BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
During the COVID shutdown, one of my friends says “We are all on this bridge together.” I instantly see a vision of humanity huddled on a bridge that ends in mid-air, with no solid ground ahead and no idea how or when the rest of the bridge can be completed. If the bridge were to continue, where we we end up? Where will it take us? What kind of world will we discover when we get there? A better question: What kind of world do we want to create from this chaos?
A DEEP DRINK
We are together is sacred circle for three days, speaking from our hearts and listening deeply to Her wisdom arising in each one of us. As we are doing our final circle and preparing to scatter across the country, one of the women sighs and observes “Such a deep drink.” Indeed it has been a deep and nourishing drink from the heart of the Sacred Feminine.
BUILDING THE BASKET
This simple image is actually very complex and took hours to construct using tiny slivers of many kinds of homemade paper. This careful construction is very much like the way to build a strong container in which to gather for deep listening and calling in Spirit.
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
This image emerged shortly after I returned from a pilgrimage in the south of France to walk in the footsteps of Mary Magdalene. Divine Mother was very clear in her instructions as I began this piece — rip the images to shreds and reassemble them on the canvas. I didn’t realize until I was finished and stood back to witness the finished image that Magdalene was present, walking barefoot across the gentle hills of Provence. As she has been for over 2000 years, she and her teachings about love are Hidden in Plain Sight.
MOUNTAIN LION
At one of our Alchemy conferences, I find the Medicine Card for Mountain Lion in my goodie bag. I am fascinated to learn the Mountain Lion medicine involves lesson on the use of power in leadership. It is the ability to lead without insisting that others follow. Mother Mountain Lion always hunts alone. I find this so freeing.
SHE WHO IS WHO SHE IS
This was a vision that kept coming to me over a period of years: a tall serene woman wearing a hooded cloak that seemed to be woven from some kind of fine metallic threads. When I told a friend about this frequent visitor, she told me she had done a painting years before of just such a woman and she named her ‘She Who Is Who She Is.’ Her name perfectly describes her qualities. She stands in her own spiritual authority – Sovereign and Sacred. She is an aspect of me that simultaneously exists across time and space.
AT THE EDGE OF A NEW WORLD
When I was first awakened to the call to gather the women, I had a vision. I was standing at the absolute edge of the world as we know it with an immense void in front of me. My arms are linked with the arms of women on both sides of me, who are linked with the woman next to her. We form a line of women stretching so far in both directions that I can see the line begin to curve with the curve of the Earth. We are each taking first one step and then another into that void and new solid ground appears under our feet with each step, because we have the courage to take that step and because we are each supported by our sisters.
DREAM
In one of my dreams, I am alone on a vast flat plain under a full moon when I hear the sound of approaching horses, the thunder-like sound of hundreds of hooves on the packed Earth. At first I am fearful but I relax as I see the most beautiful white horses streaming toward me and then continuing past me on both sides. I feel heartbroken when they pass out of sight beyond me, and I drop to put my ear on the ground to catch the last echos of their hoof beats disappearing in the distance.
OWL MEDICINE
“Owl Medicine is powerful and must be taken very seriously.” These were the words of an indigenous wisdom keeper when I called to tell her I was sitting hospice with a large great-horned owl that dropped into my backyard. Most likely the owl had eaten a poisoned small rodent and its neurological system was shutting down. I sat with the owl through the afternoon and into the night. The wings in this image are from a photo I took after the owl died. Owls have long been a symbol of wisdom and invite us to see the truth hidden in the deception.They remind us to pay attention to signals and omens and ask us to consider whether we are lying to ourselves.
EARTH
This was one of my first images of the Sacred Feminine, taking the form of an Earth Woman.
She embodies all the beauty and sacred complexities of our precious Mother Earth. Ocean sunsets and flowing river valleys, flowers and feathers, deep forests and jagged mountain peaks. She celebrates diverse life forms who share this planet with us: hawk, owl, wolf, lion, butterfly. Presided over by a full moon, She reminds us that all life on this planet is our sacred responsibility.
WINTER SOLSTICE
When women walked upon this earth in their sovereign and sacred wisdom, they knew to honor the seasons, the phases of the moon, the whispers of their ancestors. Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere is the time for stillness, for burrowing in deep to listen. This does not mean there is no fire in the hearth or in the belly. We dream of seeds.
DEEP WISDOM
I’ve just completed a Winter Solstice image and Mother reminds me that in the southern hemisphere, it is mid-summer. Among Her many gifts to us is balanced wholeness, light and dark. And so She emerges in a deep forest, surrounded by ancient growth and whispering an invitation to dive deeper into the great Mystery.
SO MANY WEBS
As we sit in ceremony I am aware that each one of us is connected to multiple other webs of Sacred Feminine wisdom arising. We each weave together with multiples organizations and networks and communities. There is overlap and repetition in the pattern of the weave and that only makes it stronger. There are nodal points where multiple webs connect and collaborate that serve as something like acupressure points to stimulate the rising frequency of humanity.
THREE IS THE KEY
As I listen to the drum during indigenous ceremony, I see this image of three teepee poles leaning together with brilliant white light pouring down from the celestial realms and up from the center of the Earth. I know intuitively that the three poles are all essential to the flow of that energy. Together they create a stable pattern and open the flow of creativity, discernment and intuition.
UNDER THE SEA
This image began as a vision board for 2024 and began to tell its own unique story about the relationship between Star Beings, Isis, Black Madonnas, Mary Magdalene and ancient sacred dolman built at the intersection of ley lines.
FIRE
After a long session of drumming and prayer at the Sacred Fire, one of the women speaks: “There is a place in the fire where you will not get burned.” For women like me of European descent who have a complicated relationship with fire and lingering ancestral trauma from the Burning Times, this is a hopeful piece of wisdom.
LYNDA’S DREAM
My friend Lynda tells me of her dream that has left her feeling disturbed, with a feeling of longing. In the dream she stands at her kitchen window and sees three horses have gotten loose from their enclosure across the street. One horse is black, one is tawny brown and the third is white. She walks to the next room to tell her husband she is worried about the horses getting hurt by traffic on the road. When she returns to the kitchen window, the horses are standing just on the other side of the glass and seem to be beckoning her to come and run with them. They wait for her for a few moments and then turn to run free and disappear.
FESTOONING
At our Alchemy 2 gathering, the amazing ALisa Starkweather tells us about the amazing collaborative magic of bees in a hive called festooning. Festooning is a honey bee behavior where worker bees connect their legs to form a lacework structure between hive frames, often seen during comb building. This structure, called a festoon, can act as scaffolding for building the comb. I can see that we women are doing our own form of festooning whenever we gather, working together to build a new world by reaching together further and further into the void.
THE WAIT IS NOT LONG
I am at a goddess painting retreat in the desert. Our home base is air conditioned and we are comfortable in the intense heat. At dawn one morning, I climb onto the roof deck to watch the sunrise over the mountains. As the sun peaks over that jagged horizon, I clearly hear the refrain from an old Little River Band song ‘Lady’ on the warm breeze: “Don’t be thinking that I don’t want you, ‘cuz baby I do.” I am in a rather isolated ‘in between’ moment of my life and I really need to hear this reminder from Mother that She still wants me, that She loves me enough to sing me this song, that I still had something to contribute.
SHOWING OFF
It is impossible to capture even a small fraction of the incredible beauty of our Earth home. The Divine Feminine swoons at the perfection of Her brightly colored creations, both flora and fauna. Her amazing creatures come to join Her from the air and the land and deep beneath the seas. We human beings are so blessed by Her abundance … and so careless with our precious gifts.