Video from 2005 of Masks of Goddess Project

I finally figured out how to do UTube, and had fun putting this video of my MASKS OF THE GODDESS Project, made in 2005.  I sold the collection in 2008, after they traveled throughout the U.S. for almost 10 years.  It was a great privilege and honor.

Angels in Nebraska revisited

I ran across this story in my files, and felt like sharing it. 

In 2005 I was driving across Nebraska from an east coast residency, and stopped in tiny Cozad to visit the Robert Henri Museum, and the 100th Meridian Museum, which I just couldn't resist.   The founder of the "Ash Can" school of American realism, Robert Henri was born there, and apparently never went back,  preferring New York City and Paris to Nebraska.  Cozad forgives him.

I remember, afterwards, sitting in a diner and fretting as usual about what to do with my life.  I know I was doing this, because I have it on paper in my journal.  I also remember looking up at a flashing sign on the bank across the street.

That got my attention.

 "I let my life be guided by a strange language that I call “signs”. I know that the world is talking to me, I need to listen to it, and if I do so I shall always be guided towards what is most intense, passionate and beautiful. Of course, it is not always easy.  If you trust life, life will trust you."

        Paolo Coelho

The Glastonbury Goddess Conference 2011

The Glastonbury Goddess Conference 2011
www.goddessconference.com

Tuesday 26th -Sunday 31st July
Now five full days of celebration!!
with Fringe events from Sunday July 24th

I'm delighted to be able to attend and be a presenter this coming July!  I'll also be attending the Glastonbury Symposium***   which should give me plenty of opportunity to learn about crop circles to my heart's delight.  I have no idea where cheap lodging can be found for all of this (if anyone reading this has any ideas, all lead are most welcome!)  I'm so happy to be able to participate in this wonderful conference - here is further information:

 Celebrating the Great Mother of Water at Lammas
Details are now online:  www.goddessconference.com

We are happy to welcome for the first time from the USA two pioneers of the Goddess movement –  Vicki Noble, co-creator of the Motherpeace Tarot, and  Zsuzsanna(Z) Budapest, Founder of the Dianic Wiccan Tradition!  With Conference Favourites: Anique Radiant Heart, Barbara Meiklejohn-Free, Carolyn Hillyer, Julie Felix, Kathy Jones, Lydia Ruyle and Lady Olivia Durdin Robertson.

Plus Presenters: Lauren Raine,  Amanda Baker, Annabel Du Boulay, Anna Saqqara Price, Charissa Schipper, Caroline Lir, Deonesea la Fey, Emma Rose Knight, Erin McCauliffe, Ganga Ashworth, Georgina Sirett-Hardie, Graell Corsini, Heloise Pilkington, Isabella Verbruggen, Isis Queen, Jacqui Woodward-Smith, Jennifer Cooper, Katinka Soetens, Kaye Cooksey, Koko Newport, Lisa Newing, Louise Bell, Louise Tarrier, Lydia Lite, Marion van Eupen, Mary Bruce, Michelle Patten, Miriam Raven, Morgaine, Noam Zimin, Oshia Drury, Rose Flint, Roz Bound, Sally Pullinger, Sharlea Johnson, Shirley-Ann Millar, Shoshana Horobin, Sophie Pullinger, Sue Quatermass, Tegwyn Hyndman, Thalia Brown, Tiana Pitman & Tina Free,

With Ceremonies and Praise Songs to the Great Goddess of Water, She who is the Source and Womb of all Life. Participate in moving Sacred Ceremonies, take part in inspiring Workshops, listen to fascinating Presentations, see beautiful Artwork & Stalls, Performances, Music, Song, Poetry and Dance. Visit the Holy Wells of the Goddess in Avalon, cleansing and immersing yourself in Her Healing Waters. Join one of Nine Wells - circles of support and participation in Conference Ceremonies. Dance the night away at the Goddess Gala Buffet and Masque, and join our Goddess Procession through the Landscape to the River Brue with a Fruit Feast!

