the Covenant, if you will. Or a new lease on our renting this planet from our great-great-grandchildren.
…Rivendell lives! Long live Rivendell!
;-)
PS.- Agape : Christianity. Love as revealed in Jesus, seen as spiritual and selfless and a model for humanity.
- Love that is spiritual, not sexual, in its nature.
- Christianity. In the early Christian Church, the love feast accompanied by Eucharistic celebration.
In the New Testament, the fatherly love of God for humans and their reciprocal love for God. The term extends to the love of one’s fellow humans.
Animus work
(Image : The journal shown here is part of the work I did for my PS course, “Book of Merlin”, SG, 2005).
The Animus (the masculine part of women) is usually, and culturally, projected on men. We fall in love with the Aragorns of the world, we never stop to think that maybe this lovely ruggedy energy could actually be ours. Ever seen a hairy Arwen ? Lol. Such is our deep deep cultural conditioning.
But I discovered that lots of our courageous Prince Valiant energies could be ours, it´s a question of looking inside and being truthful with ourselves. In my PS work, way back then, I realized that I was sort of in awe with Strider (Aragorn)- (no, not the actor, Tolkien´s character), because these energies were mine. I didn´t want to be Arwen, I wanted to own my Strider energies, and what a wonderful addition to my life!… I also realized that a whole part of the events of my past life had incorporated these energies, oh yes, I certainly did some rather non-female things in my life!…
All of which, being my real life experience, had me thinking that maybe our culture has some rather shady agenda dividing people into male and female stereotypes. That´s what Jung (GrandPapa Carl Gustav) tried to say when he formulated that men have a female part of their psyche (the Anima), and women a masculine part (the Animus). Though…mmmm…Granddaddy being a staunch Swiss macho man (Goddess knows I´m familiar with those characters having had a very Swiss e-dew-kation!), he naturally thought that the Anima business was more “normal” than the other one!
Anyway, I did work with my Animus, and even gave him some really well-known faces at the time, Merlin for one, Gandalf, my inner Druid, (yeah, I know he´s a Mayar, not a Druid), Aragorn-Strider, and Elrond, the half-elven. (You must have guessed that I am a Lord of the Rings fan ?…).
It helped a lot to feel that these “masculine” energies were actually mine! So I stopped projecting them “outside”, and could finally let my men be the troubled, fragile, chinked beings that they really were…oh blessed relief for them…See my point?
This post goes with the preceding one about Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. The Sun was considered a female entity by the ancient Celts, as it still is in the German language : die Sonne, der Mond. When I speak about a shady agenda above, it is so, or why should solar qualities systematically be attributed to the masculine, and lunar ones to the female? Examining both, you get to understand the agenda, lol.
Note *** Just so you get this right : yeah, I am an Elf, and yeah, I am 3000 years old! (No, not Arwen.)
Hahaha
The Final Initiation
(Image : “Druid Review”, final exam, SG, 2009)
A year or so after receiving the lovely scroll that marks the end of my formal training as a Druid at OBOD (actually you may find out that it never ends!), the final Initiation.
…I was in the kitchen, talking with Mika and Adam (the other two parts of the Earth Sanctuary Project´s coregroup) over coffee one morning, about how hard it is sometimes to maintain this land, and how sometimes we would love to travel or go someplace different, smaller, easier, – and how we couldn´t ever go back to living in a town flat, when a sudden realisation hit my brain.
I, who thought I couldn´t ever live in a town again, had the sudden vision that all the trees of the world were now rooted in my heart, and the mountains, and the rocks, and the little river, and all the animals, deer, fox, squirrels and eagles, and that I could, without batting an eye, pack my suitcase and go…anywhere!
Tears just welled up in my eyes.
All the forests of the world are now rooted in my green heart.
I have become the Grove.
Amaterasu
(Image : “Amaterasu”, soul card 145, collage on cardboard, SG, 2010)
…Did you know that for the old Celts the Sun was a female symbol?
Oh how different everything would have been if the warm energy and the smile of the Goddess had not been banished to the night side of the Western psyche!
Amaterasu – omikami, ” the great august kami that shines in the heaven” – is a sun goddess and one of the principal Shinto deities.
Asse-asse-asseverate!
(Image : “Use Your Imagination” Journal, recycled paper bags, SG, 2010)
Couldn´t resist…
I do declare, earnestly, nay, I avow, I allege, I asseverate, that this feckless tyro, this neophyte, this greenhorn, this factitious filibuster, this facetious sassy tenderfoot, this pesky pugnacious rogue, is causing quite a pother among the class.
…Happy translating, dear BabelFish!
Don´t mind me, it´s just a pretext for uploading a new image!…
(The Lady Dragon laughing, obstreperously, of course!)
Quaquaversal
(Image : “Use your Imagination” Journal, SG, 2010)
Hehehe…another gem at Dictionary.com :
quaquaversal
The Legacy
(Image : Revamped “Use your imagination” Journal, recycled paper bags, SG, 2009)
…Yesterday I counted them : I have created 18 journals in less than two years! Only two of them are completely finished, cover to cover.
I consider them as “works in progress”. Usually I go back and take them up, adding, changing, sometimes quite drastically. Like this one, “Use your imagination”, which I started two years back.
I´m quite happy about the results; these are already a nice legacy to leave behind to my children and grandchidren. They´re proof that I have existed in exactly this way, with a happy colouring and enthusiasm (“enthusiasm” meaning “transported by the gods”), and what a peculiar, odd, quaint and kooky way this is.
…Wait a minute! Eighteen in two years, and assuming this won´t slow down too much (given the happy-go-lucky way “the gods” daily transport me!), it means 180 journals in twenty years from now! Woah. They will have to rent a TRUCK to move “The Legacy”! …(Or make one huge bonfire!)
Hahaha
PS.- Not counting the 1.157.822 posts that constitute my group work in the InnerNet!
Bah, maybe the Net will crash, and good bye all good intentions.
*sigh*
Anchoring the Light
(Image : Mandala 46, Anchoring the Light, SG, watercolours)
…Not much more we can do these days, but anchoring the Light as concretely as we possibly can.
Luna di Napoli
Again, just for fun.
That´s Luna wearing my sunglasses.
La Cooosa Noooostra…
(Translation = Ecco, Don´t-e Mess-e wizzz ma Faamili… Capicchi?)
(The Godmother, I)
Walking my talk
(Image : The Crazy Book, Altered Journal, SG, 07)
This morning, as I was forking dead bramble branches onto a cart – I was thinking how my way of sustaining peace has changed through the years…
In the Sixties I was a flower child, complete with kohl around my eyes and multicoloured Afghan dresses (been one of the first ones to hit the streets of my provincial hometown, Geneva, Switzerland, with a blue-and-red Afghan dress and red leather boots!).
I had this slogan wrapped around my head (in a bandanna) ”Peace, Now”, and would endlessly sit in meetings, and rallies – even sit on the ground with my buddies, if it was needed. And we would talk, talk, talk. Talk our heads off sometimes it seemed. Did we ever achieve anything ? The question remains open. I don´t think we impacted much on international politics, lol!
I know I changed. Bit by bit I came down from Cloud Nine, first of all because what with the Afghan dresses and all, dangly Indian earrings and my pretty little self – nobody ever took me seriously enough to actually ask me how I would bring about my programme of “Peace, Now”… And thank you Goddess, nobody ever really asked, because at that time it was all a question of feeling, I couldn´t have told anyone how I meant to bring about Peace (capital P) and even less…World Peace. And anyway, at that time, it was the bearded, long-haired cutie pie that I was accompanying (…being the decoration of, shall we say) that was having the lead role in everything. (Had to get to grips with that one too, lol)
More than thirty five years have passed, 35 five years which have mauled my life, have shaped it, sculptured it; I had ample time to swallow, regurgitate, vomit sometimes, and digest, digest, digest. Do my homework. I´m a wild crone now. I´m a “woman who runs with wolves” now. I have “hugged the monster”, and made my inner peace with my Animus. I´m OK. Now. So. What about Peace? Mmmmm…? Well, I´ll give it to you in a nutshell, a quintaessential nutshell mind you. I have learned that nothing, but NOTHING – changes things so rapidly and neatly as…taking action! Don´t talk about it : do it! Walk your talk. That´s all. End of sermon. Says the wild crone, sweating like hell, shovelling another prickly forkful of brown brambles into the cart, one sunny Spanish midday, in the year 8 of the Third Millennium. (Hey! That´s Year 21 after the Harmonic Convergence of 1987! Damn my bodicious gollywag, we´re getting there: our intention for planetary healing has come of age! )
*Old woman of the mountain cackling through her teeth*
The Power of Myth
(Image : A view of the Earth Sanctuary, pic SG, 2002)
…This phrase has been going through my mind a lot during this week :
“Through myths we are connected to the history of the world.”
The creation of Myths precedes the formation of Archetypes, which are, as it were, the teaching tools of a Universal Mind that is a rather unused level of our psyche. The knowledge and inner experience of Archetypes, what they are and how they work, give us a conscious choice of aligning to the history of the world, – I am not referring here to the history of books, the history of men-kind (patriarchy), but rather to the hidden history of human emotions as it has remained engraved in the human psyche, and is somehow transmitted from generation to generation. Someone said that a myth is a story that we know about, even if we have never heard of it. On the individual level, as we grow older, layer upon layer of our own history is stored in the brain, and there comes a time when it becomes necessary to create our own story, the story of our own life, the story of our very own Hero´s Journey, our own Myth. We can then align this personal myth to the evolutionary Pull that the archetypal world indicates in more universal Myths, instead of remaining a prisoner of the restraining conditionings and identifications in the Collective Unconscious. That is, we can, if we want to, if we know how to, put our own Myth, our tiny little canoe, into the great mythical World River, where it will enhance the already existing stories of the world. This can give us incredible strength, because we know that through this link in our mind we will go on, in the Myth. That way, the archetypal world transcends our personal earthly existence and can prolong the most important experiences of who we have been. We will survive, but we will be transformed.
Myths are the very inner fabric which can restore our deepest relationship to the world, if we can align with them, and understand them.
To all our friends out there!
For some mysterious reason (which we are clarifying) our website is down.
If you want to have a look where we live, here is a picture folder in my PictureTrail gallery about the Sanctuary:
http://www.picturetrail.com/gea2
All the pics are taken either by me, or by someone of our team.
Website OK now
Phewww…the website is online again! Just a snaggyglitch with the annual payment, that I totally forgot! What a weird impression to suddenly sort of go blind in the WWW!
This blog represents only one member of the Earth Sanctuary Project, and as such, is of course autonomous, but I prefer readers to know what the context of the blog (and its author) is. To just share intimacies through “just another blog” wouldn´t be worth it, I think. But this is a pioneer project, a druid grove and an ecopsychological experiment in answer to “An Inconvenient Truth”, so the intimacies are meant to be flashes of what happens when some people decide to take the leap, and actually get deeply involved with planetary healing. And so…down the rabbit hole!
… Happy Reading!
I love chaos Journal
…Had me a real good time not-thinking!
The Wizard, *somewhat disheveled*
Thinking inside the box
Just to show you what “thinking inside the box” really means for me, here is my Little Peace Shrine, matchbox-size. (Yes, it´s an ordinary matchbox.)
Dreamers and Doers
(Image : Child of Gaia, collage on paper, SG, ’02)
On a certain Druid Message Board, my daughter (who is an Ovate at OBOD) tickled people saying that it wasn´t the same thing at all, as a Druid, to fight for a concrete bit of land, than to imagine fantastic relationships with trees, for example in some meditations. “I can´t breathe your imaginary trees” she aptly concluded.
That, which was a conscious provocation on her part from the word go, really upset the apple cart! People fell on her with axes and bludgeoned her until she retired from the said Message Board. I know that people sensed her provocation, and might have answered to that, but one comment was worthy of note, a man said “if your theory was true, 90% of this Message Board would not be valid in the context of Druidry”. Ha. Interesting. And if it was true ? I mean, what if it was true that 90% of the people who say they are interested in Druidry don´t get off their butts to do something about it ?? …
Anyway, some people on the Druid Path are obviously not very peaceful. She later “recanted”, did the proverbial and diplomatic knee jerk thingie in the name of peace and harmony, and things came back to “normal”.
However, her last comment really got me thinking, and I think that she is right. It is all too easy to become a “Flat Foot Druid” as she calls them, someone who fantasizes about strange encounters with nature divinities in the dark woods of their mind, but does not even think of changing their real life to live more in accordance with their spiritual beliefs.
For example. You want to “save the planet”? Try to buy a piece of land! And see the difference between Dreaming and Doing. People told her that it was easy for her to say that she was active ecologically speaking since she owned (well, her family owns) a hundred and eight acres of mountain! Some other people said that they were protecting the trees in their town´s park, and isn´´t that a druid thing to do ? Oh. Aren´t the local councils supposed to do that ? Oh ! You mean…spiritually ? Oooooh. Now that makes a huge difference for the trees!
Easy ???? EASY ?*”&%&&$$$??¡¡¡!!!??? (My computer doesn´t show the Euro sign, hahaha). No, it wasn´t easy to create the Earth Sanctuary. It was a bloody miracle, and not at all of the divine kind! It was a human miracle, of the people who committed because of their ecopsychological understanding, and stayed focused for over two decades. It is a long story – and truly we saw exactly why people prefer to adopt a cactus and have it living on their balcony!
Now, of course, twenty-two years later, some of the horridness has dimmed, and we are, well…comfortable. We are not exactly living in luxury, though luxury is a flexible concept. Is luxury about having running water? Some African women have to walk ten miles, back and forth, daily, to get to more or less clean water. Is luxury about having an electric heater? Television? A computer? A good car ? Seen that way, we live in incredible luxury and also appreciate it deeply every single day. And no, I don´t care if I don´t have the latest electronic gadget, I only ever use my cell phone to contact with my other daughter who lives down at the village. Two calls a week, period. Luxury is extremely relative.
Being a Druid is about loving the Earth, and I understand that this love is not always manifested in being able to buy a huge property. Gosh, I understand that, and I bless your cactus on your balcony, – but it is not the same.
And let it be known that I am a Dreamer, not a doer – and that it cost me a tooth or two to accept that thousands of trees and animals are under my direct responsibility now.
Think about it.
You cannot breathe imaginary trees.
PS.-And please watch “An Inconvenient Truth” again.
The Wizard and the Magic Shelves
There is a piece of furniture in our dining-room that is quite-quite magical.
At first glance it´s a bizarre mix of stuff, but you just take down one – ONE! – book, and you may not come back to reality for a hundred years…! You will be trans-materialized to Faerieland, where nothing is as it seems, and you will have lots of wondrous encounters…treacherous trolls, gnomes, ladies of the forest, the Green Man, and perhaps even the Queen of Faerie…mmm…masked, and smiling dangerously…
These are the shelves where I put my latest art, my Magickal Recipes books, my journal, diaries and altered books. *grin*
So. You are warned. This is a Star Gate!
PS.- Christmas time is my time for glitzy shopping. The rest of the year I do not find my kind of stuff so much, shiny, blitzy, glittery Faerie lights, your friendly neighbourhood wizard roams around the supermarkets, aaahing and oooohing…
Faces of the Goddess
(Images : Faces of the Goddess, Heart of the Cailleach, The Morrigan, and The Lady Niwalen (Spring), collage on paper, SG, 2008)
The Goddess is like a mountain, and She goes on and on…
Cooking as a Druidic art
Hehehe, bet you never thought about that one!
Well, you see, I´m not Gaelic, or Celtic anything (that is, if you discard the fact that the Celts had big settlements in Switzerland!) – I don´t even know how you pronounce Iolo Morganwg (…do you?) What I do know, is that I am deeply invested in my Gaian life. So deeply that I do not see a boundary between body, mind and spirit – they´re just functions of the same Life, that, incidentally, is me.
Who is me? As in “woman, mother, ex-wife, daughter, therapist, artist”? Nope. As in : L-I-F-E. I´m a life. I´m an alive entity, living on this planet. (I do know that it´s a planet, that´s more than some prehistoric Druids knew, I bet!). Accidentally, I´m a woman, so I also do know about dirt, nappies, rashes, caca, illnesses, bad karma, and some snaggyglitch stuff which would never – ever – come into the mind of some of the elevated white-clad bearded smoothies I know who call themselves…errr…druids.
So, my kind of Druidry…whatchamacallit?
Ah yes…the Female Side of Druidry. *giggle*
Anyway, don´t get me going. I was talking about cooking.
Have you ever thought about the pure magic that an apple pie is? Or a gratin dauphinois? From the elemental (somewhat dirty) ingredients (from your garden, or from the supermarket, oh! that´s another interesting discussion!…) to the fragrant appearance on the community´s table…and then, oh then, into your lovely druid body…this Magician, this Wizard, sustains and celebrates the LIFE that is you.
…She says, *waving her big serving spoon*, now, d’ you want some of that…errr…lovely grub, or what?
PS.- Aaaah…and the wine, the wine!
What is it about names…
(Image : The entry to “Hobbiton”, SG, 2002)
Each name has its energy, and evokes an image, or a sound, and touches a different level of being.
They have been knowing this for millenia in India.
These sacred sounds are called “mantrams”.
For me, an artist, the names that Tolkien invented are “mantrams”. I don´t know why. They just evoke a host of images that feel deeply satisfying to my soul.
That is why we baptized the different projects at the Earth Sanctuary with names taken out of Tolkien´s work.
It enables us to touch our daily work emotionally, to wrap our heart around feelings that otherwise would possibly be unrelated to the physical world.
“I´m clearing the wood” sounds very different from “Today I´m working in Lothlorien”, or…”Hobbiton needs a bit of a trimming, let´s go see”!
As I said elsewhere, myths are what connect us to the history of the world, and that is precisely Tolkien´s genius. This is ART, art´s function being to show what ordinary people don´t see anymore.
As Dominic Monaghan (Merry, in the LOTR movies) says in the Extended DVD Bonus material of the Two Towers, “The most important thread in the movies is the environmental issue.”
That is quite true, and though it may not be really voluntary on Peter Jackson´s part (we do not know), it is easy to “read” this part of the LOTR Saga in this way.
Saruman is the great big baddie who rips out all the trees, to make big fires to forge Orc weapons.
Treebeard and the Ents go to war and conquer Orthanc exploding the dam and freeing the waters behind it.
Very metaphorical, lol.
The Earth Sanctuary being a deep ecology project, we profoundly resonate with Tolkien saying through Treebeard (do you remember the booming voice?) : “Nobody cares for the woods anymore”…
And also with Merry saying to Treebeard :”You are part of this world, aren´t you?” trying to convince Treebeard and the Ents to participate in the “war of the ring”.
It all sounds very familiar, and it is infinitely satisfying to be able to know that we too are active participants in this battle to free “Middle-Earth”. Our way of doing that, is to have claimed this mountain and to protect it as far as we can, and as deeply as we can, from the craziness of the Orcs unleashed by “Saruman”.
It is almost a political statement, this “I´m working in Hobbiton today”! The Shire is Alive. Frodo Lives. Here, in this tiny kingdom, the Elves won´t have to leave Middle-Earth. We need them, the Elves are a part of who we are as Earthlings, a part that we have mostly forgotten and so we are making a space for them, in ourselves first. Yes, we have forgotten who we are. High Elves, and Ents, and dragons, and citizens of a very different Earth.
Symbolically speaking, you understand ? (We don´t “see” fairies, though we have the profoundest artistic soul-link with them.)
So, all in all, lol, that is why there is a Hobbiton, a Bag End, a Lothlorien, and even, hahahaha, a Fangorn forest at the Earth Sanctuary… A Fangorn forest which we haven´t touched yet, oh my Goddess, it is so dark, so tangled, so deliciously MOSSY!…
Putting all this in this blog is a way for me to bid for a world that is disappearing fast. And also a mission statement, who are humans without the world that gave birth to them, eh? We are Earthlings. We still have to reclaim our deepest spiritual heritage. We are Gaians, 70% of our bodies are WATER. We are uniquely made for the beauty of this world.
Now, the icing on the cake and the fun part of this, is that the Earth Sanctuary being the size of a small mountain, it is “real-er” than a movie shot in a parking lot, lol. Bag End actually LOOKS like Bag End (with a square door, until we find a good carpenter!…), and you could (if you wood, hehehehe) build “flets” in the trees of “Lothlorien”! This place is huge and it´s real. So it´s possible to “breathe Middle-Earth”… Though we don´t dress as Elves (yet!)…
Been thinking about Medieval banquets in the “dungeons” - mmm…. we have a whole host of “halls” which were storing spaces for the former owners. See ? Banquets with Elven banners and all? And REAL bards singing?…
…That´ll be the day!
The Lady Dragon,
From her Lair.
Walker Between the Worlds
(Image : 
“Gift of the Eagle”, soul card 87, SG, 2005)
What can she lose, except a new layer of dead leaves ?
The Peace of Wild Things
On a clear day you can see forever – right to the old Roman fortress that was built near the sea.
You can see the tankers sliding on the silver waters, and at night, the lights shimmer in the dark, a human presence that we need to balance the valley and its mysteries.
And here is a poem by Wendell Berry, which I would share with you, this day.
by Wendell Berry
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. “
…As I look over the hills of my home, over the green hills falling gently towards the sea, I can truly feel what the poet means.
“Resting in the grace of the world”, indeed.
The Golden River
I finally turned my back
on the Path Which Doesn´t Lead Anywhere.
And though I felt lonely,
I felt free.
And the little brook sang and sang,
And the bees frollicked around me,
And my blood turned to a golden river.
Biosphere 2030
(Image : The Angel, accidental pic, SG, 08)
This is also a piece of writing by Wendell Berry (American Poet, Novelist and Farmer), that I want to share with you, from the book “Clearing”, (Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1974).
It is prophetic, deep and moving and we sometimes use it as a Mission Statement for the Earth Sanctuary.
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
along the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windrows.
as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the level of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no dream of paradise.
Its hardship is its possibility.
And here is a link to an Interview with Wendell Berry : http://arts.envirolink.org/interviews_and_conversations/WendellBerry.html
PS.- Biosphere 2030 is a project at the Sanctuary, by Mika and Adam.
Moony me
(Image : Soul card 23, SG, 05)
Things that grow, soil, dirt, darkness, damp, lush, magic, forest, water, mist…The moon draws life out of the soil.
Pregnant, full, ripe, tide, cycles, fertile, change, transformation, trance-formation. Moon, not cold. Warm, nice, moist, nest, egg, ovules. Embrace, inside, space. Dark spaces. Mature.
*Cheshire cat grin*
Rosie Brambleberry
(Image : Roots of Time, Brocéliande 05, SG, collage on paper)
One of the plants that I most appreciate is the ubiquitous bramble bush. Gardeners have a horror of the ever-invading brambles, but I just love them. And I´m the laughing stock of a certain group, mmmm, better not tell names methinks. You know who you are.
Since the day a biologist told me that the function of brambles is to grow in protection of the earth, particularly after the disturbing passage of the human ape, I appreciate them even more, and let them prosper wherever they shoot up, within reasonable sharing of the territory.
They are so beautiful too, so strong, so alive, vibrant. And they give us berries too, to make delicious jams. Ever tried my Autumn Crumble?
Don´t touch my brambles, I say! Which earned me the name of “Rosie Brambleberry”…
The barking frog
(Image: 
The lady Luna, sitting unashamedly in a corner of the veg patch, which she knows is forbidden territory. Do I detect a hint of provocation in her eyes???…)
Hey, we have a barking frog down by the swimming pool.
Down the garden path there is a lovely square well of water that juts out from the giant swimming pool (a water reservoir really, in case of fires). Since nobody ever disturbed the well, it is covered with green moss, flowers are even growing there, it´s like a tiny self-contained ecosystem, lol.
And in it, lives a frog.
Now, this is one special frog, because it barks, and only whenever one of our doggies is barking.
We don´t hear the frog usually, except very discreetly on very warm summer nights. Or maybe on a Full Moon.
But whenever one of the doggies barks at something (Chispa or Luna – our …mmmm… “guardian dogs”, err… dragons, one tiny black-and-white miniature Pinscher, and one black-and-white English Cocker Spaniel), the frog begins a concert too.
“Crew-ee-ee tock-tock-tock!”
Now, does that sound like a frog, eh ?
OK, so we have a miniature goblin elemental down by the swimming pool.
Sort of scary, eh?
PS .- One of these days, if I see that frog, I will try to kiss him, see what happens!
Shrine to Time
(Image : “Traces”, a visual journal, SG, 08)
Artistically speaking, I have always been fascinated by traces, marks, blobs, stains, all the ways that the white paper loses its pristine whiteness, all the bits of paper that are on my table after I have finished a project. I never have the heart to throw them away, they are so beautiful! So I started a nice collection, which has now become another visual journal called “Traces”.
I have been wondering what all the fascination is about, and I think now that it has to do with the passing of Time on objects and on people. We live in a world that praises youth and beauty, yet this such a fragmentary view of reality. I love reading weathered faces in the same way that I love my bits of unlikely stains. Time erodes, time takes away the virginity of the white paper and of the beautiful face, and it is so much more poignant this way. Faces become interesting as Time passes, because you finally see the person, not the ideal or the possibility of the person. And the white paper becomes art.
We live in a society that for base commercial reasons detests old age (can´t fix it!) and fading beauties; it hates death with a vengeance, and that is why this society is in such a deep state of unbalance, in a pretty horrible state of denial, actually.
So I feel damn good about putting the dirty, the spoiled, the disintegrating, the broken, in their rightful places : beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the passing of Time is inevitable.
On Becoming a Druid
(Image : The Sacred Mountain, painting, SG, 1996)
So, they ask me, how do you become a Druid? And is it for real ?
Images of Walt Disney´s Merlin, and of Gandalf, swim before my eyes. For real ?
You bet!
Oh, little problem : I don’t have a beard or a willie.
Never mind. This is 2008. Right?
It is said that a Druid´s training takes 20 years. At least. So, how come I did it in three?
That is not counting the fact that I started in the middle of the Harmonic Convergence in 1987.
Yes, do you remember ? We pledged, in the night from the 16th to the 17th of August, that year, that fateful year, that we would do something for Mother Gaia. I did. What about you ? Were you even born?
I came to OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids, UK) in 2005, but I will always be grateful that the biggest part of my training as a Druid was already done. I “only” had to pass through the three grades of OBOD, which I did in three years, pass through the initiations and indications of the Gwersu, and here I am, 22 years later. Presenting, your friendly neighbourhood Druid, at long last.
The first grade of OBOD is really a lovely one. You explore the Artist in yourself, you learn about Celtic mythology, the rituals, the Wheel of the Year. The second one, that of Ovate, is a bit more mysterious. You are led into your own deep inner Forest, and you yourself have to find a path out of the tangle! The third, that of Druid, is about owning your spiritual authority, your personal Voice in the World. That is a very brief resumé, in fact you can get totally lost a dozen times, in your own complexities, and some people take a very long and winding Path towards their accomplishment.
At the end, you are supposed to come out of your Journey with an autonomous Druid project, or at least that is what I understand. OBOD never hands you your journey on a platter, and that helps you to become really independent, if you weren´t to begin with.
How do we know that we are Druids ? My friends and colleagues at OBOD would probably say…Mmmm…you know it in your heart. *Chuckle-chuckle*. Besides, your contacts in the Otherworld tell you. Period.*More chuckle*
I would say : When you actually start to behave like a useful (to Gaia) human being. We are all Druids, yes, even Al Gore! However, you may need a little training, which depends on how stubborn you are in your very old beliefs about modern reality. The Matrix is damn hard to undo, all those little ciphers wrapped around your head get to be quite annoying, you have to de-hypnotize, really. (Which will be harder, methinks, than receiving four Gwersu a month for a few years…)
It´s been a long long Journey for me. Now I am really an Earthling. Only an Earthling. I wonder at the stars, at the growth of trees, at babies, at the lines in my face, at everything. The more I forsake hard knowledge (2 + 2 = 4), the more I wonder. What is this planet ? Paradise? For Earthlings, it could be. So, how about starting to work together towards it ? Bit by bit, tree by tree, stone by stone, acre by acre?…
The Druid grade, for me personally, is a synthesis, not only of the three grades, but of the rest of my spiritual Journey since it began, 42 years back. The image of the Celtic Triple Knot comes to mind. Three, working as one:
I will always be a Bard, art being my link to the world. I will always be an Ovate, for the great Mysteries of the Deep Forest, for the the Emerald Fire, for my encounter with the Goddess… And I will always be a Druid, and a leader.
And I still don´t have a beard. Or a …Never mind.
(Beware, women out there, you actually do get to meet some prejudices along the way, and I understand that. Women meddling with men´s affairs? Fatal business. *Chortling*. So now, not only do we bear children, not only do we have big, black cauldrons, but we also have staffs and wands? Hehehe. Just remember that in the Celtic world, women were also warriors, and that there are some wonderful examples of women taking a leading role. Besides, Herne, dearest, where is your cauldron?))
My favorite example of what a Druid´s role really is, what it could be even in the modern world (Just Imagine!), is that of a Druid being able to stand in-between two armies, and send everybody home. Such was their authority in their own times, and that is the kind of authority that would be necessary nowadays. Just send the screaming apes home, to do something useful for a change! And then get involved into a meeting with the chiefs, and help them see a better way to settle differences. (No, I´m not a bloody “fiminist”, I´m a very astute Crone!)
In fact, I would counsel the “wymyn” too. Stop whining, girl, and git to work THINKING, or why do you think that you have a brain in the first place!
Don´t like it ?
Ha. But that is exactly what Druids (or Crones for that matter!) should be about:
Get a grip on reality, (wo)man!
The Lady Dragon,
From her lair,
Under the mountain.
About Leadership
(Image : Evolution, soul card 79, SG, 1998)
Just so that there should be no mistake about my ideas on Leadership among the thousands that are reading this blog out there, *smiley*, I will define them through two excerpts of a wonderful book that I just read, Synchronicity, The Inner Path of Leadership, by Joseph Jaworsky, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 1996.
“Leadership is all about the release of human possibilities. One of the central requirements for good leadership is the capacity to inspire the people in the group : to move them and encourage them and pull them into the activity, and to help them get centered and focused and operating at peak capacity. A key element of this capacity to inspire is communicating to people that you believe they matter, that you know they have something important to give. The confidence you have in others will to some degree determine the confidence they have in themselves. John Gardner put it succinctly :
If one is leading, teaching, dealing with young people or engaged in any other activity that involves influencing, directing, guiding ,helping or nurturing, the whole tone of the relationship is conditioned by one´s faith in human possibilities. That is the generative element, the source of the current that gives life to the relationship.
Just being able to be there for others and to listen to them is one of the most important capacities a leader can have. It calls forth the best of people by allowing them to express what is within them. If someone listens to me say what I am feeling, then my feelings are given substance and direction, and I can act.” (page 66)
And the second :
“The conventional view of leadership emphasizes positional power and conspicuous accomplishment. But true leadership is about creating a domain in which we continually learn and become more capable of participating in our unfolding future. A true leader sets the stage on which predictable miracles, synchronistic in nature, can – and do – occur. The capacity to participate in our unfolding future has more to do with our being – our total orientation of character and consciousness – than with what we do. Leadership is about creating, day by day, a domain in which we and those around us continually deepen our understanding of reality and are able to participate in shaping the future. This, then, is the deeper territory of leadership – collectively “listening” to what is wanting to emerge in the world, and then having the courage to do what is required.” (page 182)
That´s exactly it. The leader should be the servant of the common good of a particular team, looking out that the whole group, one by one, is pulling through in whatever project is collectively undertaken. Ken Wilber would say that the leader is aligned to the “transpersonal”; the good leader is one who understands the deeper connections in reality, and thus promotes coherence and evolution for every one in the team, including, of course, him/herself.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
The Ficticious Journal
(Back cover, the proof!…, SG 08)
I love journals.They are like emotional treasure chests.
I mean, I love other people´s journals. I´m in awe of other people´s journals.
I tend to start my own by the front cover and at a crashing pace, but then not see the job through to the back cover! Also I don´t like recounting my experiences (which is a bit of a paradox for a journal writer, isn´t it?) – basta with living things once, re-telling it all, in details, bores me to tears…! Blogging is different, but, as you know by now, I prefer my entries short and nicely rounded, preferably with a nice image of my own creating ( they say that an image is worth a thousand words, haha).
OK – so I wanted to have at least one finished journal, and I did it, hooray!
Except. Mmm…It´s called The Ficticious Journal. I scribbled the text. It was wonderful! Like going…blah-blah-blah…The squiggles don´t mean a thing, but the journal is extremely satisfactory. Maybe I should restrict myself to visual art journals? Forget about diaries?…
It´s damn cold at the Sanctuary, but we have a nice pile of wood inside the house. Enough for a few nice evenings around the fire. When it´s that cold (we´re still without a central heating system, English castle- like!)I go into hibernation, especially when it rains, I hide in my bed with a woolen poncho, woolen socks , woolen-everything except…errr…well, you know.
The Gift of Life
Oh the wonders of new technologies!… This is Alexander, my first grandson, still snug and warm in his mother’s (my daughter´s) belly. 
The rebellious spirit
I am a rebellious spirit. (You might have guessed.)
Like Neo I chose the red pill to see how deep the rabbit hole went, and as I come up for breath, now and again I see a topsy-turvy world in which the sins of the fathers are visited upon the vacant eyes of the young.
Wuthering Heights & Ratatouille, again
Sometimes people tell me that they somewhat envy the way I live. Believe me, there´s nothing “nice” about it! (Except in summer, which, now, given the climate change, is about one month long!July is “nice”…)
At the moment, the water heater chose to break down, just when the temperature sank below zero, so not only is it Siberia in the kitchen, but we don´t even have warm water!…I was thinking about washing the dishes with woolen gloves, but…:-D
Also, we are dealing with rats, annoying little creatures. This house is so badly built that there are enough spaces in-between the various architectural “interventions” for rats to have a ball. I can hear them flit through the walls, and as I said before, I take my Swedish bedcovers
and migrate to another room (at least I can do that!). Another lesson in EcoNoetics ? After the wild boars, the lizards, the brambles, and the cold???? Well. Yes. Woman, get on with it! (An encouraging thought).
My primitive brain just makes me shudder, heeeeeew!
(Image : Mika and Adam working in one of the gardens)
EcoNoetics – Part I
(Our patio, Summer 2008)
The Meaning of EcoNoetics–Conversations with the Wizard about Ecopsychology
Note ***Quite simply, “noetic” means intuitive knowing. EcoNoetics means intuition about our rootedness in the Earth.If you have ever had an experience where you “just knew” something to be true – through deep contemplation or even as an instantaneous “hit” – without any evidence from your senses or without any rational justification… and then it turned out to be so; well that was a “noetic” moment. It’s a way of knowing grounded in something larger than your own personal mind. Usually, it comes with a sense of “rightness” and self-validation. …What it really is, is an indication that there is more, so much more to human beings than what meets the eye…
Shakti : When I started my active pro-Gaia career twenty-two years back, people thought that I was slightly bonkers, and sometimes did not even refrain from telling me so! Now of course the environmental issue – as it is called – is quite mainstream.
