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Posts Tagged ‘Women’

The curse “May you live I interesting times”……..

Well we certainly have that!

I am writing this as the misinformation about over Coronavirus is spreading, and getting very political.

In a discussion early in July between essence makers, some of who are also homeopaths, it came around to the energy imprint of CV-19. It seems that those who have been testing CV-19 in a homeopathic mode experienced the same sort of pattern. Folks started off with the preparation lifting their mood, but at the weeks wore on it became apparent that old emotions began to surface.

Realisations then followed that this effect is being reflected in the collective. We are past the initial stage and well into the ‘old stuff surfacing and needing to be fixed’ stage.

True, the chaos that has ensued is being used to impressive political effect. That affects all of us, but it is being dealt with in different ways. This is where the populace starts to split.

On the one hand there are the folk who think ****, I thought I dealt with that stuff, but nevertheless get stuck in, working to sort themselves out. When asked to wear face-coverings, they can see the sense in whatever can be done to mitigate the spread is OK, especially from not wanting to be the unknowing or accidental vector, thereby infecting someone else. The recognition that if it helps others to feel more secure in being out and about, it is only a cloth mask.

On the other hand, there are the folk that could be classed as those not wishing to or wanting to deal with what is happening.

  • Still believing that people in charge (in UK, that is mostly Westminster) are doing a fantastic job, even though they can see through the smoke, the mirrors and the gaslighting that it is not the case.
  • The virus does not exist, inasmuch as it is only influenza. Asking questions of those who have encountered the virus – How do you know you have had it? Were you tested? Do you have proof?
  • The reactions of some people are fear-mongering and if you are young and healthy you will be fine.
  • Wearing a mask is seen as a personal affront, and finding every excuse and press release to back that up, (bearing in mind people who it would harm are not required to do so).
  • Not being able to see through the sometimes ’not-so-clever’ release of information and events into the public domain to introduce doubt, diversion and division.

One could surmise therefore, that some people in the second category are finding that the CV-19 energies are encouraging them to face their shadow, and that is not sitting well: Better to stay the same; let’s get back to normal; things couldn’t really be that bad; we have faced worse and come through; that is fear-mongering; Dr XX says that is not true; the vaccine will save us……..; we knew it wasn’t fatal so what is the fuss about……

The populace is split into two camps, like it was in both English and US civil wars, like it is over Brexit and many other instances. A population divided is weak, it is rich pickings for those who would manipulate, gaslight and carry out hidden agendas.

Just a while back people were being encouraged to get on with their lives, spend money and go on holiday. Then a few days ago being told – you have to quarantine for 14days when you get back. Classic gaslighting if ever there was!

 

From a completely different view, the astrology of these times can show a lot.

Pluto, the planet that is not a planet then it is one, sort-of……… has been trundling its way (transiting) through Capricorn. We felt the first ‘brush’ of what it reflects in the world in 2008/9, when we had the banking crash. Where there is no underlying truth, any situation is up-ended when Pluto comes to visit. Then as we approached the end of December 2019, Pluto was joined by Saturn. An interesting mix of a super, deep spring-clean and a need to look at boundaries, roots, instabilities and lack or organisation. Then in March 2020, Jupiter joined in……… so whatever was or was not going on, it then got splattered everywhere.

I call these three in Capricorn the ‘Covid planets’ and they stay with us, until mid-December 2020. The three together are reflecting a need to sort out the basics. If we don’t, we will be stuck in this type of mess for some time. Unfortunately, the ‘we’ here is not so much the everyday person, but those in charge, those in positions of authority. Yes, the same people who are manipulating us and gaslighting us!

 

astr29072020part

From a different view again – stories for the young men (the Welsh Mabinogi).

I have had the good fortune to have been studying Welsh literature over the last four years. The classic group of stories called the Mabinogi seems a strange place to find correlations for our time.

The first four stories tell of the escapades of young men as they learn life’s lessons. These stories were meant for the youngsters of the upper class.

Of the four countries/areas that have done well dealing with Covid 19, all four (Iceland, New Zealand, Kerula and Germany), all have women leaders.

The others, the men (mostly) need the lessons the Mabinogi teach.

Woven in all the of the stories of the Mabinogi is the same lesson……….. young men, brought up in male-dominated worlds setting out into the world and making a hash of it. Why, because of their upbringing, they firmly ignore or are ignorant of, the natural laws of their Land, they blunder into and over the sacred, destroying and decimating. Some eventually ‘get it’, but for other there is war, death and destruction.

The stories are often centred around relationships with women (about whom they know very little). In many, the woman is wronged or insulted in some way – usually grievously. The settings wander between the manifest world and that of the liminal otherworld. In the liminal places these lads are challenged and if the lessons are not heeded their misogynistic and patriarchal behaviour unbalances everything and then brings ruin into the manifest world.

This is the effect the Wounded Male or Wounded Warrior has on the Sacred Feminine.

Sounds horribly familiar, does it not! 

We have today the mindless, misogynist leaders raping the Earth, oppressing and making scapegoats of the poor, the ill, the disabled, the children – all for the wont of lining their pockets and keeping control of the masses.  (AND the government in the UK reckons it is doing all this stuff in the name of Sovereignty – give me a break and don’t get me started!)

