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   Diving into the chaos that precedes all births!

   
   

1. February through mid-springtime, when everything truly blooms and the earth is awakened fully, is not an easy time of the year for me, but it's a powerfully transformative time, nonetheless. This is when the deepest of the hidden comes up to the surface for healing. There are seeds I planted years ago - seed thoughts, seed beliefs, seed actions (not all pleasant)! Life mirrors my inner processes: everything I plant will grow or come to the surface as weeds I may choose not to harvest. Healing, healing, healing; discovering lost treasures.

 

"Persephone" by Patricia Ariel 

Here is a beautiful ode to Persephone, by Maria Ede-Weaving, shared by 

 The Journey of Young Women (www.JoYW.org) from Minneapolis, Minnesota

Persephone, guide me safely into the darkness.

May I know that for every journey there, you are at my side;

for every moment of fear and hopelessness,

you are there to comfort me.

Great Goddess of life’s deepest mysteries

plant me; enfold me in your still darkness, and with compassion

help me grow towards the light of a new understanding, a new wisdom.

In you I await my new beginnings; in you I find my deepest strength and wisdom;

because of you I will never be the same.

With you I walk the light and the dark

and fear neither;

With you, I journey to the depths, I endure and I survive, transformed and reborn 

by the experience.

I give thanks that I travel now with a foot in each place,

nourished by both my inner and outer worlds.

I am a bat at home in the darkest cave;

I am a blossom unfurled in the warmth of the sun.

I embrace all that I am and honour all that I have experienced;

in the depth of your compassion may I find grace.

I live by these words. Every day I remember that I am a daughter of the earth and these words are all I need to remember to embrace the cycles of my life. Embracing the ancient cycles of the earth and moon give us the opportunity to connect deeply to all the ways in which our life can unfold. Then the dark and the light are given equal honor and the gifts of wisdom within each experience can be integrated into the soul. Our souls have come to weave many different kinds of teachings into itself. Trust the processes that you are in no matter how they feel. It is all meant to be in the great big picture of your life's journey. Let die what must die and open the door to the opportunities that lie before you. It is a great mystery; your life! Make it so by believing it is so! Goddess Bless!


To Be of the Earth

To be of the Earth is to know
The restlessness of being a seed
The darkness of being planted
The struggle toward the light
The pain of growth into the light
The joy of bursting and bearing fruit
The love of being food for someone
The scattering of your seeds
The decay of the seasons
The mystery of death
And the miracle of birth

~John Soos

Each year, at the cross-quarter fire festival of Imbolc, I bring a large tree branch from the woods near our house, into the home, to use as a prayer tree. Imbolc is an ancient seasonal festival that celebrates the first stirrings of the earth and honors the Goddess Bridget. Her sacred day of Imbolc is February 2. Around here, we celebrate it through the entire month of February and on into March! (She is my other favorite Goddess!)




This year I asked my son, Seamus, to find the prayer tree for us. He chose a perfectly beautiful large branch. And now, after two months of being the recipient of so many songs, heart-felt prayers, gratitude offerings, and healing wishes, it is one of the most magically infused prayer trees in New Hampshire, I am sure!


In the corner, where we place the prayer tree, I also set up an altar draped in white fabric (Bridget's sacred color) and fabric containing Celtic knotwork. On it, I placed objects sacred to Her. At the base of the tree, I created a healing well for Bridget, as she is Goddess of the Healing Wells and of any place where three streams or other bodies of water, meet! I create the symbolic well out of many shimmering shades of blue fabric.  Beside it, I place a pitcher of water and a goblet shaped like a bee-hive, for She is also known to have a sacred apple orchard in the Otherworld and Her bees go there to gather honey for Her.

Bridget is also a fertility Goddess. She is the Goddess of the herbalists and the poets and is a great inspiring force in my life.


This morning I dismantled the well, shook out the fabric off the side of the back porch, and placed my sacred Imbolc items into a special magical closet where I keep just these sort of things.


Over the last two months, women have come in and out of my home for ritual and ceremony, and for resting time at the monthly Red Tent we hold on the new moon. Seeking, praying, healing hearts and hands of many of these women have left offerings in the symbolic Bridget's Well. There are coins, jewelry, birch bark, carefully-folded notes, small candles, and crystals; and there are so many prayer ties on this tree! It is like a holy treasure!


Between today and tomorrow, I am going to find a home, near a small stream, in the forest, for this prayer tree and all the offerings that have been left in gratitude to Her, my favorite Irish Goddess, Bridget.


I am thinking about this prayer tree lying up against a larger, Mother tree, with it's strips of white cloth, ribbon, scarves, and lace, blowing in the wind, going back to the earth, slowly composting our prayers into the soft pine floor of the New Hampshire woods. This image fills my heart with the deepest gratitude to the Divine Feminine presence in my life; to the deepest love of the Earth, for her daughters and sons; to the Gods and Goddesses of magic, and creativity, and healing!


I'll be on a journey over the next two days and feel honored to do this sacred work. Spirituality and creativity infuse my daily life with magic, mystery, and joy. I feel a deep excitement that I am going out into the woods, like Artemis, with my prayer tree and bundle of offerings, at the turning of spring!


