There is a Karen Taylor-Good song that we use in the Shamanic Priestess Process™ called Use Me Up, that goes like this: “ When I meet my maker and my time on earth is done, when I stand before Her (word change mine) looking back on where I’ve come, I can only pray that with Her grace and love, She will say,” I used you up”. Use me up, let me give everything I am, pour out my heart and soul according to your plan. Use me up, let there be nothing of me left, no chance to love untaken, not one regret.”
As we move into the 2nd half or even the last 3rd or 4th of our lives, seasoned women of consciousness, what I am calling The Shamanic WiseWoman, know that time is now precious to give our remaining gifts to the world, to “use up” our time here fulfilling our purpose, telling our stories and leaving our own unique legacy. Our spice and seasoning comes from years of hard knocks, tough lessons, and dark nights of the soul, and as equally from the joyful celebrations, pleasures and adventures of our lives.
We are intended to honor the gifts we have already given, and the thresholds already crossed, so that we can gain the energy to renew ourselves again and again. In the holy spaces we can create together as sacred women, we can rise from the ashes of old wounds and old ways, and consecrate our lives toward new ways of offering ourselves in service to our world which can so greatly benefit from our wisdom.
I am thoroughly enjoying walking as a WiseWoman these days, but that was not so until recently. I have been an eternal youth most of my life, choosing not to have children and instead focus on my sacred work and my “freedom” to be eccentric and forge new trails. I have been discovering new facets of myself as I embrace my wisdom and care less about self-image, accomplishment and achievement. Through all the twists and turns of my life, I have indeed cultivated the mother energy within me. Now she is becoming the grandmother! I am also discovering a new kind of spiritual sensitivity, a profound connection to the animal kingdom, and a deepening connection to my own inner mate.
These revelations were not available to me in younger versions of self. I am able to be more present-centered, less distracted by the glamours of the world, as I drop into the last cycles of my life. I no longer have goals, because I want to follow more of what inspires me and less of what drives me. Because I encounter it more often, I am drawn to explore the mysteries of death these days, and I look forward to doing this with a strong circle of strong women.
Are you eager to engage your own inner WiseWoman? Do you savor the experience of a women’s circle? Are you willing to ceremonially integrate your life lessons so far? Are you ready to concentrate your life force on your sacred soul purpose, even as you move toward befriending the death mysteries?
We (Mary Manera, me, and Jacoba Groenwegen) completed our first session October 19th-23th at Isis Cove Community NC, as the Smoky Mountains were on fire with autumn color. For those who could not make the October session, we will repeat this first session in Cincinatti Feb 23-26th, 2017. Then we will form a committed circle to go forward to the Cincinnati in late April and complete in late June. An application process ensures you are resonate with where we are going, and you will be a huge part of the evolution of the Shamanic WiseWoman Process™.
McAndrew, MA, LPC, NCC is an Ordained High Priestess, and a congregational leader of Full Moon Sanctuary. She is dedicated to the path of the Divine Feminine, facilitating women’s awakening and empowerment for the past 40 years. She is the creatrix of the Shamanic Priestess Process, the Shamanic Magdalane Mysteries and retreats, workshops and processes for women. For more, visit www.goddessontheloose.com
Carolyn Baker, Ph.D. is the author of Dark Gold: The Human Shadow And The Global Crisis. Her radio show, the Lifeboat Hour, airs on Progressive Radio Network every week. She may be contacted at Carolyn@carolynbaker.net.
Carolyn’s NOTE: At the request of Andrew Harvey and Stephen Dinan Of Shift Network, I penned this article which was posted today on Huffington Post and which I am reposting here.
In her Time Magazine article “In Praise Of Darkness,” professor, author, and Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor speaks of “full-on solar spirituality.” According to Taylor, solar spirituality excludes the inevitable darkness of human experience which on the one hand feels ominous, yet without confronting it, the spiritual journey is incomplete.
“Darkness” is shorthand for anything that scares me — that I want no part of — either because I am sure that I do not have the resources to survive it or because I do not want to find out. The absence of God is in there, along with the fear of dementia and the loss of those nearest and dearest to me. So is the melting of polar ice caps, the suffering of children, and the nagging question of what it will feel like to die. If I had my way, I would eliminate everything from chronic back pain to the fear of the devil from my life and the lives of those I love — if I could just find the right night-lights to leave on. At least I think I would. The problem is this: when, despite all my best efforts, the lights have gone off in my life (literally or figuratively, take your pick), plunging me into the kind of darkness that turns my knees to water, nonetheless I have not died. The monsters have not dragged me out of bed and taken me back to their lair. The witches have not turned me into a bat. Instead, I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.