Corona virus is not causing this – it has given us a window to see what is really going on.

We can either attempt to understand the situation in all its horrible-ness and try to sort out the issues it brings up for us, or pretend it is not happening in the hope it will go way.

 With Pluto reflecting on the scene…it will not be the latter!

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Over the past three years we have been studying some of the myths and stories of the Celtic Lands.

The first work we did was on the Mabinogi……….the well-known collection of stories from Wales. The Mabinogi are a series of teaching tales aimed at aristocratic young men. The tales guide them through life lessons on how to deal with women, honour and above all, relationship with Nature, the Otherworld, its inhabitants and lore. A subject of many a blog from me has been aspects of Sovereignty, and the Mabinogi is packed with challenges where the young nobleman learns how to deal with living on the sacred Land.

We followed that course with one on Taliesin, the master magician, and more recently a course called Celtic Source, looking at the myth and stories of the Celtic Lands and from whence they arose.

Interestingly, as part of a discussion on the Celtic Source course …… we touched on something that has always fascinated me. From a detached viewpoint it was noticed in the modern-day spiritual scene there seemed to be two camps. One camp looks to refining personal energy as a means to move forward in spiritual growth. Seeking that which is beyond as a means of redemption, echoing many religions.

The other camp finding that gaining greater contact with the planet and nature aids spiritual growth. The latter, having a self-labelled, broadly pagan approach, the former looking to attention on the subtle energies of the body and to the subtle layers of being beyond the body.

So, where did the ‘it has to be better somewhere else’ come from? It brought memories of reading ‘Be Here, Now’ by Ram Dass in the 1970s and not totally ‘getting it’ then, but totally on it now.

The ‘better somewhere else’ simply looks outside or beyond what is in the Now.

The counterpoint indicates we have all we need ‘Now’, but we just don’t realise it. There is no ‘somewhere else’ better. Pining for ‘elsewhere’ just gets you further from ‘being here, now’.

Looking back to the roots of myths and stories of the Celtic lands, they were told to those who were not the workers but the next layers up. The workers knew how to have a good relationship with the Land, the cycles of Nature and the input of the liminal energies around them. They could not function in their daily lives without this innate knowledge.

The more gentrified had lost that link and the stories were for them. True, storytellers would have regaled both worker and overlords with the stories, but the land workers knew what the storyteller was on about. The workers did not have to be reminded, but probably smugly listened to the antics of the young warriors in the stories, messing up and being punished for it.

Where did these land workers get their innate knowledge from? One thought emerged that in the very distant past, the liminal energies of the Land taught them, much like it is believed that plants taught people (actually plants still do teach) how to use them for healing. The Land energies still do teach too, if you are open to listen.

However, as is apparent from these old myths and stories, if the Land is ignored and contact with it is lost, trouble follows fast. The past shows what needs to be heeded. Ignore it and the suffering will be repeated.

In 2019 our leaders who have no idea what ‘living in the real world’ is like. They know nothing of being poor, homeless, having to work 24/7 and still not having enough to keep food on the plate and a roof over the head. So not much different from the noble young men in the Mabinogi and other tales……..

Our leaders are ungrounded with their heads full of ideas that are not practical and in fact damaging to the wider populace.

Without being grounded, respectful of the Land and Nature…. those who lead are going to always fuck it up………. and here we are today…. Those with little or no connection with the Land and Nature are in charge and are destroying the planet.

Without being grounded, people will not be in touch with who they really are.

Without being grounded, people will not be able to learn from the Land and Nature. They might think they are, but will be unable to put what they have learned into practice.

Without being grounded, people will experience high levels of stress on every level (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) and be less able to adapt to changes in environment.

We have no bards or poets today whose job it was to train the young noblemen and to cunningly persuade their Lords to ‘do the right thing’. The media (modern equivalent of bards and poets?) have sold out to the leadership and use their influence to coerce the minions about the achievements of their leaders. A complete 180 degrees turnaround on the ancient role.

The latest batch of leaders have even consigned the wisdom of and respect for the womenfolk to pointless gossip or to tasks as handmaids.

The phrase “we want our sovereignty back” rings hollow, when real sovereignty is about having a good relationship and working hand-in-hand with the Land and Nature.

Real sovereignty is recognising what women have to offer, having a good relationship and working hand-in-hand with women.

When the ‘peasants’ revolt against the craziness of today they risk being labelled as terrorists.

These ‘terrorists’ are simply being ‘here, now’, mindful of Nature ……………

They want to be financially wealthy and secure, and are destroying Nature (e.g fracking) for short term financial gain.

They pay lip-service to caring for the environment and put pressure and responsibility onto the ‘peasants’ do their bit. In reality, those in leadership could demand scrubbers on cement factory chimneys, which would cut down carbon emissions hugely in one simple move.

Which begs the question of why are the leaders doing what they are doing?

I also sense that those in charge are afraid….they are scared…… scared of the things they are consigning swathes of the population to……. lack of money, loss of status…… they are scared of things they cannot control………they are scared of the power of Nature.