Mika : I heard you say several times that the Earth Sanctuary is not about solar panels. What do you mean by that ?
Shakti : I mean that it is not only about solar panels. If we had the means we would go into some really interesting alternative technologies, I´m sure. As it is, the battle for the land has been so intense that we didn´t have much psychological space left to think about solar panels. I think that ecopsychology is more about our psychological functioning in the domain of ecology than about pure ecology anyway. We are not a so-called ecovillage, for example. We are a small group that is trying to re-define our relationship to Nature inwardly, as well as outwardly.
Mika : What do you mean by inwardly ?
Shakti : We have to get an intimate measure of Nature, otherwise we will fall into the common trap of having a romantic view of “Mother Nature”. It is always very very dangerous to anthropomorphize the natural forces that affect our lives. There is no intention when the lightning strikes. Human beings may give it a human form, and say that the lightning is a Thunderbeing, but in itself there is no intention behind Nature. It just is.
So, working with and in nature gives us a good appreciation of what these forces really are. And then, we, the oh so very clever apes, will perhaps be able to make a story with this “it”, whatever “it” is, create a new myth, a meme, whatever – and through this story people will be able to create a real relationship with the Earth, not an imaginary one. We may then, through the myth, have an emotional relationship with Nature, one that makes sense for us, not as children, but as co-creators. When I say that I love the Grand-Mother fig-tree down in the garden, and that I feel that she loves me back, this is real for me, I can approach the tree with respect and even love. But I do not trick myself into believing that there is an entity there that is speaking with me. That would be the domain of art and imagination (Tolkien´s Treebeard comes to mind). So physically working/being with “Nature” is what the Earth Sanctuary is all about. Feeling how our muscles react, how our lungs react, after a hard day of cutting through the jungle, for example. That is “integrating” Mother Nature directly at the level in which I think that Nature exists – the level of the Ground of All Being.
Mika : Then we will perhaps have to consider what our relationship is, emotionally speaking, with the fact that in us too, the conditioned monkeys, there is this Ground of Being, that we are a part of something that to us, to the conditioned emotional person, is as far-away as if it was another planet ?
Shakti : That is what the Earth Sanctuary is about. To learn how to come to terms with the alien-ness of that which has been repressed by such a severely conditioned society. And also to learn why this happened in the first place, this sorry state of disconnection from our very roots. Actually, there is no other way to find real “solutions” to the climate crisis – there must be a fundamental change of consciousness (as Krishnamurti so aptly said) not only a change in consciousness. In this sense the current climate crisis is an open stargate for Evolution´s next step on this our Earth.
It will not be enough to think of the world as our stage, as Shakespeare said. It is so much more than that.
(References: J. Krishnamurti, The Ground of Being and the Mind of Man; Andy Fisher, Radical Ecopsychology; Theodore Roszak, The Voice of the Earth; James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia; Jo Campbell, The Power of Myth; etc. )
EcoNoetics – Part II
(Image : 
The Sanctuary, soul card 63, collage on paper, SG, 05)
This is a rather longer post for a change, but a very interesting one for the people among you who are interested in Ecopsychology, and as it is a good synthesis about what Ecopsychology currently is, it is also interesting for anybody who needs to know about it, it being of such relevance for the times.
Adam and I (and Mika, too) are members of a Net page called Druidic Dawn, a place for all kinds of druidic contacts, and we started to chat. Rereading what we wrote I thought that it would be fascinating material for the people who read our blogs. So this is the first part of our dialogue, Adam´s synthesis.
Adam: Part of my work is the development of Ecopsychology. I just want to know if anyone is familiar with it and works with it?
If not, then I’d like to introduce a few new (but no doubt familiar to Druids) ideas.
From this website: http://ecopsychology.athabascau.ca/
1. The emerging synthesis of ecology and psychology
2. The skillful application of ecological insight to the practice of psychotherapy
3. The study of our emotional bond with the Earth
4. The search for an environmentally-based standard of mental health
5. Re-defining “sanity” as if the whole world mattered
Shakti: Adam, hello!
Maybe you could put your original writings somewhere in here (re/ecospychology)? I mean the ones that we translated for the Spanish website. I think it is interesting for people to get a glimpse of how we, as a group, use Druidry as a tool for the future.
It could lead to an interesting discussion about the role of Druidry in the years/decades to come.
Adam : Certainly, here’s the text in all its glory
It’s quite long, but I did have to summarize a couple of books on the subject and my own thoughts into it…
The Basics of Ecopsychology (Adam Brough, the Earth Sanctuary, 2008)
Humans and Gaia
Gaia, as seen by James Lovelock, is a self-regulating system. It is a web of life, where all the organisms play a part in keeping the Earth in a healthy livable balance. The lands, skies and seas, and the organisms that inhabit them are part of an interdependent system that evolves and diversifies in harmony and unity. The idea is that the Earth is a huge superorganism and all individual organisms and inanimate materials are the components of this superorganism, including us humans. As a part of Gaia, humanity isn’t just living on Gaia but living in her. We aren’t just “of” Gaia, our identity runs much deeper than that, because we “are” Gaia, albeit a small part of her. We are emerging and developing within Gaia in a similar way that our organs emerged and developed within us as embryos. We are utterly dependant on Gaia for our existence but unlike our organs, we humans do not yet fulfill a vital function within Gaia. We have potential to become an important part of her, but if we disappear Gaia would not miss us. In fact it is even worse, Gaia would flourish more, as now we are more of a burden on the Gaian system than a blessing. We no longer help to maintain Gaia “in a healthy livable balance.” In our past we evolved a great talent for abstract thinking and problem solving, involving intellect and imagination. With this we have been able to create tools that help us enhance our otherwise unremarkable bodies and also created complex social bonds. From these we have developed landscape-transforming civilizations, instant global communication and travelled to the moon. Humans do not lack any inventiveness, except perhaps in one respect. Despite our abilities we have a problem, we are consuming more resources than we need. It was fine before the industrial revolution, Gaia was usually able to replenish herself with more life and keep things in balance. Then came the industrial revolution, which kept growing and growing until one day we found it is not as sustainable as we once thought. The resources being used were running out, the trees were being cut down faster than they could grow and the amount of chemicals being pumped into the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, is more than can be recycled back into the earth’s cycles. So what’s going to happen now? One day – soon – the industrial movement will realize that it has no more materials to work with because it has used them all up, but not before the atmosphere becomes uninhabitable by human beings because of the pollutants that have been pumped there. Is there a way to stop this before it happens? This is where the environmental movement comes in, a movement currently growing as people become more aware of our environmental plight. There are many environmental groups that are working to change things. From those who work practically with nature, with things like organic farming, permaculture and remineralization, to more political and social activism, such as political groups working to change environmental policies and others trying to reeducate the rest of society, especially future generations. But so far all answers within the environment have been about the effects, such as global warming, nonrenewable resources, save the whales and save the trees. But here is always a cause to any effect and if we follow the thread, we find that at some point, to some degree, humans are responsible. Perhaps it is just a question of politics or educating society, but maybe it’s deeper than that, maybe it’s psychological.
Ecology needs Psychology and Psychology needs Ecology
Psychology was originally applied to how an individual interacts with human society. The common populace was seen as the measure of sanity. If you didn’t measure up, if you were out of step, then you may have a psychological problem. But what if society’s psychology isn’t as sane as we’d like to think? What have we to measure society’s sanity against? Well how about the very place the human psyche evolves within and depends upon; Gaia. This, as seen above, is itself a society, made up of a community of various organisms, including ours. But how to connect the two fields of ecology and psychology? Well since the nineties there have been many writings about something called ecopsychology, starting with Theodore Roszak who first coined the term. The idea for Theodore Roszak is that ecology needs psychology and psychology needs ecology. What ecology lacks is a place for the human mind; it talks of carbon and water cycles and an interconnected web of life but leaves us humans feeling a bit estranged as it doesn’t really mention our minds’ place in it. Also psychology needs grounding in a larger sphere of understanding, it needs to understand that the psyche evolved out of its natural habitat so that we are not further estranged from our roots.
Ecological neurosis
In our current state of ecological plight, the word “madness” seems very appropriate. One ecopsychologist, Ralph Metzner, used ideas from psychology to show what sort of diagnosis we could give to humanity today, especially Western society. One is amnesia, here we have forgotten what we are, we have somehow lost an ancient memory of our belonging, and instead we feel like “strangers” that have found ourselves in a place that is impersonal and alien. Another diagnosis could be autism. We have forgotten where we have come from and because of that we no longer feel an empathy with our source. It’s not surprising that myths have arisen that the origin of humans is above and beyond the world and maybe even the universe, such as aliens from another world, spirits from another dimension or some eternal resting place where we as souls no longer have to worry about “earthly” matters. To top it off, humanity may have an addiction, one called consumerism that convinces us that we need more stuff, newer stuff, all the time. We can do all we want about the effects of our “collective neuroses,” by saving whales, ethical consumerism, ethical industry, sustainable living etc ., but if these aren’t reinforced by a deeper psychological healing then our actions won’t be quite so effective. As Karen Armstrong said, “Neuroses are much more difficult to get rid of than beliefs.” We can all change our opinions more easily than we can eliminate destructive patterns in our lives, however hard we try. It is the same with religion and, surely, the same with a culture. Our religious beliefs may have changed but our emotional compulsions have remained.” If we only change the effects of things, then we can easily slip back into our old habits and compulsions. If we do not add a psychological depth to ecology, then no matter how many trees we try to save, humanity may find itself slipping back into old patterns.”
Ecological Unconscious
In ecopsychological writings, there is an idea called the ecological unconscious. Where Freud talked of a personal unconscious that contains an individual’s psychology and Jung talked about the collective unconscious, the common psychology of humanity, Roszak talks about the ecological unconscious. We cannot say that the psyche appeared out of nowhere, in fact it has evolved from and continues to evolve within Gaia. Its beginning goes far back through our evolution and gradually appeared. In evolution, nothing is ever lost it is usually built upon, such as the layering of our brain, from a “fish” brain at the core layered over until we have a “human” brain layered over the top. This ecological unconscious has been denied because of beliefs that we are somehow distinct from nature, or that we are the pinnacle of its evolution. But our evolution does not proceed from nature in an independent way, it proceeds within nature, in an interdependent evolution. So to heal ourselves, we need not only look at our personal and interpersonal relations, but we also have to place psychology within a broader arena, that of Gaia, so that our health can be greatly enhanced, as this is the very place that we grow within and depend upon for our existence. Our reconnection isn’t just a physical one but also a psychological and a spiritual one. Our relationship with nature isn’t just one outside of us but also within us. The journey of the soul is a part of nature, not apart from it.
The Human Mind and Gaia
With this view of a human evolution that depends upon Gaia, we also redefine our identity. Humans have a lot of identities within which our egos may define themselves; I am this individual with this body and personality, I am in this family, I do this work, I live this life, I am this religion, I am this nationality, I am this race etc., all very human definitions. But we can go further back, I am a primate, I am a mammal, I am a vertebrate, I am an animal, I am a living being, I am Gaia and even back to the stars and the Big Bang, seeing our evolution as a part of the evolution of the universe. For the first time that we know of, through us, Gaia has developed an “ego,” a sense of identity and place. Through the consciousness of humanity, Gaia can know herself and her place in the universe. Everything we do, everything we are is an extension of Gaia and her evolution. Our cultures, like sciences, religions and arts can be directed, not only for the advantage of humanity, but also for Gaia, the interdependent system to which we belong. As Gaia evolves, we evolve and as we evolve, Gaia evolves, and even the rest of the universe is in turn enriched by the synergy that is life.
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EcoNoetics – Part III
(Image : Druid´s Egg, soul card, collage on paper, SG, 04)
A Dialogue with the Wizard
Shakti: Wow! Right up our alley! Thank you, Adam.
Adam : Well, very interesting thread
As to what I do with ecopsychology. Well I’m “in training” with it, developing my ideas on it through my writings and discussions (like this). I’m also on two courses, one being OBOD’s and another being Psychosynthesis with Will Parfitt (which both Shakti and Mika have gone through.) In the future I’d like to work more professionally with it, with other people. I’m starting of course here, at the Earth Sanctuary, and it’ll expand from there.
One of the important ideas that I need to elaborate upon is, that I think that Ecopsychology could be in danger of sacrificing what we humans (collectively) have gone through, like agriculture and industrial revolution. Like you I view these as stages in our development that can be viewed as essential “gateways” for further development and not a bane to life on Earth, despite the difficult challenges that we have created with them.
In James Lovelock’s Healing Gaia he talks about the “Four Outcomes of Diseases,” the development of a relationship between microorganism and organism which he uses as possible outcomes of a superorganism’s (Gaia’s) relationship with organisms (like humanity). (1- parasite is destroyed. 2- “War of attrition” or chronic infection. 3- Host is destroyed, parasite dies also. 4- Symbiosis)
The last one is where we want to be and Ecopsychology can facilitate that. But we have to be careful what sort of symbiosis we promote.
Currently our development is diverging from the Earth’s. But in this way we’ll just come “crashing back down” as the evolution of the living Earth is sort of a “centre of gravity” for our own evolution. We cannot evolve without regard to our evolutionary context.
So we need some sort of symbiosis to prevent this…
But if we try to “unite” or merge with the Earth in a symbiosis without considering a possible further potential of human beings, then all that we have gone through as a species has been lost and any potential for future noetic evolution will have to be restarted, if we are capable of it at all. I do not advocate going back to some idealised way of living before “harmful” industrial or even agricultural practices came into being. Though I like a simpler way of living, I’m no hermit!. There are some things about the modern world that I won’t do without (starting with this computer!)
Our own evolution(biological, cultural AND spiritual) is best seen in a state of running “parallel” to the Earth’s evolution, and that we have to reach a synthesis, not a symbiosis. That is, we neither lose our own evolution through merging nor through isolation, but we move together interdependently. Through this, our own evolutionary path is enhanced and the Earth’s evolution takes on newer, noetic, dimensions by virtue of our presence within it.
Shakti: We are the Earth, a few thoughts today.
(Comment on your post, Adam.)
Adam : “Our own evolution(biological, cultural AND spiritual) is best seen in a state of running “parallel” to the Earth’s evolution.”
We emerged from our environment, which means that we are “it”, our evolution is the Earth´s evolution. We are part of it, not separated. We have the innate capacity to manifest, reveal, Earth´s potential. We are Earthlings, in this sense.
“That is, we neither lose our own evolution through merging nor through isolation, but we move together interdependently.”
Again, I feel that it is more than inter-action, or inter-dependence. There is not “Nature” and “us”.We are the evolutionary process. We are Nature. And that is also the hope : This…”it” (Life on Earth) in us, through us, is going somewhere, and we can participate, promote, help, ease this process along, because something in our very core knows what it´s all about.
“Through this, our own evolutionary path is enhanced and the Earth’s evolution takes on newer, noetic, dimensions by virtue of our presence within it.”
If there is a noetic dimension in human beings (and there is, of course), can we not suppose that this has been there as a potential from the beginning ? That consciousness is a given in the Universe? Or maybe that through very specific circumstances (if you prefer the idea of randomness)we evolved a consciousness that is part of our environment/habitat? Evolution may not end with Sapiens Sapiens. Maybe humanity is still a baby, and who knows what we may become ? Those of us who have had transpersonal experiences know for a fact that we are Earth, to the very marrow of our bones. Not, however, in a symbiotic way. We are the consciousness that emerged from the habitat, in a way we are Earth´s nervous system.
That feeling is what connects me to Druidry. In 2005 I have been participating in an OBOD retreat in Brocéliande, – and we visited the Standing Stones at Carnac. The feeling that I got from the stones was that the Ancients knew emotionally that we are in fact a part of the Earth, – though they couldn´t have known scientifically. This feeling of “I´m part of this, as intimately as the marrow of my bones” is one of the deepest experiences that an Earthling can have. It is connected to the feeling of reverence for the Ancestors, which is a part of Celtic Druidry. And also to the Celtic knotwork, the Great Chain of Life transcending the little ants that we are as separate and concrete entities.
The important fact is how we are going to use this inner experience, regressively, or progressively. It all depends, as I said above, on if we have actually been able to integrate the shadows of a society that has been dis-connected from Nature for a long long time. This society – ours – has a very bad karma indeed. And we need to correct that, but first of all we must make amends and realize that we are not separate from our planetary habitat. Which is a whole psychological process in itself, lol.
For me, that´s how the two things – EcoNoetics & Druidry – sort of hang together, and largely, this is why I have become a Druid.
Adam : Yes Shakti, that is also my understanding. In my text, at the end I wrote; “With this view of a human evolution that depends upon Gaia, we also redefine our identity. Humans have a lot of identities within which our egos may define themselves; I am this individual with this body and personality, I am in this family, I do this work, I live this life, I am this religion, I am this nationality, I am this race etc., all very human definitions. But we can go further back, I am a primate, I am a mammal, I am a vertebrate, I am an animal, I am a living being, I am Gaia and even back to the stars and the Big Bang, seeing our evolution as a part of the evolution of the universe.”
I was thinking that the Ecosphere (Gaia/Earth) encompasses several “spheres”; atmosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere, which can (and, in my view, does) include the emerging noosphere, they are so tightly interwoven with one another, they are like waves upon a sea, they cannot be regarded as separate yet still they are distinct.
Or another way of putting it; within our planetary ecosystem there are several properties that evolve each one as a part of the whole system. There are photosynthetic, sensual properties, digestive, respiritory, sexual properties etc, all interacting with one another as a whole. Amongst these properties, Gaia is also developing noetic properties, which, rather than being a mere product of our biological brains, could in fact be inherent within the universe, and finds its best expression through our brains.
You’re right, Shakti, in that we cannot evolve “in parallel” with the Earth as we are an aspect of the Earth’s life. Where we go, the Earth goes and where the Earth goes we go. What I should have made clear is what we are evolving in parallel to; the different “spheres” must evolve in parallel to each other to maintain the evolutionary coherence of Gaia, or else it all unravels and goes extinct. To survive, humans are to evolve “in parallel” or complementary to other organisms that make up the Gaian community or else risk getting “booted out.”
Shakti : Interesting thread, innit?
“To survive, humans are to evolve “in parallel” or complementary to other organisms that make up the Gaian community or else risk getting “booted out.”
Fact is, we are starting to get booted out, don´t you think? Sadly, it´s a question of a decade or two. Society, as we know it, will soon disappear if we don´t find a way so that “the different spheres” will “evolve in parallel to each other to maintain the evolutionary coherence of Gaia”. At one point, we may become no more than an unwelcome parasite!
But you know, the whole point of eco-psychology is that it´s the human race that has to be “saved”, not the Earth. The planetary ecosystem will exist long after us, I think. And maybe we won´t be there to see how Gaia deals with yet another branch,/time,/phase, of her own evolution.
I would like to point out and share the idea that the problem, however sad and crazy the appearances, is not “us”, us human beings. We may look and act like rats, but we are not. There is a noetic possibility within us that “our society” (The Matrix, to use a well-worn meme)is mostly not paying any attention to. The potential expansion of consciousness of our species is something that is rarely if ever taken into account. And if it is at all, it is almost always theoretical. I´m not really talking about “the transpersonal” here, or unknown dimensions of the Spirit – but more about psychological attitudes, sensitivities and more adjusted perceptions of reality.
That is why I think that Druidry – in all its aspects – has something very valuable to offer to Evolution. The druidic philosophy acts as a meme, we absorb it without even noticing, most of the time. The rituals of the Wheel of the Year, the meditations on ecoNoetic subjects, our sensibility, our ways of feeling, gradually change through the training (for example at OBOD) – and at the end, we absorb this fact of our belonging to the planetary ecosystem with the air we breathe:
It´s easier to get a bunch of people celebrating Imbolc in the woods, than trying to change the structures of the Matrix in them, lol. And the effect will be the same, a subtle change in the noetic sphere, which is exactly what we need now, if we want to survive.
Ecopsychology has to become EcoNoetics, a change of consciousness. Or as Krishnamurti himself so aptly said “We need a change of consciousness, not a change in consciousness”. It´s not what you do, it´s what you ARE that is so important.
Adam : I just got a “laugh” reading something. There was some news talking about “far reaching consequences of the climate change.” Still, it was public media and I doubt they’d want to use a phrase like “complete devastation of humanity and its civilisation”, otherwise no one would read it!
I was reading a blog… (http://lessonsforanewworld.blogspot.com/2008/11/end-of-everything.html) that mentioned that plenty of human societies and ciivlisations have collapsed because of ecological disaster of some kind, but it was localised enough that the local ecology could recover, the effected humans could find refuge elsewhere and there was still enough humanity around to replace the lost civilisation. This time, we’re not talking about the collapse of a local ecology and civilisation, but the global ecology and global civilisation. This time it would be the collapse of humanity on a global scale with nowhere to escape to, nor any other human civilisation to replace us.
I think, yes, the Earth might “think”… “Humanity if you haven’t learnt by now, then you’ve missed your chance. I’m not going to waste time with you lot playing silly buggers, I’ve more important stuff to get on with… like living! “
Another thought I’ve been having is that if we regress with our current abilities then that would be extremely dangerous. I mean, now that our marvelously inventive minds have created interesting “gadgets” like nuclear technology, we cannot afford to regress whilst we are still in “control” of various volatile technologies! Some might say there are plenty of Chimpanzees running humanity!(It´s “nuclear”, Mr Bush, not noo-killer!)
Al Gore mentioned it in his documentary (An Inconvenient Truth). He was showing how the rules of war have changed, that “spears and stones are one thing and guns another” then he showed a mushroom cloud, and that about says it all really. A completely different consciousness needs to be developed to handle our technologies, our populations, our resources, and just about everything that we have become and are becoming.
It´s a whole different ball game or “new age” as some call it. Could it be that we need a whole different ball gamer?
Shakti: Noo-killers!
“Noo-killers”, oh, that could be a new meme, killers of the noosphere! (it´s not only the biosphere that stands under attack!)
“I mean, now that our marvelously inventive minds have created interesting “gadgets” like nuclear technology, we cannot afford to regress whilst we are still in “control” of various volatile technologies! ”
And not only technologies! Just have a closer look at how the global economy stands, and how it most certainly would collapse if…several teeny weeny thingies would happen tomorrow! Actually, it is happening already. I do hope people are starting to see how “individual” and “collective” hang together, embraced over a deep deep abyss!…
So you´re right, the kind of mindset that can handle the whole circus is definitely not a regressive one, or even a sentimental one!…We will need professionals in everything just to survive .
This thread, has brought to my attention the concept of EcoNoetics, the “mechanics” of consciousness itself, or perception of reality – ecology cannot be to “just” put solar panels and hug trees; as psychology cannot be to become “well-adjusted”citizens and then we´d be rather OK. We will not be OK with “just” solar panels. Or “just” hugging trees. Or “just becoming “well-adjusted”. As for the latter, becoming “adjusted” to madness is…madness. Actually, trees are disappearing fast, particularly where they do matter, like in the Amazonas. And nobody, but nobody will do a damn thing about it, because we have not yet got to the point where we understand, as a species, that “we cannot breathe imaginary trees” (as Mika so aptly said somewhere on a certain Message Board). We need more than all that.We need to become true Earthlings, all of us, of every colour and creed imaginable.
But see? People, the general public, hasn´t got this information about what the potential of the human being really is. (And I´m still not talking about unverified abstractions.) Just humanistically speaking, the potential of the human mind is awesome. And how much do we use ? Not even ten per cent!
Adam : Haha! I honestly didn’t think of noo-killers when I wrote that. A bit of accidental genius, or something…
“So you´re right, the kind of mindset that can handle the whole circus is definitely not a regressive one, or even a sentimental one!…We will need professionals in everything just to survive.”
Perhaps now everyone needs to become a professional at living one´s life in a useful way ? I’m seeing my life as a work, an effort towards something. Even my playtime (and rest!) isn’t an escape or a break from life’s efforts, it’s a vital bit of work to be done.
It’s a profession (or work!) just being alive these days. People take it for granted that life is just something that happens. You can see it in the way people are brought up, it almost seems, some of the time, that kids can grow up by themselves. They’re just left to their own devices with little support (and what support there is, is too often one in which the individual gives up their potential to conform to societal conventions). So a person is brought up in a “whatever” sort of way, then they get educated at school with “whatever” sort of information, they start “whatever” work, distract themselves with “whatever” entertainment, then comes “whatever” retirement, followed by “whatever” death. For me, it’s important that my life isn’t a ”whatever” life, that its efforts are for something, focused, dedicated, useful.
“Ecology cannot be to “just” put solar panels and hug trees; as psychology cannot be to become “well-adjusted”citizens and then we´d be rather OK. We will not be OK with “just” solar panels. Or “just” hugging trees. Or “just becoming “well-adjusted”.”
There certainly needs to be a deeper work. I mentioned it in my text, and in fact I’ll use Karen Armstrong’s quote again; “Neuroses are much more difficult to get rid of than beliefs. We can all change our opinions more easily than we can eliminate destructive patterns in our lives, however hard we try. It is the same with religion and, surely, the same with a culture. Our religious beliefs may have changed but our emotional compulsions have remained.”
But still, that’s just the “basement work” of psychology; looking for healing and being “well-adjusted” is just the start, not the be-all and end-all of psychological wellness.
Theodore Roszak mentions in his work the “ecological unconscious.” He, and others, describe it as something that reaches into the past, as a psychological structure connected with our past evolution within the Earth and possibly even influenced by the very development of the universe from the Big Bang. But again, this is only the “basement work” of psychlogy.
Perhaps the idea of the ecological unconscious also needs to be brought into the future and other aspects of it recognised, rather than just its past. If our past evolution is synonymous with the universe’s then so is our future (upperworld/higher/potential) evolution, which in Psychosynthesis is represented by the upper unconscious. Any psychology should be both a constant work of balancing/synthesis, overcoming neurosis AND opening to potential. And, as you say Shakti, humans have a lot of potential!
“As for the latter, becoming “adjusted” to madness is…madness.”
So…Red pill or blue pill?
Shakti: Red or blue?
Red! (Ouch!!)
Cernunnos
(Image : Cernunnos, collage on paper, SG, ‘o5)
…Being one of those crazy post-menopausal Wild Women “who run with wolves”, my favourite god is quite naturally Cernunnos, in his various aspects, Herne the Hunter, the Green Man, the Lord of the Beasts. As a woman I feel extremely comfortable with these energies, which is a paradox. More than a paradox, I see it as a (hard-won!) synthesis of male and female in me. I am him. Maybe my love for him is the only way I will ever get closer to the other gender. Sometimes I perceive him as the daimon in me, something that completes me as a person, as a woman. And I perceive him as a wonderful bridge (in my mind) over the chasm that has been artificially created between the genders, through the systematic and intentionally distorted (my interpretation) application of social stereotypes to all children, male and female. A sorry situation, as I have discovered in my own life, as a mother and as a woman.
The pictures in this entry are two aspects of Cernunnos that I have felt very intensely, up close and personal, both of them an inner vision, one of them applied to a natural object, the other one a vision in a meditation. I thought I´d share them here, because I feel it is extremely important to balance the part of ourselves that we apparently are not, male or female, inside us. At my age I do not project the Animus on men anymore, as younger women usually do (when they “fall in love”), and I do not let men project their Anima on me, because I think that this Anima of theirs, this precious archetype of womanhood in a man, is their own treasure, their own inner link with the Great Goddess, to discover and enjoy, rather than project like all adolescents do on “ideal” women (movie stars, fashion models, etc. etc). I must confess that I had a crush on Viggo Mortensen´s Aragorn for a while, perhaps because I felt the energy of Aragorn (in Peter Jackson´s movies) so close to my inner experience of the god Cernunnos.
I feel generally good about men, and if they want to see me as a part of the Goddess, well, they may, because I am. I´m no tantric diva, but I certainly embody a whole bunch of nice womanly qualities…!
(Picture : SG, drawing: La Grotte des Trois Frères)
The Otherworld
(Image : Road to Damascus, collage on paper, SG ’04)
Who cares if the Otherworld and the gods are “real”, or not ?
To me they are real. As a walker-between-the-worlds, an artist, half of my brain (and half of my time!) is “over there”, through the magic Gates, walking the Land of the Imaginal, which is not just fantasy. The images are real, they are inside my brain, and I can, if I want and need to, have a creative dialogue between these parts of who-I-am.
Or did you think that your Matrix identity was the “real” one ?
Give yourself the chance to discover what your hidden mind is up to!
When all is said and done, at the moment of your passing, will it have mattered if the wonderful encounters with archetypes, gnomes, the Queen of Faerie or Merlin himself that you possibly had, were politically correct? Is the Matrix real ? Hahaha. Adam, my young friend,has a saying written on a piece of cardboard which says “Do not believe everything that you think”. Lol.
Are you so restricted in your perceptions that you think that only the physical is “real”?
Even so, I think that there is a huge difference between “path-finding” in your own neurons, and some of them are quite quirky, particularly the quantic ones, ya-hoo!!, - and “imagining” things.
When you just imagine (which is quite OK too), well, you have a certain control over the images, you build them up, you actually create them in mind-matter (in sanscrit, chit, yup), you create what you want or what you need, and basically the images obey their master, your alpha mind (for example).
But there is another way of working with images, a much more mysterious way, which I prefer. The images emerge in your mind which simply acts as a mirror, and they have their own development, their own quirky quarky path. Very different.
In that mysterious world, Merlin really exists and he can even talk to you…That is what I call the “Otherworld”, a mysterious place inside my own brain, which has its own rules, motivations, and purpose, aside from my Matrix ID.
The process is the same as in art, an idea “is born”, somewhere deep inside, and the good artist follows this idea, to see where it is leading. All the art is in the letting go of preconceptions. The good artist is a master at “letting go”!…
And that is how I sometimes follow the gods and the various interesting characters that come and visit me. Can´t mistake the joy, the exhilaration, the enthusiasm, the uplift, in one word…the buzz. The bliss. We do not invent the gods, they come …or they ignore us.
Awen & Nwyfre
(Image, Throne of the Goddess, soul card 80, SG, ’04)
There are two Druidic concepts/experiences that I feel the Western world (=the Matrix) sorely needs at this time : Awen and Nwyfre.
The first, the Awen, is simply inspiration, intuition, particularly poetic, artistic, and also mystical. The Awen defines the Druid. It is the very breath of his/her Druidic presence and role. The Druid “listens” to the voice of the gods, and to the whisperings of the Otherworld, and transmits them as best he/she can to the “ordinary” (=conditioned by the Matrix) world. Besides his other tasks of management, administration, counselling, the Druid is always aware of the finer promptings of his intuition. The Druid is a living Oracle.
All of my art depends on the Awen. I am unable to draw or paint without this inner surge of bliss; I´m really not interest in theories of art or technicalities (I don´t sell my work anyway!) – when the Awen surges I have to leave what I am doing, and go get a piece of cardboard, a white paper, something that I can use, anything, to “take notes”. It is as if I was looking inside my brain! The roof of my brain becomes, at that moment, a rather moved and animated Sixtine Chapel – only with my own images! (I wish I could photograph what I see, since I am self-taught I don´t have the dexterity to reproduce my visions exactly, which is why I admire Alan Lee so much!)
I also know that my soul cards, for example, are inspiring to other people. The Awen gets through the image and sometimes grips a person with a “wow” feeling. I know. This is the feeling that I experienced when I first made the card!…
So I become a sort of willing and very aware channel, or better said, a bridge. That is why my second name is Walker-Between-The-Worlds. A Walker for the Awen.
Nwyfre and the Green Fire
(Image : Dream Quest, collage on cardboard, SG, 2002)
The second concept/experience is that of Nwyfre, the life-force, the ki energy. No living being can exist without Nwyfre. Nor plants, flowers, butterflies. Not even the rocks. The rocks are alive too, of course, only they vibrate at a very slow pace, like the mountains. All-that-lives, Gaia Herself, is made of Nwyfre, basically. It is so obvious, yet so mysterious. You cannot define Nwyfre, photograph it, smell it, or weigh it. It is like the soul, a given, a transparent mystery. Le Mystère au fond de la Vie.
You can feel it, though. And if you are trained for it, you can actually see it move. You can foresee how it will move, you can flow with it. The way I see it, it should be an important part of the Druidic training. (The training of a Druid takes a minimum of twenty years, one way or the other, so you can imagine! The real Druid is steeped, like a tea-bag, in Awen and Nwyfre!)
Nwyfre is the vibrant Green Fire that emanates from a very old Forest. In 2005 I was in Brocéliande, Brittany, for an OBOD retreat with our Chosen-Chief, and the Green Fire litterally made up the territory. You could see where it began and where it ended! Like a green bubble over the land, the Ever-Burning Tree …breathtaking! I remember getting to the town of Rennes in our car, Mika driving. We didn´t know where the OBOD retreat took place, but I looked out of the window and told Mika “It´s there! The Old Forest is there!” And it was. We found our way right through the Invisible Gate!…
Nwyfre is also the shakti, the Energy. (That which makes this blog vibrant, you know. Not my doing, I´m just a very faithful bridge. *smiley*)
PS.- Have you ever looked into the eyes of a newborn? If you are lucky, you will get zapped with something that is both Awen and Nwyfre, not divided yet, not separated – whole, pure magic. There, at this instant, the eyes of the baby are a twin Stargate!…
The Memory of Stones 1
(I
mage : La Roche-aux-Fées, and Mika, Brocéliande 2005)
At OBOD we are taught that stones are alive, in their own way. I have been thinking about just that for a long time, because I have this strange ability to touch something and feel some of the vibrations that have been left in an object. It is not always clear, and the weird thing is that the older and the most natural a thing is, the clearer my impressions. I “get” all sorts of stories when I am at a historical site. For example, Chartres has been wonderful, Montségur terrible, and I still want to visit Glastonbury and the Scottish Highlands.
Four prehistoric sites have really left a deep mark in my brain : Carnac (in Brittany), la Roche-aux-Fées (Brittany), the island of Gavrinis (also in Brittany) and some places in the Forest of Brocéliande. (Not Merlin´s Tomb, which was really left in a disgusting state!)
It was during the same retreat with OBOD´s Chosen-Chief that I have already mentioned. The retreat was called “Le Mystère au fond de la Vie”( The Mystery at the deep end of Life), and though the workshop/retreat was more or less simple and straightforward, the experiences that I had were not.