To reserve a place:  www.goddessconference.com



--------------------

*** The Glastonbury Symposium    

An annual three-day conference
of mysteries, truth and new frontiers:

 crop circles - environment - liberty issues - 2012
earth mysteries - new science - metaphysics
consciousness studies - UFOs - alternative health 

Friday-Sunday, 22nd-24th July 2011

Town Hall,Glastonbury

2011 is the Symposium's twenty-first year!

One of Britain's longest-established
and most acclaimed 'alternative' conferences

The Bucket List

The world is not with us enough
O taste and see the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives to the imagination’s tongue,

grief, mercy, language, tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite, savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our deaths, 

crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking the fruit.

Denise Levertov "O Taste and See" **

 I've been dealing for about three months now with the issue of whether or not I had cancer.  Two weeks ago I had a process (I believe it's called a cat scan) right out of sci-fi whereby they shoot you full of some dreadful radioactive stuff, and then put you in a long tube where you get color coded by some kind of process I frankly don't understand. I take it purple is an especially bad sign.

Needless to say, I've been doing some evaluation these days.  Yesterday the day finally came when I was to get the news, so I dressed in my favorite royal purple outfit, put on my ruby necklace, and sat in front of the doctor's office thinking things over.  I was terrified, in spite of all my "mature realism".  I found myself praying to Tara, Creator, and, because it was handy, a large cactus right in front of me that I figured did very well as a representative of Gaia.  Here's more or less what I said (not out loud):  

"I know you've heard a lot of people bargain, and it's probably ridiculous, but it's worth a try.  So here's the deal:  if you'll just please let me not be ill, I promise I'll go back to work.  I'll return to the work I was doing for the Goddess, and I'll finish my book.  Further,  I'll offer whatever gifts and abilities I may have to help or inspire others, and I'll leave it up to You to determine just who or where I may land with that.  And I promise to get myself out of the way toward that end (as much as an ordinary  human being with the usual neuroses, etc., can.*)"

(*I think it's always good to have a frailty clause, otherwise you set yourself up for perfectionism, which is a recipe for failure. Self-forgiveness is written into the contract.)

Then I sat in an examination room. The only magazine to read,  Time Magazine, seemed rather ironic, and the stuff within it (if I was to soon begin the process of leaving the world) seemed stupid and abstract. Is most of this stuff really what we spend all our energy on in the brief little bit of time we so generously get to be here? Good grief, just look at it.   I tried to imagine how doctors must feel having to give bad news to people - no wonder they get so detached and cold.  What else can they do, I suppose? 

Since (most) medical clinics aren't famous for their psychological and spiritual sensitivities, I sat there for about 45 minutes, sweating.  I thought about one of my favorite movies, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman's "The Bucket List".   What was mine?  ..........Lose 30 pounds.  Go see the Callanish Stones and the Hebrides.  Get a Spider Woman tattoo.  Volunteer in an orphanage.  Go back to Bali.  Go back to Yosemite.  Eat a fabulous chocolate cake with my hands and wash it down with champagne.  Look up Kerry Macneil (no, cross off that.  He'd probably be bald and ill tempered)....and so on.

So.  The doctor came in, that long hour ended.  After I left I immediately drove to the Safeway, bought a huge piece of gooey chocolate cake and ate the entire thing (with my hands on a picnic bench).  Messy, fabulous.  A kid with chocolate all over their hands and face is cute.  I'm sure the sight of a 60ish woman like that  is outright scary - which made  me laugh.  Who cares!  I later went to the movies, and capped off the evening with a bottle of champagne.

Now, since I promised ....... back to work.   I declare myself un-retired.  I don't have cancer.  But I'm glad I made my bucket list.  I think everyone should make a bucket list.......and do it before they have to sit in a sterile examination room like I just did.   The Callenish stones are next.

Life is good, my friends.

**"The poem begins with an ironic reversal of Wordsworth’s lines: "The world is too much with us late and soon." The problem as Levertov sees it is that "The world is / not with us enough. / O taste and see." The poem calls sleepers to awaken to life."   