While Barbara Brown Taylor is not part of the New Age movement, her brilliant assessment succinctly captures a reality which has incessantly escaped that movement, namely that darkness must be valued as wholeheartedly as our veneration of the light.
Marc Gafni: A New Age Cosby?
While American culture has been recently rocked by ubiquitous allegations of Bill Cosby sexually assaulting women spanning at least the past fifty years, a lesser-known but equally repugnant scandal has erupted among the professional purveyors of “solar spirituality,” namely a plethora of accusations against New Age teacher and former Rabbi Marc Gafni. Born Marc Winiarz and sometimes known as Mordechai Gafni, the spiritual guru, according to Wikipedia, has been accused by multiple women of sexually assaulting them, dating back to 1980, and he himself has admitted to having had sexual relationships with girls as young as 14. He was also accused of molesting a 13 year old girl over a period of nine months. I do not wish to enumerate or comment on all of the accusations against Gafni because the focus of this article is not litigious. Nevertheless, some accusations beg to be mentioned.
In the December 25, 2015, New York Times article “A Spiritual Leader Gains Stature, Trailed By A Troubled Past,” Gafni’s long history of accusations of sexual abuse was examined as well as his associations with the founder of the Integral spiritual community, Ken Wilber, and with Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey. Clarifying the definition of “Integral,” Barbara Marx Hubbard stated that, “Integral theory is based on the understanding that evolution itself is an expression of a spiritual universal force of creation embodied in each one of us as us, as unique selves.”
In Sara Kabakov’s article of January 13, 2016 in Forward Newspaper, “I Was Thirteen When Marc Gafni’s Abuse Began,” she writes, “Right now there are children in the Jewish world, and in other communities, who are being abused and forced into silence. Their parents and teachers don’t know what is happening. I know, because it happened to me. I am the woman Gafni molested when she was 13 years old. This is the first time I am telling my story in my own name.” Kabakov tells her story in depth and also recounts her healing process and her struggle to recover from years of sexual abuse and emotional manipulation at the hands of Gafni.
Only days before Kabakov’s story was released, Forward Newspaper published a daring piece that came after Gafni’s team mistakenly sent Forward a recording of them plotting a strategy of suing journalists. The tape is extremely revelatory and includes Gafni’s statement, “Let’s have a separate meeting, and figure out — do we want to sue someone and who would that be?” Gafni said to Michael Wright, his press representative, and Christopher Marston, his lawyer. Earlier in the conversation, Gafni said: “If we do decide to take action someplace, maybe the Forward would be the test case.”
Another damning piece regarding Gafni, “Gafni Faces Fallout From New Age Community,” was published by Jewish Week on January 5. The article states that, “Already some 25 New Age leaders — including Deepak Chopra, the best-selling author; Andrew Harvey, founder of the Institute for Sacred Activism; Craig Hamilton, CEO of Evolving Wisdom; author Jean Houston; and Stephen Dinan, CEO of The Shift Network — have signed a public statement disavowing themselves from Gafni.”
Perhaps the most thorough piece to date is from William Harryman writing in his Integral Options Café blog and highlighting the psychological aspects of Gafni’s devastating actions. Harryman notes that,
“One of the many things missing in the NYT article, and most of the ones that have followed, is a recognition that Gafni’s pathology is not only emotional and sexual manipulation and other forms of abuse, it is also a sociopathic personality that almost hides the malignant narcissist within. The NYT article exposed some of the controversies surrounding Gafni (which has led to the current outrage in the Jewish community and in the integral community, but in each instance allowed him to refute the allegations with no further exploration of the facts or statements by the victims.) What could have been an important document revealing Gafni’s 35-year pattern of abuses–interpersonal, sexual, and control–became little more than a PR piece for him and his ‘think tank.'”
Harryman, who has two Masters degrees in counseling psychology, states that he has worked extensively with survivors of sexual abuse, and pointing to Gafni’s repeated defense that his abusive encounters were “consensual,” Harryman argues that,
“It is also important to understand that Gafni works hard to make these issues be about pseudo-consensual sex because the reality is much darker. His survivors ARE sexually manipulated, and there are consistent reports of debasing sexuality (woman as whore), but the sexual relationships are simply the seduction that brings women into his circle of influence. Once he seduces someone, then he begins the process of mind control, shaping their thoughts and experiences so that they come to see things his way.”
