Stone Songlines

I've been in the throes of selling our home and looking for a new home, so hadn't realised how long it is since I last posted a blog. My apologies to anyone who's checked in.

We are currently lurking in a motel north of Sydney and are homeless and stateless until we find a new home. So please bear with the fact that I'm unsure when I'm going to blog again. I had hoped to do some posts today but I'm very tired after our 1400km travels since Thursday so have decided to have a good rest. We have been house-hunting in rather hot weather. Today is extremely hot and we are just staying indoors in our motel unit.

Tomorrow we're moving to Kempsey, which is in the mid-north coast of New SouthWales, and I hope to be able to resume blogging once we get settled in our friend's home.

So patience, please, folks, and normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

I forgot to post this before, but I'm rather enchanted by this pendant.  I bought it as an early birthday present for myself and to celebrate the winding-up of my Tree of Life painting.

When I bought this pendant, I wanted to call it "Cerridwen" to pay tribute to both my Welsh and Irish Celtic ancestry. But it insists on being called "Isis" and I know thename is right. I found this in a little shop called Soularity, about 15 minutes from where I live in Traralgon. Theshop is run by a lovely lady called Ruth. I called in to say hello and saw this pendant on display on the counter. 

It has been created as an individual piece by a local silversmith artist.  It has a triangle of Lapis Lazuli, with clear quartz at the sides and above the lapis. Either side are pearls.  This is a beautiful piece which really resonates with my energy and I feel like a goddess every time I wear it.

Being a Libran, I'm allowed to change my mind. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, lolol.

In an earlier blog, I was talking of letting go of teaching to focus on my art. Shortly thereafter, I had a lovely birthday card from a friend with some beautiful words about enjoying what I've been teaching to her and others. It really touched my heart and caused me to rethink.

Theother thing that caused me to rethink was when I found I was thinking of starting to teach art classes linking art and astrological events when I move to our new home, at St Elsewhere, wherever that is, as we're still waiting to hear if we've sold our home.

I'm also working on how to teach online once the move is under our belt, as I've found the video input of a Creative Goddess e-course I'm following to be quite inspirational. Anyway, nothing's going to happen in the immediate future until we've pulled up our roots here and, in our gipsy-like fashion, head off to new (and hopefully warmer) pastures further north.

So watch this space for future developments and thanks to my friend for her beautiful words.

A while back I posted a note about a crone ritual and Rosetta asked me for more details. I've taken a bit of time to get back to this subject, for which I apologise. Unfortunately, I can't remember any more about the details of the crone ritual than that which I wrote down. It happened as we were preparing to move back to the UK and the stress of that move wiped out a lot of what I remember in the period just before the move.

However, I did a search on line and came up with the following site which has some lovely ideas for rituals. This is the link and I hope it is helpful:

http://www.tryskelion.com/tryskelion/crone2.htm

If anyone's also interested, there's a Crone magazine you can track down online which is available as an e-magazine at a cost of around ten Canadian dollars. I've purchased a copy myself and it's very interesting and thought-provoking.

I could not resist reproducing this poem on my blog as it is to upliftingand mirthful. It came in my e-mail in a post from Panhala, a list operated on Yahoo groups, which each days sends you poetry, a lovely scene and great music. It's a wonderfully uplifting gift from Joe Riley who operates the list. If you'd like to get this daily post, you can suscribe by joining Yahoo groups and doing a search for Panhala, or do a search for Panhala if you're already listed with a Yahoo group. Enjoy this poetry, folks, it's terrific for your heart and soul.