Most of the frequented places at Brocéliande are vibrationally “exhausted”; tourists, thousands of them, are not exactly known for respecting subtle environments! I remember being at a particularly “sacred (Arthurian) site in the Forest, and suddenly there was a shout nearby “Eh! T’as pas une cigarette?” (Got a cig?), hahaha, not exactly inducive of meditation…!
The moments that I really touched this “Mystery at the deep end of Life” all happened for me in a natural (and Druidic) context. At Carnac, the alignment of stones called “L’Allée des Druides”, the site of Monteneuf, and the “Faerie Rock” , la Roche-aux-Fées. And the island of Gavrinis. When I came back to Spain I painted a serie of images that I will show you in further entries, because I want to share what I do with art, apart from altered books, ATCs (Artist Trading Cards), and X-mas cards!
At the “Roche-aux-Fées”, as it is called, something weird happened to my camera. I didn´t see this at the time, but when the film was developped, this light appeared. Mmm…something technical. Of course. Anyway, it really represents what I felt, and it happened just as I snapped a pic of Mika, my daughter, who was with me at the retreat.
Stones have a memory, and your brain can decode it.
The Memory of Stones 2
These pics are of La Roche-aux-Fées, the squat pile of big stones, “L’ Allée des Druides”, at Carnac, on the left, and of the stones that most impressed me at the site of Monteneuf, the lonely vertical one. Can you feel the Reaching to the Sky of the big stone? The vertical axis?
At Carnac, luckily, I could stand by the stones and touch them for quite a long time, away from the constant chatter of the group. As a matter of fact, I didn´t want to listen to the guide that we had, preferring to walk among the stones, alone, and “listen” to them. I am not really interested in historical facts and blah-blah-blah.
The inner experience that I had was of the deep deep link with the Ancestors , of a bridge over Time and Space – with the mysterious ones who put the stones up, feeling how they wanted to touch the night sky, wanted to touch the stars. The stones are bridges between Earth and Sky, and as I was standing there I could feel the vibration right through my hands (by the way, I wasn´t alone to feel that). As much as the underground tumulus of Gavrinis was an experience of the Goddess, of Gaia, of Mother Earth – so Carnac was really the experience of Father Sky. I had a downright “religious” feeling, a profound awe at the beauty of the Earth.
At both places, Carnac and Gavrinis, I felt clearly: ”This is an initiation”. I was moved to tears to feel so deeply part of the Great Chain of Life.
Three years along, down the corridor of Time, the experiences are still fresh in my mind. More than Druidic rituals, the touching of these subtle vibrations have left their mark, and in a way, have determined my destiny ever since. I was a Bard, then.
It really feels good to recall, and more than that, to share the moments.
Thank you for reading.
The Memory of Stones 3
(Image : The Roots of Time, collage on paper, SG, 2005)
This is the collage that I did at the hotel, right after being at La Roche-aux-Fées.
There is more to come. Stay tuned…;-)
Memories of Gavrinis
Kept Gavrinis for last in this serie about stones.
Wow. Gavrinis is something else! I remember that our hosts at the hotel said it wasn´t possible to reach the island, maybe it was the wrong time of the year, I don´t remember – but the Chosen-Chief really insisted, and after the experience I understand why.
Gavrinis is a small island, situated in the Gulf of Morbihan, at ten minutes by boat of the port of Larmor-Baden. It is reknown for its magnificent neolothic art, and sometimes compared to Newgrange. Well, won´t bore you with the blah-blah-blah facts, if you´re interested you can look it up in the Net.
I remember that we entered the “tomb” in single file. The immediate impression really being of being “en-tombed”. At night, it must be quite spooky. But I remember standing there with the group, and the first feeling was of…warmth. Not just because we were inside a pile of stones, it was something psychological, a psychological warmth, you understand ? As if I was embraced by a mother, it evoked the earliest memories of being a tiny baby…
We formed a circle at the end of the tunnel, and in that warmth, in this deep silence of the stones, the Chosen-Chief called out the Awen.
…What happened to me then ? Looking back it seems like a journey back in Time. I remember the warm hand and the energy of the Chosen-Chief holding my hand on the right side, and Mika, my daughter, on the left. I remember Philip´s hand becoming huge, and vibrating. It was all swift and short, but nevertheless the unmistakable happened in a flash : I went back in Time, and died again. Yes, I had a symbolic experience of death, of returning into the ground, of being embraced by Mother Earth and existing in Her, a separate entity no more. I remember thinking …Oh death where is Thy sting? I started to cry,
…and it was already time to get out again!
I haven´t been much afraid of death since I had the inner experience of “All-That-Is” as my real identity, but that experience in the tunnel at Gavrinis, really took all fear away from me concerning dying. It is just a Going Back to the Origin, to the warm embrace of a Mother. It is just going to sleep, it is just forgetting the whole turmoil of Life, the Mother is so incredibly peaceful and strong…
When I die, please put me directly into the earth, if you can, and plant a little apple tree so that I can be remembered. Nothing more. Cry with joy if you want. Dying is going back into bliss.
Thank you for insisting to go to Gavrinis, Philip. And thank you for being who you are.
The Memory of Stones 4
When I came back from the retreat, I painted a serie of 16 images – about what I felt in the tunnel, and generally at the retreat. The 16 paintings jumped onto paper one right after the other for 16 days!
Have you ever seen the prehistoric paintings of Lascaux or Altamira ? That is how I felt.
As I paint I am aware of doing a shamanic act, I feel so close to those unknown painters in the caves. I have been to the northern part of Spain a month back (Asturias, Cantábria) and by chance Mika and I arrived to Altamira. At the neo-cave (a reproduction of the real cave), right at its entrance, there is the “place of the Artist”, where you can see some tools, powders and charcoal. Again, I was moved to tears to feel the fellowship over Time, the great Chain of Life (The Fellowship of the Sacred Stones?), the sacredness of Art, of the artist being a bridge between worlds.
That was the exact feeling while I was painting my serie of 16. (Actually, I did them for my Psychosynthesis Diploma Course, as a post-graduation exercise).
Mandalas
After all this subterranean stuff, I think this blog needs something more …airy. A little pause in-between two “serious” postings! 
So I will tell you that I not only paint stones, but also Mandalas.
There is a folder in my PictureTrail gallery, if you care to click there.
The Future of Druidry
(Image : The Ancestors, SG, collage on paper, 2007)
As I see it, Druidry is “an idea whose time has come”, as Werner Erhard said, and he added “Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come”. I agree. That is what I think of OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, UK) and modern Druidry : their time has come.
What do I mean ? Druidry, having supposedly existed 8000 years back, it is thus an idea whose time has come back? No?
The subject being rather complex, given the number of Druidic movements and their differences, what in Hel do I mean ?? Well, I´ll tell you my mind in plain English.
I think that Druidry – and especially OBOD - is a tool for modern times, for ecopsychological times. Druidry is truly about an econoetic experience. That is its importance, in the context of The Inconvenient Truth. No, it is not that ” The Druids” (of which nobody knows anything really accurate!) are coming back. It´s that since humanity is in such dire straits with the Climate Crisis, the crisis-this, the crisis-that – we are looking into the past for inspiration, for survival. Unfortunately, there is no healthy going back. We have to face the music, here and now, and create new solutions for the future, for the future of our children and grandchildren. Find new soul-utions, new soul-filled solutions.
I do not think that we should try to recreate Druidry, and especially not a romantic form of Druidry, in which all the real facts might get distorted by a wishy-washy – and unconscious – view of reality. The sacred language of the Druids has vanished from the surface of the Earth, we know only fragmented bits of their teachings and of their rituals – and maybe we don´t even want to know, lol, what with this idea of human sacrifices that the old Druids have been accused of!…(By the Romans, so it just might not be really true!)
Humanity has evolved a lot in 8000 years, though it sometimes doesn´t look like it, and we simply cannot go back. The Druids are lost in Time. No, I´m talking about an intuitive creation, based on modern psychology. I´m talking about a training that would be up to the current times, in which such enormous changes are about to happen. Oh that the tsunami of the coming Change should not find us still believing in Father Christmas!…
It is no longer feasible – or indeed politically correct! – to accept religions and beliefs that actually reject physical reality. Our very survival now depends on us being able to manage the said physical level. I agree that there is more to reality than “just” physical reality (a good example is quantum physics), but let us courageously and wisely confront this absolute truth: if I hit you hard on your head with a brick, your skull will shatter and you will go down. And that, my dears, would be it. However much you may regard the importance of philosophical levels, with your brain in a bloody mush you cannot think. Don´t let the “channelers” tell you otherwise. That is the importance of physical reality.
Some of our most crazy ways of perceiving reality, and of being in contact with our environment, will have to go. No more “virgin births”, or winged beings dancing through invented rosy skies. No more unicorns, and fairies, and gnomes. Not to mention the metempsychosis of the individual ego. All this will have to be catalogued into the folder “Creative Imagination”…real creative imagination, mind you, but the step to give these creatures *the same* earthly existence as stones, trees, animals and real humans – will have to go. We will have to re-orient ourselves, re-connect with our true gutsy soul (not the golden rosy cloud around the head), we will have to get a grip on reality again.
What we know about “The Druids” is that they found *The World* beautiful, and that, my friends, is why Druidry is “an idea whose time has come”.
(Don´t shoot the pianist, I´m only saying what I really think.)
The Lady Dragon, *in a rather rebellious mood this morning*
Links
(Image : Shakti´s Bardic crane bag, 2005)
If you want to know more about who we are at the Earth Sanctuary, what we do, and how we see things, it would be a good idea to click over to Mika´s Creations from the Heart and Adam´s Grove of Quotes (which you probably have already done, but I wanted to mention this, since we are the core group of the Earth Sanctuary Project). Both links are mentioned on the right-hand side of this blog. Have fun!
Nine Ladies of Avalon
(Image : The Holy Grail, collage on paper, SG, 2002)
Nine ladies with long skirts, white and red and black, dancing through a dark forest, at velvety midnight.
Oh sisters what do we do, so strange the night, so dark the forest, and terrifying the call of the owl,
hoo hoo hoo
together and glancing furtively, owl-like, this way and that,
nine ladies in white-read-and black, dancing under the clear moon, nothing to fear at all, but how vast the mystery
(The Nine Ladies, SG, 2002)
The Isle of Avalon is an inner landscape, an archetype of Beauty, Wisdom and Truth. It is the earthly Paradise which the myths tell us was once our home, now mostly forgotten. It is the land which the poet and mystic see in vision, where the artist and musician find inspiration; where the soul goes for spiritual healing : a timeless land of power and mystery that offers initiation and enlightenment to all those who dare travel to its shores.
The island-valley of Avalon
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow´d, happy, fair with orchards-lawns
And bowery hollows crown´d with summer sea.
(Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
Nine is the most magical Celtic number, 3 three times itself. Returning to Taliesin´s description of the Isle of Apples in “The Life of Merlin”, the Chief Bard tells us :
“That is the place where nine sisters exercise a kindly rule over those who come to them from our land. The one who is first among them has greater skill in healing, her name is Morgen, and she has learned the uses of all plants in curing the ills of the body. She knows too the art of changing her shape, of flying through the air, like Daedalus, on strange wings.”
Whatever the case, the powers of these women of the Otherworld are very real indeed. Their role is to initiate students into the inner planes through the cauldron of rebirth, an undertaking which demands great sacrifice – to die to one´s old self in order to become reborn transformed, with perceptions and powers beyond the unawakened human experience. The magical cauldron, or grail, is nothing less than the crucible of the goddess out of which emerges the transformed initiate of the Celtic Mysteries. Legend has it that Arthur´s sword, Excalibur, given to him by the Lady of the Lake, was forged there also. This of course symbolizes the masculine principle, the gift of will, authority and action. The Avalon initiation unlocks the energy of both the chalice and the sword, both masculine and feminine powers in perfect balance, for us to take back to our own side of the waters for the healing of our world.
Major Arcana : Strength
(Image : 
The Memory of Pain, collage on paper, SG, 2002)
My favourite way of inviting the Awen is through Tarot. This morning, I got a Major Arcana : Strength.
showing strength, knowing you can endure, having a gallant spirit, feeling an unshakable resolve, taking heart despite setbacks, having stamina, being a rock, being patient, dealing calmly with frustration, accepting others, taking time
maintaining composure
refusing to get angry, showing forbearance, being compassionate, giving others lots of space, understanding what others are feeling, accepting, forgiving imperfection, being kind,
Achieving soft control, persuading, guiding indirectly, tempering force with benevolence, demonstrating the strength of love,
Usually we think of strength in physical terms, but there is also inner strength. Inner strength comes from exercising the heart muscle. It is perseverance, courage, resolve and composure – qualities that help us endure when times are tough.
Hekate of the Crossroads
(Image : Circle of Healing, collage on paper, SG, 2004)
Elderwoman speaks : I am Spirit. Making body is what I do. I am Body. Making Spirit is what I do. I am Primal. I am Sublime. I am strongest when the Two are One.
Elderwoman is the ancient holy one. She is grandmother, witch and hag. She has been ignored, blamed and feared, for she holds powers that others deny. Powers of time and transformation. Powers we may fear, but would do better to understand, especially in our times. The Crone is the Mother of all Mothers. She knows all your bedtime stories, and all your worst nightmares.
She is the One who knows Death. She will introduce you to your shadow. She can free you from your fears. Elderwoman is She Who Has Gone Beyond.
She has lived many years and many lives. Her feet know the paths of the Ancestors. Through her we can touch those who have gone before. She has lived for love, for power, for grace. Now she lives for herself and for her journey. She travels new roads and dares the unknown.
“Queen of the Night, triple-faced Hekate is one of the most ancient images from a pre-Greek stratum of mythology and an original enbodiment of the Great Triple Goddess. She is most often linked with the dark of the moon and presides over magic, ritual, prophetic vision, childbirth, death, the underworld, and the secrets of regeneration. Mistress of the crossroads, this goddess dwells in caves, walks the highways at night, and is the force that moves the moon.
Hekate is the archetypal shaman as she moves between worlds in a fluid way. She bridges the visible and the invisible realities, delving for insight into the magical realms for the ultimate purpose of effecting a healing and regeneration.
The Magic Love Wand
What do you mean, my magic Love wand is not *real* ?
Ah yes. I understand. You sell yours for 250 $ in the Net, and mine cost me 1,95 euros in a toyshop (because its two entwined plastic hearts called my attention).
Mmmm…
We all know about the old magic of dollars in the big big *real* world. *sigh*
PS.- I worked a bit on the wand afterwards, though. Little girls´wands do not come with the symbol of the Great Goddess. Unfortunately.
And a Happy X-mas to you!
Of course, we Druids have celebrated the Winter Solstice three days ago. The air was different, and the light. Alleluiah, everything starts growing again…
But well, you have my X-mas Greetings too, and those of our local Rudolf the Reindeer (Kaila, who seems to think : Yeah,yeah, you insufferable humans!!…)
The Lady Dragon, *happy and snug in her Spanish castle*
The Earth Sanctuary in a festive mood!
That´s one part of the core group! Methinks 2009 will be a great year…
Creature comforts
(Image : Power of the Invisible, collage on paper, SG, ’04)
The boiler has broken down again. Darn. We´ve been almost a month now without hot water in the plumbing. The house feels like a fridge sometimes.
I am blessed, though.
As I heat up the water in pans for the washing of dishes, my heart sends out silent thoughts to the millions of women out there who dont even have water.
A Druid Flag and the Flow of Awen
(First draft, very rough design, December 26th, 2008)
I have been told that there has been much talk about a Universal Druid Flag on certain Forums in the Net, and complicated negociations between Druid movements. Apparently the Druid groups cannot agree on a shared symbol that would represent all Druids, and *naturally* every Druid organisation wants to edge in their own specific symbols.
On another Druid Forum online to which I belong (Druidid Dawn) I met some people and we quickly came to a fertile exchange of ideas, out of which emerged this design, which is a very rough draft of mine of what could become a Druid Flag.
Do you like it ?
Blue stands for the Bardic grade; green for the Ovate. The white tree represents the Druid grade, and its branches are in the form of a Celtic knot, which represents the unbroken Chain of Life. I added a planet on which this tree is growing. Et voilá. In less than a day, we got a Druid Flag. I loved the flow of the Awen as it created the project, and of course, didn´t think much (at least not with my intellect).
Someone commented that it might as well be a flag for the whole of humanity, since we all form part of Gaia, and of the Tree. I loved the idea.
I have no doubts that this design would/will be met with a 102 and a half comments from all sorts of people involved with Druidry, but at least we can now buy some fabric, and try to make a real flag, which, if it is rejected, will float handsomely over “The Last Homely House in the West”, in our Spanish Rivendell, at the heart of the Earth Sanctuary.
Cool, huh?
I will keep you informed of this project.
Shadow Work Fun
(Image : Soul card 118, SG, 2008)
You mean that there can be fun in Shadow Work? Yup.
I wrote this entry three days back, and when I was finished and tried to upload it, WordPress shut me down, and I lost the post! I had torn the paper into tiny bits, thinking, you know, OK, work done, so I had to assemble my bits, do some puzzling (pun intended) work, and then I left it. I respect the “reasons-why” that I encounter, even if they are not really logical.
In the meantime, I made a collage about my experience, and when I was finished and wanted to scan it, I realized that there were actually two images in the same space. See the pic at the right ? That is how I collaged it, the second one, below, is the very same, on the “reverse” side, with a totally different meaning.
The first one, was of a wave that crashes on the shore, mountains in the background (incidental, too, it´s the edge that was torn from the luminous bit above!) I rather liked the image, but thought, mmm…air, water and earth, where´s the fire ?…
When I turned the image around to scan it, there appeared the fire! See? The bubbles that come up from the depth of the sea, *haha*, it´s a submerged volcano!…That was fun.
And now comes what I had written, three days ago. I think it´s important, so here it goes.
“One of the most useful processes that you can do as a “person-in-the-world”, a person worried about all the stuff about the Inconvenient Truth, is…shadow work. It is certainly the most important part of our work in Ecopsychology. You cannot change a society from the same consciousness that has created the Climate Crisis in the first place. To change something, we will have to analyse why it happened in the first place. And I have absolutely no doubt about what we will encounter. Nobody wants it, let me tell you from experience. (Not very good for the climate crisis).
Often, too often, shadow work is presented as an uncovering of personal repressed shit, of all the dark thingies that supposedly “go bump” around in the dark night of your soul. Only partly true. The unconscious is dark (no “light” = no consciousness), but the soul is luminous. Not the same at all.
The shit is usually on the immediate (submerged!) surface, but therapists make you carry this baggage because after all, they are making a living out of it! Get my drift?
Underneath the shitty truth of who you are is the great regrettably universal truth of the Matrix conditioning, to which we all have been submitted right from infancy. It is a process of systematic mutilation that starts very early in every newborn. It even starts before that, in every little mother´s womb. Society has its own independent agenda concerning newborns, and the worst part of it, is that it later hides the stuff under the guise of “therapy”. You need “therapy” to make you a ”good” crazy person again. Well, mostly, you are not being really healed. You are being smothered with what the Matrix does not want to see of itself. The truth would be to tell you that there is a great light beneath the surface of the waters, as there is a great light under the stars.
Real shadow work is more about un-covering this Light, and reclaiming who you really are, than about the shitty business of seeing your shortcomings and your ploys (sometimes really intelligent!) to survive in a society that does not acknowledge the existence of the soul. (No, not the rosy light that supposedly glows above your brow, that´s the intellect).
You carry society´s ignorance as if it was your own, and mostly it isn´t.
In my long career as a therapist (yeah, been there done that) I have never seen a wholly personal shadow that wouldn´t extend into collective ones. I am not saying that personal shadows do not exist, that they are a fancy and malevolent creation. Not all is invented. But I do say that all problems have a soul-ution, we are made of Light, and it is this Light that has been repressed.
I have, however, seen a lot of abandoned babies and unloved children, – which takes us to the urgent necessity of a courageous analysis of our spookily unbalanced societies.
Just my two-cent of wisdom for today, in the middle of this oh so phony X-mas business.
Love,
The Lady Dragon *slightly nauseated by the festivities*
(Soul Card 118, The Submerged Volcano, and Light Bubbles)
Flight of the Morrigan
(Image : Flight of the Morrigan, collage on paper, SG, 2008)
That´s another collage I did yesterday.
From Wikipedia :“The Morrigan, The Dark aspect of the Celtic Triple Goddess. The “Washer at the Ford” (seen washing bloody laundry prior to battle by those destined to die). The Battle Goddess, also Queen of the Witches and Goddess of Magick. Could appear as a Raven, a beautiful Maiden or an ugly Hag. Marries the Dagdha at Samhain. The Goddess of Death. Directional assignment: North or North-west, Samhain.”
The Mask
(Image, The Mask, collage on paper, SG, 3o 12.o8)
We all wear masks. It is said that we need them in order to function in society. Which is just the kind of “baggage” that I told you about in the post about shadow work. It is maybe necessary to protect your most tender feelings from your colleagues at the office, but it sure complicates intimate relationships, no end. Which begs some deeper work (IMHO) on why we create such un-human environments to begin with. Above all, things usually become very difficult when people don´t remember that they wear a mask, and honestly think that the mask is their real face.
Anyway, I did this collage yesterday, and it belongs to this serie about shadow work, so here it is.
On a straight path up to heaven!
(Image : The Source, collage on cardboard, SG, 2005)
Thanks to all my readers the stats of this blog are on a straight monthly path up to heaven!Thanks for reading, folks.
And I do hope some of it helps you to bear new ideas to lighten your world.
On my part, have a very creative, healthy and happy 2009! Cheers, in spite of all.
Be brave, be good, be outrageous. Be yourself.
May the Force be with you.
The Lady Dragon, *in a ya-hoo mood*
PS.- And watch “An Inconvenient Truth” again, show it to your children, to your colleagues at work, to your neighbours, to your friends. Houston, we´ve got a problem!…May 2009 change the course of things because we all understand what we do not want for our children.
Trash Art and New Year Resolutions
(Image : Recycled!, art journal made with used X-mas paper bags, SG, 01.01.08)
I, the Lady Dragon, hereby solemnly swear, *spits on her paws*, that I will not buy any new art material in 2009, but instead will recycle all the thingies that are contained in all my boxes, drawers and treasure chests. I will develop Trash Art to a fine point this year, recycling the contents of my trash bins and of my used paper baskets. I swear not to put a foot – or even half a foot! – in any art shops, in Spain or elsewhere. May the Great Gook forever damn me to mediocre art if I should do so.
Hahaha. Let´s see how long that lasts!
Tarot cards for 2009
(Image : Tarot Journal, 2009, SG, visual journal)
Every year, at the beginning of January, I throw my Tarot deck, to see a little bit how the next year looks like, could look like. Well, this year, the cards are a fantastic bunch, and if I get to be up to them through the year, this is going to be a great year!
The Sun, The Wheel of Fortune, The Star, and the High Priestess, a rather interesting mix.
Tech snaggyglitch!
Hello, my dears!
This is a post to communicate that I am re-shuffling the posts, and so some of them disappear into the dungeons. You can see “All Posts” through the tag cloud.
Since I´m not the brightest light when it comes to techno-stuff, I may need a day
to figure out how I can get my blog into the correct chronological order.
Ah well, I´ll show you some art then…;-)
(Image : Spanish High Drama, collage on paper, SG, 07)
Conjunctio : The Lovers
(Image : Conjunctio, soul card, SG, 2005)
Each one of them: complete.
Each one of them, a perfect jewel.
Neither only man, neither only woman.
They are what each one is. Just that. They will cry and they will bleed, and they will share the gift of life.
As they touch they feel the same life force
flowing in their veins, like living fire.
And so they shine, perfect jewels in a perfect necklace,
Glowing ruby-red on the throat of the Goddess.
Alchemy, practiced throughout the ancient world, is a science or art through which material is subjected to a serie of operations in order to produce gold or the so-called philosopher´s stone, the key to understanding everything. This latter was to be reached by the union of opposites in the final process called the conjunctio, normally imaged as the union of male and female in the form of the divine androgyne. Although alchemy was practiced as literal chemistry, it was also imaged metaphorically as a process of psychospiritual growth. In this sense, even the literal chemical process was imagined to hold the mental projections of the alchemist. It was Jung´s metaphor for the process of individuation whereby opposites are held in tension and brought into harmony through the constellation of a third possibility. The Lovers of Tarot come to mind, too, in which a couple is seen looking up at the blessing hands of an angel (Rider Waite).
Oh Hidden Life, vibrant in every atom,
Oh Hidden Light, shining in every creature,
Oh Hidden Love, embracing all in oneness,
May all who feel themselves as one with thee,
Know they are therefore one with each other.
(Annie Besant)
Initiation: The Tower
(Image : The Sannyasin and the Labyrinth, soul card 87, SG, 06)
Essentially initiation is a soul journey. It may be stepped into consciously, or it may overwhelm us when we least expect it. It often comes upon us unbidden, with the elemental force of a hurricane, or an earthquake. A loss, or death of a loved one, or any sudden drastic change of our life circumstances can push us into the unknown. It is the passage of awakening to the new and unfamiliar circumstances that tests our capacity for evolution. The willingness to surrender control of the old and familiar condition, requires a maturity of soul that arises through the challenge of living. There is a necessary shattering of innocence, of trust in the safety and comfort of the known. Facing our fears, and meeting these often painful points of transition in a human life, is to consciously connect with the Mystery of the Self, with the order of the cosmos, with existence itself, and to be opened by its infinite potential.
“Obey the Teacher on the Way. Prepare for the tests. Pass through each Gate and in the sphere which they reveal and guard, perform the labor which befits their sphere. Learn thus the lesson and begin with love to serve humanity.
Then, to the Teacher went the final word : “Prepare the candidate. Give him his labours to perform and place his name upon the tablets of the living Way.”
(The Tibetan Master)
” Within the light shall you see light; walk in that light and there see light. Your light must brighter shine.” (The Old Commentary).
Oh!
The silence of the vultures
Thickens the plot, no doubt.Follow the threads, follow the trails,
Follow the hints and the winks,
We are on to something.
Staunchly we walk
Back to the Shire,
The Ring has ben destroyed,
My friends.
We fight for freedom.
This is no race for amateurs.
Too many strange-sounding names,
Too many nuts to Nibble-ungen on.
Hahaha.
The Lady Dragon *being esoteric*
Have you Had your Meme Today ?
“A meme is any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.”
Come to think of it, symbols that have been transmitted through the ages, are memes: for example, the crux ansata, the Ankh cross (eternal life for the Egyptians); the Yin-Yang symbol (duality and movement thereof); the Christian cross (symbol of the Saviour, for some); etc.
Anything can become a meme (pronounced meem) , and the science of the transmission of memes is memetics.
Well, Assagioli´s Egg is a meme. It contains all the information about Assagioli´s view of reality.
I come to today´s subject. Today I have painted a meme, the meme that is the Earth Sanctuary. Those of you who are interested in Psychosynthesis will recognize the Egg, and its Seven Points.
Defining what we do and who we are is too complicated, and maybe not very useful, so I will share this visual meme with you today, and let it float in the Web, see what happens.
More Memes
(Images : Mandalas, Shakti G., 1998)
See if you can decipher the contents of these visual memes.
(And yes, Tibetan Mandalas are also memes.)
Use Your Imagination Journal
(Image: My Dreams Are Still Fluffy After All These Years spread, UYI Journal, 2009, SG, Recycled Paper Bags, recycled magazines, recycled wools)
…is fattening up, lol. Just a peek…
The Sink Sadhana
(Image : The Magician, Shakti´s Funky Tarot, SG, 2004)
Sadhana = Spiritual path, in sanscrit.
The kids who live with me have things to do, friends to meet, articles to write, clever thinking to share, and guess who washes the dishes ?
Yes.
Me.
I have things to do, articles to write, smashing thinking to get out there, lots of art to birth into the world. This morning, I stifled the scream that was bubbling up my throat (me being a drama queen), and considered the sink. Wait a minute.
When people ask “Gosh, Shakti, where do you find the patience(—>the strength/the morale/the boost/the incentive/the sheer hooplala) to go on writing, creating, thinking…?
*smile*
In my kitchen.
Been at the Sink Sadhana for more than forty years now, and that is where I learned everything there is to learn about patience and hooplala.
…Have you ever paused a minute to think about the spiritual influence of an exercise like washing dishes, drying them, piling them up in neat clean piles into a cupboard, whoa, every day thrice, again and again, for years? To be dirtied again the next day, yipee-ya-yey, again and again, year in year out ?
Yea, brother. Every single day of my long life since I´m on my own, I have been in one kitchen or another, at least during part of the day, courageously facing the mounds of dirty dishes.
Today, my friends, I made an extraordinary discovery : the Sink Sadhana has made me…unsinkable!
OK, now.
Have you finished your breakfast?
Can I get at the dishes ?
*blinking*
Naaah, I´m OK doing it.
You just go play!
Hehehe.
Soul cards
(Image : The Winter Queen, soul card 121, SG, 2009)
So, what are soul cards?
I have started my collage work years and years ago, long before it was “invented” in California by a lady called Seena Frost. An artist friend of mine showed me how to cut stuff in old magazines to create stunning collage work (her own being abstract). As my drawing was not up to the kind of images that I got in my mind, the technique really worked for me. I can decide on perspective, and create architecture, layers and depths. Through the years I evolved my own style and my own themes.
When I started my Psychosynthesis Diploma Course in the year 2000, I realized that I could actually document my inner processes, so the collage work soon became an expression of all the phases of my PS process. Now they are an extension of my inner Journey.
Anything can start a collage card, an inner impulse, a colour, something somebody says, an image in a magazine, sometimes just an emotion, or a state of mind. Through time I have elaborated my own “vocabulary”, so I immediately know what the card means when I look at it. It is a sort of stenography of the soul.
When I show the cards I let the viewers elaborate on their own meanings, and am glad to see that my cards evoke lots of interesting ideas. It rather works like an unconventional Tarot deck (of 121 cards!). Nowadays I mostly use them to illustrate this blog, which allows me to show things that words cannot communicate.
All the images you see in this blog are simple scissors-and-glue work. I don´t do Photoshop. And of course, I don´t sell them, though I did, at one time, create book covers with them for a friend of mine who is a publisher.
Hey!
(Image : The Hermit, Shakti´s Funky Tarot)
Today is my birthday! *beaming*
Sixty-two going on to 45! *Cheshire Cat Grin*
I´m…awed. Life is beautiful.
Shadow Warrior
(Image : Shadow Warrior, collage on cardboard, SG, 2009)
Got two or three rants in the offing, but didn´t have the time to appear here today, so that´s for the next week.
Meanwhile, here´s my latest collage, Shadow Warrior.
Enlightening moments
(Image : Gift of Life, collage on paper, SG, 2004)
“The real meaning of enlightenment is gazing with undimmed eyes upon all darknesses.”
(Nicolas Kazantzakis)
My daughter, the one who is two weeks away from giving birth to her first baby, is having some really enlightening moments.
“Mum, do you realize that every soldier that has ever been killed in a war has been brought to the world through a woman going through all the stages of pregnancy ?”
Yes. my darling. Not to mention giving birth, which is one hell of a moment for the female body.
“Mum ? How come no woman ever protests?”
Well. Errr…
“And do you realize that nobody -EVER- talks about it ?”
Yup.
Sweetheart, that is why your witchy old mum is a shadow warrior.
Listen…
(Image : The Lady, collage on cardboard, SG, 2004)
kia tere te karohihori…
which means approx.:
May the calm be widespread
May the sea glisten like greenstone
and may the warmth of summer fall upon us all.
(Maori)
*sigh*
I love saying these words aloud (in Maori, and pardon my accent!)…
They are like pearls sliding out of the mouth.
And then, on another note, not less important :
“Stamp out conformity. Stay in bed all day. Dream of gypsy wagons. Marry yourself. Eat mangoes naked.” (Sark)
Certainly, the essence of Druidry, to this Druid.
“She”
(Image : Blue, collage on paper, SG, 2004)
How different, how vastly different our destinies would have been, my friends,
If a cult generated in the desert had not slain even Her memory.
She was stepped on, She was humiliated, She was quartered and then thrown to the winds.
Her name does not echo anymore in the wild forests of the West. Her rivers, Her heartland, Her springs, Her waterfalls, have all been dried up. The Earth has become a wasteland.
Behind the veils, behind the clouds, Avalon goes on. And on and on.
Shekinah, Kali, Inanna, Ereshkigal, Sekhmet, Hecate, Mary the Dark, Our Lady of All Creatures,
Ora pro Nobis, Pray for us, for the sons and daughters of man
Are lost.
We´re OK!
This is just to let you know that we are OK here at the Sanctuary, but that there was a hurricane-like gale during the last two nights, which uprooted a lot of trees, and we are without electricity, so …no Internet. I´m typing this at my daughter´s computer in the village.
Apart from material problems we are doing OK, none of us has been hurt, except that we are having a taste of what the climate change has in store for us. So we´re working on some psychological adjustment, as a tool to align intelligently for the future.
The house is like a castle, it´s a stone fortress, so we´re not worrying, but the pine trees are flying around, and that´s a real danger; if one of them falls on a cable (lots of them in the property), that could start a fire, and with the gale, it couldn´t be stopped. So we´re thinking about safety measures, not to mention the urgency of renewing the house´s insurances. I have at least three blogs in store, but will have to wait until the light comes back, the official services are completely overwhelmed.
Do you believe in fairies?
(Image : The Lady and the Unicorn, coloured drawing, SG, 2009)
I hope not. They do not exist in real nature (obviously).
(Yo, yo, yoooo – don´t spit at me!)
Let me finish.
…Are you – however - *owning* your inner Fairy ? Mmmmm?
I just wonder what the world would look like if a majority of people, instead of repressing their natural sensitivity – would express it as a legitimate side of their personal nature ? Yes, women and men.
…What if people became familiar with their inner magic?
Would “fairies” even be necessary then ????
The image is from the delightful Unicorns – Coloring Book, by Christy Shaffer, Dover Publications Inc, Mineola, N.Y, USA.
The colours are mine, though.
PS.- Note the lackered fingernails – as in so many new-agey images, there is a lack of a practical sense of clothing where women – and fairies! – are concerned. How can they flit about in their gauzy little dresses ???…So unpractical! Hahaha.
Love the colours, nonetheless. *sigh*
Oh, and the light is back, so I can rant some more now…
Pay me, pal!
(Image : Master El Morya, source unknown)
I have a rather bubbly, lightly sarcastic, view of the new-agey crowd (been there, done that). And what I found a few days back must be the weirdest among the pearls that I am collecting. There are some really funky zany views on the spiritual Hierarchy in the Net, but the extract below must well be the golden cherry on the glitzy purple cake :
(…)How To Win a PERSONAL Q&A SESSION With Master Kuthumi
Each month when you register for the Galactic Activation Conference via our Paypal link, you have a chance to win a personal Questions and Answers session with Master Kuthumi by choosing a number between 1 and 700 and typing it in the place on the Paypal invoice at checkout where it says : “MY RAFFLE CHOICE”.
