​Soul-filled women,
​
Do your ancestors come from Britain, Wales, England or Ireland?

We often collectively refer to these ancestral homelands, peoples and traditions as "Celtic".

Our ancestors (and all indigneous peoples everywhere) honoured the cycles of the earth and followed the moon & sun in their rhythms.

There are 2 sets of holidays, or holy-days that can be observed: solar + lunar.

(If your ancestral tradition is not Celtic or European, I'd love to hear about your seasonal cycle. Add your sharing to the comments below.)

Solar days align with what the sun is doing. 

'Across-the-pond', and here in our Northern hemisphere, there are 4 solar alignments:

• Winter Solstice or Midwinter when the days are shortest, the sun weakest.
• Spring Equinox, night and day are in equal balance.
• Summer Solstice or Midsummer, the day is longest, our fiery friend strongest.
• Autumn Equinox, day and night, again, equal.

​Lunar holy-days align with the cycles of the moon. 

Again, there are 4:

• Samhain, both the end and beginning of the cycle with the dying back of the plants, the resting into Earth. Often celebrated November 1st.
• Imbolc, the quickening of Spring, when the first stirrings of life return (sooner in Britain, than here in Canada). February 1.
• Beltaine, the fertility celebration as nature begins to blossom. May 1.
• Lammas or Lughnasadh, the harvest. Now our precious plant providers bring forth the fruits and grains that nourish us. August 1

Why lunar?

I was taught that these holy-days actually fall in alignment with the cycle of the moon as She passes through the astrological signs of the zodiac--also identified as starry constellations in our night sky.

Have you ever looked at the signs of the zodiac organized on the wheel of the year?

​Signs have opposites. Signs have elements: fire, earth, water, air. They also have a third designation: fixed, cardinal or mutable.

The four fixed signs sit directly across on the wheel: Taurus (earth) to Scorpio (a water sign), and Acquarius (air) to Leo (a fire sign).

We all know by our birthdays what time of the year the sun enters the constellation of a certain sign in the sky.

For example, I was born under Acquariushe sun journeys through that constellation from about January 21-February 21 (the timing is exact by hour so can vary by a day depending on the year).

Right now, the sun travelling through Acquarius.

The moon also cycles through the constellations/signs. But it moves quickly in it's cycle of 28/29 days, and so spends about 3 days in each sign. 

There are lovely apps you can get on your phone now that will tell you where the moon is. (I use "the Moon" app)

Many women track their emotional ebbs and flows along with the journey of the moon through the signs, noting they may tend to a certain mood when the moon is in a given sign.

Biodynamic gardeners plant, water, harvest and tend their gardens according to these movements. For example, days when the moon is passing through an earth sign (Taurus, Capricorn, Virgo) are good days to put roots down, till, transplant.

When the moon enters the opposite sign of Acquarius (Leo), it is the exact alignment of Imbolc. 

For Beltaine, sun in Taurus, moon in Scorpio.

For Lammas, sun in Leo, moon in Acquarius.

For Samhain, sun in Scorpio, moon in Taurus.

All very tidy, yes? When I learned this and went to track in on my calendar, I was amazed to see...these days always fall on a full moon! Check for yourself! Ah, nature, so organized and cyclical.

Not all pagans, wiccans, earth-honouring folk, druids, goddess-centred spiritual practitioners, choose to celebrate these lunar holy-days this way.

Many stick with the generalized dates of the 1st of the month. Some choose a phase of the moon that expresses more the mood of the season.

Samhain is inward, downward to the Otherworld, and some choose to align with the dark/new moon nearest to Nov 1.

Beltaine is full bloom and aligns beautifully with full-moon energy.

Imbolc is the whisper of the beginning, so the baby crescent moon, 1-3 days after dark/new is resonant.

​Ah...here we are back to Imbolc.

I had the grace to work with a client as we enter the phase of nature that expresses Imbolc.

As we worked deeply in her family constellation around issues with her mother and being a mom herself, she was able to open to receive more nourishment from MOTHER.

Not surprisingly, when we went to do energy work on the table, the grain mother of Britain came present: Brigid. (Her mother's ancestors are from Britain).

Imbolc is the festival of Brigid. Crosses woven of grain are a traditional offering to her made for this festival. 

Brigid has many attributes. In my tradition, we call her Brenacht and she is an aspect of fire. She is the aspect of fire that provides nourishment through food cooked at the hearth, and the other heart warming forms of family and tribal connection that happen around food and the hearth fire.

Her tree spirit is the birch, and to evoke her presence, one would feed birch wood to the fire (I find the birch in the British Isles is quite specific to this. I don't find our Canadian silver birch or yellow birch to be the same resonance. Perhaps there is a local goddess or grandmother spirit that "lives" in our local birch.)

Imbolc is the time of quickening...of the child in the womb, of new life in the earth. It is the first stirring of Spring. Brigid as divine mother, is also associated with the sacred task of midwifery.

Such peaceful, nourishing, blessed energies came through in the healing today as my client's ancestors sang to her through my voice. 

Some simple ways to honour this lunar festival if your heart feels called?

• Journal about what is quickening and stirring within you. 
• Make an altar to Brigid, or simply light a candle and ask to connect more deeply with the energy of this time.
• Take a walk under the Imbolc full moon (exact February 9, 2:23am), or sit around a fire.

Do you celebrate Imbolc? Are there other seasonal festivals you honour instead? Is there a goddess you connect with? Have you encountered this teaching before about lunar alignments? I'd love to hear your comments below...also for the other women here to receive...!

Soul-filled women,

The profound presence of the Great Mother came to grace the healing room today. Once again, an aspect of Her body I have never experienced came to guide a client.

Who or what is the Primordial Mother? My experience of her was as the oldest creational energy there is on our Earth.