Additionally, Harryman dares to use the term sociopath to describe Gafni and adds,
“Sociopaths… can be VERY charming and seductive, and if you’ll notice in some of the online statements, even those who have distanced themselves from Gafni marvel at his charisma. It is the charisma that lures women, and it also lures in supporters (financial) and defenders (students). Once they are seduced, especially the women, Gafni’s mask will begin to slip. These women discover the porn addiction, the rage, the manipulation of others, the lack of remorse, the debasing sexuality, and the inability to tell the truth. Understandably, they are frightened of him, and when they escape, they remain trapped in silence out of fear or reprisal — because if they do speak out, he will call them liars, or say they are mentally unstable, and on an on.”
In telling her story, Sara Kabakov (above) reinforces Harryman’s perspective.
Since the publication of the December 25, 2015 New York Times article, over 40 other articles from a variety of sources have been published regarding the Gafni scandal. In addition, a number of spiritual teachers and authors have spoken out against Gafni and distanced themselves from him. One of the largest networks of spiritual teachers is Shift, which recently posted on its blog a statement of disavowal of Marc Gafni with a very specific explanation from one of its members, Andrew Harvey, which stated:
We, the undersigned, have concluded, based upon direct experience, investigation, or conversation with trusted allies, that we cannot endorse Marc Gafni as a teacher in any way. Furthermore, we will not feature him in any event, publication, or online activity we produce, nor will we participate as a speaker or promote any event in which he is featured.Signed by:
Sera Beak – Author of Red Hot and Holy
Adam Bucko – Hab Community
Rev. Diane Berke – Founder, One Spirit Learning Alliance
Deepak Chopra – NY Times bestselling author
Stephen Dinan – CEO, The Shift Network
Scott Edelstein – Author of Sex and the Spiritual Teacher
Lion Goodman – founder, Clear Your Beliefs
Andrew Harvey – Founder, Institute for Sacred Activism
Craig Hamilton – CEO, Evolving Wisdom
Harriet Hawkins – Center for Spiritual Living Livermore Valley
Ross Hostetter – Founder, The Fieldwork School
Jean Houston – Author of The Possible Human
Kurt Johnson – The Interspiritual Network
Anodea Judith – Founder, Sacred Centers
Bill Kauth – Founder, The ManKind Project
Rory McEntee – Foundation for New Monasticism
Devaa Haley Mitchell – Co-founder, The Shift Network
David Nicol – Founder, Subtle Activism Network
Terry Patten – Integral Evolutionary Practice
John Robbins – Author of Diet for a New America
Ocean Robbins – CEO, The Food Revolution Network
Robb Smith – CEO, Integral Life
Mirabai Starr – Author of Caravan of No Despair
Marcia Wieder – CEO, Dream University
Claire Zammit – Founder, Feminine Power
Additionally, Change.Org published a petition entitled “Stop Marc Gafni From Abusing Again,” signed by more than 100 rabbis who stated that:
As a group of religious and communal leaders, we are motivated by the obligation embedded in the belief that whoever saves a single life, it is as if they have saved a whole world. Marc Gafni has left a trail of pain, suffering, and trauma amongst the people and congregations who were unfortunate to have trusted him. He has abused his extraordinary intellectual gifts and charisma to harm many who came to him in search of spiritual guidance and teaching. He has used professional alliances to legitimize himself by association, and thereby be able to continue creating more harm. As a result Marc Gafni is neither trusted, respected, nor welcome to teach virtually anywhere in Judaism. In community after community, those who have trusted him have had their trust betrayed. Some of those who sign here were severely mislead and even once defenders of Gafni’s integrity only to see that we too had been deceived.
Polyamorous Or Polyamoral?
Gafni defends his sexual proclivities as polyamorous, and to that orientation, he is certainly entitled. However, the trail of alleged sexual abuse documented by his accusers and those who believe them reveals manipulation, mind control, and ghastly incidents of misogynistic abuses of power over his victims. Moreover, Gafni touts himself as a “sexual pioneer” who is being persecuted for his polyamory in a manner similar to the way in which a gay man might have been persecuted for his sexual orientation in the 1950s, daring to compare his twisted sexual cannibalism with the benign sexual orientation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered human beings.
