Posted on: Oct 28, 2020 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Sabbats
A Samhain Meditation: Hecate and the Crossroads of Choice
On Samhain eve, in the pitch blackness of deep night, light a single candle in a quiet, private space in your home.
Open yourself to the energies of the natural world as it transits into its winter state of death and dormancy. Sense the withdrawal of energy inward to darkness and stillness, the falling away of leaves, the slowing metabolism of birds and beasts, and the sleeping life force within the barren landscape.
Breathe these wild realm energies into your body. Follow them inward to the dark stillness of your inner core. Tap into the deep roots of your spiritual journey that give rise to your soul-sourced impulses to reclaim your Deep Self and the best qualities of your humanity.
In this self-reflection, remember that life is a constant cycle of death and new beginnings — in the shifting of the seasons, the turning of day into night, and the rising and falling of your breath — in the consciously chosen and outwardly imposed losses and endings of your day-to-day life — in the suffering and passing of a loved one, and in your own fragile mortality, mapped out in the inevitable morphing of your physical form.
Surrender to your own constant cycle of endings and new beginnings, and be present to the personal change that is emerging for you at this time.
When you find the parts of your life that are ending and calling for your conscious engagement, speak them out loud to the listening darkness, and state your intention to travel to Hecate’s crossroads to seek out Her guidance. Then imagine a path appearing at your feet that will lead to the heart of the sacred dark, between the worlds, where Hecate awaits you
See Hecate’s luminescent form before you in the ebony darkness and close the distance between you. Take a few moments to connect with Hecate. What does She look like? How does it feel to be in Her presence? What words of welcome does She share? What words do you speak in return?
Let Hecate place Her hand upon your solar plexus. Commune with Her in the rich, dark stillness of your inner core, sharing with Her the endings that are arising within you and the soul-sourced roots of your impetus for change.
With a sweep of Her hands, two paths appear, intersecting diagonally at your feet. This is your personal crossroads, unique from any other individual or any other season in your life. One path holds the stories and energies of your life as it is, and the other the life your journey of soul is calling you to. Here you can find everything you need to make wise, soulful choices in this death moment of shifting into a new cycle of healing and personal growth.
Let yourself feel everything, know everything, for Hecate’s is the middle path that calls you to be big, wise and powerful enough to embrace the full breadth, the good and the bad, of your life story.
Yet also practice self-care. If at any time you feel overwhelmed by the information and insights coming to you, remember that you are master of this journey and can choose how deep you want to engage your crossroads magic at this time.
As you return to the space between the crossroads, it is time to choose how you will respond to this particular death moment, and how to conceive and engage change itself.
You can choose to see change as your enemy or your teacher. You can choose to embrace the lessons and new beginnings offered by the endings of this death moment, or to let fear and resistance rule you and chain you to the path of your life as it is.
Take several slow, deep breaths and fill yourself with the shining light of Hecate’s love. Feel the power and beauty of this love that can brave profound, life-changing endings, and can hold and heal the sorrow and wounding, and the joy and the beauty, of your life story and pathwork. This same love is inside of you, supporting and guiding your journey of soul.
Then ask yourself: are you ready to walk Hecate’s middle path, consciously engaging all that you’ve been shown and all that you are in service of this transformational death moment? What endings are you willing to embrace? Will you let love and your best instincts guide you on your journey of soul? Be brave, choose wisely; these are powerful times requiring powerful choices.
Your time at Hecate’s crossroads is drawing to a close. Look into Her eyes and acknowledge Her for who She truly is: the Dark Mother who knows you, loves you and is here, always, to guide you in these profound, tricky ending moments in your journey through life. Offer Her your heartfelt gratitude as you bid Her farewell. Then use your breath to bring yourself back into your physical body and waking reality.
Blow out the candle and sit, quiet and still, within the enveloping darkness. This too is a crossroads moment, as is each breath and each moment that follows, because change comes to you in the little and big ways that mark your passage through time and space. In each of these moments, with every thought, word and action, you get to choose how to spend this precious offering that is your life. And by your choices, your destiny and that of our Earth home are woven.
Excerpt from The Path of She Books of Sabbats: A Journey of Soul Through the Seasons.
Artwork by Sarah Sheil
Posted on: Jul 28, 2020 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Sabbats
A Lammas Teaching: The Seasons and Cycles of Breath
Excerpt from The Path of She Book of Sabbats.
Our journey of soul is like breath.
On the in-breath, we enter deep inside of ourselves, to the well-spring of our soul and the mysteries of the sacred dark, seeking guidance and inspiration for our pathwork of healing and transformation, and the seeds of our beauty and wounding that are ready to return to the light of our waking-world consciousness.