If the number you choose is closest to the number that has been pre chosen that month by Master Kuthumi, you will win a chance to ask Master Kuthumi a question and receive his answer and any guidance he has for you at that time, at the end of that nights activation before the call ends.(…)
Let me smile. Ain´t that quaint or what! What is the chance that an elevated Being like that will know if Rita Sunshine, of Sacramento Landing, has to have a gluten-free diet – or if Bulagungule Okongole, of Kenya, really needs to sell that chicken to his mother-in-law?… *kewkewkew, the Lady Dragon, chuckling*
Hey! If you want to know anything at all about the spiritual Hierarchy, you put your money in my Paypal, and I´ll give you the real dirt about the subject!
No offense meant, to anybody, and especially not to Master Kuthumi.
Having said that, if the Masters really look anything like the drawing I also found on another site…I could..well… become a fan in two seconds flat!
*The Lady Dragon, preening herself before her mirror*
One Light
(Image : Origins, collage on cardboard, SG, 1996)
Am reading The wisdom of the Sufi Sages (Timothy Freke), a wonderful little book, and this quote really hit us (reading it aloud in the family, and we all ended up crying, lol) :
“There is only One Light, and “you” and “me” are holes in the lamp shade”.
The whole point being that we are all the same Light, NOT “parts of the same old lamp shade!”
See what I mean ?
In the Light,
The Lady Dragon.
Happy Imbolc, everyone!
(Image : Hail, Brighid!,collage on paper, SG, 2006)
Spring is Coming!:
Imbolc is a holiday with a variety of names, depending on which culture and location you’re looking at. In the Irish Gaelic, it’s called Oimelc, which translates to “ewe’s milk.” It’s a precursor to the end of winter when the ewes are nursing their newly born lambs. Spring and the planting season are right around the corner.
Most Holy Brighid, Excellent Woman, Bright Arrow, Sudden Flame;
May your bright fiery Sun take us swiftly to your lasting kingdom.
Brighid is the goddess of creativity and regeneration.
So, Happy Imbolc, to all of you out there!
Love,
The Lady Dragon.
If only
(Image : Imbolc, soul card 77, SG, 2005)
If only my name had been Vanessa,
If only I had been a real blonde,
If only I had dared eat more chocolate,
If only I had created more mischief,
If only I had married Alan Lee…
Ah well.
As the Spanish say : “Yo creía” y “yo pensaba” son hijos de Doña Ignorancia y de Don Tiempo perdido”. ( ”I believed” and “I thought” are the children of Lady Ignorance and Mister Time (lost).
*sigh*
Chain of Life
(Image : Jai Kali Ma, soul card 124, SG 2009)
My mother, bless her soul, has arrived to the very ripe age of a hundred years last November, and claims that she is so tired that she would just like to fall asleep and never wake up again.
My daughter, on the other hand, is exhausted by the last stages of her pregnancy, and carries her “beloved balloon” around like a precious burden.
Me, sandwiched in-between a coming death and a coming life, still full of my own life, my heart throbbing with my life, creating ferociously so as not to lose a single day, fearing an uncertain future for us all, hoping for the best and wishing away the past.
How unimportant seem the busy affairs of men…
Ten Little Eggs
(Image : The Little Mothers, soul card 56, SG 2005)
Mum (me) is preparing spinach pie for supper when suddenly, …peep! nee-noo-nee-noo nee-noo (the emergency siren)! No eggs. And the supermarket is definitely too far away at this late hour. “Wait! I´ll go down to the chicken coop!” Mika (my daughter, no, not the pregnant one) exclaims. Ten minutes later, the radiant gal comes back, with ten little eggs in a platter.
Now, do you remember this movie in which Charlton Heston finds out to his horror that since there is no real food anymore, people are actually eating dead bodies? Soylent Green, I think it was called.
Well, let me tell you folks, in a pre-Soylent Green world, ten little eggs – real little eggs! – make all the difference!…
Happy Imbolc! Gaaaaah…
The Enlightened Artichoke
(Image: Secret Garden, collaborative journal, SG, 2005)
(Shawn, you´re going to love this one!) *wink*
…One of my good friends (ohum…) told me : ”I´m reading your blog, but m´dear, aren´t you talking about yourself a bit too much?”
Well. Since I´m fascinated with LIFE, and I´m the nearest subject available for observation…
Besides, I´m not trying to uphold an egotistic singularity, of which I am by the way well aware, I´m just playing with the fact that in so many ways I am – as the Spanish say, “more normal than an artichoke”, -that is, I share in all the glory and all the shit that it means to be fully human. And that is why, the stats say, my words have such a resonance out there in the big wide world… Aren´t we all, for good or for worse, in the same boat?
Mmm…I´m an artichoke, yes, but albeit an enlightened one! Hahaha.
The Martian Toaster
(Image: Madame Mim, Walt Disney) (Yup, that´s Madame Mim, I´ve been told that someone is searching for her!))
Who…but who (look into my fiery dragon eyes!) has thrown away my old (burnt but comfy) toaster, and replaced it with this Martian…thing ?
That …thing… says : “Bread can catch fire therefore the appliance should not be used near curtains, furniture… ” Points of suspension, I swear this is real. Where on Earth will I find, in my kitchen, a nook without furniture? And what are the points of suspension for?
“It” also says “Do not touch the appliance with wet hands”. See what I mean ? Only a thingie coming from outer space would give such an advice to an Earthling!
And this: ” Personal safety: The temperature of the accessible surfaces may be high when the appliance is in use”. Duh. (Note *** May be high, (the temperature), it is not certain?)
Not to mention the Instructions for Use :
-Connect the appliance to the mains. Put the slice or slices of bread into the appliance. Use the select knob to reach the desired toasting level. Start the appliance by sliding the loading lever down until a “click” is heard. After -the/-selected-toasting/-time-… the-appliance/-will-switch/-off -/auto-ma/-tically.
Kew kew kew
Whoa, for braindeads.
Now, wait a minute, while I go toast “a slice-/ or / slices of -/bread” (what else??). If I´m not back in two minutes, call the emergency phone, I may have been abducted!
Oh, and the thing is called “Planet” (yes, but… which one?)
The Staff and The Wand
(Image : The Lady of the Lake, The OM Journal, SG, 2007)
I´m finishing my Druid Grade at OBOD, (which actually means that I´m just starting in Druidry!…)
As the OBOD Gwersu (booklets) suggest, staff and wand represent the magic (respectively) of the authority of the Druid, and the magic of Thought, so yes, I have my Harry Potter wand (yeah, have a quick laugh, you sad sad people, kew kew kew) and my Druid staff which is, as it should be, impressive.
My wand is made of very straight hazelnut wood (impossibly straight say my friends who know about my kind of magic!), and it helps me greatly to be “thinking straight”, and then to project my very straight and direct thoughts into the world.
My staff carries significant charms, geegaws and doodads of various civilizations (a mother-of-pearl tiki from New Zealand, leather bands from Morocco, silver hearts from the supermarket, and last but not least very nice feathers from our very own chicken coop), and you wouldn´t want to come across it, it being pointed at your middle, it looks…wicked.
The OBOD training also says that staff and wand represent “the masculine”, as (“naturally”?…) cauldron, cup or chalice represent “the feminine”. I think that OBOD skated a bit too close to a sexist assumption on that one, but what the heck, it´s nice having neat categories in our busy little brain (s).
Now what do my staff and my wand carry ? Masculine energy, or my own ? Since everything a female thinks and does is also female, these are two very powerful female…err…ornaments.
OK, in a nutshell, the wand is Elrond´s and the staff is Gandalf´s. But the energy is… pure Aragorn. Et voilá. Said it.
*sigh*
*The Lady Dragon, sort of dreamy-eyed*
Soulmates
…Encountered my soulmate at long last! Tee Hee. See the pic?
Naaah, just joking.
This is one hell of a stereotype of a Druid. Oldish, white hair, sharp blue eyes under stormy eyebrows, bear claw at the neck, and, of course, wooden staff. He´s too Druidy to be true, must be an American…or maybe a film star. Or an “extra” in a BBC documentary on Stonehenge…
Speaking of Druid stereotypes, I know of female Druids of uncertain age, round and funny, and no less authoritative. Well, I must say that I don´t really believe in young Druids, that´s true. To become a counsellor to kings one must have a certain life experience, don´t you agree?
Anyways, the pic was funny. Love the hair, gosh, I would love to have the hair!…
And what about soulmates then?
Soulmates are not necessarily romantic partners. They can be. They can be your daughters, too (in my case, yes, they are!), a very dear friend, or friends, plural, since soulmates may appear in numbers.
I think their characteristic is that you feel, and they do too, that we have known each other forever. We are “built” the same way, and often have had similar experiences in life. We “resonate”. We “grok” each other.
Soulmates get us closer to the fact that humanity is one Family, that we all come from Olduvai Valley when the real story is finally told. And certainly, we are part of the same Soul, a level of consciousness that the Matrix does its best and its worst to make us forget…
PS.- Note the coordinated colours of gloves and cape ? I´d give half of my hoarded treasures to get my greedy little hands on clothing like that !…
Save the Soul of Stonehenge!
Mika and Adam (her soulmate) are on various Druid forums, one of them a Save Stonehenge Message Board. Mika comes to breakfast this morning, all heated up, almost screaming : “What the hell are they trying to save, a pile of stones or their own soul?“
Good point, Mika.
And she then sputters on : “Why don´t “they” build a mini Stonehenge in their backyard, and try to save their backyard – which is in just as much danger of disappearing than Stonehenge itself?”
Another good (ecopsychological) point.
Then Mum (me) pipes up : “Oh – maybe you should ask “them” if they actually have a backyard ? Or a garden, or a small stretch of lawn ? Even that would save their soul, since where the soul is all stones are also…
Mika says : Good point, Mum.
And puts another toast in the Martian toaster…
PS.- Miiiiika!!! Look what I found in E-Bay, a complete “Build-Your-Own-Stonehenge” kit!!!!
I want it! I want it! I want it!
Kew kew kew
Stonehenge Soul Card
Long before this breakfast conversation ever happened (please see post below), this is soul card Nr.
113, The Priest. (SG – 2007)… (An Egyptian priest at Stonehenge ?…Mmmm-ysterious.)
And then Adam´s last post on his blog “Grove of Quotes“.
Twenty-three little eggs!
Ain´t that sweet victory ? Twenty-three little eggs!
And the Oscar goes to…, Thelma and Louise, Ginger, Wallace (hen, lol), Moby Dick, Twig, Hazel, Ivy, and Elf !
And thanks to Little Tetley (aka the Masai Warrior), Raven (aka Shaman) and Bamboo.
*huge grin*
You are honoured members of our community.
Mammon´s Prayer
(Image : It´s not what it seems, collage on paper, SG, 2002)
…The other day, Mika, Adam and me were in a supermarket to do some shopping. It was one of those hyper-hyper affairs, with very high ceilings and lots of lights, that look like a modern cathedral. I said “So…Let´s go worshipping, in this temple!”.
Adam looked at me and laughed. Five minutes later he came up with a piece of paper and a pen, and started scribbling furiously. Then he read us what he had written. We laughed out, it was so funny. I said… “Gimme that paper, this is a blog!” …
So here it goes…
Our Money,
Who art in the Economy,
Hallowed be thy Value.
Thy Profit come,
Thy Wealth be done
In our bank account as it is for the bank.
Give us this day our regular income,
And forgive us our misspending
As we forgive those who misspend against us.
And lead us not into poverty,
But deliver us to cheap shops
For thine is the Profit, the Value and the Wealth
Forever and ever,
Or at least as long as the Economy holds up,
Amen.
Mammon.
Mammon, as you know, dear people, is a Phoenician false god of riches and avarice.
Adam (Brough) is a really good writer, have you enjoyed his blog yet? It´s The Grove of Quotes. Adam is a member of the Earth Sanctuary coregroup.
The 11th Hour
I just saw Leo DiCaprio´s “The 11th Hour”, and I´m very glad to say that this work is also the discourse behind the creation of the Earth Sanctuary; I mean this is what we thought thirty years back, and it is such a comfort to see the subject go mainstream.
So if you haven´t seen it yet, please do!
This blog is in that context, as a cultural priority.
I find it even better than the Inconvenient Truth (too much Al Gore on screen in the other one).
I don´t care if Leo is looking out for an Oscar (as Al Gore did), these things need to be said – and people need to LISTEN AND ACT. And I´ll remind you that “people” is each one of us. Don´t wait, don´t start to criticize, it´s all true, and you need to be able to face a multifaceted and huge cultural Transition, you, you, and you, and you, and your loved ones.
So…get the message out! We don´t have that much time to turn the Tide.
Please Google :
The 11th Hour
Together.com /easy ways to fight climate change
THE ECOLOGIST
/Interview with Leo about the movie – http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1849
THANK YOU.
Elderwoman
My new grandson – Alexander Leonidas – has been born today at 10.00 a.m. Mother and child are doing fine. We could meet him just two hours after his birth, he looks like a regular little Buddha.
Never more than today am I thinking of this :
“We must abandon the notion that we become grandparents when our children give birth. In the same way that all adults are ultimately responsible for all the earth´s children, grandparents come into being when we realize we are responsible for all the grandchildren on 
the earth.”
From Alice Walker´s We Are The Ones We´ve Been Waiting For, New Press 2006.
The now-Mum, 6 years old, how time flies)
Alexander Leonidas, 24 hours old
Presenting…This is Leo. Don´t know if he will go on much longer looking so peaceful, so here he is, as we saw him today.
Mum and baby are fine and happy together. Dad has gone very quiet, suddenly…
Nana(me) is smiling from ear to ear.
Uncle Adam´s a Poet!
(Image : Adam and Mika planting an ash tree at the Sanctuary, in honour of Leo, who is a little charmer, lol)
Here´s the poem that Adam handed me after having been with Leo in a corner of the room, at the clinic where my daughter gave birth:
Little life,
Pure humanity,
Unbroken and uncultured,
Open with no defenses.
The world crashes around and disturbs
Your delicate, sensitive being,
Disturbing you from your centre.
But that´s fine,
You are with me,
Sheltered in my arms;
Your peace;
Your sanctuary.
I protect and defend you
And guide you back to your centre.
The light softens its invasive glare,
So your dark twinkling eyes open up
To look curiously around
In that shining, intelligent way.
They say : “Hello world,”
“I´m here.”
…Now, who wouldn´t want an uncle like that, eh???
I´ll go back writing about Druidry, lol, but just now, we´re all in awe of this new life!…
(Which feeling, actually, is a good part of what Duidry really is about…)
Maternal thinking
(Image : Our Lady of All Creatures, soul card 5, SG, 2004)
Oh I was so glad that this baby wasn´t mine! That I could at long last see another mother go through her own challenges! Nothing of that, nope, no thing. Zilch.
Eight o´clock in the morning, Nana making Swiss Birchermuesli and vegetable soup to bring to the new Mum – ah! and where are the damn iron pills, and the fruit juice? Why can´t I get my hand on any clean Tupperware when I need it, move aside, here I go! Again. *chuckle-chuckle*
Thinking…My baby (the new Mum!) needs vitamins – and mentally checking my list of nutrients for depleted female systems! Hahaha.
If politicians had ten per cent of maternal thinking in reference to the planet, no, a millionth of a dose of maternal thinking, we would finally have some hope concerning the climate crisis. It wouldn´t have happened to begin with, maybe.
Yo-yo The Rapper
(Image: Yo-yo The Rapper, Pic MG, 2009)
It is funny to see how quickly nicknames come up, with this business of the new baby; we have already gone through Leo, Alex, Kartoffeln (potatoes in German, and that from his Mum), Peanut (Auntie Mika) – and now by general consensus..Yo-yo The Rapper! (Well, you can see why in the pic.)
That reminds me of the work with the subpersonalities in Psychosynthesis. So many facets of our soul have been severed from our central consciousness, it´s sometimes hard work to get them back, (as examples: the Inner Child, the Shadow, Animus and Anima, etc.)
Anyway, Kartoffeln is screaming, gotta go! I´ll bla-bla-bla later! (The two of them are in my home, the Mum needs rest and vegetable soup!)
Faithfully Yours,
Nana.
Nana´s Vegetable Soup
(Image : Her Cosmos, collage on paper, SG, 2002)
If you think that I´ve gone gaga over my grandson, and am drifting away from my main subject (Druidry), let me tell you, you are so wrong!
Druidry is about reverence for all Life, and about the celebration of being human, and what is more sacred than a newly forged bond between a mother and a child? (Yo-yo has widely opened eyes after a week, and looks around, and even starts to say “aaaah…” – like in : aaaah, here I am…)
Nana has her witching ways with newborn babies, hahaha.
Anyway, about the soup.
In case of doubt, hurricane, financial crisis or end-of -the-world-as-we-know-it, Nana´s vegetable soup is a secure and healthy answer; Nana´s soup is the best of remedies! Potatoes, leeks,carrots and a secret ingredient (begins with an l and ends with an e, you guess it…)
*chuckling*
Ecopsychology and Maternal Thinking
(Image : Homo Noeticus, SG, collage on paper, 2002)
Three mistakes, dearest Reader, that you shouldn´t make :
Do not make the mistake of thinking that this post is a feminist one. It is not. It is humanistic.
Do not, either, make the mistake that this post is for women only. No way.
And, third, do not make the mistake of thinking that ecopsychology should be created entirely by male minds in cold universities. Maternal thinking is the first and foremost source of the knowledge about a new sense of caring for the planet.
If the male part of the human population was as involved with their baby ´s shit, and their baby´s beautiful eyes, and their baby´s tiny hands, and their baby´s perfect feet, and with this constant “is the baby well?” thought that lurks in each mother´s head (and grandmother´s, well, in most of the healthy ones, anyway)- Nana thinks that the world would be a very different place.
Not that I think that men cannot do that, oh no. Men are as nurturing as women, it is a psychological given that exists in the males too, so far only as a wonderful potential. The damn thing is the cultural conditioning that first separates genders and then assign them different roles,(so that antiquated unconscious structures can be perpetuated), when (apart from breast feeding) men can do exactly the same as women in caring for the kiddies.
The Matrix has its own crazy agenda. Parents, beware! The Matrix has it all wrong, and who is going to do something about it ?
Maybe small communities will be able to live “on a road less travelled”, and bit by bit, baby by baby, couple by couple, Grandma by Grandad, change things around.
Nana prays that this should be so.
Homo Noeticus
(Image : The Eye of Shiva, watercolours, SG, 2002)
As surely as the Cromagnon followed the Neandherthal, Homo Noeticus will follow Sapiens Sapiens. For the time being, Sapiens Sapiens hasn´t even got to the top of his potential, and might even disappear from the surface of the planet, as the dinosaurs (and the dodo, lol!) did before him.
Being a Sapiens Sapiens - that is : I know that I know - I´m quite a bit ashamed at how the “intelligent ape” (?????) is behaving. If I did not know why, and what to do about it, I guess I would drown in my own despair.
For the moment, here is an interesting and excellent interview about Homo Noeticus – and we´re not talking UFOS, Angels, Indigo Children and Ascended Masters…
Towards Homo Noeticus (John White)
I suppose that the next step of Evolution would be first to fulfill Sapiens Sapiens. There is no way the “intelligent ape” (mmm…we could question that description, now, couldn´t we?…) will jump over his relationship with his environment (and thus, back to maternal thinking, if you get my drift…)
Owning my Merlin-hood
(Image : The Earth Sanctuary, December 2000)
Yes, my Merlin-hood. As in : parent-hood, mother-hood, person-hood.
Ancient scriptures say that Merlin is not only a figure of legend, or the archetype of the Wise Old Man, or of the Hermit, but that the word also describes a function. Thus, you say a Merlin, as in : a carpenter, a doctor.
And yes, of course, women make fine Merlins, too. (Oops, bring on the Epsom salts! The gentleman in the first row, with the white beard and the neatly pressed white robes, just fainted!…)
Merlins, then, are teachers, judges, counselors to kings, administrators, artists, poets, writers, visionaries, healers, and above all, Peacemakers.
Having finished the formal part of my OBOD* Training, let it be widely known that this is what I am.
Team spirit
(Image: yes, that´s Nana, the essential Merlin!…)
I love living in an intentional community, emphasis on intentional. Though for the moment it´s rather an extended family situation, we do share the premises in a communal way. One car, one washing machine, one purpose (lol) and one Dharma (that´s good).
Team spirit is our one and all.
Experimenting with being a fully-fledged individual in a collective setting. No – none! - giving in to group -think, at all. Never. Ever. But finding ways of synchronising efforts, blogs linked, I wash the dishes tonight, you cook supper. I´ll get the clothes up on the line, and Taxi! you drive me to the supermarket, to do some (intelligent) shopping. (Whoa, Grandma doesn´t have a driving license, I must be a singularity in the cosmos!…) We are aware of each other´s dance in a way that couples or neighbours are not. Not yet. (But it will have to come to pass.)
…I´m making tea, d’ you want some?
Experimenting. Putting the Matrix in its rightful place : still a priority, so we look …errr…quite normal. Team spirit is the Future, or there will not be any Future. 
Oh I´ve lived in other communities when I was younger. I am a child of the Sixties after all. Flash me the V sign, and Peace & Love. I´m the Woodstock generation gone south, hehehe. Some of those group settings have been shitty business. Bleh. But at least we were experimenting. We were not resigned to the dreary. Now that I am a mature Crone, I still think intentional communities out in the country are a buZZ, capital ZZ. It beats living alone in a flat in a crowded urban desert, any day.
Besides, what with the climate crisis, I think that it will become more and more necessary to learn to live together, so I specialized in conflict resolution. Yup. Nana the Merlin, is really a Peacemaker. At your service, dear people.
*smile*
That´s one thing I know how to do, and apple pies, too.
Home is where my curtains are!
(Image : Merlin´s Tower, SG, 2000)
We´re moving!
The Zoozoos (Mika and Adam) will occupy the fort downstairs, and I get to go back to Merlin´s Tower, says the Lady Dragon *licking her paws*. A space I love because it overlooks the valley, reminding me every single hour of every day (and night!) what I am fighting for!…:-)
Now you have to understand, this house is the size of a small castle, so changes are…life-changing! We do not move just from one room to another, lol, we move ALL our belongings down to the main “flat”, or up…into the Tower! I´ll put a picture of the Tower, just so you´ll see that I am being truthful.
We´ve decided, as a team, to OK-uppy the place.
The three doggies are getting more confused by the hour. The Lulu (Luna, my cocker-spaniel) is sitting on her bed, looking doubtful, everything is moving around her, and her look challenges us to move her mattress, I think.
Kayla is up and down behind anybody who carries cargo, and Chispa, Mika´s dog, well, as usual, doesn´t loose sight of Mika.
I promise myself (not the first time round!) that I will not accumulate more stuff. Things. Thingies. Gizmos. Thingamajigs. Thingumbobs. Doohickeys. See? As I get them in and out of bags, I feel that they are sacred, all of them…
Can´t give them away! *wailing* Or, forbid the thought, throw them away! They will have to be put in my funeral pyre when the time comes (the latest possible, thank you, I still want to see how that climate crisis works out!!)
Mika has just put my curtains up in my new abode, the chintzy ones with roses and lilies, and I suddenly have that homey feeling…oh! I could live almost anywhere, but please… with my curtains!
I’m putting up my altered books, and art materials, and another thought arises : Home, for me, is truly where my (he)art is!…
So. I will probably stay in the Tower until 2011, that´s when we will have a big Druid encounter here – and after that…who knows ? I may emigrate to Glastonbury!…;-)
Dust
(Image : Dragoney Thing, SG, watercolours, 2002)
They say we go “from dust to dust”…lol.
Gosh, good people, I must have had the entire population of Ghost Town under my bed, when I moved it!
Hahaha.
Higitus Figitus Zumbabazing
(Image : Sword in the Stone, Walt Disney)
My friend Jill commented recently : ”Hope the move goes smoothly”, which reminded me of…
Higitus Figitus… Yes, the move has gone very magickally, each box dancing up the stairs by its own, hehehe…Do you remember the song?
From: The Sword in the Stone
Written by: Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman
Higitus Figitus zumbabazing
I want your attention ev’rything!
We’re packing to leave come on let’s go
books are always the first you know
Hockety pockety wockety wack
abracabra dabra nack
Shrink in size very small
we’ve got to save enough room for all
Higitus Figitus migitus mum
pres-ti-dig-i-ton-i-um!
Cicero you belong to the “C’s”
alphabethical order please
Ali-i-ca-fez bal-a-ca-zez
malacamez meripides
diminish diminish dictionary
those words in your vocabulary
Hockety pockety wockety wack
that’s the way we have to pack.
Higitus Figitus migitus mum
pres-ti-dig-i-ton-i-um!
Higitus Figitus zoomacazam
don’t get in a trafic jam
Sugar bowl you’re getting rough
the poor old tea set’s cracked enough
Hockety pockety wockety wack
odds and ends and bric a brac
Higitus Figitus migitus mum,
pres-ti-dig-i-ton-i-um.
Higitus Figitus migitus mum,
pres-ti-dig-i-ton-i-um!
PS.- …What a way to pack! Except for the whiskers, it´s me, up to a T!…
Molotov
(Image : Nana, small and friendly, but determined, lol)
Everytime I moved, (and I must have been moving twenty times at least in twenty-two years!…) I found treasures buried in old cardboard boxes, and this picture is no exception.
You see, I own a big wooden trunk, in which I keep the results of all my studies (Celtic, PS, etc.etc), as well as a certain number of diplomas, – and when I need to move it, -which I cannot do alone!-, I joke “…Anybody to carry my psychosynthesis?” – the understanding being, wow, heeeeeavy stuff…
This time around, I looked through the trunk (which I usually avoid, for every time I did it, I also embarked on some long, new/old journey…) – and lo and behold! found this pic of me, aged three (or so, maybe less).
Which reminded me that my father called me “Molotov” (the name of a then-known Russian politician renowned for his manic rebuttal in almost any situation), because I was for ever saying “NO!”, and my parents would try to cajole me, hypnotizing me with their schemes, like my mother offering me chocolate to shut me up, since I was talking non-stop, with the sorry result (says my mother!) that I went right on talking, but with my mouth full of chocolate! (Which might or might not explain a little tendency to overweight all along my life, ehem…)
Certainly, this little Mademoiselle seems to know what she wants; she looks friendly, but I remember feeling strangely determined…;-)
Souvenirs, souvenirs…Sixty years and a lot of events down my (black!) belt, and now this weirdness, looking at my own image …Do we ever really change?
*smile*
PS.- Don´t I look like little Leo ??? Hehehe
Madame Mim, again
(Image : The Sword in the Stone, Walt Disney, the Final Duel)
I think I told you before that I am a “psychosynthesist”, and that in my therapy sessions I work with Assagioli´s concepts, (well, my own), in what concerns spiritual development.
One of Assagioli´s concepts which really comes in handy because it reflects, very exactly so, a societal truth, is that of subpersonalities:
Until we come to work with our own soul, until we find our own journey (which is one of the aims of psychosynthesis) we usually play out learned roles. We are the mother of, the wife of, the daughter of, the husband, the secretary, the happy drinker, the plaything, – stereotypes, which society has at the ready for us to slip into, should we forget who we really are. Everything is so marvellously ”organised” that we actually do forget, and for a long time in certain cases. The Matrix is largely made of these empty stereotypes, not of real people, and that´s why everything gets so scary, crazy and schizo, but that´s another story.
The subpersonalities, in Assagioli´s theory, and in my work too – are the bits of ourselves that were chopped off because they were not accepted by our parents, or society at large; but they do not disappear, energy cannot disappear, it only trans-forms. These bits and pieces were simply repressed, sent into a dark cell somewhere in the brain, or into a bunch of muscles in the body. These energies, (archetypes are also energies), come popping up when wheedled out in therapy. I usually use art to do that. These bits and pieces can then be scrutinized, analysed by the conscious mind, and finally discarded for being obsolete, or on the contrary, integrated into the conscious personality, which then has the effect of people feeling more “whole”. (Psychosynthesis is a holistic journey/therapy/adventure, one that makes you both whole and holy.)
So, that´s the context of this post, but not its real content. I needed to draw the context in somewhat broad lines, in which I now will explain how ”Madame Mim” came about in my own inner journey.
Unwittingly (I think), Disney has created a very funny feminist archetype! Disney is not known for being a Goddess-hugger, so it must have been fortuitous, lol. Madame Mim, if you consider her a bit more seriously is the perfect antithesis of the so-called Hollywood stereotype of women that the US of A are selling all around the world, and is the cause of so much psychological pain for “ordinary” women. In my practice, I have found this verified again and again: the Hollywood goddesses have become a new Olympus, and women in the street for ever strive to be like them, but of course, can´t reach the stage where they are considered as goddesses since the Hollywood tales are mostly totally artificial (not to mention the telly and the Internet!). Still, women suffer. Until they come to know, and act out, their own archetypes (the real ones, the real energies that they carry deep within their body-mind).
For me, Madame Mim is one of these “new” archetypes that women all over the world actually need, to save them from the repressed and corseted hell patriarchy reserves for the intelligent and the beautiful (women and men). Ugly, fat and old women just fall by the wayside, nobody is interested, ever, and so most of them end up in despair, others in therapy, and some of them (the lucky ones? hahaha) fall into my arms – figuratively speaking, into the scaly arms of the Lady Dragon. And then the real fun begins!…
…Madame Mim is the “opposing” figure to Merlin, who is the good guy par excellence. Madame Mim is a real nasty baddie, she reveals all that is hidden, she is brazen, funny and horrible, she is outrageous, and she is lovable. She is …us.
…In a nutshell, I think we urgently need Madame Mim to start a WWW Club (=Wounded Women Winners Club)…! (Or : a double-whammy : World Wide Web of Wounded Women Winners!) kew kew kew (The Lady Dragon, chuckling)
And that´s why :…” I’m the magnificent, marvelous, mad mad mad… Madam Mim “!
See what I mean?
*Awful Dragoney Cheshire Cat Grin”
This too will pass
(Image : Imbolc 2006, pic SG)
When I go into the patio I feel like an owl caught in a car´s headlights! I feel disheveled, bedraggled and grumpy, my hair spiky from the winter, and with round eyes which cannot believe that the winter has finally passed, and all things are growing again!
The air is different. And the birds are going crazy; I have missed them. The little prune tree in the courtyard is covered with flowers and looks snowy, beautiful. Tomorrow the white glory will be gone, and the tree will be on its green way to produce fruit.
How transient things are. Which reminds of the story of a king (don´t remember which right now) who asked his astrologer to give him a piece of advice which would be universal, definitive. A while later the astrologer came to the king with a small wooden box, in which there was a ring. The king said : “This is it ? Your universal advice?”. “Look inside the ring”, said the astrologer.
On the inside of the ring a few words were engraved : “This too will pass.”
Now, you think about it…
A Wyrd Sense of Order
(Image :
The Black Butterfly, watercolours, SG, 2007)
They say that I have a weird sense of order (weird, as in bizarre, strange, uncanny, odd); I tell them, Nope, I have a Wyrd sense of order (as in, The Way of the Wyrd) . (Have a look, interesting stuff!)
For example, I don´t mind a pile of rotting wooden planks in a corner of the patio, but I do mind a pile of rotting wooden planks some of which are painted pink, in the same corner! Or : I don´t mind spider webs all over, but I do mind a can of Coke left on the stairs, except if someone gets that can and frames it, and calls it “A Modern Icon” (an artist friend of mine actually did this, and we had an on-going row about it, me saying You´re crazy, this is not art!, and the guy answering, if I frame it and exhibit it, and people admire it at the exhibit´s first day party, it is! Wow, couldn´t get that through my pretty little head!…Actually he was right. Art is what we make of it, period. Who is to be the judge of any work of art?)
So I´m Wyrd, very Wyrd…
*unashamed grin*
Dirty Work
(Images : Dancing Moon, mixed media art journal, SG, 2009)
For years now I have applied the Zen discipline of not rushing into things on ego impulses; not wolfing down the tasty morsels on my plate; not tearing open that enveloppe that I had been waiting for; waiting three days before taking that important decision. And, of course, rolling my words on my tongue like pebbles before barging in with a witty comment or a bad-tempered criticism.
Nothing repressive, you understand, just this Druid´s daily exercises at self-mastery.
So you can imagine how happy I feel, oh yes, like a pea in a pod, now that I have attained the right age, to slurp my soup a little bit, not worrying that it might not look attractive, and splash around with colours, without having to think which is best with which other.
Contrast, my friends, contrast is all and everything.
And… a little dirty work, now and then.
Bulk negotiations with the Goddess
(Image : Little EcoBook, SG, 2008)
In the OBOD training they teach you how to approach trees in a civilized way, gently, bowing (inwardly), and how to talk to them (in your mind), asking them for branches for a wand, for example.
Well, in concrete reality this is not very practical, I realized today.
My insurance has asked me to clean 15 meters around the house, or they won´t pay if there´s a fire. OK, got it. But “cleaning around the house” here means…errr…a lot of work. Since it is not very practical to ”approach the Goddess” every time we cut some bush, hahaha, I make bulk negotiations with Her…”M´Lady, I am sorry/I am very sorry/I am terribly sorry, we need to cut one, two, ten, fifteen little trees; but there still will be a million of them out there (am not joking), so don´t worry!” OK, bulk negotiation for twenty trees. One down the hatch.
As to elegance and Zen posture in actually cutting the trees, forget it! I cut the way I can, with a saw that has seen better days, and …oops, I have forgotten my gloves! I am a bloody rookie!!
At five-thirty sharp, someone of the team, someone English, as you would have guessed, will cry out “Tea time!”, and that will be it for the day.
Oh gosh oh gosh I am sorry/I am very sorry/ I am terribly sorry…:-(
(I´ll go back tomorrow and I promise to leave a perfumed garden behind, eventually…)
PS.- We also have the concept of “debt prayer” – imagine, the guy cut twenty little trees and two big ones, and forgot to say a prayer!!! Down on your knees, you…heathen, and repent!
Kew kew kew (I am joking now, of course)
Kew kew kew
(Image : Funny Mandala, watercolours, SG, 2005, yup, that´s me, there in the middle!)
…Had an e-mail from Malawi (south of Tanzania) saying : “Dear Madam, what is kew kew kew, please?”
Kew kew kew is the Lady Dragon chuckling (cackling, giggling, snickering, tittering). The definition is : to laugh softly and amusedly, usually with satisfaction.
