Since July 31 is a Blue Moon, we decided to have fun with a special discount code offer. This is our best discount ever–it will only happen once in a blue moon! 😉
Also, remember to sign up for the Brigid’s Grove Newsletter for resources, monthly freebies, + art and workshop announcements!
Darkness falls.
I enter sacred space
stepping from holy ground
onto holy ground
only this time I recognize it.
Owl calls,
moon rises,
sun sets,
leaves rustle,
heart beats.Breathing in,
breathing out
feeling the world spin
feeling the earth turn
watching Her weaving at work in the night.
July’s Blue Moon is coming up at the end of this week and my Womanrunes course is carefully scheduled to end on that day. I can hardly believe we have worked through 37 runes already! (I’ve also scheduled the next Immersion for October.) I’ve written a Full Moon ritual to go out with the last email for the course and I will do the ritual myself with my family. I definitely feel the restless energy referenced in this Blue Moon article:
…As amazing as this moon will be, and necessary—it’s going to be one that challenges us on every single level. In the build up to this lunar event we may have been feeling restless, or have had an excess of nervous energy. Our pulses may have been racing, and it may have been harder for us to relax or fall asleep at night.
Our souls can sense that we are on the verge of something big—but it’s up to us to initiate change.
via Unprecedented Blue Moon in Aquarius: Now or Never. | elephant journal.
Last night, I took my new crystal ball with me to the woods to reflect. I asked what I need to know right now, as I am feeling pulled in several directions and between several wonderful ideas, and I drew The Heart. It reminds me to rest for a little while, but also that I act in this world with great passion and intensity and that’s okay.
We are leaving tomorrow for a family mini-vacation at a river cabin. I’m really looking forward to it. Some healing, play, and relaxation after the energetic depletion of the hard work required for me during the last two weeks of my school session.
(Of course, I fantasize that somehow I’m going to finish writing my dissertation during our mini vacation! 😉 )
“She may feel she will die if she does not dance naked in a thunderstorm, sit in perfect silence, return home ink-stained, paint-stained, tear-stained, moon-stained.”
—Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
We honor the new moon and her blessings.
Letting go, releasing, shedding.
That which no longer serves is gently released
That which is desired, slips out into the crack of possibility
And takes root
Preparing to grow.
But, for now a moment to rest.
To keep silent peace
To soak in the dark of the moon
And her promise of quiet
Deep
Renewal.
Following the spiral path of maiden, mother, and crone…
Do you want to take a journey into a deeper understanding of yourself? Do you wish to unlock insight and understanding? Do you want to reach out to other women in sisterhood and co-create a powerful circle experience?
This new online program is both a powerful, personal experience AND a training in facilitating transformative women’s circles. You will listen to your deep self, access your inner wisdom and prepare to step into circle as guardian and guide for other women who are hungering for depth, connection, restoration, and renewal in today’s busy world.
This intensive course is limited to 15 women, to allow for deep connection and dedicated attention.
August 29-October 12, 2015
Your online experience includes…
With your registration, you will also receive an incredible resource package valued at more than $100 including:
Kit and Initiation Program. In this collection of essays and ritual resources, you will find a complete Red Tent “recipe,” circle leadership basics, moontime musings, and readings, quotes, and poems to help you facilitate a rich, inviting, welcoming, creative space for the women of your community.After your process is complete you will also receive:
For inspiration on your own path, feel free to listen our local Red Tent Circle singing the beautiful chant Dance in a Circle of Women during our May Circle.
Register via our website or check out via Etsy here.
…Make a sacred fire
and throw on it all that you would use to harm yourself.
Make kindling from shame.
Let your dance be wild,
your voice be honest
and your heart untamed.
Be cyclical,
don’t make sense..
Initiate yourself.
Initiate yourself.
The Spiral in Womanrunes is The Rune of Initiation. Our spiral goddess pendant represents and reminds me of this lifelong process of initiation. A pivotal initiatory point for many women is giving birth and I wore this pendant all through my last pregnancy, including in the birth pool in which my last son was born. She carries the imprint of that power for me, a reminder of my own capacity to change, grow, welcome, and create.
I consider her a pendant symbolic of initiation for many events, whether a personal life transition (such as childbirth) or as dedication to a particular path, life purpose, or journey.