On our out-breath, we turn our focus outward, embracing the enervating powers of light and life and letting the seeds of our pathwork express and reveal themselves in the machinations of our everyday existence. Life is our teacher, bringing us the insights, energies and experiences we need to heal, grow and blossom in the sunlit world.
On our return in-breath, we gather up and take back inside everything that we have learned and experienced. We harvest our healing work and life story, and ingest their transformative lessons, letting them nourish and change us. And in this process, we become a newer, more profound and brighter version of our Deep Self.
The turning of the seasons is like breath.
On the in-breath, the natural realm turns inward as the balance shifts from light and life to darkness and death. Nature sinks into stillness and repose, while the land rejuvenates and the seeds of the new gestate in the belly of the dark.
On the out-breath, the returning light and warmth awaken the sleeping seeds of life within the land. Roots dig deep and green tendrils reach upward to kiss the sun. Everywhere in Nature, creation expands outward in a rampant, stunning display of the beauty and abundance of new and blossoming growth.
On the return in-breath, the living world offers up the fruits of its labors for the harvest. The death and sacrifice of some threads of life ensure the nurturance and continuance of others. Yet nothing is truly lost, for contained within death are the seeds of a new season and a future harvest.
Our busy modern world is not like breath. If anything, we are fixated on a perpetual out-breath, with its expansive, external focus. We are always doing and striving, charting our passage through life by the material markers of achievements and possessions. More is better. Growth is everything.
Yet we can never escape the natural order of things. We can’t breathe out, without breathing in. The outer arises from the inner, and that which grows and expands, in the end, returns to the still, fertile center of things to feed and give rise to the next cycle of life.
This is the work of Lammas, where profound, consciously chosen endings gift us with the seeds of profound, life-serving beginnings, and from these seeds our lives and our world are renewed and reborn.
Celebrate Lammas with the Path of She Book of Sabbats.
Photo Credit: Rachel Lynette French on Unsplash
Posted on: Jul 10, 2020 @ 11:00 Posted in: Sabbats
Summer Journey: Nature’s Magic of Beauty and Abundance
I reach out to you as Summer deepens into its powers of light and life, and Nature gifts us with its transformative magic of beauty, abundance and goodness.
I reach out to you as I struggle daily with the onslaught of bad news that relentlessly reinforces the mess we’ve made of this world, and the horrors of our destructive ways.
I reach out to you knowing that I’m not alone in my angst. We all sense, deep down, that change is coming at us, hard and fast — change that profoundly matters to our personal lives, to those we hold close and dear, to the oppressed and vulnerable in our midst, to our children and children’s children to come, to our Earth home, and to our very future as a species.
I reach out to you, offering a different voice, and a positive, empowering vision and path of change in the face of the noise and negativity of the daily news cycle that locks us in a mindset of scarcity, fear, and gross imbalances in power, wealth and wellbeing. This outer mindset is just one possibility and path for our human society, and another path, arising from the life-centered ways of the Goddess and Nature, is flourishing outside your doorstep at this very moment.
Walk With MeCome, take my hand, join me as I walk on a fine, sunny July day, following the same path that’s guided my questing feet for twenty years — down a secret forest trail on our land that leads to a tranquil, rural road surrounded by farmland.
The fir trees and sword ferns greet me as I pass, brushing me lightly with their bright green, new-leaf finery. My heart swells at the cry of nesting eagles in the treetops, and I sniff hungrily as I pass the hedgerow of ocean spray. Just out of sight, gardens are in full bloom, with tasty, green produce and plump, sweet berries juicy ripe for the picking.
This Nature’s transformative magic, an antidote and counterforce to the negative onslaught of the daily news cycle, and the madness and stresses of our human society. I’m not hiding out or seeking solace in the natural realm. No, this is a conscious act, a walking transformation, and a revolution in the making, with Nature and the Goddess as my teachers and guides in their ways of life, abundance and goodness.
Your Own Transformative Nature MagicI reach out from my place on this path and invite you to experience a bit of this Nature magic I speak of. However my story resonates with you, breathe these energies into your body and soul. Let them awaken your own connections to the beauty and gifts of summertime Nature in your part of the world.
You don’t have to live in a rural setting like I do. You just need to step outside your door and Nature is there: in the sky overhead, the earth beneath your feet, the birdsong and insect buzz, and your favorite green space or tree or flower bed; in the fresh, local produce at your grocery store; and the way your body feels when brushed by the wind and caressed by sunshine.
This is no mundane exchange with Nature. Great teachings beckon to you from your sensual, summer encounters with green-growing things, fragrant flowers, melodic birds, fresh-picked berries, warm-wind caresses, and the life-giving promise of sunshine. Simple, powerful, life- and world-changing lessons — abundance is real; life is good; and every living being is beautiful, worthy and essential to the web of life that holds us all.