…So you have to imagine this big green fat lady-dragon, heaving, all her folds of scaly skin shaking, smoke coming out of her mouth (she has big very white very sharp teeth!), and this awful sound :
…kew kew kew…
She laughs, quietly and amusedly. And you tremble in your boots, ´cause you don´t know if she maybe has the project of eating you for breakfast.
That, Dear Sir in Malawi, is what it is.
The Lady Dragon, *grinning*
(Naaaah, I´m joking. But just to be sure, mind your toupee!)
…
The Gaian Druids
(Note : Gandalf the Grey, in Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson´s movie(s), a new mythology for the Third Millennium?…I know, of course, that Gandalf is not a druid exactly – he is a Maiar, an Immortal, who came to Middle-Earth to help in the fight against Sauron, but his role in the movies is the closest that I have seen to the real role of a druid, both as Grey and as White, and I think that Tolkien knew this, since his declared aim, through his books, was to create “an English mythology”. The traditional images of Merlin also come to mind, naturally).
…Just finished the book “The Druids : Celtic Priests of Nature” by Jean Markale, the Breton expert on Celtic societies – published by Inner Traditions International).
Markale does not mince his words, which is why I appreciate his work. Listen to this…
(…) It is an accepted fact that there are no official written texts revealing an authentic druidic tradition; moreover, this is quite convenient, for it allows any person to claim that he or she is the heir of a tradition transmitted orally over the centuries. This being the case we do not feel compelled to believe such individuals. (…) For this reason we can see how the doors are opened to anyone to claim druidic lineage.(…)
And this :
(…) To dream, that it all might have been…perhaps. But there are dreams that provide a more faithful account of higher realities than the quotidian vision of a universe in perpetual transformation. The druids were all-seing and of the opinion that any individual could attain this high degree of inner vision. They placed their confidence in human beings, claiming there was no impossibility that could not be overcome because human beings, in the image of the druid-gods and the unnamable god, possess an inifinite power, the extent of which they didn´t always understand or know how to make use of. In this sense, druidism is a humanist belief. But it is a sacred humanism.(…)
And this, which I absolutely love :
(…) To utter words in a Celtic tongue, and dress in a large white robe is not enough to lay claim to being a real druid. (…)
Or this, which is quite, quite definitive :
(…)One thing is certain : without a Celtic society there can be no druidism. Neodruidism is nothing but archaelogy. (…)
Kew kew kew
Quite. Lol. Exactly my point of view.
…So, when I am claiming, after twenty years of studies and experience, that I am a Druid, what am I claiming, exactly ?
I agree with Markale, but would like to add this : Neo-druidism is archaeology, certainly, but inspired archaelogy:
To quote my friend Adam Brough, who is an esteemed part of our core group at the Sanctuary, I would say (please bookmark his Grove of Quotes if you are interested in the subject, he is publishing his latest article on Druidry in three parts) :
(…)”I’m not interested in the fact or fiction of what Druids were, I’m more interested in what Druidry can do in the world today. I’m not adverse to a fictional image of Druidry if it helps my purpose. In this context I’ll introduce my theory, which isn’t a description of what Druids were, but is an image, a symbol that can inspire the role of Druidry in today’s world. I’m a myth maker, and myths are symbols that help inform our attitude towards and behavior within the world. And Druidry, as I envision it, can be a useful tool to direct human attitude and behavior towards a healthy relationship with each other, with the living Earth and with the expression of our souls.”
Alex Little, Baby News
Quickly, the news. Baby´s now a month and a half.
Eats well. Sleeps well. No hysterics. Shits and burps a lot. Starting to focus, mostly on Mummy´s face, but also on anybody who coo-chee-cooes to him. Smiles, a little, tentatively. Mummy is swearing her baby is trying to talk. Baby definitely communicating. A good thing : this is basic-basic-basic.
Someone is definitely there.
Nana is gaga about her grandson.
All is as it should be.
Peace and Love.
End of message.
Mmm… The pic is a little out of focus, sorry ´bout that, but we wouldn´t go too near with the camera.
Writing with a Broom
(Image : My spread in Mika´s new journal, Be a Blue Cat.You can´t see it for the scanning, but it´s twinkling!)
Every time I need inspiration for a new blog, I get a broom out and I go sweep the entrance to the house. Mind you, it takes a while to sweep it, it´s almost a mile long!…
Something about the broom´s rythm is quite hypnotic, so soothing, and it usually sparks up my brain. I get into this lovely alpha state quite rapidly, and from there on, the blog almost writes itself.
Besides, every buddy here gets a good laugh. …Where is Nana? Oh she is at the entrance again, …errr…writing.
A good glass of Guinness does the job too. Lol.
Sleeping Beauty
(Image : The Earth Sanctuary, 2009, pic MG)
As I was cutting the brambles this morning, I was thinking about how this place looks like a sleeping beauty, all rolled into her carpet of ivy and brambles, like Cleopatra, lol.
We didn´t really start to clean the place before (we bought the property in 1998), because…hummm…there were too many Christians around! (And we weren´t Druids yet, back then, well yes, in spirit, but not in title).
My oh my, are the Romans wooky!! Have you ever seen them work, out in the country ?
First they barge in with their tools (pun intended) and boom in a deep voice (so as to frighten the wymyn and the small kids) : “OK, now, what do I cut?…” – Then they cut, wholesale, then they wipe their weary face with an elbow, belch, and say they are going for a beer, hey what a wonderful day!
“Naturally”, the women and the little gnomes of the forest have to make the bunches of wood, and generally clean after them…smirking behind their little hands, oh Goddess, how the beasts left the place.
…A negative view ? Naaaah, just jokin´.
We cannot get a consensus with the Christians on how everything works here. They have the weirdest sense of duty, and a still weirder connection with their body. Like, they usually work an hour more, because they don´t want their body to dictate to them whether they stop or not. Also, they feel guilty up to their whiskers when they do not match some crazy self-expectations. Everything has to be cut down, right up to the horizon, otherwise it´s not cleaning up the place!…
What´s the difference with us, by-now weathered Druids ? Well, when the bod gets tired we stop, enjoy the scenery, go for coffee, or mead or a sandwich – have a laugh or a hug, or both, breathe deep, feel the contentment and the gratefulness for just being able to live here..and then, and only then, we go back to work. See? And we stop when we feel like it.
Anyways, I needed to say today, that Sleeping Beauty is awakening from her long slumber…
…and that she can do it slowly and nicely, we sent the royal… (expletive) away to chase some mammoth for lunch!!
PS.- I´m joking again, “The Prince” has been away for years, he is building a political career in the Canary Islands, far far away in another galaxy. Hahaha. When he departed, he told us that we were too slow for him. Oh goody, now we can breathe…
Wacky Romans.
The Return of Avalon
(Image : The Earth Sanctuary, After April Rains, pic MG, 2009)
…Do you remember Avalon? The Isle of Apples, the Isle of the Blessed, the Isle of Glass, and perhaps…Tir na nÓg, the Land of the Ever Young ? How about the Garden of Eden?
You don´t ? You should, you know.
Avalon is part of humanity´s hidden story, a myth that has become an archetype, deep within our psyche, buried under so many destroyed castles, lying dormant beneath layers and layers of other stories…
We dream of a Land, green as an emerald, lush, mossy – when we were innocent and young, and thought that goodness was the word of the day.
We are no longer innocent, of course, but this Land, this Isle of Glass, Avalon, will Return; we call to it, we need it as we need air.
“…I will silently draw a path for you, in the formless waters. I will lay me down as a bridge over sleepy waters. Between the dark and the dark, I will shoot a flaming arrow, to light your way. There are no more shadows, but for one that stands, like a tall vigil, at the door of silence. The one that weeps tears of fire, a shimmering of things past, of things that are, and of things to be. A formless dream yet. There, the waters glow blue, and Chiron smiles, the healer ever healing himself, of a nameless wound.” (The Secret Diaries, SG, 2005)
We need an Avalon that would Return, but no, not a new Garden of Eden, not the Avalon that is lost in the mists of prehistory, but a statement that we are Earthlings, Gaians, and belong, by all the fibers of our green heart, to the Body of the Goddess.
Wise Old Witch
(Image : The Goddess Book, SG, 2005)
Hee hee…this made my day!
You know that sentence that comes up on your dashboard, about what people were searching for and so got to your blog?
Well, one of the searches today was for a “wise old witch”, …and this blog came up!!
Hooray!!!
Kew kew kew
How to become a druid in the real world
(Image : The Earth Sanctuary, SG, 2009)
Another search today…”How to become a druid in the real world”…
I´m tickled pink that my blog should appear when people ask this stuff…
This must be my day, and something Wyrd, very Wyrd…
PS.- What with the heavy rain, the little river is suddenly going crazy! It´s lovely to watch…
Peace Conference Among the Brambles
(Image : The Earth Sanctuary, behind the main house, 2009)
Brambles are great masters; they teach you patience, balance, peace of mind, focused intention.
We are very lucky, we´ve got a whole forest of them around the house. It goes like this :
Breathe slowly in and out, in and out, get a grip (with gloves!), find your centre of gravity, and…pull! (The brambles here are mostly nested in the high branches of the highest trees, nobody seems to have done that work before us!)
Then… breathe sloooowly, in and out, find your peaceful centre, get a grip and …pull!
Now, if you are in a violent state of mind, or a nasty turn of thoughts, or just sassy or bad-tempered, or even just a little bit brash that day, you will make the gravest error : to attack the brambles with your scissors. Oh no no no…Don´t do that! There´s a saying that spells “You can never win a battle with brambles!”. Attacking the brambles is not a very good idea.
…Today I found the perfect rythm, a sense of deep peace, right there in the middle of the spiky branches. I love this space of serene strength, breathe, pull, cut, – breathe, pull, cut – all the time sending peaceful blessings to all the corners of the Multiverse. And you know what ? Not a scratch. *grin*
Afterwards, with our now famous five o´clock tea, I told Mika that I had a mind to send some people we know, unprepared, into one of our forests of brambles – see if they learn their lesson! Ya ya ya, not very nice on my part, but I was back in the comfort of my castle, lol, so…
Sweeping the Stones
(Image : One of the smallest rocks, which we call Seat of the Pendragon, 2009)
My friend Govinda, who is an encyclopedia of knowing being a biologist (he is no longer with us, I mean in the Project), once told me that the Prades mountains had been underwater a million or so years ago. So could it be that the giant stones, stones as big as big elephants that squat around the property, could have been part of a seabed ?
We think so. No way these giants rolled down the mountain, they must have been here for an eternity. I´m thinking of this, blinking, “…a million years….???”, while I´m sweeping the stones clear of debris left by the recent storms. On top of some of them, a grove of Mediterranean oaks has been growing for the last hundred years. More “druidic”, impossible. And the rocks and the trees don´t even speak Gaelic, hahaha. (Sorry, couldn´t help that.)
A million years, before the appearance of humans, even…
Got the Ancestors right there, in my backyard.
I just, you know, …tip my hat! Respect, respect, respect.
Mother of us all, Hear my voice
(Image : The Earth Sanctuary, 2009, MG)
I´m talking to my Goddess while I´m cutting the ivy. Mother of us all, Hear my voice. Do not fear our machines or our intentions.
…At the beginning of our adventure with this place, way way back, every time I heard the clacking of scissors or the vroom-ing of machines, I winced.
Ten years on, I´m a pro, lol. Cutting the ivy is like cutting the Goddess´s hair, or paring her toenails. Not a big affair. No tears, no tantrum, eh, my Goddess?
I go click-click-click, quick and sure, talking to the ivy all the while, telling it that it will get the most fashionable haircut, ever, Avalon-style, stylish bangs and a nice green mane to float in the winds…
“Sweeping the stones and talking to the ivy, the baba yaga flits around with her broom, her scissors and her silvery sickle neatly tucked into a dark leather bag, eyes shining and bones happy, creating her miraculous Millennium garden, grass blade by juicy grass blade. People think she might be a bit slow-witted, because she cackles around like some crazed old bird and doesn´t care about courtly life, but I see her wield her invisible magic wand, creating a legacy that will extend, hopefully, far, far beyond her own lifetime.” (The Secret Diaries, SG, 2009)
Alex Little – 2
…For the friends who actually know us in “real” life (as if the Internet wasn´t real!)- here are two new pics of Alex, who is doing fine. He´s about two months old now. The little one in the middle, still in diapers, is his Mom (my daughter), age approx. 1, gosh, can´t remember - definitely the same soul family, the same happy disposition!…
Group creativity
(Image : The Grand Safari Lodge, hehehe)
Did I tell you before that I love living and growing with a bunch of people ? I did, and I do. *grin*
There is always someone who comes up with an interesting … ”why don´t we…?”
The latest being this tent that we mounted on the terrace, to be able to eat outside during the summer season. Until now I have been so busy with other stuff that I never really thought about new creature comforts (I´m known for wearing the same pair of sandals for five to ten years!…)
So, when Mika and I went to the supermarket and saw this huge metal structure with a nice fabric roof over it, Mika stopped, and whispered to me…”And it´s a very reasonable price…”, I just went “Oh! Oh yeaaahhhh…”, and bought the thing, which now stands proud in a corner of the huge terrace, which dwarfs it into a very…well, reasonable… size.
And no grand expenditure. At all.
So today we gloriously ate lunch outside, lettuce, parsley, radishes and young onions, right up from Mika´s garden, with scrambled eggs from our very own chicken coop. Ah well…I think we will withstand the necessary transition from the petrol-age…Why don´t we add a sofa under the tent so that someone could have a nice little siesta???…
The young ones immediately saw the potential for sleeping outside during Midsummer Night, with the dogs and all (candles, mosquito nets, etc.) – so the tent acquired the nickname “The Grand Safari Lodge”…
Now – why don´t we look out to find a cart, with a mule, or something…
The Grand Safari Lodge
And this, my friends…is Alex, with slightly dreamy eyes, thinking of the possibilities of the Grand Safari Lodge…mmmm ?
(see entry just below)
The Great Counselor
(Image: Jai Jai Mother Kali, collage on paper, SG, 2002)
In these hard times for us all, may the great Counselor always be behind our left shoulder (as Carlos Castaneda said), and may She always help us to make wise decisions…
My heart goes out to the world, today.
Bright Blessings,
The fragile human
(Image : Vishuddi Chakra Blessings, SG 2009)
…As the world braces for a pandemia of the Mexican flu, I am thinking of how fragile our bodies really are, and how far we have strayed away, as a species, from nature. I think we´re on the brink of a rather painful “learning curve”, and I am concerned about the future of mankind. I wish you well, and please know that not all of humanity has lost its mind.
Take care of your loved ones, and do what you have to do to protect them and yourselves.
If you don´t have access to medicine, think “plants”. Here´s a short list that you might try as a last resource (but listen to your doctor first, if you have one):
Propolis, Calendula oficinalis, Echinacea, Green tea, Uncaria tormentosa, Aloe Vera, GARLIC, and NEEM (look it up). Shitake, Mistletoe. They all have antiviral properties.
Blessings Most Bright,
The Lady Dragon.
The Chicken Coop
Yup, that´s our chicken coop…(right-hand corner of the pic)
…Lucky chicken, wot? (And no, we do not eat them, they are too precious for that!) Oh! and somebody, way back, put some fishes into the swimming pool, so we have big carps there now!
…Mmmm…can you eat carp?? I´ll have to Google Chinese recipes…;-)
In these crazy times, when even a trip to a supermarket starts to feel scary, we´re grateful to the beasties, let me tell you, folks!
A Curse on the Robots
(Image : The Earth Sanctuary, 2009, pic MG)
…My bod´s sweating through and through, I´ve been cleaning a part of the gardens.
Today I feel very angry.
To see the sheer beauty of this place here, that we are maintaining with such dedicated effort, almost single-handed, no external help at all, just us, a bunch of people thinking of the future, and to think of the scary virus, (probably engineered by sickos obsessed with their bank accounts), a virus, this one or the next, that could maybe just stop us in our healthy tracks, is sad, very sad. I swallow the anger, good compost for the next day´s effort. But what I would need is to howl.
A curse on the robots.
I´ll have some tea now, and a shower.
See ya tomorrow.
Dirty story
(Image : Biosphere 2030, pic Mika G)
Got ya! No, not dirty-dirty.
…I am always astounded by women´s daily relationship with dirt, particularly us Moms and Mom-types (nurses, secretaries, etc.) . (Not talking about rich women who have Hispanic servants here…I never had that type of service in my whole life! No chacha in my home!…haha, would that be mostly because I am ”it”?… )
What would be of the world without us women cleaning up ??? From baby shit to pizza leftovers, we are trained. And I´m not one of the crazy ones (you should see the Swiss, they are born with broom and bucket!), I don´t mind a little dust, but…what is this thing on a kitchen shelf ? A cocoon ? A cocoon for what ? Bleeeeh.
This morning I started with the kitchen sink, up the wall, down the other side, fridge, cupboards, floor, and then looked at the next room…oy-vey, floor, table, chairs, up the wall, down the wall, framed pics, knick-knacks, cobwebs…That´s when I stopped. Time for coffee on the terrace (it´s a beautiful sunny day), and…the computer. The computer ? Kew kew kew…Two computers, two mice, two keyboards (ooooh the keyboards….)…Stop! Tomorrow is another day. (Hopefully.)
PS.- I hope you´re all safe and well. Wash your hands often, eat well, love your neighbours, and trust your Wyrd (if you can).
Eating a Meadow
(Image : Mika´s lettuce, SG 2009)
…Do you remember your experience of the countryside when you were a kid ?
The scents, the warmth ot the sun, the drone of insects, the blue blue sky maybe with little dots of fluffy white clouds, the green grass, your nose in the daisies to observe ants, the heightened colours ? The sense of belonging to a very sane world? The sense that everything is all right, and always will be?
Well, the experience of having some of Mika´s lettuce for lunch, straight from her garden, is like that. It´s like…eating a meadow.
Synthesis
(Image : My Little Goddess, Govinda´s offering, 1998, pic SG 2009)
…A friend of mine asked me why I didn´t separate my themes into a separate set of blogs : baby blogs, personal life, eating lettuce and stuff (gardening blog?), and then the “serious” Druid stuff.
Dearie, you don´t get it. I do it all in one blog, because I write about a synthesis in my life where everything contributes to the fact that I am an alive person, with all of my aspects, none of which is less interesting to me, or less inportant to the world I live in. (Won´t write about pooping, all right, that´s the limit of “civilization”, though I could say a few things about the subject, OK, OK, forget it and pass the cookies).
Also, I like my blogs very short, because I don´t think that nowadays people have time to digress. I try to get to the point as quickly as possible in each blog.
Done.
Eco-teaching
(Image : Grandmother Fig-tree, 2008, pic: SG)
Biosphere 2030 Project blog, Mika and Adam.
…I homeschooled my two daughters, with a programme from the US : the Clonlara School. Both of them finished high school and got their diploma. That was before the era of the Net. I can just imagine how delightful the whole thing would be now, by e-mail.
Clonlara is a “do-it-yourself” programme that is really a teaching in itself. It is homeschooling my daughters the Clonlara way that I learned to teach. A priceless experience.
It is really of no use to fill the students head with more written information. What is needed, is a “hands-on” experience in every subject that you are studying. The important thing is to teach people how to find the information they need, not overload them with more fancy words. Basically, we teach by example. Ecopsychology is about feeling how you belong to this planet. We will give you a list of books, certainly; then put you into your boots, and out there into the great wilds, without further ado. Meet your planet! Lol. Hands on.
Finding out about a new way of life cannot be taught through books, IMHO.
Eco-Druids
Back to the Druids.
There are so many definitions, so much Druid material in the Net, that surely one will please you. Thus, I need not amplify explanations. As for us, I need to say that we feel closer to the Greenpeace eco-warriors than to the club of elderly bearded gentlemen that is the usual stereotype.
So we have started calling ourselves Eco-Druids (or Gaian Druids). The Lothlórien-Nemeton Grove is a Grove of Eco-Druids. See? The Eco-Druids are more interested in the planetary ecosystem and its protection (Think globally, Act locally), than in fluffy imaginary relationships with old gods. We´re not much into ritual, our aim being to make the whole of our daily life a ritual of celebration of life on this planet. We are not really Celtic-minded either, though we have a good knowledge about the Celtic world, what it was and how it functioned. Loving the music of Enya is not enough to make a Celt, just so you know…
As Jean Markale said, Druids were inseparable from their society, and that should also be the case nowadays. Ours being now a global society, sharing memes, viruses and a terrible climate crisis, what would be the position in society of today´s Druids? That is what we are working on.
Besides, I need to clarify that I am not ”a” Druid, I am an OBOD Druid (Order of Bards,Ovates and Druids, UK, of which Philip Carr-Gomm is the Chosen-Chief), that is, my training (which I have now finished) has been specifically through OBOD´s Correspondence Course. I strictly agree with the Course (though I have my own mind about lots of subjects therein) and would recommend it to anyone(for its truly nice ecopsychological value), because it closely resembles what I just told you about the “Clonlara way”. Nobody asks for your spiritual allegiance, you work at your own rythm, and you evolve your very own personal style of Druidry; nobody tells you what a Druid is or is not, in our case we became… Eco-Druids.
Point made.
Druid School(s)
(Image: Green Man in the Making, Govinda´s ceramic monster covered with moss, 2009)
I may irritate some of you, and even lose a few readers, lol, but I need to say again that I´m absolutely not interested in the shaky affirmations and ritualistic behaviour of some modern “Druids”; even the so-called Neo-Druids sometimes bore me to tears with their bling-bling following of some eighteenth century guys with unpronounceable names…
I can only give credit to Druidry as a model of a possible social structure in a non judeo-christian (non-patriarchal) perspective of the world. Something new which would integrate the progress made by the human soul through the millenia of its existence. Not as a re-creation (which is quite impossible anyway), not even as a source of direct inspiration, because, hey, man, Druids burned people alive in giant wicker baskets (that is a recorded fact), and blimey, who would want that as a model? Get real!!
I accept Druidry as a possible demonstration of a new/old? way of relating to Nature, and I don´t mean relating to old gods, who are nothing but the projection in imagination of our very real human potential.
I think that what is actually worth a thought or two, is the function of Druids in their own society, which was that they were mediators between the Otherworld (the world of the imaginal, of the spiritual) and human structures, policies, realizations. I totally grok that a Druid could intervene between two armies and send the crazies home, to do something worthwhile, like educating their children, and till the land. I would love to be able to do that, but let me tell you, I wouldn´t do it without the kind of heavy spiritual authority the Druids had in their society. It´s the authority for the good of their communities that I think is such a good idea. But it wouldn´t cross my mind to give that kind of power to a person who hasn´t worked in details on the psycho-spiritual roots of their being, gosh, never. That is why – follow my thought! – we need…Druid schools. (No, not another “Correspondence Course”!)
What we need is a Druidic Hogwarts, if you see what I mean. *grin*
With every good wish,
The Lady Dragon, *feeling mightily rebellious this morning*
PS.- Yes, and hopeful, too!…
Living with four languages…
(
Image : Ma P’tite Déesse, céramique, SG 1997)
…Mmmm…Europe in the making ? The global civilization?
Originally I´m Swiss (from the French-speaking part, Geneva, so French is my mother-tongue); I have been living in Spain for twenty-two years (well, in Catalonia, don´t tell the Catalans that they are Spanish or they will drop you dead!); my daughter is living with an Englishman from south east England (so English is our daily fare), and I watch the German telly programmes (I´m actually a bilingual Swiss), because there is more rock´n roll there than in the dreary Spanish po-mo ones…
Let me give you an example : “…Me pasas le journal, please ?” Hahaha.
We are going to re-invent Esperanto, I think!…It´s a hard discipline not to mix up the languages, and muy a menudo (often), the wires in our taxed brains look like a plate of tangled spaghetti!
C’est intéressant, quand même!…(Y’a un circonflexe sur même, non?) Hat das Wort “même” ein…errr… circonflexe? Mikaaaaaa! Comment ça s’écrit déjà, “circonflexe”????)
Gosh, how simple and elegant and efficient Internet English looks…Hahaha.
Red Sun-day
(Image : Red Sun-day, soul card 124, SG ‘o9)
There are days when the world just jars on my nerves.
There are days when I just disappear in a puff of bright smoke, and go live forever in the Otherworld, with a bunch of magazines, a pair of scissors, a bottle of glue and a pot of very strong coffee…
Here is my last soul card. Today, the sun was blood-red.
Book(s) of Shadows
(Image : Book(s) of Shadows, Druid Grade, SG, 2009)
What is… a Book of Shadows ? It is a book in the form of a journal, or diary, in which wizards (and OBOD students) collect recipes of all kinds, experiences, ideas, inspirations, it is the journal of their Journey through the training.
Today I have finished the whole serie of Books of Shadows that I have been creating for my OBOD Journey; I have finished the course (at Imbolc), and I have now finished my Druid Review.
Now my Druid Journey really begins!…
These journals are part of a serie that I have been creating for my OBOD Druid “graduation”.
Nana´s Wisdom Book
(Image : Three spreads in Nana´s Wisdom Book, SG 2009)
My favourite Book of Shadows is called Nana´s Wisdom Book. It is a visual journal that contains a treasure of poems and ideas, Goddess-oriented, that I filched from here and there, adding my own comments and colours. It is meant to be part of a legacy for my children and grand-children.
These days, not being that young anymore I think about the last part of my life, and quite seriously. I´m starting to gather what I want to be remembered by…Sort of a poignant move…Not sad at all, you understand, but realistic. (OK, I´m not that old, this ancient dragon has still some pretty nifty juices running! hahaha)
Of course, my books, visual journals, mixed media stuff (spirit dolls, matchbox altars, etc.) will be part of the legacy. I want to be remembered for what I did, for what I created, not for what I thought, or for what my intentions were. “Nana was a pretty zany old bird!”, how´s that, for an epitaph? Or… “She really lived.”
Seeing all my journals together, wow…I may be ready for an art exhibition!
…Why Not?
(Image: …Why Not?, visual journal, SG, 2008)
Here are two pics of one of my favourite journals: …Why Not? (2008)
Sometimes I just can´t express what I need to with words. So I shut off the reasonable part of my brain and pump inspirational stuff from the other part. Like for this journal. Not a word there, just a jumble of emotions, sensations, energies…
WordPress, I love U!
(Image : The Book of Vivian, SG, 2009, another Book of Shadows of mine, well, Book of Shadows is the traditional term for a diary like that, but might as well call it a Book of Light, hahaha)
WordPress, I truly do love U. I get such inspiration from the Searches!… Today, this one :
“how do i become a real wizard?”
Dear X (hope you read this…), to become a real wizard you have to understand how the world functions (because you love it so much that you grok it!), and then you will produce the right type of enchantments for every buddy that reads you to get a real positive inner thrill of spiritual energy, and a smile on their face.
Forget about manipulation of subtle energies and star dust, forget about power-over and childish stuff like it, just open your heart and let the juice of it flow over the World!…
Nana, baby-sitter
(Image : More Books of Shadows, the Book of Vivian (left) and the Book of Merlin)
My girl : “Mom, hafta go to the gyneco, can you stay with the baby for a few hours?”
Mom feels panic rising. Do I remember how it is done ? Baby bottle ? Change diaper? Soothe crying baby???…
So, here we go, bottle, diaper, done – sleepy-head in my arms, looking at me, sort of non-plussed, hey, this is not Mama, who are you, new person ?
So I gurgle and smile, make silly noises, and send good energy through my hands, good “chi” – Mama-chi. Baby smiles from ear to ear, oh that´s it, that I know, good bye world…* sighs, great big yawn, falls deeply asleep*
…Nana, great Druid, spiritual teacher of many, with the weight of Life in her arms, breathes slowly, Universe in, Universe out, this is what Druidry is all about, warm caring, breathing in the Awen, Nwyfre circulating in all cells…Baby sleeps, content and easy.
Wish I could take the world into my arms.
*smile*
Mary, Theotokos
(Image : The Little Goddess Prayer Book, SG, 2009)
Don´t get me wrong, I have been a feminist for most of my adult years, and I hated the wishy-washy image of the catholic Mary. And for good reasons. Always behind her son, pale-looking, with tortured eyes, the absolute scourge of female sovereignty.
That was until I connected with the Great Goddess of the Beginnings (as Jean Markale calls Her). Then, I slowly came to the realization that Mary, Mother of God, was so rooted in the heart of the people, all over the world, because She is an image that comes from the very depths of the Collective Unconscious. Never mind what they did to Her. Before Her, Ishtar, Cybele, Mothers of Us All.
…Mother Mary, or as She is called at the Earth Sanctuary : Our Lady of All Creatures.
Not an example, not a model, not a cage, but a celebration of Womanhood, a celebration of humanity, everywhere, of all of us.
Je vous salue, Marie…
Sancta Maria,
Ora pro nobis,
Nobis peccatoribus,
Nunc et in hora
Mortis nostrae.
…Breathe sweetly into the face of a civilization gone mad…
His Frodo eyes
(Image : Alex, my grandson, three months old now)
…Don´t know if Baby reminds me of Frodo, or if Elijah Wood reminds me of a baby, but there is something magickal about…Frodo eyes.
…Don´t you think so?
The Meaning of the Quest
(Image : The Earth Sanctuary, 2009)
From The Grail: The Celtic Origins of the Sacred Icon, Jean Markale, Inner Traditions International, Rochester, Vermont:
La Porte est Au-Dedans.” (Chapelle de Tréhorenteuc, Brocéliande, Bretagne)
(…)” …numerous knights who have set off on the quest pass by the Castle of the Grail without seeing it. Without even seeing that there is a castle. For the door of the castle is always on the inside. It is the open door to the closed palace of the king.
The wisdom attained by the winner of the Quest is within the reach of everyone. But as is most excellently said by the Trouvère Thibaud de Champagne, “the messengers are illuminated by night, and during the day they remain invisible to folk”. Everything is symbol. Everything is language. We must take risks and burrow into the Night, for it alone can show us the path. This is the reason the visionary sages, philosophers, and saints are often portrayed as blind men. The Sun of the Night is not the same as that which shines during the day, but its brightness is much more dazzling, and it permits the human spirit to be a druid in the etymological sense of the word, that is to say, “far seeing”.
One will therefore see all the inevitable consequences that arise from this Quest for the Grail. It represents a supreme moment in human thought, one of those privileged moments in which the landscape, illumined by a marvelous light, shows up clearly on the horizon, And in this landscape the Grail is hiding. It is up to us to awaken what it contains.”
Oh, and by the way, this is post Nr 200. Happy Birthday, dear blog, and I drink to your health, dear Readers!
The Great Inner Marriage
(Image : This must be the funniest poster ever! It´s not really esthetic to have that “sample” thing across the image, sorry ´bout that, it´s a poster that you have to buy, I don´t remember where right now. But it is the only image that I have ever found where Aragorn and the Horned One (Cernunnos) are fused. A brilliant idea, especially for a LOTR fan like me! Now…Take the image, age it a bit, and if you are him, hahaha, please give me a ring! …Alternatively, please buy the poster, and…someone, LOL, send it to me!)
…Without wanting to reveal too much, the Druid Grade at OBOD is largely oriented towards an opening to the Masculine, in the sense of an opening and a certain mastery of energies traditionally deemed “masculine” (staff, wand, straight lines, the Sun, reason, logic, structure, etc.) in contrast to, complementary to, the Feminine (cauldron, cup, curved lines, intuition,the Moon) which is basically the subject of the Ovate Grade.
So I need to say here that my favourite “g.o.d” is not a goddess, though, obviously, being a woman and an artist, I´m very Goddess-oriented. It is an archetype which I find magnificently complementary to what I already am by nature. It is my beloved Cernunnos, in his various facets, Herne the Hunter, for example, The Lord of Wild Beasts. The Wild Man, the Green Man.
For me this is the masculine facet of the Goddess Herself. Her rightful Companion, Son, Lover.
Of course, during the Course we are asked to work with both, feminine and masculine energies. In fact, they should not be separated. In our societies they were divided for purely historical reasons, and it is our task to bring them together again. This is something that I very strongly believe. We need, each one of us, male or female, to find our own inner Wholeness, Holiness, again. Not project it outside, on a real person who, after all, is only human. If you do that, project it outside, you are bound for trouble!…So we have to work, as Jung says, with Animus and Anima, no way to circumvent this fact. If we are into the Inner Journey, of course. All the others, please go on projecting on Kevin Costner et al., that is what they are there for. (Oh no, I never even made it to Leo DiCaprio, never mind Zac Efron).
The cauldron is considered a ”female” symbol, and the wand or staff a “masculine” one. It is a question of creating a certain order in the brain, to study the separation in an orderly way, to analyze the why and wherefore of it (which the OBOD Course doesn´t really do, at least not openly)so as to become able to see the necessity of a “marriage” between the two within oneself .
For me personally, the complementary energy of the Goddess-in-me, or of the Goddess-that-I-am (in all humility and metaphorically speaking)has been/was/is Cernunnos, Herne the Hunter. But there is a further step to this inner Marriage . For me also, the real Masculine is Merlin, Gandalf, the Wise Old Man – the sage, the philosopher, the visionary – Merlin who stood before me, the Elder of my tribe, the Crone, the Wisewoman, at initiation.
Anyway, Friends, I totally get it that the only ”complement” for me , the only one that I would want, that I only ever should want, is my own “masculine” wisdom.
And thus, I am married to myself, or to my Self : the Goddess-in-me is married to the Merlin-in-me, making of this body-person a pure vessel of bliss. Yeh, yeh, yeh, good work, good work, most certainly.
PS.- Can´t forget Aragorn, however. Woowee!!! I´m going on, and on, and on,… rockin´ the roll !!!
Civilization of the Grandmothers
(Image : Hello, World, here I come!, pic MG, 09)
…These last few days I have been with my three-month old grandson, my daughter is working, couldn´t help it, circumstances, blah-blah.
The sheer beauty of it…
It takes my breath away to think that the same tender beauty can be sent to Afghanistan (or elsewhere, wherever the “civilized” world is reaping storms) twenty years later, after so many – so many – hours of dedication and love, and die there, young, painfully, through a stray bullet, or a bomb. The thought makes me very angry. Civilization has not happened yet. And it will not happen without the grandmothers, let me tell you.
And if you think that all grandmothers are the fragile-looking white-haired silly type – you have it all wrong. We women of the Sixties are powerful grandmothers. Not all of us are dyeing our hair blue and looking like the sweet little nobodies that usually pass for crones. Some of us are fierce witches, some of us have learned our lessons. Haven´t we, sisters??
These days my criteria for survival are quite simple. Nowadays, in everything, there is only one question : does it lead to a sustainable future (given the global circumstances) or does it not ? The answer is obvious to me, at every turn of the road. And more so holding this wonderful perfect tiny human being in my arms…
IDS, Independent Druid School
(Image : The Sword of Light, drawing by Michaela Devi, 2009)
I have to laugh when I read that “all modern Druidry is fake Druidry” (John Michael Greer, in a blog of his). Obviously. There are no authentic traces of what the Druids really were, so that attempts to re-construct their real teachings are doomed.