Chaya Kurtz nailed it beautifully in her article “How To Spot A Spiritual Sexual Predator:”
Anybody Who Ideologically Justifies Polyamory: If he’s really “progressive”, this man can quote The Ethical Slut. And since his predecessors in his spiritual lineage had multiple wives, certainly he should have them. While he is free to enjoy his spiritually-sanctioned dalliances, you’re in big trouble if he even thinks you’re cheating on him. After all, it’s Tantra! Or it’s Christianity! Or Abraham had more than one wife! He has so much spiritual mojo that he is simply gifting it to all the women he’s intimate with. How dare you refuse his gift!?
While Marc Gafni attempts to package himself as a spiritual and sexual revolutionary, he has shown himself to be yet another ethical train wreck–a sexual predator with a pretty face, an impressive resume, and terrifying charisma. Gafni is nothing more than a retread of an ancient archetype with which world literature is replete and religions in particular are infested. Whether it’s the prurient guru system of a variety of Eastern spiritual traditions or the Vatican’s soul-murdering path of sexual carnage among innocent children, the story is always the same: Power, control, manipulation, conquest, and psychological mayhem.
Where Are The Voices Of Solar Spirituality?
Marc Gafni is the co-founder, with Ken Wilber, of the Center For Integral Wisdom, one of many organizations promoting Integral Spirituality. According to Wikipedia, “Integral theory is Ken Wilber’s attempt to place a wide diversity of theories and thinkers into one single framework. It is portrayed as a ‘theory of everything’ trying ‘to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into an interrelated network of approaches that are mutually enriching’.” Gafni has been long associated with two heavyweights of the Integral movement: Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton.
In 2006, three women from a spiritual community in Israel, headed by Gafni, filed complaints with the police of sexual misconduct against him. At that time, Ken Wilber did not distance himself from Gafni but offered his opinion on the Jews School website:
I have stated my conclusion, after reviewing the evidence and as many perspectives as I can, that there is truth to some of these allegations and that this is due in part to Marc’s illness, and that as long as this dysfunction is not addressed, I do not believe that Marc should be teaching. But I want to point out that emotional illness can be treated and in many cases cured. Marc may or may not be sincere, and his therapy may or may not be effective–but that is exactly the purpose of the therapeutic board: namely, to make that decision, and not to let either of the partial sides do so. I do not know if this solution will work, but to date it is the only rational, compassionate, and fair one that I have heard, and therefore the only one which serves justice.
At that time, Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton published a lengthy defense of Gafni, asserting that the women in Israel had lied.
More recently in the New York Times, December 25, 2015 article, Wilber was quoted as saying that, “Marc has a lot of Shakti,” [Mr. Wilber said, using a Sanskrit word for energy.] “I don’t think he understood the impact it had on people.”
To date, neither Ken Wilber nor Sally Kempton have spoken out about the ongoing, incessant, enduring charges of sexual misconduct against Gafni that surfaced in 2006, 2011, and 2016. In fact, on Gafni’s website, one finds endorsements from Wilber and Kempton who have been aware of Gafni’s proclivities for years, yet neither have distanced themselves from Gafni. What are we to make of this?
Living In The Light, Ignoring The Shadow
For the past three decades, I have been a student of the immortal Carl Jung and currently as a life coach, a former psychotherapist, and an author, my life has been profoundly altered by Jung’s work. Perhaps most personally profound for me in the body of his work is the reality of the human shadow of which I was totally ignorant when in my thirties I wildly embraced solar spirituality
After many years of immersion in New Age spirituality, at the age of 40 my life fell apart as a result of my shadow blind spots. I subsequently entered Jungian depth therapy, and as I persevered in it, I quickly came to understand the extent to which my reliance on New Age spirituality had served to mask my pain and obscure the deep childhood wounds I needed to attend to in order to experience the wholeness for which I longed. My obsession with positive thinking and attempting to manifest a pain-free life had fostered within me an ego-inflation that was rapidly de-flated as I became more familiar with the ugly, obnoxious aspects of my shadow.
While basking in the sunlight of positive thinking was more pleasurable for me than allowing the presence of the so-called “negative,” it neither rang true nor felt consistent with the full spectrum of my humanity. As I read the works of Jung and as I opened to the reality of my own personal shadow, on the one hand, I felt more emotional distress, but on the other, exploring the forbidden territory of my psyche felt profoundly authentic and substantial. I soon realized that solar spirituality, focused primarily on the light, offered a dubious peace of mind at the expense of familiarity with my deepest humanity and the human condition at large. In fact, I came to understand that addiction to positive thinking precariously ignores the dark side of humanity and in doing so, conceals the shadow of manipulation, abuse of power, self-righteous arrogance, and compulsive control that lurk beneath the still waters of “living in the light.”
