red tent | WoodsPriestess

“… Every day, we witness the positive, transformative effects of, ‘restoring women to ceremony’…another reason it is vital that we continue our work…”

–D’vorah Grenn (Stepping into Ourselves, p. 56)

We’ve been hard at work over the last three months giving birth to a new project!

Introducing…The Red Tent Resource Kit…

I actually ended up sort of accidentally writing a whole new book to go with this kit. It was originally going to be a collection of handouts as a pdf. However, as I put the handouts together, I realized I was actually writing a short book or manual instead. I also reflected on how I am tired of only getting pdf manuals and ebooks when I sign up for different programs, rather than an actual, printed book. One of my mottoes this year is to follow the inspiration, so I went with it, and at the end of last month our new books arrived and they’re beautiful and I’m so excited about them!

Our unique, signature Red Tent Kit includes ALL of the following resources:

Womanrunes Book and Card set: ideal for personal guidance and self-development, or for the inspiration and renewal corner at your Red Tent Circle.
Red Tent Goddess Sculpture: symbolic of self-care and of both receiving and giving.
Carnelian Pendulum (kit exclusive!)
Brand new 58 page book: Restoring Women to Ceremony, The Red Tent Resource Kit, written exclusively for this kit. 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.
Moontime pendant with silver-tone, solid crescent moon charm
Red altar cloth
Red organza bag to store your resources
Coupon for $100 off the companion Red Tent Initiation online training to be held in July-August
Extra surprise bonus goodies intuitively chosen for you!

The contents of this Kit are valued at $100 when sold separately!

When I was taking pictures for the Kit, I randomly drew three Womanrunes cards to include in the pictures. The ones I drew were absolutely perfect for sharing the message of what this collection has to offer to others and what we hope to create in restoring women to ceremony:

Gratitude for the way words twine around my tongue
And through my fingers
Gratitude for sacred space
Sacred sisters
And sacred solitude.
Gratitude for warm spring evenings
Setting sun and moonrise
Gratitude for hope and inspiration
The opportunity to follow a calling
The beat of footsteps
On beautiful earth.
Gratitude for babies
Fuzzy heads and sweet breath
For dancing daughters
For smiling sons.
Gratitude for supportive partners
The opportunity to walk alongside another.
Gratitude for co-creation
For courage
For stepping into personal power.
Gratitude for tasting fear
For letting it roll around inside familiar grooves in the brain
And then doing it anyway.
Gratitude for the real
The holy
The potently ordinary
The powerfully mundane.
Gratitude for sacred space to which I may return
Again and again
As inexhaustible and powerful
As the sweep of wind through branches
The river’s song
And the silent watchfulness of stone.

Today while I was uploading some song recordings from last night’s new moon Red Tent Circle, I found a recording a did a couple of weeks ago and forgot about. One of the assignments for March for the Sacred Year class I am participating in was to write a gratitude poem. Even though I spoke-wrote this poem several weeks ago, it felt very true to read it again today. After last night’s Red Tent, I am feeling grateful to circle with other women in real life rather than only in virtual space. Recently, I’ve also been feeling grateful for the women who have been participating in my dissertation research group. I’m so glad I chose to do a dissertation research project with the input of others, rather than working alone. My exploration is already much deeper and more nuanced than it would have been without the women who have been willing to share their voices, wisdom, experience, and perspectives with me. Very grateful! I look forward to continuing to spiral together (my research is about contemporary priestessing and my research group is still open to additional participants). People have offered extremely thoughtful and well-considered responses to the questions I posed so far, as well as led me to explore new questions and lines of thought.

At last night’s circle.

I’m grateful for spring flowers too and modified some prior posts into this one at SageWoman: Ode to Tiny Flowers.

I also decided to gift myself with 30 Days of Bringing in the May for my birthday this year. It is on my 100 Things list to do another month-long daily woodspriestess blog-experience and I thought my birth month would be a good opportunity to do so. Might as well layer it into this ecourse too! I enjoyed the Brigid course in February so much. I’ve been reflecting a lot recently about how one of the primary tasks of ritual and ceremony is in creating the container. This is what I do with women’s circles and retreats. The Sacred Year class and the 30 Days courses do the same for me—create the container and give “permission,” in their way, for an experience to unfold. It is incredible how easy it is to rush through the day without taking needed pauses, time outs, or stillpoints. I’m working on developing two courses myself, one about Red Tents (and women’s circle work in general) and one a Womanrunes immersion ecourse (to be followed by a divination intensive course late this year or early next). I also have several other courses in mind to be worked on (not to forget the dissertation! Oh my!), but I have to focus. Having another baby has really made me pare away a lot in my life, including very basic self-care things like regular showers! I’ve done it before, so I know it isn’t permanent, but it is still hard to feel like I’m trimming away so much that matters to me, while also having so much I want to offer, and constantly having to prioritize and choose. I’ve been looking at it as a sort of “sabbatical.” While I might not be able to do as much face to face projects as I envision and dream of, I can lay the groundwork, I can write, I can prepare and outline and imagine, while also sitting in my bed holding my sleeping baby. Maybe I won’t get to the woods every day and maybe I have to choose between the shower or yoga, since doing both in one day seems like too much to ask sometimes, but I can use this baby time to incubate new visions and grow while appearing stationary. During the Inner Mentor visualization we did last night, we traveled in time to meet ourselves twenty years from now. The first thing she/I told me is that my baby is now twenty. It felt like a shock to consider that, since right now is so real.