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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

…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!…

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*