Seldom does one find discussion or instruction on shadow dynamics within the New Age movement. In an astonishingly hypocritical article by Marc Gafni himself, “Shadow Integration,” Gafni reveals that he has no idea what shadow work entails:
Why would you want to integrate your darkest impulses? Perhaps those impulses need to be transmuted and evolved. At the very least, it would appear that they need to be disciplined and controlled. Is shadow integration merely a sophisticated license for ethical libertines, as some spiritual moralists have wanted to claim? And if it is not, if shadow integration points to some profound and important intuition about our wholeness and enlightenment, as others have loudly claimed, but not explained, then what is it?
As he blathers on throughout the article, Gafni repeatedly reveals his ignorance of the shadow and implies instead that he has a fuller grasp of it than all of the world’s wisest teachers on the topic.
In my 2016 book Dark Gold: The Human Shadow And The Global Crisis, I offered a detailed definition of the shadow, bolstered by several other authors in the Jungian tradition.
For example, mythologist and student of Jung, Joseph Campbell, states that “The Shadow is, so to say, the blind spot in your nature. It’s that which you won’t look at about yourself. This is the counterpart exactly of the Freudian unconscious, the repressed recollections as well at the repressed potentialities in you.”
In The Shadow In America: Reclaiming The Soul of a Nation, Jacquelyn Small notes that:
Until made conscious the shadow causes us to act in ways that create catastrophe or explosions of emotionalism….When we try to deny the shadow, it multiplies. When instead, we choose to invite it in, we gain stability and expand consciousness, losing our self-righteousness, and becoming flexible, less defended, more balanced.
In her 2005 book The Sacred Purpose of Being Human, Small refers to the shadow as “…our holy grit. It’s the sandpaper in your psyche that rubs you raw until you make it conscious.”
It is important to understand that we commit to working with the shadow not only because failing to do so impedes our loftiest intentions but because we are “prospectors” in search of the “dark gold.” If there are precious metals to be mined, why would we settle for less? For as Robert Johnson reminds us in Owning Your Own Shadow, “…these disowned parts are extremely valuable and cannot be disregarded. As promised of the living water, our shadow costs nothing and is immediately—and embarrassingly — ever present. To honor and accept one’s own shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime.”
Clinical and forensic psychologist, Stephen Diamond asserts that authentic spirituality requires consciously accepting and relating properly to the shadow as opposed to repressing, projecting, acting out and remaining naively unconscious of its repudiated, denied, disavowed contents, a sort of precarious pseudo-spirituality.
”Bringing the shadow to consciousness,” writes another of Jung’s students, Liliane Frey-Rohn (1967), ”is a psychological problem of the highest moral significance. It demands that the individual hold himself accountable not only for what happens to him, but also for what he projects. . . Without the conscious inclusion of the shadow in daily life there cannot be a positive relationship to other people, or to the creative sources in the soul; there cannot be an individual relationship to the Divine.”
Thus engaging in meticulous and astringent shadow work is a moral and spiritual imperative. Moreover, in situations of ghastly abuse as we witness in the sordid saga of Marc Gafni, a host of enablers always encircle the perpetrator. He would not have been able to continue his devastating sexual behavior without the likes of Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton fluffing pillows and making tea for him. The Gafni scandal reveals nothing if not the grotesque head and monstrous appendages of the human shadow writ large across the entire New Age movement, intoxicated with the Kool Aid of solar spirituality. Overwhelmingly, the New Age movement and the spiritual guru system is in abject denial of the shadow, and until it confronts its shadow, we can expect to see lives and communities ravaged by the darkness ignored while spiritual celebrities bask in the light of happy-faced, huggy, saccharine spirituality.
In his January 3, 2016 statement on behalf of Shift Network, Stephen Dinan wrote: “I strongly believe that the full truth of this situation needs to be surfaced, witnessed and addressed, not just for the sake of those involved but for the sake of our whole movement so that we may do collective shadow work and face the abuse of power that too often happens under the guise of spiritual teaching.”
Integral teacher, Terry Patten, who has firmly distanced himself from Gafni offered wise counsel in a recent blog:
The victim narrative is too easy, too convenient, and very incomplete. We are all autonomous adults. No matter how smart, talented, and tenacious Marc Gafni might be, the only power he has over anyone is the power we have given him. If he has compromised our community, it’s up to us to reclaim it. It’s our responsibility to draw a clear line if we want greater goodness and moral intelligence.His unexamined shadow compromises everything he associates with, so it’s undermining those remarkable philosophical ideas and this community of practice and inquiry, not serving them. They are the victims I’m most interested in defending.