Ode To Gaiety

Go gloom

Begone glum and grim

Off  with the drab drear and grumble

It's time

its past time

to come undone and come out laughing

time to wrap killjoys in wet blankets

and feed them to the sourpusses

Come frisky pals

Come forth wily wags

Loosen your screws and get off your rocker

Untie the strait lacer

Tie up the smarty pants

Tickle the crosspatch with josh and guffaw

Share quips and pranks with every victim

of grouch pomposity or blah

Woe to the bozo who says No to

tee hee ho ho and ha ha

Boo to the cleancut klutz who

wipes the smile off his face

Without gaiety

freedom is a chastity belt

Without gaiety

life is a wooden kimono

Come cheerful chums

Cut up and carry on

Crack your pots and split your sides

Boggle the bellyacher

Convulse the worrywart

Pratfall the prissy poos and the fuddy duds

Take drollery to heart or end up a deadhead

at the guillotine of the mindless

Be wise and go merry round

whatever you cherish

what you love to enjoy what you live to exert

And when the high spirits

call your number up

count on merriment all the way to the countdown

Long live hilarity euphoria and flumadiddle

Long live gaiety

for all the laity

~ James Broughton ~

I recently got hold of a book by Priestess Brandi Auset called "The Goddess Guide - Exploring the Attributes and Correspondences of the Divine Feminine".

This is an incredibly useful book which I highly recommend.  It gives a summary of a big range of goddesses by name in cultures through the world and what they represent.  The next section lists attributes such as "enlightenment" ,"infertility", "destruction", "woodlands and forests", and so on, with the names of the goddesses listed under the attributes so that you've got a handy reference guide if you want to conduct a ritual and want to know the particular goddess to invoke for that ritual.The next section lists the colour rays and associated goddesses. The section after this relates to the elements - earth, fire, air and water - and the names of goddessesd associated with those elements, again if you want to work with these goddess energies in rituals or in your daily life.The following section relates to the wheel of the year and goddesses to work with for particular occasions, such as Yule, Imbolc and so on. And the final section looks at the phases of a woman's life - Maiden,Mother, Crone - and the goddess energies to work with in relation to these aspects of a woman's life.

It's a terrific book, a lot of work has gone into it, and I can highly recommend it as a useful addition to your array of goddess-related goodies lurking around your home,workspace or studio.

Years ago, when I'd been doing Tarot readings for a while, I did a reading with a woman in which we covered the issueof mutual forgiveness involving a relative.  She listened in silence and then, as she got up to leave, said: "Thank you, anyway", a sure sign that the idea of forgiveness was for her, at least in the immediate future, a dead duck. Lluckily I had enough readings under my belt by then not to get disheartened.  A friend also told me recently that a shop owner she knew had glass stones with words engraved in them like "love", "faith", charity, and so on.  All these walked out the door, but the ones with "forgiveness" on them stayed put.

So I'm adding on a bit more here about forgiveness because in my experience this is one of the biggest challenges for us - to let go of past wrongs, to forgive the person (which does not mean approval of what they've done, by the way) and to cleanse ourselves of any bitterness or anger from the past.

A lack of forgiveness, to me, does not affect the person we need to forgive.  It affects ourselves deeply.  It prevents us from moving forward in our lives free of the burden of anger about the past. And I think many people misunderstand forgiveness.  It does not mean that we say what a person has done to us is okay.  It means we can acknowledge that harm was done to us but that now we need to let that person go to their own lives, while we cleanse ourselves of the burden of being unable to forgive.  The only person dragged down by an inability to forgive is ourself. 

But also another myth is that we ca nforgive overnight and perhaps that's why people are reluctant to takeon board the idea of forgiveness becaue of misconceptions.  I don't think in most cases it's possible nor desirable to forgive in one shot at it.  Forgiveness should not be a mechanical act where we really haven't forgiven deep within.  It needs to be an ongoing process to which we return with dignity and grace, to tell ourselves we have forgiven, until that point when we can look within ourselves, take a deep breath and feel so much lighter because now we know thatf orgiveness has happened. 

It is an act of grace for ourselves and, with any luck, it's an act of grace for the person to whom forgiveness is being extended.  Not that we can ask for repentance as a return for forgiveness.  If we do get repentance, that's the icing on the cake.  But forgiveness is not a quid pro quo - it's an unconditional act which opens us up to greater things in our heart than were previously possible when the weight of an inability to forgive acts like a crushing stone on  our heart. The process of forgiving my father for the wrongs I've perceived has been long and painful.  I think my series of paintings have brought forward the blessing of forgiveness and letting go and now, synchronistically, my father has turned up in spirit to ask for an act of forgiveness which I can now willingly, gladly and lovingly extend to him, from my heart to his.