Let´s be humble in the face of reality.
That´s why I don´t say that I am “a” Druid anymore. I am a Druid of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, OBOD, UK - because I have completed the Grade. Does that make me a “real” Druid ? Well, obviously, no, there are no “real” Druids, there are only people belonging to organisations that define themselves as Druidic.
Knowing this, owning this bitter-sweet truth, the Project here, the Earth Sanctuary, created a School which we consciously define as Druid School, – since the core group is working with OBOD (two Druids, one Ovate)and actually is a Grove linked with OBOD, the Lothlorien-Nemeton Grove.
Anyway, for the moment, here is the way we structure the teachings of our own School, very schematically. Oh, and Very Important Detail …We are not under the wing of OBOD, repeat : not, that is why we call it : ”Independent Druid School”. We do not claim to represent OBOD, in any way, but as Members of the Order and a Grove, we would promote the OBOD Correspondence Course. People, do it! It´s great.
In a way we are…an intelligent satellite, hahaha. And as such, we freely choose to Align with the inner structure of the Order. (More on alignment in the next post).
Bards = Art (in all its various forms). Developping the Artist Within. The Wheel of the Year. Basics of Druidic philosophy as learned by us through OBOD. (See my Art Gallery.)
Ovates = Ecopsychology. Biosphere 2030 (see page, above). Studying biodiversity in situ here at the Earth Sanctuary. New ways to re-connect with Nature.The Deep Inner Forest. The Imaginal World. (Finished my Druid Grade with OBOD.)
Druids = Psychosynthesis. Dharma Quest (see page, above). Esoteric teachings. Anam Cara Coaching. (Got a Psychosynthesis Diploma from PS/Avalon, Will Parfitt.)
The School defines itself as a School for World Servers and a Twenty-First Century Mystery School.
OK, point made, mission accomplished. I hope the sky will not fall on my head.
Back to fun stuff.
IDS, Independent Druid School – 2
(Image : Merlin´s Tower, SG, 2007)
…Have received an e-mail which said : “Is your Druid School for real?”
Hahaha. Yeeeep, and here is the proof. See the picture ? Well, that´s Merlin´s Tower, and it´s made – *gasp* – of real stone!…
This is our very own Druid Hogwarts, and Yours Faithfully a very real (not-bearded!) Professor Dumbledore.
And another question : “How do I get from here to … there?”
Well. Same way Harry gets to Platform Number Nine-And-Three-Quarters:… WooweeBONG! (= following your bliss and the Way of your Wyrd).
Get a grip, buddy!
(Image : Spirit of Evolution, soul card 127, SG, 2002)
Our kind of Druidry, the one we are now teaching, has everything to do with reality, not only with imaginal realities,you understand, but with concrete reality. With the concrete reality of a planet in dire straits.
Let´s see..
“All modern Druidry is fake.” (Jean Markale, and others).
Druids are only relevant in the structure of a Celtic society.
(Jean Markale)
Celtic societies have disappeared.
The hard truth is that there are no Druids anymore, and since they did not write down their teachings, we cannot know the contents thereof.
All current Druid “wisdom” is taken from sources other than Druidism (humanistic psychology, Kabbalah, New Age stuff, numerology, you name it).
Humanity has evolved since the building of Stonehenge (which wasn´t built by the Druids).
Even a Correspondence Course is a contradiction with the basic tenet of Druidry : no written word. (Now, why would that be so, NO written word…?)
Our form of Druidry is based directly on an ecopsychological point of view. We position that there is an emotional link, a basic-basic human link with Nature that we have to revive, restore. But not of the astral kind, not of the imagined kind. The planet needs us awake and planted on our feet, not dreamy, hazy and rosy, travelling misty dimensions and calling them “real”.
Don´t misunderstand me. Imagination is as real as stones, but it´s a different sort of reality. When we say “the Otherworld”, we do not mean a parallel dimension where gods and weird entities “really” run around in flimsy clothes (You tell me : why are fairies always clothed in flimsy robes???). That is for children. (Ah, and not even for them. Give them an education, for the planet´s sake!)
The Otherworld is the world of imagination, it looks parallel to the physical world, but it´s not. It´s contained within your brain, it is a wonderful faculty of your very physical brain. (Yeah, I know about quantum physics, a tiny little bit, enough to know that all matter is made of energy).
You may not like this point of view, but it is nonetheless absolutely true: the imaginal worlds – the worlds created by our imagination – though real in their own terms, are not real in the sense of physical reality.
I am an artist, I should know. Of all the old g.o.d.s., Cernunnos is my favourite. The Goddess, in any one of her many disguises, visits me often. I believe in Jesus the Christ. I honour all religions. I celebrate only one : reality.
And I accept only one “envoy” : from within, the sublime rays of the Inner Sun.
I know that these images that are frolicking around my brain are ART, they are not reality. Reality is made, usually and how sorry I am about that, of blood, sweat and tears. (And love, of course, but that´s another discussion.)
So. Any kind of reconstruction of Druidism is at best imagined. Now, why would people do that ? Why would they imagine stuff that cannot be correlated with their “real” reality? The stuff supermarkets, computers and our very bodies are made of? …Well, it´s because that “physical” reality (the reality of social consensus), manipulated as it is by the powers-that-be, is sorely lacking the thrilling, positive, bubbly glow that has been taken from us so early in our life. We miss the inner bubbles, the sheer excitement, and so we create fairies, and other dimensions. And fake Druidry.
Do you remember still what life was when we were kids? Imagining being pirates, and Indian Chiefs and kings and queens?… Before we knew about sinusitis and stones in the kidneys?
We are a species that needs to dream. Where there is no vision, the people perish.
And then we forget the line between dream and reality, and become Celtic Archdruids, though we are from Wisconsin, Germany, or Finland…
There is no harm in imagining relationships with “g.o.d.s”, as long as we remember that while we sauntered gaily through the woods looking like second-hand Gandalfs and Galadriels, politicians have taken over the real world, and are milking it for what it´s worth!…
…Get a grip, buddy!
“Real” Druids, real contemporary Druids, would, I have no doubt about that, address the REAL situation of a world gone mad because we now believe in the 36th dimension of reincarnated Atlantean High Priests! See what I mean ? That, addressing the real reality, would actually be part of their function. (Now don´t go politicking, it´s not that either).
Post Data .- I´m not your hard-boiled materialist either. Been a Rosicrucian for thirty years, have had two Indigo children (and have now a Crystal grandchild, lol).
Do as the angels do : take it lightly. OK?
Soft skin
(Image : Soulmates, watercolours on cardboard, SG, 2000)
“Go out on a limb, that´s where all the fruit is!” (Anonymous, probably from the Sixties)
…Hey, have received another one of those delightful e-mails that have me staring into space for minutes with that blank look that my daughter always welcomes with a hearty laugh…(Mum, want some coffee?)
“Dear Viv, sorry to tell you, but you sound every day more like a crotchety old witch…”
Thanks, Bernard the Hermit. It´s true. Crotchety I may be, and, after all, old is my current destiny, OK, OK, Mum will stay mumm, but with soft skin, eh?…;-)
Oh and just wanted to add, in case the qualification of “fake” near the word “Druidry” really revolutionized your thinking(which caused the e-mail in the first place, did it not?), I did say “fake Druidry“, I did not say fake spirituality. The people´s spirituality, among those who call themselves Druids, is not in question, I wouldn´t dare. I´m just questioning the legitimacy of some of the context they evoke to justify some things that have nothing to do with spirituality.
OK ? See the difference?
I have no problem with any type of spirituality, but I do seem to have a slight problem with fantastic allegations.
I can accept… “An angel stood by my side” as…”I felt protected.” Wow, great feeling. I´m so happy for you. It´s nice, isn´t it ?
But not : “There was a seven- foot tall Brad Pitt-type of winged being at my side who made me feel like Angelina Jolie”. Or : ” There is this Master from Atlantis who sends me memorandums which I sell for a bunch of dollars, and please don´t forget my workshops, or my new book!”…See what I mean?
Crotchety and old, huh? Mmmm….(Bernie, I´ll get your skin for that, yet!)
(Bah, don´t pay any attention, this is pure twitter stuff!)
Gnashing my teeth
(Image : The Garden of Love, soul card 97, SG, 2006)
Yeeeewww, sometimes I´m gnashing my teeth at what I write in here!…
But.
I swore to myself to try to be as deeply true to myself as I only could writing this blog, because I don´t see the necessity of “just another blog” with another lengthy blogroll to show how interesting one´s blog is, with no real “meat” for people to put their teeth into. I don´t think that we have time to blunder about exchanging polite references anymore, this is not the place, nor the time.
I´m all for saying meaningful stuff, meaningful in any way meaningful can be for any person at a given time. I write meaning-full stuff for me. And also for the people who know me (by now, a lot!), for the people who are looking for some in-sights about life (different maybe from their own), for people who like to get a smile out of their online experience…
You see, I am now at the (st)age in my life where I don´t care much anymore about what “people” (sheeple?) think of me, I know my rights. So I write about what´s happening to me, in my real life, knowing full well that it´s not important, or maybe it is, because all of us are important, each one is important. (Not meant as a platitude but as a basic truth).
My posts reflect a real life, sometimes shining, sometimes messy, and that´s all right.
Still, when I read some of the things I have written with an intellectual perspective, I cringe! But isn´t that what courage is ? To fear the response to one´s intention and do something anyway? Isn´t this what we all need ? That some things that are never said should have a place sometime and somewhere?
Women, grandmothers, kiddies, Gaia, joy, gratitude, humour, trees, rocks, sunny days, bad days, hell days, washing the dishes, tummy trouble, bone tired, beautiful smiles, hugs, good intentions, bad schemes, masks, deep sleep, politics, loving the world, yearnings for peace, human rights, evolution, beauty, funny e-mails, a life…
Besides, I need to show my art. (No, I don´t sell it.)
*a hearty hug*
Yours faithfully : Nana.
Make Art Not War
(Image: La Preuve du Délit, lol)
I´m a Child of the Sixties; I still wear buttons. And guess what I found on the Net (and couldn´t resist buying!)…yeah, “I love Aragorn” and “Make Art Not War”…! Cool and quaint, eh? (especially for a grandmother!)
Bright Blessings,
PS.- Ah, call me unabashed and unrepenting, I´m buying a third …”Gandalf for President”…What else?
Living under the trees
(Image : The Earth Sanctuary, 2007)
…I don´t think that the real Druids – 8000 years back in the tunnel of Time – really understood the importance of trees. Now before you spit in my eye with your Oaken Knowledge, let me tell you this.
Eight thousand years back there were so many trees in Europe that they formed one vast Forest from Iberia to the Danube and beyond. Men were living in this giant Forest like fish live in water. We can´t really get an exact idea how that felt, except to imagine that trees were a primary element in men´s psyche, trees were part of their religion, long long before the Nailed One came to incarnate among us. Druids had what we call ”Knowledge of the Oak Tree”. Druids probably considered trees as gods, or at least as spiritual entities. As some African or Aborigene tribes still do. Nature was alive with spirits, which had to be feared, and revered, and appeased.
But men had zero scientific knowledge. They didn´t know that we actually need trees to survive. (Well, except, of course, if we start to build crystal domes, and who wants that?)
And that, the lack of knowing the survival value of trees for humankind, is why they couldn´t do a bloody thing when the Romans started to burn their way through the Forest, advocating the necessity of “civilization”. The old Oak Knowledge disappeared. And the Druids disappeared too. Technologically, the Romans were infinitely superior. The Oak Knowledge probably survived in small pockets, maybe in Ireland, maybe in Scotland. In the rest of Europe, the Roman “marines” got their way.
The Druids didn´t know how to resist Roman “civilization”, or couldn´t. They probably couldn´t even understand the Roman mania. And thus, here we are, at the Eleventh Hour, destroying more and more of our life-giving habitat, until we all die from the consequences.
As a species, we truly lost our mind. We quite litterally lost our mind. I mean, we have to reclaim our sanity, this has to become a very conscious act.
Nowadays trees are just part of the sitcom movie in which we live. Forests are places to do your jogging routine (when you find a forest, which might be difficult where you live!!), nowadays the real human story is urban. It´s in the cities that the real story of humankind is unrolling. Forests are just nice places to go on week-ends, to have fried sausages with a bunch of friends. If you can get out of your city, that is. Which Saturday Night fever will need a lot of petrol for a lot of people!
The planet is fast becoming a desert. The planet is becoming a Wasteland. There will be wars for water. Thank you, guys. Nice idea of a future for our kids.
My friend Govinda who is a biologist, and an encyclopedia of plant life, once told me, sort of dreamily…”You know, humans are meant to live under the trees. That is where we really thrive.”
That triggered my thinking, and a huge part of my ecopsychological sensibility. I started to pay attention to what happened to my body when I got out of my little haven of shade and water. And let me tell you, that is easy: five minutes down the road and you get roasted alive in July. Spain is truly becoming the proverbial Wasteland.
Living in the shade provided by the trees is where my heart is these days.
My Avalon is thriving.
Listen to this, friends of my emerald heart : we do need the trees!…
OK, so we can´t know how the Druids actually lived, and I don´t think we really need to know. Our species has changed, science and Time have changed our brains. We are wired in a totally different way. But this,
living under the trees,
we will still need to understand it, and wherever possible, we will need to apply it. Maybe a new Knowledge of the Oak will be about understanding that we are part of this planet, we are not displaced aliens!…
The sheer necessity of places like the Earth Sanctuary will become more vital as every year passes.
Hey, Jude!
(Image : Thunderbeing, soul card, SG, 2006)
Don´t laugh. I´m clueless in the Land of Music.
This morning I was in the local supermarket buying some DVDs and a Beatles´album started to play, it got me thinking about my musical tastes. *deep frown*
Oh-oh-oh. It seems my world stopped after Hey, Jude! and Lady Madonna…how gross is that!
After that, I remember the “plaintives” (Enya and Lorena Mc Kennit), Van Morrison and The Chieftains, and then a long lonely beach of Zen music for Meditation and Relaxing, a bout with a lonely brook (and nothing else!), then some New Age music ( Medwyn Goodall, in the art sessions background), Celtic ballads, Irish nostalgia, and finally the last album of Leonard Cohen, who, like me, had aged a lot in the meantime…
I have no clue. Never did get to rap music, hip-hop and stuff like that. They are having fun, aren´t they ?
I remember Protest Songs. Whoah, I am as stranded as the legendary dodo.
(Bueno, but rock´n roll still gets me to my feet in a flash.)
Please pretty please pity me ?
Words
(Image : Funny collage, SG 2008)
I love words. As I should, as an almost daily blogger. Words are shiny multicoloured jewels, which I love to assemble, sometimes as baroque necklaces…
Did you know that daedal is an adjective that means cleverly intricate, skillfully artistic, to pule means to whimper, to sough means making a rustling sound, and that a nimiety is an excess of something, a too-muchness? And do you know what a quidnunc (noun) is? Quidnunc comes from the Latin quid nunc?, “what now?” One who is curious to know everything that passes, a gossip, a busybody.
…Lovely, ain´t it ?
Who is Ezra…
(Image : The glorified water reservoir, of Olympic dimensions!…)
So. Who is Ezra…and what is he doing in the swimming pool?
Ezra is a 30 inches-long golden carp, who swims around the swimming pool with six or seven equally big friends, among wyverns and…jaws.
I´m joking. Ezra was put into the swimming pool (a glorified water reservoir really) ten years back by someone of our community who has since long departed (to the Canary Islands not to the Otherworld!). Ezra grew and grew, his friends too, and they had lots and lots of babies.Thousands of them, actually.
*grim smile*
The “swimming pool” is now full of who-knows-what and two snakes, and nobody is really wanting to take a plunge, not even in July when the temperature goes right up and up and up! (In this case we just roast and drum for rain!…). Mika and Adam built a raft with some dry canes from last year, and Adam sailed to the center of the pool, his legs deep in the water. It really felt like he was in the middle of the Amazon river, “Adam, mind your legs, maybe there are piranhas!…”
And…crocodiles ?
*toothy smile*
My delightful daily Awen
(Image : Little House of Happy Dreams, a New Year Positive Intentions installation, SG 2009)
From a friend : “What with 213 posts in less than a year, how do you get your inspiration?”
Well, you know, I am known to rudely interrupt someone in a conversation to exclaim “Oh! that´s a blog!”
Inspiration (Awen) can come from anywhere. And I mean anywhere. Plus, I have a list of potential posts in a small notebook that I carry around with me. You´ll probably see The Dinosaur Zuchini, What is your Alignment and Your Inner Space sometime soon. *grin*
Words, sounds, situations, sensations, bubbles from my right-hand side brain, anything can be a trigger. But I have to find a meaning in it, a purpose, a sharing and …a smile. And it has to be short, an idea wrapped in a short and possibly effectively woven net of words. And then, well, I myself must have a degree of pleasure in writing and reading. Real delight, you understand ? Bliss, this most elusive vapour in the modern world.
The Wizard of Lothlorien should be a garden of a thousand delights, sometimes bitter-sweet and that´s OK too, because this is what I would like to share with my readers. The world may go to tatters, but we are still free in the digital world. As a matter of fact, as long as they don´t touch the Net, we will have a degree of freedom (and thus, delight) never seen before in our long tortuous History (except on wild islands).
Hope you enjoy The Wizard as much as I do. Through the upward curve of the stats, I do know that you do, and it makes me very glad, thank you for reading, and sharing the smiles.
Hugs,
The Lady Dragon, from her emerald island.
What is your Alignment?
(Image : The Return of Avalon, picture MDG, 2009)
… In other words, what are you aligned to? Do you even know?
…Do you know that it is important to know?
My Zen teacher, a lot of years back, told us, his students : ” Your life is an expression of your beliefs. Your beliefs are your destiny.”
Indeed.
I am aligned to a positive future for our planet. I am aligned to a positive future for our western civilization. Both are the best of all possible worlds that we have at this point, given the circumstances. They are Home, whether we like it or not.
It´s taken me the best of forty years to understand the hidden history of the world, to get it that a lot of what we see is just appearances, that there are fundamental historical lines that have determined our past and are right now determining our future, and if we want to change that future (gloomy as it is if we just let these lines develop by themselves), we will have to become conscious of how these hidden lines really are a prison of the soul. In a way, the InnerNet is helping us to see that we are in a prison, the InnerNet being home both to the beautiful and to the unacceptable at the same time, forcing us to decide, to choose: this future, or another entirely different?…
…To what future are you aligned ?
…Are you sure that your apparent intention is the real one ?
Think.
It ain´t happening
(Image : A touch of the invisible, soul card, SG, 2005)
…Have you heard this one ?… :
“If it ain´t in the news, it ain´t happening” (Anon)
That, for sure, has me teeth jarring in me head!…
Global warming, climate crisis, real financial crashes, profiteering on the back of the poorest, wars, degradation of the environment, moral degradation, ethical poverty, injustice, and don´t forget swine flu, hem, sorry, the A flu…Barbies & Kens of the world, don´t worry! It ain´t happening.
Keep glued to YouTube and your telly and your touchy-feely cell phones, young ones, now that is real, hahaha.
Ye gods, what´s happening to humanity ???
Ah yeah. It ain´t happening.
It´s all rosy, and keep the cash flow coming, in nice golden waves…like pissing in the gutter.
Yuck.
PS.- Sorry.
*swallowing hard*
It ain´t happening – 2
(Images : Book of Shadows, collage soul cards, SG 2006)
Twittering away, no pasa nada, no-thing…
PS.- I promise I will get out of this tenebrific space.
(I´ll have you know that tenebrific is a word that means “producing darkness”. Lol. Like in : this space is so cavernous, and so terrifically tenebrous, dark, that it produces a darkness in the soul. A tenebrific author. I told you that I love words.)
The IAO Survival Strategy
(Image : Druid´s Egg, soul card 197, SG 2002)
…In which IAO stands for: I-mprovise! A-dapt! O-vercome!
Improvise : in terms of survival strategy we don´t always (read: almost never, lol) get the circumstances that we would need to comfortably pass to the next evolutionary phase in our lives. Change is cathartic. So, since the old strategies mostly won´t work anymore, we have to improvise. Be clever enough to trust our spontaneous inner wisdom.
Adapt : Since we mostly cannot choose in which circumstances this next step wil become possible, let´s just become aware of what surrounds us here and now, and adapt to the new circumstances (=be flexible).
Overcome : If we have been able to become aware of the new possibilities that surround us (instead of moaning about the loss of the old way), and if we have been smart enough to be flexible, we will certainly overcome whatever enlightening obstacles life throws our way.
Then the cycle can begin again.
My hunch is that, in these interesting times that we are witnessing, this time around it will not be survival of the fittest (=big muscles), but survival of those of us who have been smart enough to understand that we must now cooperate. Our very best chance now, is to work together for the good of all.
Mmm…Food for thought today. Thanks, Mika, you handsome soul.
The Dinosaur Zucchini
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My daughter Mika is the Spanish Coordinator (although she´s actually as Swiss as myself!) of the Remineralize the Earth website. She has also translated some writing into Spanish for them. Here you have an article by Mika´s American friend Joanna Campe about their work. Enough to say in this blog that you sprinkle rock dust on your veg patch, and you get miracles.
Mika did sprinkle her veg patch, but not with rock dust (which she still cannot find here in Spain), but with something called “leonardita”, a natural product made with fossilized humus, which helps growth, and is also a miracle cure for the soil. I´m not very savvy where these things are concerned, but we call the “leonardita” thing Dinosaur Powder, it is a fun image to imagine dinosaur skeletons ground to powder, making our garden a very wild place indeed! (The leonardita stuff is that old, I´m told.)
And it works! …Here is a picture of Mika with a tiny part of her first zucchini harvest. (Have to look up zucchini recipes, gad, we´re eating zucchini with almost everything right now, zucchini bread, zucchini soup, zucchini soufflé, zucchini cookies…!)
Birdsong
(Image : Baba Yaga and the Gift of the Eagle, soul card 129, SG, 2005)
…Do you remember this book by Rachel Carson, Silent spring ?
I remember that it was published in the Sixties, and helped launch the protect-the-environment movement, which, at that time, really caused a general hue and cry. I also remember telling my mother “We have to do something”, and she laughed at my face, and said “You´re crazy, get a haircut and forget about your fantasies!”
That was approx 45 years back. Since then, environmental movements have gone mainstream, of course, and now the movie industry is getting into it, too. Movies like “An Inconvenient Truth”, “The Eleventh Hour”, and lately “Home”, are giant successes. It seems that we the people understand their message even before our governments.
I comment this because this morning as I was having tea on the terrace, I suddenly heard the birds. The Sanctuary is chock-full of birds. Their happy chirping is the background of our days. It has even become a background sound that we don´t hear anymore. It is just there, part of our everyday lives. A humming, a trilling, a sweet song that we identify with joy, enthusiasm, all things good and vibrating with energy.
…What if next spring was silent ?
Not a nice thought.
H.O.P.E
(Image : Shamballa, soul card 1, SG 2002)
…Did you know that H.O.P.E is an acronym that means :
H-elp O-ur P-lanet E-volve…? (Anon)
PS.- Though I´m sure Mother Earth doesn´t need our help, thunk you very much (pun intended), so what about…
H-umanity…O-h, P-lease E-volve !…???
Anon the Wise
(Image : Elderwoman, soul card 14, SG 2008)
“Frodo Lives!” (Anon, New York metro, the Sixties)
“Only action has the power to transform knowledge into wisdom” (Anon)
” A person who aims at nothing is sure to hit it.” (Anon)
“He who dies with the most toys is, nonetheless, still dead.” (Anon)
“Choose your friends by their character and your socks by their colour. Choosing your socks by their character makes no sense, and choosing your friends by their colour is unthinkable.”
Anon, Anon, Anon…
…Been asked: “Who is this Anon ? Is s/he, say, a Greek philosopher ? An Indian sage ??? …Seems a very wise person!…”
Indeed.
Anon the Wise is…Anon Y´mous. You know…
*grin*
The high stacking container
(Image : 42, soul card 17, SG, 2002)
…Mika and I were eating our rolls and sipping our morning coffee on a big parking space yesterday, when we saw one of those huge rectangular containers, the kind of container that can be transported on ships, this one was called Typhook, like in : typhoon, or something (a Chinese container???…), and there was a label on it :
“Attention : this container is capable of high stacking”…
Wow. Gee, I´m shaking in my boots:
…If this container is capable of “high stacking”…what else is it capable of????…
(maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe it´s a… Transformer!…)
Just jokin´. You know I love words.
The Forest is Alive!
(Image: Spring of the Goddess, SG, 2009)
When people first get here, they get crazy about the environment, oh the Forest, oh the Fairies (lol,) oh the Elementals, oooh the Gnomes and the Hobbits and the Ents…Hahaha!
So they throw away their shoes and go out into the gardens, to frolick with the butterflies…
We have to tell them, Don´t do that! …There are snakes out there!
Be reasonable, put on a pair of sandals, at least!
And put a shirt on, mosquitoes and all sorts of wingey beings love ”sky-clad” urbanites as I love dark chocolate (yum-yum, do you get it ??)! Not to mention the sun. No, you will not tan, you will roast!…
Besides, the Spanish people abandon lots of dogs into the woods at this time of the year (you know, such a burden during the holidays…! Horrible, but absolutely true!), and these dogs are hungry, so don´t just traipse off into the woods in your flimsy garments!
Tssk, tssk, tssk…really…
…Pale-faces a bit gonk-gonk, eh?…
Boundaries as definitions
(Image : Shadow Warrior, soul card, SG 2005)
I think that it´s important to know how to create/draw boundaries. Boundaries act as definitions.
Not frontiers, limitations, “stop” signs, lol, but clear and creative boundaries around projects, ideas, in relationships, and about oneself. This facilitates communication, enormously.
I´m not “any woman”, I´m me. First boundary, ever. First definition. If your Mum didn´t allow your me to emerge and become well-defined, you´ve got a problem. (Mine didn´t, and oh the years and years of falling into mass traps, and then having to re-create myself out of the rubble…)
I´m not “any Druid”, I´m a person who has finished the OBOD Course. I am a person who has gone through a certain specific process, through various particular grades and challenges, and that is my definition, at this time.
I will always have a tender feeling for my children, of course, and I´ll be there to help them, should they need me, come hell or high water. (What with the current climate change, it might be quite literal, one day.) But I´m “Mummy” no longer, to anybody. I have become my own Mother. I have pushed the boundaries of the mother-image, and found a new definition.
A Mother, in the world.
That is who I am, my definition.
I am no longer my mother´s toy. I am no longer anyone´s wife. I don´t have a boss, lording it over me. Definitions. New boundaries, new experiences.
I am a clear vessel, an active and conscious container (…a high-stacking container, hahaha), for Spirit.:
…Isn´t it fascinating that the more I am defined by my boundaries, the more free I feel?
…Isn´t it fascinating that the more free and creatively defined I feel, the more empty I become?
…Isn´t it awesome, that the more defined I am (by myself), and the more empty, the more universal my heart becomes ?
And isn´t it intriguing, finally, that the more universal my heart becomes, the more I profoundly love… individuals ?…
Full circle, that, isn´t it ?
What am I trying to say ?
We are truly part of this beloved Earth. Earth is our boundary and our definition. Not as specks of dust, but as individually defined incarnations of Spirit.
Eating flowers
(Image : Banquet of the Gods, collage, SG, 2009)
…It´s high summer again, at the Sanctuary. We are sort of bumbling about with lolling tongues, with as little clothing as possible, Mexican-style, physical effort is banned, gosh I´m starting to perspire every time I move my eyes…!
Nobody really wants to cook, so we´re entering the sandwich-phase of the year. Fruit, juices, cold anything, and of course, ice-cream. And lots of water.
And flowers.
…Take a piece of dark bread, put some mayo on it – then tomato (fresh from the garden), cucumber (also from the garden), parsley (same), radishes (yes, from the garden), a boiled egg (from own chicken coop, if you please), and add a multicoloured rain of flower petals, orange, white, periwinkle blue.
Niam. Slurp.
(the slurp is from the tomato, sweet sweet fruit of love)
Then oh then…say in a swooning tone, diva-like…bye-bye, I´m off for a little SIESTA, see ya later, dear people…
And you fall onto the white coolness of your beloved bed, say a little prayer of Thank you oh God for so much luxury (the flower sandwich, the bed and the siesta), and then sleep your banquet off for a couple of hours…
*impish grin*
God, “in here”
…Basically, I´ve become too world-wise to believe in a God “out there”, but the One “in here”…that´s really something else.
…My heart dwells in the Light.
And thus, irrevocably, my friends, unalterably, irreversibly, I know that you too are…That.
The music of the trees
(Image : Midsummer Song, MG, 2009)
…Trees are growing, did you realize that?
Well, I never really realized this before. I mean, I got the idea in my head, but it had never before so…immensely…touched my heart. Looking at the landscape today, I told Mika, it´s changed, don´t you think ? And she said, of course, the trees are growing!
You might think : duh, and so what ?
Not so fast. The forest is alive!… We usually think of “Nature” as a decoration, on the foreground of which the all-important affairs of (wo)mankind are ocurring, but if you get very still, the picture changes :
The world is alive, completely and thoroughly alive, and this horrible noise that is drowning the silence and beauty of Creation is…us, the ugly apes! Goddess, but we make a horrible sound…! Discordant, out of tune, out of rythm, ugly, ugly, dissonant, incongruent, in one word … discrepant!
I could well understand that the planet would wish to shake Her shoulders a bit, and down the drain we would all go like the puny little beasts that we are…bleeeeeh.
And to think…that inside even the dead-brains there is a genius lurking…
*the thought makes my teeth jar against each other*
What a waste! Where oh where did we go wrong ?? (A rethorical question, of course…)
Anyway, I do wish we could hear the trees, and that their clamour would reach the sky.
Now that would be some music!…
The VeeVee BeeBeeDee Order
(Image : Alexander Leonidas, current ID : The Sovereign, now 6 months old)
…I have been promoted to Guardian of the Sacred Objects in the V.V.B.B.D Order!
The V-ery V-enerable B-ottle, B-ib and Dummy Order, don´t you know it?…
Yes. Whenever the Sovereign wails either for bottle, bib or dummy, the Guardian has to jump up and salute : Yessir, Here are the Objects! And produce them, immediately. And know which is which. The bib for dribble, the bottle for water and the dummy for…everything else, particularly …silent meditation.
The Guardian also has to produce pureed fruit for midday meal, and comfortable-arms rest for The Sovereign.
In return, the Guardian will receive a Beam of Light from very blue eyes (…shades of Paul Newman!)and even, at times, a muted giggle.
Oh to be Loved by a baby…
(Not mine, my daughter´s, of course).
Holy days
(Image : Ascend!, matchbox shrine, 2008)
Hello, my Dears.
I´m out for a breather for a few days.
Have a great Summertime!
(All my posts can be accessed through the Tag Cloud at the right, so you may want to catch up!…)
The Wizard.
PS.- Oh and BTW, this blog passed the 10 000 clicks mark! Thanks for reading!…
My life is a river
(Image : Our Lady of the Emerald Heart, soul card 129, SG, 2009)
Hello! Been there and am back again!
Goddess, it´s hot in Spain, and we´re close to the coast!…
I´m back into soul cards again. A friend of mine suggested that soul cards are really visual poetry, and that is so right. Here´s a new soul card, Our Lady of the Emerald Heart, and a poem that I wrote in answer to a friend´s blog about poetry (Adam´s)…
My life is a river, From lofty mountain to stormy sea.
Sometimes it meanders lazily, Sometimes it growls like a tiger.
Always it flows and flows, Down from the rocky crags
To the sweet shadows of the valley.
…And sometimes, While I´m peeling onions,
I cry.
To really appreciate it you have to say it aloud, letting the words roll on your tongue, like pearls.
Gardening, Zen style
(Image: Awen, the Earth Sanctuary)
“Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
spring comes and the grass
grows by itself.” (Zen wisdom)
The style of gardening at the Earth Sanctuary has a lot to do with Zen.
Obviously, to anyone looking at the place we´re not professionals, lol, we´re …err…recycled urban hooligans!
“Just observe; the grass grows by itself” is one unwritten advice for would-be gardeners at the Sanctuary. “If it´s happy, don´t move it!” is the other.
The temptation has been great through the years to barge into the property and “clean” it, lol. The former owners did that with machines!… A hundred and eight acres of woodland is a large playground!.. But then we came from the domain of “spirituality” (Zen, Tantra, Psychosynthesis) not gardening techniques, and lots of times we just let things grow because… we did not know what to do with them! So we started observing that in the areas where we did not “work”, nature had its own cycles, which adjusted themselves quite nicely, thank you, without the intervention of the human apes!… These places have a sort of aura, something different, something wild and nourishing to the spirit that other places that we…err…”cleaned”… simply did not show.
So our style of gardening now is limited to taking out the dead biomatter (because of the danger of fires during the hot summers), – cleaning small paths to get to places, and generally letting the rest care for itself. Ah yes, and carefully cutting the low branches of some trees to help them soar into the sky.
We had a hard battle with the vegetable garden though, which at one point was very litterally overrun by the wild boars (or BIG bunnies! we never knew which ate all the tender little shoots…). At first we put up a wooden fence, thinking that the boars would not jump over it. Wrong. They go UNDER it! The vegetables were not safe. So we put up a green wire, thinking that the boars do NOT shape-shift to enter the grounds, lol. Wrong. They somehow laughed at the wire.Vegetables, OUT! Bwaaaaahahhaha! So we finally put up a barrier of rushes around the wooden fence, with the green wire sandwiched in-between the two. Now it´s a tiny garden, EXTREMELY well fenced! (And the vegetables are usually intact, hehehehe). After despairing for a whole season, – the garden, which we now jokingly refer to as our “kraal”, like the spiky walls people build in South Africa to protect their villages – is doing OK. This time around, I think that perhaps, eventually, next year, and not hoping much – we will have enough garden produce in the kitchen to feed the family! (Which is an on-going joke, oh yeah, we´re plainly BEGINNERS! *wink-wink*) The essential point of all this, however, is NOT to “get” something from the earth, (fruit we do get, wild plums, apples and figs as an example, and hazelnuts, from trees that have been planted by the former owners). The fundamental idea is to have “liberated” the place by buying it entirely, almost stolen it away from the path of destruction the planet is on. And learning to live with the trees, to observe our own roots, live in a different way, nothing tremendous, just getting down from the technological high-horse at times and go by foot for a while. (Hey, if I did not believe in technology, I would not write this blog, right?) We have been rewarded a hundred times over by nature itself, for the huge effort of actually buying the land. Foxes and eagles and squirrels and lots of birds and tiny animals have appeared. OK, we have to learn to grab the greens away from them, but it´s a a tiny obstacle for the glory of knowing that all this wild life is preserved, and with it, our archetypal roots as Earthlings.