The planet with a quick shiver could kill us all, ants that we are, on her surface.

River2Mind you, we are doing a pretty good job of destroying ourselves……

 

 

 

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It has been a long while since I blogged as a lot has gone on, with deep shifts of energy and identification of patterns that have taken a while to surface and understand.

I have never been an ‘Earth Mother’ type as I am blessed with an independent, rebellious streak. Nevertheless, from time to time I have taken younger women under my wing to support them through times of transition and transformation, with eventual success.

This was until a year ago.

There came a time, at the point of transformation, the person chose to stay as they were. After they had put so much effort into working on themselves this came as a shock to me and caused me a lot of soul-searching, re-assessment and self-examination.

Had I failed?

Eventually the realisation came that it had been my job to create the opportunity for them to change and whether they did or not was nothing to do with me. I had done my job and kept my side of any karmic bargain.

It was compounded by other issues dear to my heart. The liminal beings of the Land were involved as were the energy flows within the Land.

I was guided by the energies of the Land, to help them make some delicate adjustments to how energy flowed in several places. This I did with a few trusted friends, but I was still emotionally troubled. I always support people in their freedom to make their own choices, but never had I come across someone wanting to stop growing.

Then I realised I had that same choice when I was in my early 30s. Stay where I was, conform, be safe or choose to break out of the apparently cosy place that my life had become. To me that was no choice, being the rebel so I chose to break free. The cost was considerable at the time, but I would do the same again. However, I can really appreciate that this would not be for everyone.

Events last year forced me to step back and let go…and then let go some more.

This I did and got stuck back into my work with the Land. I got to know this area where I now live, quite intimately, in a geographical sense, over a period of three months. Gradually this brought a deeper connection within myself too.

In meditation one evening, a new dragon companion presented itself. it seemed I had passed some sort of test……. but a skeleton dragon! WTF!!!
I had to let go of any preconceived thoughts about how it flies and just chuckle at the absurdity of the whole thing. Terry Pratchett would have had a field-day.

skeldrag

It was also made clear to me as a local cauldron-holder, that I needed to hold energies at every level…….for the Land, its liminal occupants, but also for the human occupants.

I had done a few things to try to help gather the disparate human energies of the valley in the last three years. Recently, an opportunity presented itself to do some very practical, mundane work for the local community. I threw ‘my hat into the ring’ without any idea if I was the type of person with skills that was being looked for. I told myself I was too old, for a start. Well, upshot was I found myself ‘walking my talk’, and doing a ‘real job’ for the first time in thirty years.

Of course, it is the ultimate “bringing spiritual practice into the material world” – so what more could I ask?

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Whilst visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum in London recently we came across this lovely sculpture of St Margaret and a Dragon:
Far from the dragon being at all scary, this one looked more like a pet.
StMargaretsmall
St Margaret is recorded as being a patron saint of childbirth, pregnant women, kidney disease and wronged people. The childbirth and pregnancy angle is initially very surprising as she was venerated for her virginity. However, one of the stories goes that on her refusal to marry she was tortured. It was also said that she was tempted by or eaten by a dragon. When the dragon swallowed her she fought back and killed it with her crucifix – hence her sometimes being referred to as ‘St Margaret, the Dragon Slayer’. Here, the assumption being that the dragon was a representation of Satan. It is thought that this is where her patronage of childbirth came from – as she herself was safely delivered from the innards of the dragon.
In the Roman Catholic Church her feast day used to be the 20th July, but in the fifth century it was first suggested that decided that her story was ‘apocryphal’ (of doubtful authenticity) and only in 1969 was the date was withdrawn from the calendar. In the Eastern Orthodox Church her feast day is the 17th July. St Margaret is still recognised as one of the saints that spoke to Joan of Arc and indeed there are many churches that bear the name ‘St Margaret’ – including Westminster Abbey.
Delving a bit further, here are some of the lines that give reference to St Margaret, taken from a mediaeval poem:
“Holye mayde Margarete loked her besyde.
There sche sawe a lothelye dragon in a corner glyde,
Brennynge as the blake fyre. His mouthe he gaped wyde.
That mayde wexed alle greene as the gresse in someres tyde.” (lines 179-182)
“Holy maid Margaret looked her beside.
There she saw a loathly dragon in a corner glide.
Burning as the black fire. His mouth he gaped wide.
That maid waxed all green as the grass in summer time.”

 

The final line is very interesting as ‘waxed all green as the grass in summer time’ was a well-known, subtle way of referring to promiscuity.
So what do we have here? Is this a description of seduction? Is this yet another tale of deriding women for being women? This does seem to sit easily with some religious traditions that make it clear that if a woman is raped, she is the one to be punished. Similarly, with a situation of sex outside of marriage when the woman is blamed and vilified, yet the man walks ‘free’.
Is the ‘dragon’ also another way of referring to woman’s sexuality, women’s ability to give birth and women’s power?

Not as far-fetched as one might think and there is a religious commentary on the story of St Margaret and the dragon that says:

“Surely this is because giving birth is not unlike a dragon splitting open to reveal a saint!”

Ouch!

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