 I've uploaded pics of a series of artworks which I've commented on in earlier blogs.  I wanted to post them  together so that you can get a sense of their progress.  So please bear with the bits and pieces all over the place in this blog. The first painting below, in retrospect and I didn't realise at the time, represents the wheel of fortune, a letting go of the old and an expansion into the new and more fortunate (hopefully) phase of my life.

The next painting above was the first Dreamscape I did in line with Jamie Ridler's Full Moon Dreamscape project.  Although I didn't, again,  realise it at the time, it really was a big jump into the new for me.

The artwork above left is the third in this series, which has followed the New and full Moon Phases, as well as the moving of Pluto from retrograde to forward again.  This painting symbolished some real heart healing of inner child stuff and for me is one of the most powerful I've ever created.  It's a big step forward from all the yellows, oranges and reds of the past year.  My friend looked at it and immediately called it The Tree of Love which I consider quite inspirational.

And finally, the painting on the right is the last in this particular series which is all heart colours - pinks and greens and turquoises - which to me represents the emergence of myself into a new part of my life free of old rubbish.

And, after all this, the most amazing miracle happened yesterday, Sunday. My friend called in from her visit to the local Spiritualist Centre and told me the medium appearing that day had had a reading for me.  She had asked if anyone knew a Maureen, and my friend thought of another Maureen she knows, as I always go by the moniker of 'Mo'.  The medium said that the spirit with whom she was in contact had said that he'd hoped I'd be there today, but that I did visit the Centre. Luckily a mutal friend poked my friend in the back and reminded her that my full name is Maureen.  The medium then said that the spirit was  my father and that she, my friend, was being asked to pass on to me that he had turned up to ask for forgiveness, to tell me that he loved me, and that he wanted to send me a huge bunch of multi-coloured roses.

I can't tell you how healing this was for me.  I had a very fractious relationship with my father, the deeper he got into alcoholism, the more intense his paranoia that I was after his money.  As it happens we did make some sort of peace before he died and had a good farewell on the day he died.  But this to me was a final key in the door of the past, as I am making preparations to move into a quite new part of my life.  I also visited a gem fair on Saturday, the day before this message, where I brought home with me a beautiful light green polished Malachite pendant.  I've always found Malachite to be a heavy duty heart healing stone, and now I know that this pendant will help guide my heart through the doorway to the temple of forgiveness for my father, a most beneficial gift from the Universe which I bless with all my heart.

I am posting this because I can see, looking back, a series of synchronistic happenings and a pattern of universal energy which, with our being here on the material plane, we can often overlook.  Here in Traralgon I visited the Spiritualist Centre and have made good friends with many of the women I've met there. I've opened up in the past period to being an artist and aligning my art with the energy cycles of the Moon and Pluto.  And as I've done this, some deep heart healing has happened which has now been blessed with a loving message from my father, something he was unable to give to me in this life. 

I wouldurge you to keep your inner eye open to recognise the miracles in our lives of universal energy which is always present.  It provides a magnificence to the progression of our path in life which enriches us and, in turn,  enriches all though with whom we come in contact through our own personal transformation and heart opening.

Talking about rituals in an earlier blog reminded me of a beautiful ritual I went through with twelve other women to honour our transit through the menopause and our embarcation on the next phase of our lives as Wise Women. These are our crone years, with the original meaning of "crone" being "crown", synchronising with our crown chakras and remembering that we came from All That Is and will be returning to All That Is, however that has resonance for us as individuals.

I finished my menopause in 2002, the year I returned to the UK. We were asked to bring a friend with us and two of my friends came along. We women who were being honoured as Wise Women gathered outside then entered the ritual space singing songs to honour Mother Earth, with our women guests singing along. We all sat in a circle and shared our various experiences. The lady who co-ordinated the ritual had also created lovely bags for us and in these we place the items which each of us had brought along to offer to the other women. I remember I brought rose quartz to signify the love in the rest of our lives. One woman had sewn small hearts with a rip in each, sewn up, to represent the heartaches we experienced on our life journey and honour how we had learned from these experiences and grown on our life journey. Another had a bracelet of wool woven in the suffragette colours of green andviolet, and so on.