But make no mistake: this is a teachable moment, a developmental opportunity. Our community needs a way to protect itself from talented sociopaths with histories of unprocessed shadow and violating others’ hearts, souls, and bodies.
With respect to Marc Gafni, the trail of accusations against him is so long and so despicable that it is difficult to discern if Gafni is just another so-called spiritual teacher who needs to do shadow work, or if he is a sociopath who truly lacks a conscience and for whom, therefore, shadow work would be meaningless. In any event, until individuals on a spiritual path have done deep shadow work, they are highly susceptible to being blinded to it by solar spirituality, making themselves vulnerable to taking advantage of others or being taken advantage by them. One of the risks and liabilities of solar spirituality is that it makes us prey to exploitation and abuse and also increases our own potential for becoming a perpetrator of abuse. Unfortunately, the more “light” associated with anyone in the public sphere, the more vulnerable that person is in terms if his or her own shadow. Likewise, the more “light” we project onto that individual because we have not done our own shadow work, the greater the danger of shadow eruption and the greater the disservice we do to them and to ourselves.
The poet William Stafford in “A Ritual To Be Read To Each Other,” notes that “the darkness around us is deep.” Without doing our own shadow work, we severely compromise our ability to engage with the gargantuan challenges of shadow and darkness in the world. Embracing a spiritual path compels us to commit to doing shadow work so that we may skillfully and compassionately navigate both the darkness and the light.
Aaron Pyne www.spiritap.com Geometric Creationalolution Awakening the Divine
Marianne Williamson speaking on women and religion at the Parliament of World’s Religions, in October 2015, Salt Lake City Utah.
Marianne’s voice is clearly becoming more powerful as she moves even more directly into her wise woman, sacred activist, priestess self…..the Goddess and this goddess, is fierce! And it’s about time that these words be spoken….thank you Marianne, for speaking on behalf of the herstory of women in patriarchal religions, and the priestess within all of us.
We gathered together in South West England from many places: our South Aftrican crystal skull carrier Jennifer the furthest, then Daniel in the Phillipines, then Jacqueline living in Tuscany, and from Kansas City, Cincinatti, Atlanta, Washington state, Central Florida, and North Carolina. Our local right side-of-the-vehicle, left-side-of-the-road drivers Christina and Sara live the closest. We are a friendly and enthusiastic bunch. We have been connecting by email for months, and many of us are in interconnected circles, students of Daniel, priestesses in my lineage, and like-minded adventurous souls. The cross-quarter time of Lammas, Venus’s close conjunction with Mercury and Jupiter and her movement into the Underworld to transform into her incarnation as Leo, all set the cosmological stage.
Our gathering place is an old country estate and villa in Swindon, UK, some 600 or more years old, added onto to many times. It was owned mostly by a family of elites with legacies of rigid, crippled people and acting out rebels. More than a few wives were “banished” to this summer estate for some kind of impropriety (Oh, to be banished here must have been such a hardship!). A few of us take the tour of the ancient house, walls lined with portraits of stiff but important people, and we easily conclude that this was one unhappy family. The 250 acre estate grounds showcases several huge old trees, a pond, and a carefully tended ancient walled garden with species dating back to the 1700’s. The park continually buzzes with families, children and dogs. There is a very old church in the back yard of the house, which must have been a constant source of angst for the household residents. 600 years later in our built-on hotel next door, we had sumptuous food served to us 3 times a day, afternoon tea, sweet single rooms, and a swimming pool. We had a big meeting room with windows and breezes blowing through, all looking out onto uncharacteristically sunny summer English days, to immerse ourselves in the Shamanic Astrology mysteries. We shared our stories and our place on the wheel, listened to Daniel teach, to stories of the Celtic pantheon, enjoyed two fascinating guest lecturers, danced a bit to Celtic favorites, made a collage, and dreamed into our daily excursions and ceremonies. We sensed that the ancestors of Lydiard Park were happy to have us, and accepted our presence.