Imagine these lessons as the foundations of a new, life-centered vision for your life and our shared society: where scarcity is replaced by abundance, love heals our fear, and everyone and everything are valued and supported for their beauty and contribution to our collective wellbeing.
I’m not naive. I know that we can’t heal ourselves and fix what ails our humanity solely through Summer’s visions of beauty, abundance and goodness. Nature, like humanity, has many sides and seasons. Winter brings hardship, scarcity, death and darkness, just as our lives are marked by pain, wounding and the shadow side of our nature. There are potent, transformative mysteries in light and life, and in darkness and death, and our lives and world are a complex weaving of all of these things.
I reach out to you in this post, and in everything I write and offer from the Path of She, from a fierce love and determination that are fueled by hope not despair. I believe in you, in me, and in the countless others that are waking and choosing to do what is needed to mend our souls, reclaim our lives, and help create a wiser, saner, more just and loving human society.
From my own intense, many-years, many-seasons journey of soul, and in my Path of She work with others, there’s one thing I know for sure: that everything we need to accomplish these mighty, daunting, exhilarating, transformative tasks is already here, within us and all around us, if we but learn to seek and source the teachings of the Goddess and Nature in new, powerful ways.
I have created the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess offering as part of a Guided Journey Series through the seasons to help you seek and source the transformative, life-centered teachings of the Goddess and Nature. The Summer Journey includes: a Guidebook (pdf ebook), Journal (pdf ebook), and Guided Meditation (mp3 audio) that offer an integrated, seven lesson program with wisdom teachings, awareness practice and journaling exercises, and a guided meditation.
I hope this blog post will inspire you to dive deep into your Summer Journey with Nature, whether through your own self-directed pathwork or the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess offering.
During these COVID-19 times, when many of us are struggling and in need of spiritual inspiration, I’m offering my Summer Journey at sliding scale prices.
The full price is $16.99. Use this coupon: summerdiscount to pay 50% of the purchase price. Use this coupon: summergift to download the Summer Journey package for free.
I ask you to pay what you can and to take what you need in support of your spiritual pathwork at this time.
Click here to go to the Path Store. Add the Summer Journey to your cart, then enter the coupon on the checkout page.
Artwork by: Vincent van Gough
Posted on: Jul 10, 2020 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Sabbats
Summer Journey: Your Inner Goddess
Excerpt from Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess
The Goddess, in simple terms, is the feminine of Divinity, the sacred feminine. Pagan teachings tell us that She is immanent: She exists everywhere and can be found in all things. She is Mother Nature, the living body of the Earth, and the seasons and cycles that govern the physical world and our human lives through birth, life, death and rebirth. Her deepest presence is a golden love from which life emerges, is nurtured, and returns to at the end of its days.
You come to know the Goddess not through words or ideas, but through direct experience of Her presence and ways. Each turning of the seasons offers an opportunity to engage an aspect of the Goddess or God that is reflected in the mysteries and energies of the season. The Goddess who comes to greet you in the summer season is your own Inner Goddess.
You are Divine. You are beautiful. You are precious and worthy beyond your wildest imagination. Your deepest presence is love. You have special gifts and a sacred purpose that are yours alone to share with this world. You are an essential part of the great weaving of life that calls you to blossom and flourish in the summer season, and offer up your very best gifts and qualities for the well-being of the whole.
These are not just pretty words. They’re the lost truths of your Divine origins and Goddess heritage. They apply not just to you, but to every single living being of this Earth: from the tiny plankton to the majestic blue whale; a single blade of grass to the Amazon rainforest; the red-breasted robin to the fearsome condor. The earth, the air, the water, and the life-light within, these too are sacred, precious and essential for our shared existence.
See the summertime magnificence of Nature through your Inner Goddess knowing. Wild creatures and green-growing things cannot help but blossom into their true beauty and sacred purpose in the life-giving powers of Summer. Each is doing exactly what it is meant to be doing in the prime of its life; their physical forms and outward behaviors are natural, seamless expressions of their inner essence and primal drive to flourish.
From the bees busy gathering nectar and pollinating plants in their travels, to the raspberry bush offering up its delicious fruits for hungry bellies, to the birds who feast on this fruit and spread it seeds, to the swaying canopy of the giant maple tree that is home and habitat to these birds and many other wild creatures — this is the way life is meant to be, a living, breathing world of interconnected beings doing their destined part to ensure the health and well-being of the whole.
Our human world doesn’t work in these ways. Most people don’t live connected to their inner essence; they don’t bloom into a beautiful, full expression of themselves and their sacred purpose in life; and they don’t offer up their best gifts to ensure the health and well-being of the whole. Much of the unhappiness and destructive impulses of humankind find their source in this core wounding.