Celebration of Water Day
Tomorrow September 7th, a Druidic friend of ours is going to a cave, to record the sound of water, and making music with it. Sounds lovely. Wish I could be there!…
So we had this idea of having a Celebration of Water Day at the Sanctuary, when we would do all sorts of things that have to do with the water that is running through the property. We have lots of water, the property wouldn´t be so…so…Irish, if we hadn´t! So it seems a great idea.
To celebrate the Day, I made three soul cards, and here they are.
The Beacon
(Image : “The Beacon”, soul card 48, Shakti G., ’05)
My way of making way for the new has been a battle, no, a war. I have deep scars etched onto my soul, I´m giddy with pain sometimes, but I did, damn the whole show, make a clean slate – I cleared the rubbish, came down to the essentials, even kissed the brass tacks, and oh goddess, the essential is simple, like, I´m too happy just to be alive.
True, life is a thing of despair for us mortal beings. Yet in the middle of the dark night of our incarnation there is a flame, a fire, a star – the unmistakable messenger of what we could be. The darkness is real, and the pain. But the star, too, is real. It is a beacon in the middle of a tossing sea. A steady light in the middle of a very dark ocean.
Maybe I will never experience the new world, maybe there will be another holocaust. But as long as I live, my life will be a testimony of the hidden : we are gods, in spite of the braindeads! What we don´t know is killing us. Yet some of us have seen the light of the star – so yes, I´m burned out from the efforts of birthing the new, but I´m also bathed in a wave that announces a new era. At the corners of my eyes, a strange light is pulsing. I´m like a fish that suddenly breathes air. I´m a furry animal that suddenly finds it has wings. There is so much we could learn about how things really are.
So it´s part of my truth to be grounded with the pain of it all, exhaling the pain in a never-ending sigh. And it´s part of my truth too, to be inhaling fresh air, filling my lungs with dancing particles of prana light.
Namasté.
Shadow Warrior.
The Lady Dragon
(Image : “The Lady Dragon”, self-portrait, Shakti ’06)
…The Lady Dragon sneezes and the roof comes down!
She is like that, a thorny being, with fangs and gills – and she has a BAD-bad-bad temper.
Hmmm…
Floppy knights raise her anger like nothing else. When one of those hollow tin cans comes around, you can see the flames starting to laugh their way out of her throat; she gets eyes like nebulas going round and round, red and gold and pure bliss – and then suddenly she goes… Whooooosh! and there you have it! The tin can cooked like a casserole of beans on a camp fire! My, my, my.
“Oopsie” she says, looking brash and young, and so damn carefree you wish you were her – you see her licking her paws and lisping…”Pardon my fire, good sirs, Couldn´t help it!” And then she smiles, an endearing god-awful toothy Dragon smile that shows her white fangs wide and clear, and…ah…you suddenly have something vely vely urgent to do ELSEWHERE!…
An ecopsychological insight
(Image : The Grandmother in winter, picture SG, 2002)
…Autumn has come to the Sanctuary. The temperature has dropped dramatically, and Grandmother Figtree, standing there in all of Her glory, presents us with pounds and pounds of fruit.
This morning, as I was eating a fig, before going down to the village to the post office, the thought suddenly erupted in my mind…I am eating Her fruit, and by that intimate communion, She makes me a part of Her!…
It wasn´t, you know, a mystical insight, with angels blowing their trumpets…It wasn´t an emotional catharsis. Not at all.
It was as casual as… “Damn, got a headache!”.
But it was so real. I could actually see, on an atomic level, in the crystal cup of my conscious mind, how the Grandmother makes me a part of Her, as I eat of Her fruit.
It is absolutely true. We are what we eat.
We actually need to understand that. This experience is the very essence of a much needed Ecopsychology.
Heart energy versus Scrapbooking
(Image : Love is an orange, collage, SG, ’05)
This is about blogging.
Had a discussion yesterday with some friends, all bloggers. Someone had said: “I don´t like to expose my personal feelings too much, my blog is more like scrapbooking. Scraps of things that I´m interested in, which I think other people will like, etc.” I said… “Who cares?” (You know me, I always put a foot where I shouldn´t!) The discussion that ensued was very interesting. I said that my blog was a way to build a bridge with the world, from within my soul (especially important to me since I live away from “civilization”, high in the mountains), it is a way to show my heart, because I think that that is what the world needs right now, more heart energy… I need to “come out of the closet”, stand up for my heart connection with the world.
I also said that I thought that this sort of blogging is the noblest part of the Internet. If some of us don´t show our heart, this wonderful, extraordinary tool will be invaded totally by spam and porn, and all sorts of nasty intentions. The world is that way, we know that. It´s not because we live in the mountains that we don´t carry “civilization” in our hearts too. It is precisely because we know how the world is that we chose to live in the mountains!
Essentially, I choose to show my heart, in a conscious way, knowing full well that thousands will pass the blog by, shaking their shoulders, bah.
Don´t mind. This blog is read, and some people seem to find good energy in it, good heart energy for their own lives. Maybe even a sense of companionship.
So, here I am. Will go on, as long as my Internet connection will hold.
I am going…nuts!
…There are so many baskets of the walnuts that Mika is gathering on the kitchen table, and we are eating so many of them that we are surely going to turn into…squirrels! Some would say that we are…nutty as a fruitcake anyway, even without eating nuts at breakfast, lunch and supper!
Walnuts, and hazelnuts, and…figs! Tons of figs! We can´t keep up with the figtree´s generosity! Dark purple figs, green figs, mature figs, and fig marmelade…on the ground!I love autumn, my favourite season, though the Goddess knows I love them all!
It´s a weird feeling, me being a city child still, to pick up the fruit and actually eat it! Can you imagine, something that doesn´t come wrapped up in plastic ? Hahaha
It´s cooler now, there is a bit of sun during the day, and Avalon mists in the morning.
And…well, you know, …nuts!
We all come from the Goddess
And to Her we shall return
Like a drop of rain
Flowing to the ocean
Hoof and horn, hoof and horn
All that dies shall be reborn
Corn and grain, corn and grain
All that falls shall rise again.
Return of the Dragon Riders
(Image : The Golden Dragon, watercolours, SG ’05)
At the Sanctuary, we love Dragons.
So…why Dragons? Why not Winged Lions or Unicorns?
Well, in our case it is because Dragons represent the fiery spiritual energy found at the heart of our Grail quest.
Thinking of Dragons as mere fantasy, a product of imagination solely (that is = unreal), is to miss the point, entirely.
Have a look at the number of websites in the Innernet which have pictures and stories about Dragons, it´s fascinating.
Dragons represent the energies of our untamed spirit. We know we need them. Without our dragons, we are not complete.
As we become dedicated as “world servers”, one of the very first trainings that is offered to us – if we are willing to do that – is to become able to “ride our dragons”, whether it be the black dragon of fear, the golden dragon of love, the red dragon of anger – or the craziest of them all : the great rainbow dragon of fighting for the good in the world.
Dragons of the Elements, Fire, Water, Air, Earth; red, blue, white or brown; however you see it, metaphorically or concretely, in this core group team we think of ourselves as Dragon Riders.
Not easily thrown, sure of foot and hand, completely peace-full, yet breathing fire through our scaly mounts.
Also, hehehe, it pleases me that dragons have a bad name, like all interesting things that have been repressed in the Barbie&Ken society. There is a Spanish saying : “Nice girls go to heaven, and bad girls go EVERYWHERE”! I love that saying…
The older I get the more outrageous I seem to like to be. Friggin´ conditioning, GET thee out of my mind!…
Dragons are not pretty, and they can be awfully sarcastic, spewing amber vinegar fire like no other being can!
All in all, interesting friends.
The Dragons will return, you know.
With their Riders, sure-footed, golden-hearted and with shiny eyes, you´ll see.
And they will protect the Earth.
The Imaginal
(Image : Dare to be who you were really meant to be, altered greeting card, SG, ‘ 07)
Art as a spiritual Path.
In the modern world Art and the spiritual Path have usually been considered as rather different domains. Not so for me. And not so for the Ancients.
Art – which is the work of the Lady Imagination – and Spirituality, which has everything to do with the Lady Intuition, come from the same Court : the court of the Sun King, the real Self.
The so-called Otherworld, in my definition, is the world of Lady Imagination, not a “parallel world”, not a different dimension.The Druid “Otherworld” is the world of the imaginal. Not a different dimension. Do you understand the vast consequences of this realization? The word “imaginal” comes from “imago”, an “imago” in psychoanalytic terms means an inner image that we have formed in early childhood (of a loved one, usually a parent) and that remains unchanged throughout our life. See? We carry “images” around, shelved in our brain(s), and these images, most of the time, determine our destiny. And that, my dearest friends, is the important point : they *determine* our destiny.
Wouldn´t it be interesting if we could actually *manifest* these “images”, actualize them, and even change them if they are not what we need them to be? This is quite possible. This is the function of –A-R-T, as I see it. Get all those “imagos” onto paper, and see who you really are! Or, more precisely, what the Matrix has done with the Original You…Then, change it! Because, you are the Creator, and you can define the images that you carry around.
Working with the energy of creativity (which is a very real divine attribute) places these two forces, Lady Imagination and Lady Intuition, in their rightful place on each side of the Sun King, the Self, in the inner Court of the Soul. And since we have even lost the inkling that we are really part of this Court, (or maybe nobody ever told us), the brillance, the sheer wonders that these two Ladies bring to the world show us the Royal Path to the center of who and what we really are : a spiritual Being of untold and undiscovered magnitude.
There are indeed historical (and many hysterical!) reasons of why we have lost the Path, why we have all been thrown off our spiritual heritage, and these reasons can and should be studied. The future of our race and of the whole planet may depend on it. There is no other way if we want to prevent utter destruction : we have to actualize our inner images.
The Scare Crone
Elderwoman, Protect the fields
Elderwoman, Paint the sky blue
And deep purple and pink.
Elderwoman, Wash the black skies away
Elderwoman, Protect us from the darknesses
from the madnesses, from the crazy dawgs.
May you forever live in our blood,
Bold and free, And easy
And sparkling ruby-red.
May we become You one day,
And in the eternal turning of the stars,
Like you do,
May we learn to protect the sacred earth.
Elderwoman, Rise in us the wild crones,
Rise through us,
For we are the grandmothers,
The women who have survived.
(Book of Shadows III)
Art as Magic
(Image : Art Journal, SG 2009)
I am in the process of creating my own School, (Druidry and Ecopsychology), and I want art to be a priority in the School´s curriculum, this is very important to me. Where people cannot *think*, they can usually draw, or do collage or other easy stuff, and the results are almost always amazing.
I´m not interested in art for art´s sake, my own brand is more adventurous, and less conventional. I have called it “soul-connected art”, and that is exactly what I mean.
A friend has expressed her opinion of my point of view so well, in answer to an e-mail of mine in one of the art groups I´m participating in, that I will just copy what she said :
“I think you defined what art means to you very well indeed.And I also think it will be fairly easy to integrate art into your School of Psychosynthesis. Almost all of the things/styles/ projects you do, and the things we’ve done in the various groups, can be used as tools to help the people who come to you develop and deepen their insight into self and connectedness, whether it be handmade art journals, soulcards, spirit dolls, painting, altered books, objects, or any of the many other things. Like you, I think art can and should be an integral part of your curriculum, because both the process and the product are important to self-actualisation and a path to empowerment. I’ve found that many people have been brought up to consume art, but what they need to learn is how to create art and through that to communicate who and what they are, what they may be, first to themselves and then to others.”
That is it, in a nutshell. My friend calls this “art-ing”, art as a verb – and I also see it that way : art as a verb, a living energy that moves, a process, not as a dead “thing”, not as an end-product. My joy is to see other people ex-press themselves, giving a voice, a visible space to the wonderful images that they carry inside.
Art, in our Druid School, has to do with the Bards, of course. As Ecopsychology has to do with the Ovates, and Psychosynthesis with the Druids.
I´ll keep you informed on SYNERGY´s progress, we want to take it step by secure step.
Mother of Sorrow
(Image : The Cailleach, Mika, acrylics, 09)
…The mountains are clothed in ochres, reds, and glowing yellows, and the Cailleach is roaming the land again.
This morning I heard a strange hooting laughter as I walked the woods, and the morning mists are hiding autumn´s mysteries.
Oh Mother of Sorrow, Mother of the shadows, Mother of the fallen leaves, of felled trees and rotting trunks, accept in your compassionate cauldron all that is now broken. Embrace the dead in their journey to the Light, speed them on towards the Light, and in your sweet compassion, wrap in your dark veils those that are left behind.
Mother of the ferns, your beauty, though hidden under your rags, touches my heart as no other being can.
Hurly-burly
(Image : Hidden Treasure, collage work, SG, 05)
…I´m whirling about with Samhain energies, and taking Findhorn Flower Essences (Transformation, lol). Don´t know that they do what they say in the leaflet, but a little bit of brandy sure settles my heart, lol.
Some things in my life are now withering, are quite limp and lifeless, so they are going directly into the Cauldron of the Goddess, for Her to dissolve and compost.
Some other things are in the middle of a dance of transformation, and I cannot recognize what is happening. So I just breathe deep, feeling woozy…
Some things are long dead, and so Tzass! chuck out, no second thoughts.
And then, there are the sore spots that still smart a bit. It´s been an intense year, so I´m kind of nursing the sore spots, not yet ready to let them go.
It´s Samhain again, this blog is just a year old, and the Cailleach is rattling the ole bones at me!
Pah. Not afraid. I am so close to being a Cailleach myself…
PS.- Am a Druid grad at OBOD now, too. And got me a dragon tattoo, a big one, right on my forearm.
What??? Not elegant ? Hahaha! I told them: I´m the right age, no regrets.
Angel Mandalas
(Image : Angel Mandala, SG, 09)
…Finished my Module 3 of Diana Cooper´s Angel Correspondence Course. And no, I haven´t gone gaga, for me angels are bits of our potential energy that we cannot recognize yet as our own, so it´s nice to know more about the flying armada, lol. Been involved with the angelical Hierarchy, and it´s been really nice, from Baby Alex as Little Angel, to the Archangel Michael and His companions, lots and lots of material for me as an artist. I was really inspired to draw some magnificent Mandalas.
Also, I have finished my OBOD Course, and am “officially” a Druid grad now. It´s been a lot – a LOT - of work, and very intense, for four years (not to mention the twenty years before joining OBOD, which were my real Training as a Druid). So now I have to think about the next step. I feel a bit disoriented without the Gwersu (OBOD monographies).
Anyway-s, this is Samhain, and I´m sorting stuff, as I told you.
…Have to think ´bout this blog too. Happy Birthday, blog, you´re one year old now! (And you have travelled a lot!…)
Love and Blessings Most Bright to all readers,
The Lady Dragon.
(PS.- Yup, next blog I hope will be a picture of my new dragon tattoo. Have to stop Mika in her tracks, she´s the one with the super camera and is up and down the stairs preparing for a visit from England.)
Where´s the dishwasher?
(Image : Jill, that´s the dragon tattoo I got, only more beautiful! I´ll try to get a pic of my arm )
…A friend who visited us from the Netherlands offered to wash the dishes after lunch, and when she came to our kitchen, she said “Where´s your dishwasher?”
I said : “Here I am, I am the dishwasher here!”
Her mouth fell slightly. Errr…you…always do it like that ?
Yeeess, “like that”, with my pretty wrinkled hands in cold water in summer and (blessedly) warm water in winter, and I do actually rather enjoy it!
Whoa. The lady was speechless.
Ah well, *sigh*. Seems we don´t go with progress, we still insist on our simple ways (hahaha). Nah, we don´t need a dishwasher of the mechanical type. Now if you would present us with a George Clooney type of dish washer, maybe…maybe…;-)
Eat your heart out, folks!
(Image : The Earth Sanctuary, Samhain 2009)
…I finally graduated from my OBOD Correspondence Course, after four years of intense Journeying!…Got the prettiest paper to vouch for it, all Celtic whirls and knotwork, and real red wax seals! *sigh*
Now my Journey as a Druid really begins. Got the rest of my life to walk my talk.
Real Druids in a real world
(Image : Panoramix, the archetypal image of a Druid, lol)
…I am fascinated by the Search Engine Terms that appear on my blog´s stats page. And quite fascinated too by how this blog comes up in various searches. Some of the search terms come so close to what this blog is, and what my life and this Project I´m participating in are, like …Wizard of the Green Fire, How to become a Druid in the real world…and today…Rebellious Sanctuary, that I feel like jumping up and down (with a Druid flag!…) “We´re here! We´re here!” Hahaha. The mad mad and astonishing magic of the Internet!…
I´m interested because behind each of these searches there might be a person looking for something, a person in a quest, the Net being like a Highway of the Wyrd…;-) How do you become a real Druid in the real world? That´s a good one! So many circumstances shape a destiny that there is really no one answer, a real Druid´s training is very, very long. And you start with statements like this (that I read in one of Jean Markale´s books about the Celts) : “There are no real Druids anymore, their sacred language is dead and lost, the Celts have disappeared under tons of pseudo-Christian ruins and wreckage”, and I myself would add : there is not one chance in Hel (Hel= the Celtic Underworld) that you will become a *real* Druid…”, and even less in the “real” world of po-mo. Wow. Thank you very much.
But the advice is priceless. This is the real deal, the down-to-its-brass-tacks deal, about Druidry: there are no “real” Druids anymore. Those that gambol about in long white robes are living a fantasy (at best) and good luck to them, I have no problem with that. To each her own. Lol.
So. Why – again – do I call myself a Druid? And not, say, an environmentalist, or a psychotherapist, or an artist. Well, you see, I am a healer and a politician (in esoteric terms) and an artist. At the same time. Twenty-two years of hard training in these three spheres entitle me to say that I know a bit about what I am doing. So I actually choose to call myself a Druid (apart from the hard fact that I actually am a Druid grad of OBOD now, a Druid Associate, or a Druid Companion). That means, to me, that I can work with Bards (art, writing, poetry, music), and with Ovates (ecopsychology), and even with Druids – *gasp* - (psychosynthesis and Dharma quest). The Druids of old worked on these three levels at the same time, it was part of who they were in their society, a function which has completely disappeared, and which, by chance and destiny, I am called to restore.
Actually, to tell you the truth, I am the Panoramix of the Earth Sanctuary ( …see what I mean?) Get the mead horn on the table, and start the music!…And for Cernunnos´s sake, SHUT THAT BARD UP! Hahaha
Happy Halloween
(Image : Spirit of Halloween, SG, 31.10.09, collage on cardboard.)
A happy Halloween, everybody! My blessings for this night of the “thinning of the veil”…
Have fun!
Wild wo/man
(Image : Wild man, soul card 134, collage on paper, SG, ’09)
No, I do not believe that there once was a stage of pure innocence for our species. I don´t believe in the innocent Wild Man. I think we have never, ever, been that civilized, even with wars, and the nuclear threat and crazy laboratory viruses frolicking about. (Try the Great Plague, and see if you like it!)
I believe in unfettering our heart, and that would be a real wildness! Just imagine, an entirely new world based on the heart, on compassion (=passion with), on helping each other, and sustaining each other, across borders, right across the continents, and if this sounds very lame to you, try being a homeless person on the streets of any poor barrio in any big city of the world!…And the old Druids were not an exception, they killed people in the most horrible ritual ways (OK, OK, we don´t have any proof ´bout that, don´t spit at me!) And if you think that the word “heart” is a very ”feminine” thing to say, you´re very wrong, my friend, I think that a wild heart is the absolute prerequisite nowadays for a man to be attractive and sexy to any contemporary female witch (of any age, and that includes me!). A wild heart smells good, hahaha!
…There is a wild light hidden somewhere in us human beings, and I think when we discover that, I mean when we discover that collectively, as a species, we´ll have made the greatest discovery of all times. There will be nothing to stop us ever again. And then, maybe our cousins from the Stars will finally reveal themselves to us, and we´ll make it, out of breath but proudly, to the Galactic Council…
Naaah…just kiddin´! (About the Galactic Council stuff, not about the untamed wilderness of my own heart…)
My beloved Nwyfre
(Image : The Dragon Nwyfre and Star of Erendil tattoo, September 09)
…Spain has a very clear idea of how a woman “of my age” should go about. Clipped (tinted) hair, no-nonsense shoes, dark clothes, – or high heels and lots and lots of make-up for po-mo grannies, depending on the social class you belong to. (The lower, the less make up is tolerated, and in any case you also have to wear some gold, otherwise they will make you feel that you have been a failure as a woman!) The right mix is between “not-sexy” and “gone to seed”, meaning “not dangerous, not a woman anymore”. Oh yes, such are things around here!…Very primitive, sometimes. Won´t tell you how they treat post-menopausal beings…Doctors, nurses, dentists, the “healing” profession, they treat you as if you were underage and slightly gaga. (That is if you are not wearing gold, in which case, they do start to treat you as a potential human being, even addressing you by your first name.) Whoah. Mmm… I walk around with yesteryear´s Nikes, natural hair (love the few white ones!), and a big tattoo on my forearm.
Told Mika : Did you see how the salesgirl looked at the tattoo?
Mika : Yeah, yeah, – that, and your dragon eyes!!
Other salesgirl : “Hey, nice sticker you got there!” (Me, thinking: It´s not a sticker, you… Bambi, they etched it into my skin with a needle!) Nice middle-aged smile, showing off my wrinkles…hahaha, very funny!
(Well, yes, I still put on my war paint every morning, can´t be too cautious, I don´t feel dressed without Kajal eyes!)
;-)
The ranting grandmother
(Image : Last Ray of Hope, collage on cardboard, SG 08)
…The image that people have of Druids is usually of white-bearded old men, doddering through the forest, with laurel in their long hair and a golden sickle to gather mistletoe or, more likely, to open the heart of a beautiful and willing virgin (I mean, litterally). Ridiculous. Truly, it´s time to do away with the cobwebs!
When I say that I am a Druid, I get this weird look, and then the question… Aaaah…Do you…err…cut mistletoe with a golden sickle, at midnight on full moons? *discreet chuckle,chukle* …Well, I can´t really see you doing that! Although …with you, one never knows…*more cackle*
Well, no. I don´t waltz through the trees in a white robe on dark nights, with wolves howling at my heels. Though…mmm…I like the image.
You might see my involvement with Druidry as an ecopsychological stance. In my opinion it is urgent that we try to get to understand – to “grok” – the planet that we infest, lol. To understand, we have to observe. To observe we have to dedicate time and energy. To dedicate time and energy, we have to set priorities. And yes, for me, being with Nature, understanding Nature, including and first of all my very own inner one, wholeheartedly, is a priority.
What prompted my rant today? I just read an article saying that if we go on with our habits of consumption we will need another planet by 2030. That´s in 22 years. My grand´son will not even be 25, and the planet will be in such a disastrous state that we will probably have gone back to the caves(if we get to 2030, that is). Not a very nice perspective, to say the least.
I am a woman, I am a grand´mother, and I am a Druid. I will speak for the trees (and for my unborn grandchildren, unto the seventh generation…). And no, I will not put on white robes – I will just be myself, jeans, a sweatshirt and my good old walking shoes. Have you hugged a tree, lately?
Damn it, is everyone sleeping???
PS.- Yeah, I have looked up the word consumption, and it means exactly what I want to say : the act of consuming, as by use, decay, or destruction, Pathology : progressive wasting of the body.
Yeah, yeah.
Double
Druidry and Tarot
…The office of the Sanctuary has received a rather nasty e-mail, asking why I would stoop so low, as a spiritual coach, as to use Tarot and Druidry as my tools in my work with people. The mail ended on the note of… ”and since you are a so-called Druid, here I leave you playing with your potions and your enchantments!”… (Suspensive space).Wow. Really nasty.
I didn´t like the tone of the e-mail, but I must say that it started me thinking, both about my use of Tarot (I use Caitlin Matthew´s Arthurian Tarot deck) and my use of Druidry, and found that I have a few things to clear up for certain people I have known in the past. And maybe, at the same time, for certain new and current friends.
I am definitely not using Druidry as a role-playing PlayStation, and I´m not a fantasy druid, not “a” Druid, I am a Druid Graduate of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, UK. I don´t claim any superior or mysterious knowledge or powers, but I do stand for having finished said Course (OBOD), and that has been four years of very intense innner Journeying. I am most definitely not using Tarot as do the mercantile channelers and seers that you find in some magazines. (If that was the meaning of the e-mail.)
Tarot is a very old tool for self-knowledge, and its archetypes most useful in any personal journey, when you want to know your place in the grand scheme of things (in our western civilization, since it is mostly a tool in Western esotericism). Astrology would be another, for example, though I do not agree that stars can have a psychological effect on the human soul. (That´s just my opinion, please respect it for whatever it is worth).
I use Tarot in my personal journey, but have never, ever, used it for another person (not even family), since I think that our Quest for our very own personal Dharma (the Path of Individuation, as Jung described it), can only be that : personal. I do not believe in seers, and I do not believe that anyone except oneself is responsible for their destiny. I wouldn´t dare intervene between a person and their soul journey. Not my business, at all.
As for Druidry, I think that I explained elsewhere, that I am not much for rituals (except private ones), that I am not in any collective group except my heart family, and that my Druidry has a clear ecopsychological flavour: I am most concerned about the well-being of our planet, and about the well-being of all its inhabitants. So. No white robes, no mistletoe at midnight. No weird magic wavings at full moons, either.
I might have, certainly, talked about “potions and enchantments” somewhere in this blog, and it must have been as a hearty joke about people who see “Druids” as “super-power Merlins”, who – of course, do not exist in real life. My use of the image of Goscinny´s Panoramix – a few blogs below - was due to my sense of humour, as well as the frog right above. Hope I won´t be blamed for that.
Hope all is clear.
Good day.
It´s the connection, silly!
Hello, Friends.
Have been doing other things, out of the virtual world, because I have had problems with my computer.
Last week, it was Wuthering Heights-time again up our mountain, the autumn winds were howling through the house, and I could have knit socks for my daughter´s baby just waiting for the comp to click from one page to the other! (Actually, in-between pages I´m reading a Medieval thriller, Sovereign, by C.J. Sansom, it´s a fun and fascinating view on the Tudor times). I have been jumping out of my patient self quite a few times now, so we called a technician, and I´ll just take the week-end off to calm down. Hooray.
(I still don´t get it, though, they tell me (“they”,you know, the computer geniuses I have around me!)… “Oh, it must be the connection! It´s awfully windy outside!…” What connection ? What has the wind outside to do with the computer ? Aren´t the cables safe or…even worse, are they leaking? Are the cables leaking words ? Hahaha. ¿Or? Lol.)
Anyway, I´ll switch it off now, and let the professionals have a go at it…;-)
Ciao, see you on Monday, then..
Be well, be safe, be content.
The Alleluiah in my ears
(Image : Soul card 44, SG, 2007)
(I have taken this post out of the dungeons, sorry if you already read it, a year ago. Thought it might help some people.)
There is a constant ringing in my ears.
It is a medical condition known as tinnitus, or acufens. So, what is tinnitus ? (…)”Tinnitus can be perceived in one or both ears or in the head. It is usually described as a ringing noise, but in some patients it takes the form of a buzzing, hissing, humming, or whistling sound; or as ticking, clicking, roaring, “crickets,” tunes, songs, or beeping. It has also been described as a “whooshing” sound, as of wind or waves.” (Wikipedia).
I have the “refrigerator” kind of beeping sound, going on 24/7, even when I sleep. The first time it happened, I remember I was on my bed, and Ziiiiiiiiiiiiing!
It never stopped. That was twelve years ago.
The first month I thought I would go crazy, I wanted to get that thing OUT of my ears! I wanted the blessed silence again. I was not resigned AT ALL. I hated that noise with a frenzy! So I went to my lady medic, who told me in no uncertain terms : “You can´t cure it, you know. You will have to learn to live with it.” ….WHOT??? And then she added (smiling at my reaction), “Do you want me to recommend a psychotherapist?” Very funny. I am a psychotherapist, THANK you.
It´s been over ten years. And you know what, I actually learned to live with it! What a learning curve that was!… At first, I tried everything, white noise, music (walking around with earphones), yoga, meditation (which I was doing anyway). Then suddenly one day… I realized that I hadn´t really heard the ringing for several hours, though it was still there. And that gave me the key to my own sort of healing with the matter (though I now know that it is true that it cannot be cured) : I don´t listen to the noise anymore. It is just there, as a part of my daily symphony, with images, thoughts, the rushing of the blood, all that stuff that is happening in the body, every single second of the day. You CAN live with tinnitus, you know. Though that seems impossible at first. You won´t cure the damn thing, but you can flow WITH it.
Now every time I become conscious of the wooshing/buzzing/ticking “refrigerator”, I think of it as my own personal *Alleluiah” in celebration of LIFE. And then, blessedly, I forget about it. People do not even need to know, it doesn´t show at all. And yes, I DO sleep well, thank you. …
And so, what prompted me to write this entry ? What prompted me to “come out of the closet”, lol? Well, my daughter´s English boy-friend, Adam, who is living with us here in Spain, has an accent that I do not quite understand sometimes (He´s from Kent). So I have to make an extra effort to listen, and besides, the wooshing sometimes just drowns his words, and I find myself saying… “Sorry? Can you repeat that, please?” more than I would like. The young man, being extremely polite, doesnt seem to mind too much, – but…I feel a bit uncomfortable, so I wanted him to know “my secret” (The Alleluiah In My Ears, lol)…
To my fellow tinnitus sufferers, I really want to extend hope. You can and you will, someday, integrate this particularity, as you have integrated a few extra pounds or the wart on your nose. Doesn´t mean anything, and it certainly won´t keep you from enjoying your life.
Blessings!
The Lady in Lothlórien.
Snoozing time
(Image : Lord Lugh and Mrs Moon, spirit dolls, SG, 2005)
Hello, Friends!
Had a bout of flu and kept to my bed for two days, a nice way to have a holiday of sorts!…And free time for exercising the brain!
This blog is now a year old, and I feel that it´s time for the Wizard to do something else. So I´ll let the blog float in cyberspace for the moment, just as it is. In snoozing mode.
It´s been a great year blogging-wise, and I want to thank all my readers.
You´ve made my day…every day!
Blessings from a Green Space,
The Lady Dragon, about to have a nice winter catnap…
…Back to work!
(Image : The Coming World, collage on paper, SG 2004)
Whoah. Mika showed me two articles that jolted me awake!
I want to share them, they contain so much information about what we are really about, that I simply had to come back:
Theodore Roszak (Ecology : Eight Principles)
The Forsaken Garden (Nancy Riley, a must-read)
The Lady Dragon turns about in her lair, and turns and turns around and around, and settles down again, back to her winter snooze (…not guaranteed not to be interrupted again!)
Real Druids
(Image : Freedom, soul card 135, SG, 2009)
(Real Druids, my favourite topic!…)
People seem to think that being a Druid is some sort of a joke.
I´ll have you know that I studied a total of four intense years, on top of 22 years of learning about the management of big groups, and that these years were not only about academic subjects, but also about the state of the world and about my own inner spiritual Journey.
The Celtic part I had to learn afresh, that much is true, I had to learn many things like the Celtic names of the Wheel of the Year, Solstices & Equinoxes, lol, and a long etc. of Celtic concepts, among them the concept of the Anam Cara (soul friend) and the Ogham (a tree alphabet), for example. All the rest, apart from learning the Celtic name of a lot of things, lol, has been one big roller-coaster of experiences, inner and outer, one heck of an eco-psychological journey, since I investigated in depth about the psychological relationship of the human species (to which I belong, lol) to the natural world, (or rather its NON-relationship since it seems that we are destroying the world bit by bit), and about the why and the wherefore of things; the center of my investigation (why we destroy the world that sustains us) has been a wonderfully chaotic “learning curve”!
Besides, I need to state this again and again, I´m not “a Druid” (=a fantasy character), I´m a graduate of OBOD, (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, UK and worldwide), and OBOD, in my humble opinion, is a most serious matter. I have not been studying “Druidry” (no real Druids left, so everything is invented OR re-created, I agree with that, no problem!), I have been creating my own brand of Neo-Druidry, in the context of OBOD – which has more to do with ecology and psychology (transpersonal psychology) than with Celtic “g.o.d.s” and role-playing fantasies.
I´m not holding that OBOD is entirely free of fantasy, but I am saying that you certainly can create your own Path within the context of the Course, you are actually invited to do just that! What you bring to the Course is what you get at the end, and I certainly brought a lot of previous experiences to it when I started in 2004.
At this point I am creating a working synthesis between ecology (our group here maintains 108 acres of woods and four houses) and psychology (most concretely, psychosynthesis). My objective is to create a School, because I think that this is the Path of the Future, for many generations to come.
(There are three generations active and working together at the Earth Sanctuary).
Not bad, for a beginning. (A beginning after 30 years of studies should be something quite interesting, lol.)
Happy Alban Arthan!
Happy Winter Solstice, dear Friends.
And a very cosy X-mas Season. Be warm, be safe.
I´ll be on holiday (here, at home, lol) for two weeks now.
Wishing you a happy 2010!
(Image : New Art Journal, SG 2010)
Well, we got there, it´s 2010!…
A year of challenges for all, no doubt about that.
One of my New Year resolutions is to dedicate more time and energy to my artwork. So I created a new blog under the name of “Art as Metanoia: The Magickal Art Room”, which is where you will find me more often from now on.
In this blog I´ve said pretty much what I needed and wanted to say in 2009, so I´ll just let it float.
Our Project goes into the “Transition Movement” now, that is we are preparing as much as we possibly can for self-sufficiency and self-reliance in a culture that will at some time close become “post peak-oil”. For us that means a return to our concrete roots : live with the land, and as much as possible, off the land. It means preparing gardens, restore old ones, and re-skill : learn to make bread and preserves and all that our grand-mothers knew and that we forgot! First step, to buy a wood cooking stove! (And learn to use it.)
And be less in the Internet (good idea, ¿no?)
So I´m wishing you a very cool 2010, Dear Readers, I´ll be back some time around Imbolc to tell you all that we have realized re/Transition. Meanwhile, I´ll be uploading pics of my artwork at the other blog.
Blessings,
The Wizard.
The Prajnaparamita Sutra
(Image : A snowy day at the Sanctuary, MDG)
…I am re-reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters, by Gary Zukav – a little gem of a book about the New Physics.