Heritage apple trees from the 1700’s,
gigantic thistles and large thriving
blooms of the Lydiard House
Walled Garden
Our intention was to weave back together what Patriarchy has torn asunder in humanity, and in ourselves, especially in our connection with our ancestors. We all resonate with the Celtic lands, and in this area of the UK, we can feel the magic that surrounds us. We are an hour from Stonehenge, and the new archeological finds in that area that continue to be unearthed daily. We are 20 minutes from the Avebury area, where a series of stone circles within stone circles, stone avenues, chambered cairns, barrows, man-made hills, and curious chalk drawings etched into hillsides are everywhere. As a bonus, this is where crop circles pop up during this time of year, and we are all keen to visit at least one. After all, we are The Crop Circle Clan. The first day we head off to the village of Avebury, smack dab in the middle of all the stones. *
Bookstores, Cottages, and
the irresistable Pub
at Avebury
The local metaphysical bookstore has a large map of the Wiltshire area, a county of 1,300 square miles, with the season’s crop circles dotted across the landscape. Unfortunately, the farmers of the area are not often willing to open their land for visitors to see them these days. After years of losing money because they sacrifice the crop in the field where the circle appears, and folk disrespecting their property in various ways, there are not many who take kindly to crop circles. We were lucky, though, and we found two that were close to each other and allowed access, thanks to Gabriella Kapfer http://peace-trails.com/ who scouted them out before we arrived. The Crop Circle Access Centre, who sponsored a Crop circle exhibit in Marlborough that several of us visited (imagine, an exhibit of circles, research, videos and photos over 25 years), was on hand at our first circle, the Eagle at Uffcott Down, to collect funds for the farmer. The second circle seemed to be on land that was not oveseen. The Eagle was huge, with no way to know where we were except for a map we were given when we paid our £3 admission. With Gabriella leading the way, we headed to the crown chakra of the Eagle. Some of us felt electrical energy, hands buzzing, a charged feeling. I was fascinated at how the wheat was precisely combed, layed and cornered by whatever force created this masterpiece. Later we headed to the heart, just below the crown, and we concluded the energy was yang, activating and definitely solar. The Crop Circle Connector interprets this one as 2016 being the possible return of Quetzacoatl, the year when the circle makers meet humanity. See the full interpretation here.
Walking into the Eagle, discovered a week before we arrived, and sitting at the Crown Chakra
The eight-pointed star within the square and circle, Etchilhampton near Devizes, discovered August 7th, a few days after we arrived in the UK, was 15 minutes away. As we headed down the road, we were the Crop Circle Clan On Fire from our experience at the gigantic solar eagle. This next circle was a new kind of woven formation, seen in recent years. The wheat is layered over itself in exquisite patterns that cannot be fully appreciated from within the circle. The eight pointed star is subtle, and can barely be discerned in the arial photos. We promptly feel asleep or went into deep meditation in this layered feminine energy, as if we were being held in a basket.
The eight-pointed woven star, and earlier woven formations (below), breathtakingly intricate and complex.
After that, crop circles sprung up around us all week, and we are pretty sure we called in one of them, as it was an astrological wheel! There was no time left in our fast-paced, full-to-the-brim week to chase after them. Because of our crop circle immersion day, we all seemed content to be surrounded by them at a distance. It was clear to many of us that we wanted to come back for more on another adventure at another time.
The largest stone circle, dated about 2,600 BCE that surrounds the village of Avebury, is itself surrounded by a henge, an ancient circular ditch, that probably contained water at one time. The two inner circles are connected to two stone avenues, that lead to a meeting place between the two. One seems for the masculine and one for the feminine, and it is easy to imagine the surrounding site of Silbury Hill, a huge human-made hill also surrounded by a henge, alight with a flame on Beltane, and processionals of people gathering to celebrate this Wheel of the Year point from all over the world. Many still do. The Avebury area draws many thousands of visitors each year. Artifacts have been found from Egypt and other parts of the world in the the West Kennet Long Barrow, a 5,700 year old multi-functional chambered site. We could not get enough of the magnificent and prolific sites at Avebury. There was too much to explore and not enough time to do it all.
Peter Knight, guardian and expert on West Kennet Long Barrow, emphasized how all the sites in the area are intimately connected, with site lines to other sites as long as 3 miles. The crop circles add another texture to this rich area of sacred sites. West Kennet is 16 miles from Stonehenge and just south of Avebury, part of an extended landscape of earth temples. Every mile or so, there is a chambered longbarrow, with West Kennet being the largest. Peter feels it was the abode of wisewomen and priestesses who oversaw births, deaths, and other rites of passage. The burials that were most predominant were the placements of only human bones in the chambers. Huge boulders in front of the entrance indicated that the site was closed 1,000 years before the Avebury circles were built. Perhaps it had served its purpose and a new era was ready to be birthed. Perhaps our current monotheistic religions will someday see that they have outlived their own uselfulness, too! Peter guided us in a night-time shamanic journey within the longbarrow, where we were encouraged to call to, and receive messages from the ancestors. Many of us saw images and heard messages that continued to stir the pot of ancestral awareness.