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/levertov/taste.htm

Sig Lonegren on Spirit Paths and Ley Lines

My introduction to Earth Spirituality and Earth Mysteries was Sig Lonegren, who I met, completely by accident, at the NEARA conference in Putney, Vermont in 1982.  Sig assumed I was with his class, and I assumed I was invited to join the friendly group I blundered into when I went to the Putney Inn for a cup of coffee......and the next thing I knew, I was at an ancient monolith site hidden on Putney Mountain, and learning to dowse for ley lines. I find his weekly articles fascinating, although I suppose this is pretty obscure for those who aren't familiar with dowsing and geomancy.  But I felt like copying his article here because  of my long interest in these ancient sites, and also because I can attest to having experienced, and located with many others, the energetic phenomenon of  leys and ley crossings - and I've also taught ley dowsing to people who found them without even "believing"  in them.

Doodwegen/Dead Straight Lines

by Sig Lonegren 

As I write this, I am in the Netherlands, east of Amsterdam in an area called "Het Gooi"  (pronounced: the 'G' in "Gooi" is pronounced like the 'ch" in the Scottish word 'loch', the 'oo' like the 'oa' on 'oat.').  It consists of a number of towns that are essentially suburbs of Amsterdam.  Among them are Bussum, Laren and Hilversum.  These three towns surround a large bit of moorland - the "Bussumerheide" and the "Westerheide" (in pink on the map below).

These moorlands have a number of perfectly straight prehistoric lines/paths that converge at St. Jan's Kerkhof (St. John's Cemetery).  Straight lines that converge like spokes on a wheel at a sacred site.  Humm… that sounds familiar.  Actually on the map below, I have hi-lighted six lines that converge on that cemetery that have energy leys ( six to eight foot straight beams of and energy that have a direction of flow) running along them.

These lines are called "doodwegen."  One line is a "doodweg" (pronounce the "o" in 'dood' as in 'oat', 'we' as in 'vet", and the 'g' as the 'ch' in 'loch.'  In English, "Doodweg" is "dead way or path," In the past, the dead were carried along these paths from their home towns to the cemetery at what is now St John's Church Cemetery.  There are many Bronze Age round barrows in that area.  (There is a similar dead way at the Rösaring northwest of Stockholm in Sweden where there is a dead straight path leading from a charnel house to a series of round barrows and a fifteen circuit labyrinth.)

Bussum Nieuwe Crailoseweg Hilversum

Laren

Six Prehistoric Doodwegen (hi-lighted in orange) converge on St. John's Churchyard/Cemetery 

Niewe Crailosweg (hi-lighted in green) runs diagonally, and is much younger

I walked the Bussumer Doodweg, and while there are slight deviations due to the thousands of years that they have been used not only for spiritual purposes, but now for walking, horse-riding and and bicycle paths, it is an essentially dead straight line from St. John's Cemetery to Bussum.

Three pictures of the Bussumer Doodweg.   In the bottom picture, you can see two horseback riding trails running parallel  with the foot/bicycle path.

While I was walking the Bussumer doodweg, I was reminded of Kubler-Ross' book on Death and Dying, and the straight path one takes from this life to the next.  When Terry Ross (no relation) taught me how to assist lost spirits to the other side, he described the same straight path, "Don't look to the left or the right; keep going straight ahead; do you see the light at the end of the tunnel?; go for it!"  These Doodwegen are portals, paths to the other side.

There is one very straight line running diagonally near the top of the map (in green) called the "Nieuwe Crailoseweg" that is a much more recent "weg," but its first bit, "Nieuwe" shows us that it is much more recent than the "Doodwegen."  While it doesn't go to the St. John's Church, it does seem to be carrying on the tradition of straightness.