Consider these cold, hard truths in relation to your own life. Think about the masks that you wear and the roles that you play in your everyday existence that disconnect you from your true, beautiful Self. Open to your inner longings and unmet needs to live an authentic life, sourced from your inner essence and sacred purpose. Let yourself feel the unhappiness, pain and loss that arise from this disconnect.
You’ve never lost your Inner Goddess, nor your connection to the ways of the sacred feminine and the living truth of Nature. There’s no separation between you and your true beauty and sacred purpose. These things have always been waiting for you to show up and reclaim them as your own.
In Summer, with the powers of light and life at their peak, it is these very things that call you to take your destined place in the sun-bright world, alongside the wild creatures, green-growing things and your fellow humans. It is time for you to live from your very best gifts and qualities, and to play your part in ensuring the health and well-being of our shared human society and Earth home. This is how you can transform your life, and help build a better, more beautiful, kinder and joyful world. You need to simply show up as your true, beautiful Self.
You are ripe. You are ready to blossom and flourish. Your Inner Goddess can show you the way.
Claim your Inner Goddess with the Path of She’s Guided Summer Journey.
The Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess immerses you in the mysteries and magic of your Inner Goddess and Nature, inviting you to claim and blossom into your best, most beautiful Self.
The Summer Journey includes: a Guidebook (pdf ebook), Journal (pdf ebook), and Guided Meditation (mp3 audio) that offer an integrated, seven lesson program with wisdom teachings, awareness practice and journaling exercises, and a guided meditation.
During these COVID-19 times, when many of us are struggling and in need of spiritual inspiration, I’m offering my Summer Journey at sliding scale prices.
The full price is $16.99. Use this coupon: summerdiscount to pay 50% of the purchase price. Use this coupon: summergift to download the Summer Journey package for free.
I ask you to pay what you can and to take what you need in support of your spiritual pathwork at this time.
Click here to go to the Path Store. Add the Summer Journey to your cart, then enter the coupon on the checkout page.
Posted on: Jun 17, 2020 @ 10:00 Posted in: Featured, Sabbats
A Summer Solstice Teaching: Nature’s Vision of Abundance
Our human world is stuck in a mindset of fear and scarcity. There’s not enough food, water, wealth, power, status, beauty or love to go around. An ethos of scarcity breeds a reality of scarcity, with a grab what you can social order with little regard for our impact on each other or our Earth home. From this miserly place, our scarcity ethos bears the fruit of poverty, social injustice, war, environmental destruction, and the countless greedy, fearful ways we wreak havoc on our world.
The natural realm offers a simple, glorious, counter-ethos: abundance. The wondrous thing is that this abundance exists now; we’re already living within its loving, generous embrace. At no time is this truth more evident than at the Summer Solstice when the Mother Earth lavishes us with goodness and beauty for our hungry bellies and souls.
Bees are busy making honey from the sweet nectar of flowers. Flowers are scenting the air with their stunning blooms. Fruits are dripping from the branches, ripening in the heat of the summer sun. Farm stalls are overloaded with fresh-picked produce. These things are the gifts of the Earth, given with an overflowing, life-centered munificence.
A little seed blossoms into a whole plant, or a bush, or a tree that proffers a plethora of food stuff and the seeds of future plants and harvests. The pit of a single plum grows into a tree that year after year offers up its fruits for our tables.
Imagine conceiving this same abundance in our human world, where power, worthiness, love, joy and other markers of personal satisfaction and social value are infinite and available for all.
Imagine embracing the notion that we each have gifts to offer, seeds of our best qualities and nature. And that we bring these gifts to the collective table of our humanity in a spirit of generosity and giving more, and only taking what we need in return.
Know that an ethos of abundance breeds a reality of abundance. Though we cannot make these choices and changes for others, we can begin to live this vision of abundance with ourselves, and within our family and communities. Through our little seeds offering up their fruits of generosity, kindness and abundance for all, change can spread outward, inspiring others to act in kind. And in this way, our little seeds can be the making of a vision of abundance that can heal and transform our world.
Excerpt from: Path of She Book of Sabbats, available in paperback and e-book at Amazon. Click here to purchase.
Make your own transformative magic for the summer season with the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess. The Summer Journey guides you through seven, integrated lessons that take you into the depths of summer’s teachings of abundance, goodness, self-love and blossoming.
Your Summer Journey includes: two pdf ebooks: the Summer Journey Guidebook and Summer Journey Journal, and the Summer Journey Guided Meditation (mp3 audio). The cost of this integrated Summer Journey package is $16.99. Click here to purchase.
Photo Art by June Ferrol