Then our friends washed our hands and feet to signify letting go of the past, and anointed us with oils to honour our journey into our Wise Women years.

It was truly a wonderful, loving experience  which demonstrated to me the power of ritual, something very much lacking in our busy, busy lives today. It's why I like the fact that I've been drawn to honour theMoon's phases with ritual in recent months, and will create another ritual to honour the Spring Equinox on 23rd September (Autumn Equinoxin northern parts of the world).

I have been interested in astrology for ages but really only recently have I started investigating it in more detail. It's a fascinating subject and, for me, it's been enlivened by the daily posts I get from the Mystic Medusa website. It's a brilliant website, but the daily posts on the Moon's phases and other galactic happenings have helped me feel far more in touch with the energies around me.

On September 11th, Pluto moved from retrograde to forward motion again. A planet is retrograde if, from our Earth position and the planet's position, it looks as if the planet is going backwards. Well, of course it ain't, there'd be all sorts of mayhem if this happened, but somehow this retrograde position does influence what's happening to us down here on little ol' Earth.

I'm quoting here from astrogrrl.com on Facebook:

"Pluto epresents rebirth, regeneration, and transformation. He is our compulsions, obsessions, ability for control, and empowerment. Pluto gives us the power to tackle obstacles in life through deeply understanding our situations, which results in our letting go and being transformed in the process. Pluto's process usually brings endings, purging, destruction, complete annihilation of what no longer works before a renewal can occur."

Mystic Medusa pointed out in her Pluto info that the effects of the retrograde go all the way back to February 2008 and in some cases, the transformation in our lives since 1995. Rang bells for me. In 1995, I tuned into crystals and did a 360deg. turn in my life to focus on Reiki, visionary art, crystals and teaching. And in February 2008 I got a pinched sciatic nerve in my left buttock, four months after my father died, which has left me with huge mobility problems and unable to drive our car. Instant standing still.

So while I started my latest artwork on the Full Moon, I actually finalised it on Friday 11th as Pluto turned direct. My intent was really to let go of all the past crap from childhood onwards which has stuck to me and which I wanted to let go. I started my own artwork on 4th September, the Full Moon, and had lots of black at the bottom. I rather thought this was going to be a challenging piece, full of redsand rage. But as things turned out, this was not to be (it's a much happier painting, thank goodness as you can see above).

The actual full intent I wrote out on my lovely Singapore paper on Saturday 5th September (weweren't able to start right on the Full Moon, this was the closest time all of us could get together), and then left under one of my crystals until 11th.

I had no idea what I was going to paint but the process went as follows and, as you can see from the final version, it turned out quite differently to what I thought I was going to create:

Firstly, I'd painted black reaching up at the bottom of the painting.

Secondly, I suddenly got the urge to add all sorts of greens and turquoises, colours I seldom use, actually. The dabs with the sponge started spreading to the side the higher I got, leaving the centre clear.

Thirdly, I felt the urge to sweep up into the vacant piece at the top lots of Pearl White, with pink and gold glitter scattered over.

Fourthly, I went to our local craft store to get some more stock of glitter while I waited for more images to emerge, and came across some lovely scrapbooking material of words and stickers. So these came home with me.

Fifthly, I got an image of a coffin and when I searched for images on the Internet, came across the purple one at the bottom of the painting in the centre. This represented the burial of the past for me. But also Ic ame across two images of open coffins with hearts pouring out. These went above the closed coffin to represent the re-birth of love in my life.

One of the sticky phrases on the craft sheets read: "Thank heaven for little girls". This went above the closed coffin and betweenthe two open images to repair the damage of my childhood and re-affirm that as a child I was pretty terrific just as I was.

Finally I added in butterflies and hearts to signify the transformative power of love, and then put in pink lines to link everything together, and centring onthe image of a huge butterfly and world which I found somewhere on the internet (but don't ask me where!).

And last but by no means least, how do I feel after all this childhood healing work? Pretty terrific. I thought my friend Pat got it right when she said she thought this painting was The Tree of Love. It has really shown me that I have so much love around me and in my own heart, and that all my travels have opened up for me a global family which feeds my heart and soul in ways which enrich my life every day, hour and second.