A painfully obvious connection between the Dod Man in England and "Doodwegen" in the Netherlands struck me that I had, for some unexplainable reason, never thought of before.  Back in the seventies, when Paul Devereaux was Editor of The Ley Hunter, there was a comic strip in most issues called "Dodman."  'Dod' is a local British vernacular word for a land snail, the "Helix pomatia".  The comic strip was the story of a snail that had long antennae, and ongoing adventures in sacred space.  This snail was a caricature based on the Dodman, best known as the chalk hill-figure known as the Long Man of Wilmington.    According to Wikipedia, "the 'inventor' of ley lines, Alfred Watkins, thought that in the words "dodman" and the builder's "hod" there was a survival of an ancient British term for a surveyor. Watkins felt that the name came about because the snail's two horns resembled a surveyor's two surveying rods."

IMHO, at a time when leys are under attack, these doodwegen are some of the best bits of evidence that these spirit paths are real!

Sig Lonegren
SunnyBank
9 Bove Town
Glastonbury
Somerset BA6 8JE
England
http://www.geomancy.org
http://www.sunnybankglastonbury.co.uk
+44 (0)1458 835 818

Sabino Canyon Reflections

 "I hold the most archaic values on earth ... the fertility of the soul, the magic of the animals, the power-vision in solitude, .... the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe."

Gary Snyder 

"We will be passing from the terminal Cenozoic into what I call the Ecozoic.  And the primary principle of the Ecozoic is that the Universe - and in particular planet Earth – is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.  If we don’t learn that – nothing is going to work."

Thomas Berry

 

 It was a magnificent day yesterday, so I took a long hike up Sabino Canyon, something I haven't done, I'm embarrassed to say, for years.    It was not long, as I got into the canyon, before the energy of the life there, so close to Tucson and yet so graciously well preserved, thanks to the State Park System, brought all my love of the area back.

About half-way up this 5 mile trail, I was struck to notice that more than half of the people making the excursion were running up the trail.  Outfitted with water bottles and Nikes, and plugged in to stop watches and earphones, they all looked stressed out as they puffed and sweated (some looked like they were downright suffering) up the trail, deadly serious, and as ungreetable as a wall of laptops at a wifi cafe.  I felt not a drop of guilt as I meandered,  stupidly blissed out in the sunshine, talking to early butterflies and birds, and trying to not get run over by the thundering but fit hordes.  There's something so very American about that - get out into nature, and achieve!  Compete with yourself! 

And now that I've got that off my chest, I have to add that as a kind of benediction for all those suffering runners, I made it a point to sit for quite some time on my plump rear on a boulder, eating bagel, and thinking of absolutely nothing.  I had some fine encounters with hawks, especially hawks seem to be speaking to me of late.  And one comical roadrunner - I find the birds much more of a contrary than any serious, determined coyote I ever met.  I have nothing magical to report to this journal today, just the magic that is already abundantly there.  I wish, for those friends who are suffering the cold, I could bring this warm day to you.

 

"In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks."
— John Muir

"When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world."
— John Muir

Valentine's Day

I realized it's Valentine's day..........I figured I should try to dig up something that relates to the occasion.  I found these poems, alas, the residue of a long ago love affair..........  

BIRD OF PARADISE


I pause at the door, key in hand.
Breathing in the last of you.
Pleasure that pierces heart and reason

All I can give
is to give it back.
World, here is my heart's unspoken delight.
I offer it back to you
to light among the dappled leaves

I open my hand
a scarlet bird
flashes among the trees.


Fly free,
Bird of Paradise,
into the morning
from the other side of forever.

IN CONSTANT FLIGHT

The road twists before me
a white line, a black stream

Hello and Goodbye live in the same house
I examine myself, knowing
that a woman of 40 years
is old enough to expect nothing.

On a whim, I stop for coffee
in Scotland, Pa.
Population 2,500 souls
and write in my journal:

    "Kiss the joy as it flies
     and live in eternity's sunrise"

Thank you, William Blake.
I am driving west now
where the sun before me
continues to set.

A painting I once saw comes to mind
two hands lying, side by side,
not touching
a kind of moving electricity
holding them
together,
and apart

from somewhere in the area of my chest
a secret electricity expands behind me
like a ribbon in the wind,
a silver cord
crossing the Pokanos,
the Catskills,
mountains, oceans, lifetimes.

Pull the cord,
and I shall surely know it.