Read this : (…)” The neutral K meson decays into a positive pi meson and a negative pi meson. The lambda particle, and this is the interesting part, decays into the original two particles (a negative pi meson and a proton!). It is as if we smash two toy automobiles together and instead of shattering into bits, they come apart into more toy automobiles, some of which are as large as the originals.
Subatomic particles forever partake of this unceasing dance of annihilation and creation. In fact subatomic particles are (author´s emphasis) this unceasing dance of annihilation and creation. This twentieth-century discovery, with all its psychedelic implications, is not a new concept. In fact, it is very similar to the way that much of the earth´s population, including the Hindus and the Buddhists, view their reality.
Hindu mythology is virtually a large-scale projection into the psychological realm of microscopic scientific discoveries. Hindu deities such as Shiva and Vishnu continually dance the creation and destruction of universes while the Buddhist image of the wheel of life symbolizes the unending process of birth, death, and rebirth which is a part of the world of form, which is emptiness, which is form.”
“…form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” (Prajaparamita Sutra, The Heart Sutra, Mahayana Buddhism).
Other extremely interesting books in the same line :
- The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra
- The Quantum self, Dana Zohar
- The Physics of Consciousness, Evan Harris Walker.
PS.- Every time the wind blows hard up at the Sanctuary, the lights go out, power lines go too, so no computer, no DVD, no warm water (the heater has gone too!), no nothing, lol, and I´m reduced to reading a book, in my bed (for warmth!) in the light of candles!… For others a nuisance, for me…heaven!
The Trees Are Not Looking At You!
(Image : The Book of Vivian and the Book of Merlin, OBOD, Druid Grade, SG 2008)
…How ever many projections you send out, seeing fairies and gnomes everywhere, elementals and whatnot, dryads and stuff, one thing is as sure as death (pun intended), and it is that when you are out there in the woods, the trees are not looking at you!
That is what is so wonderful about nature. Nature doesn´t judge, doesn´t plan, doesn´t really care about the human species, only if we get to be much of a nuisance (the case now!), in which case we will probably be swept from the planetary map at some time in the future, along with dinosaurs and the dodo! One day, there will be nobody to even notice the beauty (that is our task, ours, the human pest, lol). Indifferent to all our great schemings, Nature will go on and rebuild itself.
When you are seated at the foot of a tree, don´t ever think that the tree is looking at you. That is what is so restful about it all. No camera, no sly evaluation. Just a great peace, and a vibration that comes and goes and breathes from your relaxed heart.
Soil and Circumstances
(Image : Alex Little, one year old, MDG, 2010)
…If there ever was a First Law in the form of education, actually homeschooling, that I applied with my kids it is… The Art of Becoming a Remarkable Person.
I happen to think that all human beings from the President of any state to the last Pygmee in the African forest are remarkable persons. Have you ever thought about the value of a human life ?
The differences are “soil and circumstances”, but the “prime matter” is of the finest.
Isn´t it high enough time that we should apply this First Law to each other ? Over borders and continents?
Transition Mode at the Sanctuary
(Image : Biosphere 2030, MDG, 2009)
…Do you know about peak oil ? No? Well, you had better Google Wikipedia for it, otherwise it could be a rude awakening if you don´t!…
Do you know about the Transition Movement ? No? Same thing. (Have a look at Wikipedia, there are lots of Spanish websites, too).
We know about all that jazz, have been into it for a good number of years now, and are slowly changing the basic gears of our community to “go into transition” (=post peak-oil mode). Yes, we have been recycling for quite some time , but hey! it could become worse, and it´s later than we think.
The Sanctuary is quite litterally carbon-neutral (two cars and one van for 100 acres of woodland), which means that our trees give us more breathing space than what we waste with the cars. This last week we made the experiment of consciously writing down all the plastic stuff that comes out after shopping in a supermarket, and I mean all, well, my dears, just becoming totally conscious about this (and actually writing down every bit of plastic that we throw away, then thinking about alternatives), we have been able to spare 80 % of plastic trash in one week!
In the same way, we have been able to save 70% of supermarket shopping. We do not buy new furniture (what´s wrong about good second-hand?), are not travelling on planes, and haven´t had a real “holiday” for years. Why go to the Bahamas, or to the Seychelles, when we can have a “holy day” every single day just by going down to the vegetable garden ? (We bought this property as a group, as an investment for a sustainable future, and have gone through a long and sometimes painful process to really make this project a healthy alternative.)
OK, and we are now into Trash Art, recycling stuff into Artwork (like paper beads to make curtains made out of old magazines), baking our own bread (very symbolic), and planting our own vegetables. And we are planning to buy a good wood stove, as soon as possible.
We have wood in abundance for the fireplace, and lots of water (our own, fortunately).
All symbolic gestures and not much more than that, I know – but at least we are concretely and above all psychologically ”processing” the hard truths of our times!…
I would encourage you to start doing the same. Who knows? We might yet survive…(Not funny, I know).
PS.- Plus, we do have the methodology of the Psychology of Change, elaborated over two decades of group processing too (see Pages right-hand corner up the post), so at long last, we might even come in handy, seeing the sorry circumstances… If we want to survive the long night, lol, we will have to learn how to live together, after all.
Two must-see DVDs (At Amazon, no problem):
- The Age of Stupid, Why Didn´t we save ourselves when we had the chance, “Think “An Inconvenient Truth” but with a personality” (lol),
and…
- A Crude Awakening, The Oil Crash, Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, “We´re running out…and we don´t have a plan”.(Gulp.)
Both are eye-openers!…(Gulp again.)
Have fun, if you can.
The Mystical Experience
(Image : Soul card, SG, 2009)
“The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darknesses.” (N. Kazantzakis)
“God has no religion.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
…I had several deep mystical experiences from the age of 8 to the age of 30, “peak moments” as they came to be called in Humanistic Psychology; all of them, each one of them, changed my life in a profound way.
I´m over 60 now, so it took me at least 30 years to completely integrate what happened when I was younger.
The first difficulty, as one can imagine, is how to remain rooted in reality when one just had the realization with all one´s senses and with absolute certainty that one is a conscious part of what other people have been calling “God”. I never ever said that I was “God”, but I said that I was an awakened part of what people call “God”, the same as us all. You really get to have to make sense of what you´re saying, and that wasn´t easy. Fortunately for me the contents of the experiences and the Vision that I slowly acquired also showed me that there were ways to say what happened without offending anyone! My experiences never inflated the ego, as they so often do. The heart of the mystical experience is too beautiful to be mistaken for something that an ego could produce, that much was clear from the start.
After that, after having been shown the interconnectedness of all, of the Great Chain of LIFE, of which I was now a conscious link, I really studied hard to get a sense of normalcy again. Except for a certain dancing light in my eyes, I functioned in the most normal way. Being “enlightened”, as they say, is no guarantee for being a balanced human being. And it is so, point-blank right on the nose! Hard work on oneself does that. I understood that very early on. And I did work hard on the person that I also was.
The sense of awe and the certainty that “all-is-Light” never left me. But I came to understand what the experience meant in contrast to what we are being fed through “education”. I studied hard then to be, one day, able to help others out of the dark tunnel of ignorance.
I also learned – sometimes quite painfully – that not everyone wants to hear the good news.
All in all, and with all, my life was changed forever and the more I understood, the more my view of the human plight changed, became more precise, more defined. The process of enlightenment is a gradual one, a continuous one, though the experience itself is more like a flash, out of time. If you think that it is a “wambam thank you m´am!” (lol)type of thing and you´re done, no, that´s not it at all. It is a long process of becoming more and more able to contain the Light, and to reflect it in a safe way. Progressively all functions align to the inner Light, until you are completely “normal” again, and seen as normal by others. The difference is just that you are being awake where most people seem to be fast asleep. This sleep being an illusion, as I learned going through the process of becoming a guide.
Enlightenment, my dears, is the basis of the normal human state of affairs, so you can measure how far we have strayed, as a species, from Home.
Ya-Ya
(Image : Alex Little, one year old, MDG, 2010)
Note : Ya-Ya means Granny in colloquial Spanish.
It goes something like this…I call my daughter on her cell phone, and Alex responds…
- Bonjour, Alex. It´s me. La Ya-Ya de la gallinas (the granny of the chicken coop, a very fresh discovery) How are you ?
Comes a small lilting voice, but with a very precise lilt, like an early imitation of grown-up language…
- Ya-Ya? Ya-Ya-ah! Deh-deh-deh-deh-deh-deh-dhe…
- Hello, my little heart. And how are you today?
- Ya-YA! Ya-YA! Ghe-ghe-ghe-ghe-ghe-ghe-ghe!…
(OK, not a poem from Aristoteles, but hey, it makes sense, at least to this ya-ya!)
- Yes, my love. Now we come for you. Let´s go to the beach. Would you like that ?
- Ya-Ya! Ya-Ya! Bah-bah – mahhhhhhhh…(=más/more/yes)…
And a piercing scream…Screeeeeeeech!!!
My daughter´s voice :
- Mum? Can you call me back now? He doesn´t want to let go of the phone!…
Aaaah. To be loved by a one-year old (who looks like Leo di Caprio, but the tinier version!)
Our daily bread
(Image : Mika´s wholegrain bread)
It´s been a month and a half since we last bought bread! Look at the pic, that is Mika´s work. She also makes yoghurt now. What with nuts and vegetables from the garden, herbs and fruit, and eggs from our very own chicken coop, olive oil and meat from the village, we now have the basics to survive. Not that the diet wouldn´t become boring rather quickly, but as for basics, we don´t depend on supermarkets. OK, OK, we still need the grain and the milk, but one step at a time…We still have reduced our plastic waste by 80%, and shopping at the supermarket by 70 %. A very nice result as we see it.
And psychologically, a very interesting experience…
We´re going deeper into transition.
Spirit Books
…After all, I´m not really sure that I want to separate my Art blog from my Druid blog! Doesn´t make much sense since my art is weaved into my daily life in such an intimate way that it doesn´t really need a different space.
For example, I´ve started creating Spirit Books What are they ? Well, they are books with a story that is invisible to the physical eyes. Besides, every reader of the “book” changes the story. Some turn the empty pages quickly and seem to understand what the book is about; some need more time until the story of the book, which is, of course, a Spirit story, occurs to them. Some like the object itself, just to look at, because they feel that ”the medium is the message”!
And some would love to use it as a “book of shadows”, a book where Bards, Ovates and Druids alike record their visions, recipes, rituals, intuitions…and understandings.(But I won´t sell them.)
Anyway, this is my first try!
See if you like it,OK?
Baby Yoga
…OK, so I am being 150% partial, it´s my first grandson after all. But doesn´t he just look as if he was doing Yoga?
(Pic taken by his Mom, my daughter, who, of course, is entirely partial too!)
Absolute luxury!
“I had been complaining about my shoes, until I saw someone without feet.”
(Anon?)
(Image : Angel 1, Working with the angels of colour, SG, 2009)
Luxury is really relative. For someone who hasn´t even got water, a running faucet is a miracle. For someone who hasn´t got a car, whatever has a motor and you can be seated and go somewhere is luxury.
I´m in art heaven : today I could buy a new box of watercolors!…
*deep sigh*
Mmm…Yodini?
One of my dear Readers asked for a pic of this author, (…whatever for?), so I thought, what the heck, why not?
So here you are…
…May the Force be with you! …
…Playing brainZzz tennis!
(Images : New ArtDeco Journal, SG ’10)
…In reference to journalling, I have to say that I´m having a ball with covers and backgrounds, splashing and sewing, adding embellishments and wools and what not (even little bells), generally and blissfully covering white pages! But then, to my alarm, I can´t seem to write anything in my journals. Do I have chronic writer´s block ?
I try to wriggle out of this saying that… what a bore writing about things that are living events, isn´t it a little like nailing down butterflies ??? …Anyway, yesterday I sat down with a nice cup of English tea, and prepared myself to finally WRITE words on my pages.
Don´t misunderstand me : I love words. Words such as ……incandescent, exiguous, gregarious, preposterous… to me, they are like so many little squares of loukoum, sugary and perfumed, that roll around the tongue like so many…err…translucent ?… pearls…
So I tried to evoke whole sentences, and strangely enough, they came in French (which is my mother-tongue), entire packages of very well envelopped archetypal thought that my left brain (the reasoning one) threw to the right-hand side (the artistic one). Things like …”Sommes-nous damnés pour toujours à ne pas pouvoir oublier notre enfance?” (Are we forever damned not to be able to forget our childhood?), and… “Je n’ai pas toujours envie de rire” (I don´t always feel like laughing), and the rather scanty… “Mon voyage n’est pas terminé” (My journey is not over), all of which had me rather puzzled, until I wrote them down on a coloured background, and then they suddenly made a lot of sense!…
I think my brainZzzz (two of them, at least, did you know that we have at least four?)are playing tennis over the corpus callosum!…
That was fun. Can´t wait to do it again!…
Beware : …Eyecandy!
…I think that I didn´t show you my latest art project : paper beads curtains?
This is the one that I finished yesterday for the entry to my rooms in Merlin´s Tower (something to sweeten old Merlin´s eyesight, LOL).
I think that they rather look like marshmallows, don´t you ?! They´re beads made with old magazines! I also made the round beads, which are of painted clay.
Wishing you a Happy Easter 2010!
…Don´t know what´s all the hoola-baloo ´bout Spring, gosh, all this activity everywhere, it tires me no end! Hahaha
The bees are busy, as in beez-beez-beez-beez-y, the flowers are all coming out with a celebration, and the plants and the birds are chirping away (…The plants ? chirping?, yeah, can´t you hear them ?) - the river is singin´, and I feel like a handkerchief that was kept too long in the dark of some god-forsaken pocket! I have to…un-FOLD, you understand??…I have to iron myself out!…
Anyway, I´m busy too, actually, with a new journal, in which I will try to record my origins – it´s good to recapitulate one´s life, so as to have a sense of synthesis, coherence and harmony, after all, what with all the ups and downs, and turn-arounds…!
(At my age it´s good to recapitulate, wow, with the mountains that I see in the distance, that I still have to climb, better to know what I got in my knapsack!…). (Anything, but lipstick, lol.)
The Artist Within
I have created a new space in the OBOD Ning.com group, called The Artist Within, in which I share my art experiments and discoveries with other members. This space is exclusively for OBOD members, since it is really a sort of social network of people who are journeying through the Course. Since the OBOD Course is divided in three parts, Bards, Ovates, and Druids, – and the first Grade is almost all about discovering, or re-discovering, the Artist inside, I thought it would be useful to give some clues to would-be artists, most of them not professionals, on how to develop the flow of Awen in themselves.
My last post was about Prompt Cards. (The next one will be about ATCs – Artist Trading Cards, of which I have made just about 6000 in six years! Lol.)
My prompt cards are poker cards which I collage or paint for when the Flow of Awen (Awen = intuition, inspiration) is a bit sluggish (not usually the case!…), I get my cards out, choose a random one, and follow its hint. Here you have a photo of the last six cards I made yesterday for the Ning group.
Hecate, and all that jazz!
(Image : Autoportrait surréaliste, SG April 2010)
…Have started a new Art Journal to explore the tricky passage that I am going through as a woman, I´m definitely a crone now, but you see, I don´t really feel like one.I wonder how many women feel the same way ? I don´t have a clue of how I´m supposed to feel, though I know that I am supposed to feel something, some things, and I dont – repeat: don´t – agree with those things one bit! And I see the desperate efforts of some other women to cling to the last remnants of their youth, like clinging to worthless rags… I swore to myself that I would not be like them!…
I don´t feel “my age”, I don´t really look “my age”, I´m the same “me” as before, and yet there are subtle changes that I do acknowledge. I cannot run as fast, I have wrinkles, sometimes my teeth are hurting (lol), and I´m certainly not as slim as I once was (never been “slim, so what?)
Actually, I feel strong, ready for battle, full of creative juices- and quite determined to help the next generation as the brand-new challenges of climate change and the need for deep change arise in their young lives. I´m a weathered veteran really. Veteran, as in skilled,steady, adept, expert, versed and practical. (Courtesy of Dictionary, com, lol).
PS.- The Spanish say “Don´t you have a grand´mother?” when someone throws compliments at themselves (which is a grandmotherly task, as we all know).
Well, no. I don´t have a grandmother anymore. I am my own grand-mother (on my passport only).
Elderwoman
(Image : Autoportrait surréaliste, art journal, SG, ’10)
“Happiness is not a destination. Happiness is a wonderful corollary of being on the right path.”
The Blessed Anon (Anon-ymous).
…Can´t believe that ten years have passed since menopause! I´m perfectly OK, but oh Goddess have I changed! I´m no longer the Mom that I was, now I´m a friend of my daughters (a darn good one at that!); I´m no longer the “goddess of love” that I was (thank the Goddess too, that struggle is finally over, lol!) – but strangely enough, I feel closer to who I was before I became an adult. I feel much, much closer to the Inner Child, the luminous Mabon archetype. When I laugh, I don´t laugh prettily, and when I cry I cry for all human beings. The older I get, the more universal I become. I would define myself as “a grandmother for humanity” now. Watching “my baby” with all the awareness and love contained in my heart.
Ten years back, they (books, friends, etc) advised me : when Lady Menopause knocks at your door, either you are “clean” (OK with your past), or all the ghosts will come running back! All the unfinished business, all the negative energies, all the shit. Menopause is one grand opportunity to get clear before the Universe!…Yup, and that´s how it was. And I worked my way through it all, patiently, sometimes it was hard, sometimes it was funny, sometimes it was heartbreaking, and sometimes it was outrageous (like when I decided to get my first tattoo at 63, and the tattoo man couldn´t help smiling at my enthusiasm!). Looking back, it was relatively easy, and not one “hot flashes” spell! I didn´t even go to see a doctor, (if you have any doubt about your health, don´t do that, I must have been crazy, lol). Not a one. Just some wild heart beating at times (the hormones, I suppose), in the beginning, and then some pain in my joints, some more wrinkles. My creative spirit soared! I immediately ”grokked” it that this was the central point in this menopause business : to allow the creative spirit to go from creating new life (or the opportunity of it, every month) to actually being this creative spirit all the time!
I never had any problem with my womanhood, so no negative ghosts reared their ugly head. It was just one long process of slow change until now, when I finally acknowledge that I have become what some feminists call “a crone”. I don´t really like this word, it makes me feel old, and I´m not ”old” (…that will be the next ten years? Hahaha). I prefer to say “wisewoman”, or “elderwoman”. I look at my daughters (27 and 31) and at my grandson (1), and I feel for them, – I´m finally out of a long archetypal tunnel, hooray, it is finally over, this constant battling with stereotypes! OK, I don´t like my “love handles” too much, but that´s because I have a “couch potato” vocation, my idea of “relax” being sitting with my feet up, a nice cup of coffee (a definite “no-no” for menopausal women, but who cares?), and maybe a chocolate bun.
My eyes are changing, it´s as if they were looking into the inner world most of the time…I care a lot less about what´s happening “outside” me (excepting Climate Change, and stuff of that nature), and I care a lot less about how I look to others. (I still put on my “war paint”, though, they say I have a “piercing look”, hahaha, and I enjoy enhancing that!…But just a dark line around my green eyes…mmm? No powder, no “foundation”, no perfume, commercially I would put beauty parlors out of business!)
I´m not reacting as fast to what is happening around me, I enjoy looking at the grass “growing by itself” a lot more, as I enjoy riding in the car instead of walking or running. There, I confessed. Oh and another confession, it hurts a bit when I see that my jawline is slacker in photographs from up close than before (though the said jaw itself is perfectly functional, lol), but then, hey! my model is Margaret Rutherford (Miss Marple) not Demi Moore, so I´ve still a long way to go…
Apart from these changes, I´m still the same zany person, and yes, outrageously young. In this case, young meaning vital, movable, moving, moved, in one word : dancing, see? Plus, I´m still practising beginner´s mind, except in those situations where a more mature outlook is needed, and then oh Goddess can I be mature!…
So, my two cents of wisdom re/menopause to all of you lovely gals out there going through the Change : trust yourself, be true to yourself, and you´ll be just fine, even with hot flashes and aching joints (coffee is a no-no, remember that!), the last best part of your life is expecting you, no bullshit. I did it.
Becoming a Legend…
Just so you see what I mean in my preceding post…The lady on the left is Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, both Miss Marple and Dame Margaret being legends, and dear models of mine as I go through my post-menopausal years. The image on the right is me, recently, retouched with a heatmap design and nothing more, bwahahaha (so appropriate!)…Yes, well, I still have a long way to go to be like The Legends, but I´m getting there, day by day, …from the feet up!…
Yeah, I know, I look a lot tenser than Miss Marple, I look weird (even without the heatmap thingie), but that´s because I try to control the damn jawline! See what I mean ? I would prefer to let go, and am not able to, yet. Anyway, did Miss Marple worry about her looks, or didn´t she ? We´ll never know.
;-)
Madame Mim and Native Americans
The little Mademoiselle on the left is me, aged three (I think), the photo in the middle is me, 60 years later, and the drawings (not mine!) are of Madame Mim, of Walt Disney fame.
Madame Mim is of course another funny archetype with which I have worked. She is the zany side of me, the “animated” Miss Marple in me. I love her dearly.
…The two comments on yesterday´s post don´t sound odd to me : I have a very keen inner relationship with the cosmos of Native Americans. Being such a nut about Ecopsychology (= the relationship of Humankind with Nature), I have this same…errr…sort of disinterested (questing ?) look on the Crazy White Man (the photographer)? Lol.The “heatmap” tech thingie and the colours no doubt emphasize the perception, but the energy is there, that´s true. It´s the Warrior of Shamballa in me that comes to the foreground through the “heatmap” thing. And yes, it´s the very same picture! (See how you can play?)
I am working in a journal with the original picture, in all sorts of nutty ways. What looks Native American can also look very ladylike with another option of the same programme. I´m working with all options, including an Andy Warhol-like pop painting type of collage.
Psychosynthesis calls these aspects of oneself “subpersonalities”, or “subs” (lol). All of us have lots of facets, and PS gives us the tools to make a true Mandala out of all of them, so that we can see that they are all fragments of the same Self, each semi-detached piece being a path in itself towards “center”. Some of these fragments are quite independent from the central ego-structure (what we generally call “me”), for example the Shadow realm on one “side” or on one hand, and then the spiritual side of our basic nature on the other.Very often these two aspects are not contained within the ego structure, and are “projected” onto other people. PS is the Path to reclaim all these projected aspects of ourselves (of our selves) and bring them into harmony, “owning” them, maybe for the first time in our life.
I think that PS, or any Path that practices “soul retrieval”, is especially good for ladies of “our age” (mmm…) because in a way our lives are behind us, we have already made our choices, and lived through the consequences, for good or for bad. At least that was my experience when I worked for my PS diploma with Will Parfitt (you´ll find a link on the side).
So yes, thank you, Susannah and Jill, I really appreciated the sharing of your perception.
Going global
(Image : Children of Gaia, soul card, collage on paper, SG, 2005)
“Think globally, Act locally.”
New Age (so-called New Age) people sometimes, often, forget the second part. I have found that my real way of “going global” is to celebrate the land under my feet and around me. I don´t think of the Sanctuary as Catalan, though Catalans would most probably disagree, lol, and hit me over the head.
The land around me is part of Her, Gaia, the planet, our Home.
These are Gaian trees, I´m a planetary citizen, we are Humankind, Children of Gaia. It doesn´t look like it, but we are One Family. Oh how far away we are, as a species, from reality: we have to work from the ground up, not from the clouds down!…
We are, all of us, planetary citizens, – as long as we do not forget the real trees, the real land, this concrete Project lives in Spain, no doubt about it; though Catalans will scream bloody murder, it is so, even for them.
There´s a process, a whole personal development, a Path, pathworking, between “I´m Swiss” and “I´m a Gaian”, and let me tell you, it´s no easy Path, though we can board a plane to Bali any moment, even at low cost!…
What a stupid arrogant species we are when we are perverted by our collective past. The dark cloud from Iceland has downed thousands of flights, and I don´t want to think about the volcano rageing beneath Yellowstone Park, which could erupt any time! Lordy, are we arrogant or what!
The more I hug my own trees, appreciating them more because I know the pain I had to go through to “liberate” them, the more ”planetary” I become. This is my planet, folks. Right here, in my garden.
Fierce Light
” Sparked by what Gandhi called “soul force” and Martin Luther King “love in action” Ripper spotlights remarkable individuals who are taking action from the heart. The film is the revelation of a new global “movement of movements” of positive, compassionate action. Fierce Light : When Spirit Meets Action illuminates what is possible when human beings are their absolute best …a human sunrise.”
Soul force : in sanscrit, satya graha.
Hooray, this project of ours is not a lone orphan in the human Universe! Watch this DVD, and you´ll get a unique insight about what we, the Earth Sanctuary, are all about! … Oh my goodness I should see the day when the words “Warriors of Shamballa” are pronounced in a mainstream DVD, a balm for sore eyes, and in the correct context at that!…
Fierce Light : When Spirit Meets Action, a film by Velcrow Ripper.
A glorious epitaph!
(Image : “Druid Review”, a non-verbal journal, SG, 2009)
…Decorators, I am told, have “mood boards”, I have my Art Journals in which I record what happens in my inner life. Thus, I have my Mystical Journal, my Dragon Journal, my Dreams Journal, Angels, Traces (abstract), Druid Diary, Elves, Merlin, Faerie Book, Why Not, Dancing Moon, angry, sad, nostalgic, funny, surrealistic, etc.
I tried written diaries but never went past the cover! So I gave up, haha, and instead of writing the story of my life, which I do not need to share, I just go crazy with watercolours, collage, wax crayons, supermarket tickets, the lot, what not. (Yes, I´ve got a Crazy Book too, and a black-and-white-only Ghost book!)
My journals are all that is not planned, not structured, not thought through, and not surprisingly, they are absolutely chock-full! I love to amaze myself!…
What a legacy to leave behind when I go to the Great Prairies up there in the Sky!…(Or, better said, under a little apple tree in my own gardens!)
(And yes, I did complete a “Nana´s Wisdom Book” as a gift for my grandson.One day he will think “what a crazy old bird my Nana was!” – and that, my friends, is a worthy epitaph for this lady dragon!)
W(art)s and all!
(Image : Little Book of the Goddess, SG, 2007)
Now something really up close and personal.
It´s funny : I have three w(art!)rts on my face, one right in the middle of my forehead, and one on each side of my nose. I don´t see them, except in a mirror, so they don´t bother me, but sometimes I think they might bother other people, so I had this idea of getting rid of them, purely on an “esthetical” level, since I don´t even feel them. My daughters (26 and 30), and the people who love me, apparently don´t “see” them anymore either. They begged me not to do that, not to get them out, they say they love this “spiritual Triangle of the Bermudas” on my face! It is so “you”, they told me. Mmmm… OK. So. Now you will simply have to love me… warts and all! (Which is a very good thing.)
In the same way, the way of unconditional acceptance of reality, in my art, I don´t choose colours and themes, they choose me! I work with whatever I have at hand, recycling old stuff, old paint, magazines, wool – whatever lies there in front of me on my worktable at any given time. OK, it is the appropriate stuff that is lying about, but nevertheless I do not plan and think in advance, nor do I calculate. “It” (…the flow of Awen?*) just…you know, flowers! And I never judge the results, not even by my own standards. I just… let it be.
When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom,
Let It Be
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom,
Let It Be Let It Be, Let It Be Let It Be, Let It Be
Whisper words of wisdom, Let It Be
And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree
There will be an answer,
Let It Be
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer,
Let It Be Let It Be, Let It Be
(John Lennon)
*grin*
Awen* – In the Celtic world, the flow of inspiration and intuition.
Dark epiphany
(Image : Shadow Warrior, soul card 122, SG, 2010)
…Sometimes when the skies hang low over the valley and it is raining, I need to curl up in my bed, with a nice cup of English tea and a good book. I close the door to the tower I live in (yes, I do live in a tower, lol, it´s not just a metaphor). At the moment I´m reading some historical novel about the period of Henry the VIIIth, for me a fascinating period of History, don´t really know why.
I know that “this too will pass”, so I don´t worry overmuch about the general gloom. I just go with the flow, and let it wash over me…
…Been in a somber mood these last few days, and it reflects in my art.
Dark epiphany – 2
(Images : Spider Woman, The Cailleach, Wild Woman, soul cards, SG, 2009)
“The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darknesses.” (Nicolas Kazantzakis)
OK, I think it´s a good moment to share some of my more ”creepy-crawley” soul cards. Not all of my work is bright and shiny. I love what I call my “shadow warrior” cards as well. They give me a good insight into domains that are not at all angelical, and I believe that´s really good for personal integration and psycho-synthesis, lol. Even so, I can´t let beauty out of it…
Dear Reader and Friends
…I´m up to my ears in “green days”, everything in the gardens is shooting up, up, out and away, the birds that are nesting make a wonderful racket just outside my window, and I´m truly exhausted with so much sheer activity! At night I just want to sink into the cushions of my sofa, and watch some really stupid television programme, which rests my mind no end, and then go to bed and sleep like a log until the birds start their racket again the next morning!…
So, not much time or psychological space for blogging, just now.
´Scuse me, I´ll be back when things go back to normal.
PS.- Mika has started a new blog about her latest passion : ecopsychological macrophotography. (Whoah! A mouthful!) It´s…wow!
Silence of the Druids
(Image: The Sanctuary, 2010)
I´m ba-ack, it´s raining. *grin*
People sometimes ask me if we have written books, and what kind of didactic material we work with. Mmm…Good question. (…You mean apart from the OBOD Course? The OBOD Course is the didactic material we are working with, if somebody absolutely insists on the written word.)
Did the Druids of old send off a correspondence course around the planet by plane?
Of course not.
Ah, there is your answer. We teach by example, and our didactic material is that which people are. In other words, we may be of help to certain people who need to decipher their own Mystery, and thus we help them to look into the alive ”book” that each one of them is. See what I mean ? Difficult to express through words, lol.
As an example, one hour in the forest is a good teaching tool. Especially if you teach an urbanite who is enthusiastic about “Mother Nature”and wants “to get, you know, closer to Her, the Goddess”, and so insists on taking off her shoes to go into the the woods, which are 80 %…brambles! Hahaha
See what I mean by “alive didactic material” ? Believe me, you won´t do it twice!…
The Druids of old haven´t written books, didn´t leave manuscripts behind when they disappeared, didn´t build temples of stone (no, not even Stonehenge, which actually wasn´t built by “The Druids”, even if it has become a popular “Druid” icon!…). And they must have been silent, very silent. When you are in tune with the world, what is there to say?
And this is also how I teach, if I may say so myself. I just grin through the whole phase of approach, until the student learns his lessons the hard way.
I´m horrible, I know. But you can´t imagine how efficient, too!
Kew kew kew
(The Lady Dragon, chuckling)
Ecopsychology Junior!
(Image : photo Tati Mika, 2010)
This is Alex, now 14 months old. He walks, well, he stumbles about, and enthusiastically bangs his head on most corners, which has his Nani (me) very worried, and running after him to prevent major disasters. Apart from that, he is an angel, very easy. A little sunshine guy with Paul Newman eyes, lol!…
And yes, this is the third generation of the Earth Sanctuary.
Naa-niiiiiii!
(Image : Little Mister Sunshine, on Mamiiii´s knees, photo : Tata I-a, MDG, 2010)
“L´homme propose et Dieu dispose.” (Anon Le Grand, ze French Anon)
Grandmothers propose and grandsons dispose, if you will pardon my French!
I told my daughter in no uncertain terms that no way do I want to be called “Granny” or anything remotely like it! So we said, OK, so Alex will call me”Ya-ya” (Granny in Catalan), but after trying it on, well, I´d rather not, ”La Yaya” is the other Grandma, thank you very much. So we said, what about “Nana” ? Mmm, nice. Nana, I can digest.
But no.
D´you know who that screech is meant to bring about running : Na-niiiiiiiii!! which means just about anything from Gimme-my-bottle-and-not-too-warm-eh? to Lift-me-up-quick-I-wanna-see-sumpthing!…Yeah. Me. the Wizard of Lothlorien. Ha.
So be it, – Nani it is. And …Maaaami-iiiii (Mama), Tata I-a (auntie Mika) and Da-da (Adam). Awa (agua, water), Maaa-meh (dáme, give me) and other wonderful words which we have a hard time not imitating! Like in: ”I-a, maa-meh awa”! (Mika, give me water). Family in stitches.
A sense of impending doom…
(Image : “Impending doom”, soul card, collage on cardboard, SG, May 2010.)
“We do not own the Earth, we only borrowed it from our granchildren.”
(Anon)
I think I´ve mentioned this before, I feel very uncomfortable about what is ocurring around the world, and that feeling comes through in my art lately. I see a necessary Change coming, a radical Paradigm Shift, about which some people have been talking for quite a goodly number of years now, myself included.
At the Sanctuary we´re extremely aware of the Peak Oil problem, and how this is going to totally change our lives; we´re aware also of the climate crisis. We are downsizing and re-skilling, learning NOW how to live with less, because when the deep shit hits the final fan, it´s going to hit hard. Be prepared.
Downsizing : These last months we have reduced our plastic trash a whopping 80%, and the rest is selected, organic goes to the chicken. Yes, we have a chickencoop which gives us an average of 6 to 8 eggs a day, and we have a veg patch. That means having learned to manage chicken, and caring for a kitchen garden. We eat less, we eat better, and leave a lot less garbage. Re-skilling : Mika has learned to make bread with about every grain available. We still depend on the supermarket for some products, but are learning to make our own (basics). We are very aware of what we buy, are buying more recicled and ecological stuff, (including second hand furniture), and we´re not going on holiday on a plane. The house is paid for, the car as well. We have an eye on gasoline prices. All this is shorthand for : be cautious, be aware, be prepared.
Forty years back when I told my mother, let´s eat brown rice, – she told me in no uncertain terms that I was crazy. So I got used to being thought of as a bit of a zany bird, what with my eco-ideas. Now these very same ideas are becoming mainstream fast, and Alleluiah, at long last.
But we don´t know if there is much time left, we already live on borrowed time as a civilization, maybe it´s too late for the majority, and the crash will be hard. Another thing that will become very handy indeed is knowing about group processes. Believe me, friends, when the survival of your family depends on your neighbours, you better know how this functions! That´s one thing for which, as a group, we are thoroughly prepared.
When asked what he thought about civilization, Gandhi answered : “It´s a good idea”. The man must have had a dark sense of gallows’ humour.
Catawampus
(Image : Soul card 126, SG, 2009)
…I love words!
Just found a shiny new one, that I never read before in my long, long journey as a reader : catawampus.
D’ you know what it means ?
Well it means… askew, awry, positioned diagonally.
It´s quite a useful little word, as in : We took a short cut and walked catawampus accross the field.
…Did you ever hear that ?
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