With Her Promise in my Heart!


Melissa Potter

Continuing on the Seal Skin, Soul Skin theme of this year for me, this morning I came upon a passage, in a book about the dark of the moon, that discussed the idea that seals were considered by ancient people to be important protection medicine for women. I then thought about how the sabian symbol for one of the planets in my Solar Return chart, and that merges with my Mid-Heaven, is "A woman rises out of the sea; a seal embraces her." I feel as if I have risen out of this great, salty cauldron of transformation and my seal-skin, my soul-skin has been returned to me. She's bringing me very deeply into my own soul, then up, again, to float on the waves; a reprieve, a rest, a blessing from the bright sun, before I return to the magical depths.  "I hear your voice everywhere I go, everywhere I go." (song on radio while I write this post.)

I am Persephone ~ Still beneath the birthing earth but I can taste the spring greens on my tongue, can feel the wet grass beneath my feet, and the mouth of the wind on my naked breasts. The heat of spring is calling me forth and melts away my night. I am Persephone; returning from the Underworld of my soul.

Open the door of the cave!  Build a sacred fire.  Prepare for me the mangoes and honey-bread, and gather the bees to sing to me! I will have many treasures and a flowing river of ecstasy to share with you, when I return!

Yesterday, I had a healing vision of a Mother Bear holding my Inner Child, in a cave, under the dark, winter sky. A friend encouraged me to draw this vision with pastels and to create the vision around me with fabric. The experience of creating the cave and picture was an intuitive process that I have written about in detail in my journal. I created a cave out of black velvet fabric and midnight-blue fabric, both with gold and silver threads running through them, that surrounded my bed. Behind it, I hung golden fabric so I would feel fully contained, safe, protected. Inside the cave,  I used pastels on a cotton canvas to draw the vision I had earlier in the day. I put my Inner Child in the arms of a strong, Mother Bear in that cave. After drawing my picture, I allowed myself to lie inside this cave. I embraced the creative river and allowed it to carry me deep into my child-heart where the wounded-one lives, where the artist lives, where the most golden self in me, lives. I noticed that the fabric hung in the shape of a hug and resembled butterfly wings! As is the way of Spirit, a moment later, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who was talking from the stereo about the archetype of the Wild Feminine, began talking about the powerful symbolism of the butterfly! (In the candlelight later, I realized it sparkled, too.) My golden shadow, butterfly, transforming spirit held space for me while I embraced the shadows, and the shame, and the art from the dark, that ended up being the most sacred art of all, and I felt so protected. ♥

The moon is just beginning to wax from it's dark-moon, seed time and toward its full expression at the time of Spring Equinox, later this month. Would you like to feel more connected to the Moon as our ancient mothers and grandmothers had?

To align yourself with the moon, harness the energy of this darker-moon time of the lunar cycle to assist you in building energy for the goals in your heart. The dark-moon part of the month, which encompasses dark moon, the new moon, and the early, waxing crescent days of the month, is a time of great and powerful seed strength. You can allow these energies to assist you in birthing what you would like to experience, accomplish, complete, and bring to fruition. As the moon grows in the night sky, so, too, will you begin to see yourself making steps toward the completion of a goal or project you want to manifest.

The Universe is listening during the New Moon time of the month for your prayers, for your hopes, for your intentions!

What do you want to BIRTH as the month and the moon grows, during the next two weeks? Can you visualize your goal being planted as a seed of hope, into the earth? See and feel it sprouting. Know and trust that each step you need, to nourish this seed enough to grow and blossom, will be revealed to you.

This new moon on March 5 was in the sign of Pisces. We are also under the influence of both the sun and Chiron, the Wounded Healer, in the sign of Pisces. It's as if all of the unhealed wounds of us are being ripped open to allow a deeper, true healing to occur. It is a challenging but healing time.

It can feel like drowning in a sea of grief; like overwhelming confusion; like unbearable, emotional pain. Likewise, it can feel like a divinely-beautiful, cleansing bath; like the embrace of the Blessed Mother; like Divine Ecstasy, and it can bring a sense of, and a deep knowing that life-long patterns and Karma are shifting and completing themselves - finally. There is hope and there are mystical experiences of synchronicity and joy.

I am ending a cycle in my life. I am literally in a brand new chapter and I have just stepped through this doorway with excitement and terror, all at once. I am about to give birth to myself.

In my place of trusting The Great Mystery, I am embracing the darkness of the late-winter sky in this waxing-crescent-moon time of our lunar cycle. I am embracing the pain and grief and losses and I am allowing the Pisces energy of Mother Ocean to wash it all away. She is washing it all away...

I hear the song of the seals singing to my soul. They know who is being born, even if I do not.

Loving, Learning, Releasing, Hoping, Faithful...

~Melissa

Melissa is the Wise Woman University Mentor of Reclaiming Artemis: Calling Passion, Power and Joy Back Into Your Life!

Visit her profile and learn more about this course by visiting:

www.wisewomanuniversity.org/potter