Think of our planet in its ancient raw form, at the time when life is just emerging from the sea. She is birthing primal life forms from the elements, and from Her waters.

She moved in the energy bodies like a primal muck, yet not as earthy and material as that, more fluid, rich. A very, very old consciousness. Perhaps the oldest Earth consciousness.

As she rose through my clients body, I saw a level of the field I have not witnessed before. I could not place it within the 7 Levels of the Aura we are currently studying in the Aura Healing Journey, though it could be one of the worlds that lies within the complex layers of reality in the Astral Body/4th Level, which is the Level we are studying this week.

I entered with the client through the lovely space where the front and back tip of the heart chakra meet and pour into the Vertical Power Current.

As we allowed ourselves to reside in that space, Her presence arose. I saw a network through the body like tree roots-very organic and not at all like the linear lines of light on the structured levels of your Aura (Levels 1, 3, 5, 7) that Barbara Brennan discovered and wrote about in her books.

I once witnessed Barbara do a healing, with other teachers assisting, during our second year of training, where we learn to work on the 4th Level of the field. (This was in 1997).

The treatment was unexpected, and something Barbara shared she had never witnessed before. She saw the client’s field morph back through all evolutionary life forms from mammal, to bird, to reptile, to the first life forms to emerge from the ocean. It was extremely powerful.

This is how I felt the Primordial Mother, as that creational energy from which all forms were originally born.

I wish I could put my hands on you right now and have you feel and experience this in your body. She was calm, peaceful, depth, presence, effortless embodiment.

Often as we work to process our wounds, we are present in the Female Pain Body. Eckart Tolle writes about it in the New Earth. It is the collective field of all harm that has been done to women on this planet throughout history, and all emotional pain women carry from it.

This transmission was a voice within the Female Wisdom Body: the deep knowledge of connection, known in and through our body.

We need her. At this moment when it is now clear that we have a very limited time to turn around our ecological impact on this primeval earth, we need to remember---no, deeply know and feel--our symbiotic relationship with our Primordial Mother, and the muck our biological bodies arose from so many millennia ago.

We are connected to all life, from the water droplet, to the amoeba, to the insects, the reptiles, the birds, the mammals, the plants, the atmosphere breathing us. As more and more of us return to living that as an embodied truth, we will come back into the necessary symbiotic relationship with our Earth that will guide our choices and actions from a deep cellular and energetic level.

The goddess has continued to grace my practice by showing up in one-one healing treatments with women.

If now is your time to work together book your Free 30 minute consult so we can talk about working together and see if the openings I have fit into your weekly schedule.

Have you experienced this aspect of the Mother? I'd love to hear about it. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

This week in healing treatmetns, Guinevere has shown herself twice. What a mystery. Not an archetype or character from mythology, possibly even history, that I have had much resonance with personally. Even though my own ancestral heredity is Welsh, and she belongs to the Welsh tradition.

If you have read The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Guinevere is characterized as more of a weak feminine archetype: the shimmering golden blonde to the protagonist Morgaine's dark hair; the pious Christian adopting the new religion in Britain, to Morgaine's priestess of the old mysteries of the Goddess; the barren feminine to the fruitful, sensual woman of the Earth.
 
But that is not the Guinevere who has been showing up energetically in the healing room. I see her as fair, but not weak. She has told/shown me something else of her story, or the symbolic energies she bears.

With arms outstretched at waist level, open to all before her, she has been appearing as the Clan Mother, a deeply feminine archetype who's concern is for the welfare of her whole community. 

Her focus is communal, not individual or even to the individual needs of her own offspring. She vessels the Divine Feminine as Mother who's protective regard, nourishment, and care extends to the whole clan.
 
An example of the Clan Mother's role taken from Iroquois ancestral traditions states:

"The oldest woman of the clan is called the Clan Mother. The clan mother, whose position is hereditary, is responsible for the welfare of the clan. She names all the people of the clan; she holds a position in nominating, installing and removing the male chief, called Hoyaneh, meaning Caretakers of the Peace."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Mother 

The story of Arthur, Camelot & Guinevere, became highly romaniticised during the era of the Medieval Romances. But if we look into the old history of Britannia, Arthur was not a king. He was a Welsh (Cymry) chieftain. Therefore, Guinevere, his wife, was not a queen, but a Clan Mother.

In the two healing treatments so far where she has manifested, she also showed me that she and Morgaine hold two polarities in a woman's soul (and a man's feminine):

The fair, or White Goddess, & the Dark Goddess; the ephemeral & the earthy.; the spirit, & the Soul. During one healing, I saw Guinevere and Morgaine standing across from one another holding hands crossed so their arms and bodies formed a lemniscate representing never-ending cycling of energies from one polarity, through centre, back to another.

The feeling of this profound archetype arriving in the room and landing her transmission into your energy field and thus the cells of your body...well...is not something I can adequately describe here! 

Here are some words from the women who have been experiencing Her:

But what does this have to do with you? 
In the dance of masculine/feminine in our present culture, political systems, leadership, social structures, our way of perceiving the world, there is a very necessary shift afoot right now.

The invitation is to embrace and vessel the viewpoint of the Clan Mother. Can you shift your focus away from what you want and need, your own betterment, to that of your clan?

How will we re-create and re-dream our world when we look at all we bring forth to provide for ourselves (again social structures, economic, political, educational, environmental) from the communal, collective regard of the Clan Mother?

How do we build families, communities, businesses, land co-operatives, gardens, and more, from the eye of collective provision, mutual support, communal resource, and a way that all can be provided for with no one left out of the tribal family?
 
I invite you to begin to see from Guinevere's eyes.

I'd love to know how things look for you from the perspective of the Clan Mother.
Share your experiences, perceptions and questions in the comments below. I do read them!