This is the pendant of initiation. This is the pendant of change.
It is time for dedication to your sacred path.
Pewter Spiral Goddess Priestess Initiation Pendant by BrigidsGrove.
I’m currently taking Vanessa Sage’s Enchant Your Everyday class (free!) and my daily enchantment practice is this:
(I usually go to the woods for this, but sometimes my own living room has to work instead!)
As we approach U.S. Independence Day and I continue to work through the Womanrunes course, some themes of interdependence emerge. There is so much strength in interdependence or being in-dependence together. How do we balance the twin forces of separation and connection?
For me, I spend a LOT of time in direct connection with my immediate family. It is rewarding, but I also crave time alone. I am introvert and I need time alone to restore my soul! The Two Circles remind me that I need to carve out the solitude my soul needs for restoration and renewal—and, I need to stop apologizing for that. I’ve cobbled together a solution of sorts, that in itself is an illustration of balancing the twin forces, in that when my baby takes his nap, I retreat with him to my bedroom. I sit next to him while he naps (he wakes up otherwise!) and write, work, and sometimes I even journal and read and make art. I usually set up a mini altar on the bed next to my laptop–sculpture, stones, salt lamp, cards. It isn’t “perfect,” but it is what sacred space looks like for me right now. Most of the course was developed while sitting next to a sleeping baby or even nursing the sleeping baby and typing with one hand! I’ve come to see this intensive time of baby-mothering as a peaceful sabbatical, rather than a denial of myself/what I need.
When we reaching the Two Circles in the course, I felt stressed at the beginning of the day—torn between the needs of kids, baby, students, myself. I was fretting over this seemingly eternal struggle for “balance” and criticizing myself with an old, tiresome story of not being a good person, what’s wrong with me, etc. I decided to listen to some old saved voice recordings from my Woodspriestess experiment that I never transcribed. Interestingly, the first one I listened to (from 2012) was practically verbatim the “tape” that was replaying for me at that moment–balancing the needs of connection with the need for solitude, separation, and independence. And, interpreting my own, legitimate need for time and space on my own, through the lens of being “selfish” or somehow inauthentic as well as not being able to meet everyone’s needs for my attention and time. I told my husband about this and he said: “how old was Alaina then?” I paused and realized that she was almost exactly the same age Tanner is now. Suddenly, we realized that this sensation is probably related to having an eight month old baby, rather than a personality “defect” to be corrected! It was actually really freeing then to realize this is not a new experience, but is situational.
(Body paint is left over from our summer ritual on July 1, but it decided to hang around just a little longer to give me another reminder!)
My favorite quote about the concept of existing in the context of relationship comes from another of Christ’s books, She Who Changes:
“[According to] Martin Buber, there can be no ‘I’ without a ‘thou,’ no self apart from relationship. Martin Buber said that before speech is developed, the hand of the infant reaches out for its mother (or other nurturer).’ In other words, before Descartes could formulate a thought, and certainly before he knew that he thought, he reached out his hand in relationship. The existence of the other is as certain as the existence of the self. Long before infants learn to speak, they come into relationship with others besides the mother, and with the physical world, with cribs, toys, sunbeams, shadows of leaves blowing in the wind. The existence of a world and the existence of others can be doubted only by someone who imagines that he or she could exist apart from relationships. According to process philosophy, a person who imagines he has no relationships is to be pitied-or committed to a mental institution. His thoughts on this matter certainly should not have become the foundation of modern western thought.” (Christ, 74)
Today, we reached the Crowned Heart, Rune of Unconditional Love. I knew right away this morning what this rune was going to remind me about. I think that the most unconditional love I’ve experienced is from my babies TO me. I’ve never been loved so intensely wholeheartedly as my babies love me. I know that might sound weird and that we think of parents as the ones having unconditional love for their babies, not vice versa, but the depth of the mother-baby attachment is extremely profound and incomparable. It is also feels so simple and uncomplicated. I had the same depth of attachment with all my children, but with each one I feel more aware of how short-lasting this period of intensity is and I just love how much my baby loves me. While we’ll always love each other deeply, right now we are a motherbaby—a single psychobiological organism and there just isn’t anything else like it…
Let’s celebrate in-dependence together!
WoodsPriestess 