Stonehenge was scheduled many months ahead by sound healer Gabriella, so that we could actually go inside this closely guarded monolith. This beautiful large stone circle was a disappointment for many reasons. The police guard warned us that if we so much as touched a stone, we would be asked to leave. The stones were clearly restored to the point that they could have been part of a museum or Disney display, the life in them long gone. Our sound healer and her partner did their best to create music over the loud traffic on the ground and in the air. A large group of us paid thousands to the curators for the privilege of sitting inside Stonehenge for an hour, and got up in the wee hours of the morning to travel there to boot!
On the way back from Stonehenge, we visited the Salisbury Cathedral that was celebrating the Magna Carta signing 800 years ago. There was an old pagan site next to the church that emphasized how Christianity built over the sacred sites, and knew that the ancients were connected to the magic of the land. We wandered around, intrigued by the stylized but spooky beauty of the place, where hundreds of notables were buried in tombs in the floor, the strange religious custom of the day. I suppose if you had the money, you could get really close to God. Some tombs were built into the walls, and had porcelin effigies guarding them.
The ancestors were stirring within and without, the Partriarchs, the Celts and the Neolithics. Daniel’s keynote of the week was his famous evolving lecture Who Are We and What the Hell Happened? As we visited the sites, felt the stirrings of our own personal ancestry, and heard from Daniel about the recent discoveries around this area and around the world, we felt ourselves getting ready to honor them. On a rainy day towards the last of our week, we gathered an altar cloth, symbols of the old story and the new story, a libation and some food and headed out to the park-like grounds of Lydiard House under a big old tree. We called in the directions and the elements. We spoke to them from our hearts, from our personal stories, forgave them, and asked them for forgiveness. We asked them for what we needed in the coming times to help us bring in a New Earth and a renewed connection to the land and to what really worked in their times, especially the pre-Celtic times before patriarchy. We honored that in this part of the world they held off patriarchy till 1,500 BCE in some places in England, Scotland and Ireland, as much as a few thousand years after it had overtaken the rest of Europe. We felt that our ceremony was good and our week was near completion.
Our final ceremony began at one of the ancient standing stone avenues of Avebury, where we wound down and around to two huge standing stones that are obviously yin and yang gateways. In the twighlight crack between the worlds, we gathered together the jewels of our week as adventurers of the Crop Circle Clan, and spoke our commitments to our own sacred marriage within. So Be It As We Make It So!
2016 Excursions: Ireland and Scotland
Visit our webpage on this webiste, and our facebook page for details on the 2016 Renaissance of the Sacred Feminine: Stars and Stones of Ireland and Scotland excursion~retreats. Join us for all 14 days or just 8 days, on the wild western coast of Ireland at Kilronan Castle and then the Newgrange area, then 6 nights on the Isle of Lewis at lovely Doune Braes hotel, our homebase to explore the great Callanish Neolithic circle and surrounding sites for 6 nights and 7 days: August 20th through Sept 3rd, 2016.
If you have read this far, enjoy my SPECIAL ADDITION BELOW! Pictures from the Cropredy Music Festival, Cropredy Village, UK August 12-15, 2015 sponsored for the last 10 years by the 70’s British band, The Fairport Convention! The Brits love their dogs as much as us Americans do (attended by me, Daniel and Jacqueline after our Avebury adventure).
“A river of tears is one of the strongest evidences of a ‘crash and burn’ initiation into the Scar Clan.”–Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Priestess Glenys of the glacial river valleys of the Pacific Northwest greets you. Glenys is my new name, by the way. It’s Welsh and means from the glen. A glen is a narrow valley, sometimes a river valley. Baby name sites insist that Glenys also means fair, clean, and holy, but I just discovered that this morning when I woke up at 2:00 AM, still on
Ireland time, and can’t be held responsible for it. Keep all this under your hat for now, until I get used to it.
I am also one of the Daughters of Danu, the name my fellow initiates and I gave our circle, but if tears shed are proof of membership, I might also claim a place in Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Scar Clan.
I’ve been through something in the last year or two that recently culminated in a dismantling or even a disintegration. I’ve been sharing my efforts to renew myself in this blog. This time they’ve led me pretty far from what I know, into things I can’
