Ancestors, ladybirds & maybe miracles

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Albert Einstein, or was it?*

We are embarking on an Ancestral Quest in our Soul Academy, UNIO, this month, and it brought to mind a story from a few years ago.

I’m going to tell you the story, and you can decide if it’s about miracles or not.

The soul work now the “results” are in…

A conversation arose in The Rose Quest about the US election results today - and the role of the Temple Priestess in relationship to the events unfolding.

Whilst I almost never comment on these collective events, I will share some of what I shared in there - which is guidance for all of us who are so called…

“The role of the Temple Priestess (and anyone on the path of the soul) is to be in union with the polarities, to move up the [Kabbalah Tree of Life] central pillar from Yesod (ego), to Tiferet (awakened soul) and maybe to Da’ath (spiritual union).

GO TO THE TEMPLE

Whenever I arrive in a new place, I seek out the ancient temple of that land… Roman, Templar, Greek, Buddhist, Hindu, Egyptian, Mayan, or, if I’m especially blessed, megalithic.

I do this to honour, remember, and learn.

It isn’t about this deity or that, though I will pay my respects if they are still present… It’s the temple itself.

The temples were built with great sacrifice - both noble and tragic - by those called to create them, with the intention that they would outlive them and generations of their descendants. The most ancient temples are often those whose hearts still echo within the stones, even after millennia.

FINDING YOUR SPIRITUAL FEET…

The deeper I go with the mystical tradition of the Kabbalah, the more I see that it is the path of unity I’ve unknowingly been walking all along.

For some time, alchemy - as rediscovered and described by Jung - was the closest description of some of what I’d been spontaneously experiencing. But now I see that alchemy was a stepping stone to the metaphysical first principles of the Kabbalah.

Underworldly

My daughter, Princess of Questions, asked us over lunch “What skill do you wish you’d learned earlier in life?”

My reply was “Understanding how to work with dreams.”

BEYOND SUBMISSION

In The Rose Quest, we are working with the principle of Receptivity, through the portal of the archetypal Temple Priestess.

If one has spent time in the realms of polarity and Masculine & Feminine energetics, the idea of Feminine submission will be very familiar, and perhaps the notion that it is the truest or highest expression of the Feminine, or even of a woman.

The North Star of Your Soul

How Your North Node Reveals Your Life’s True Direction

Hello Old Souls,

This month in UNIO we are on a Truth Quest, and as part of this we are journeying into our True Nodes. I thought I'd share a taste of this with you all too (I go into more detail in UNIO.

The Difference

Tonight, I feasted on the film Lee, about Lee Miller… she was a photographer, photojournalist and war correspondent.

It was a kaleidoscope of heart-wrenching devastation, courage, truth, love, bare breasts, cruelty, compassion, death, and red lipstick.

What struck me was seeing it through a woman’s lens, literally and metaphorically.

“Only a woman could’ve taken these.”

(A quote from the film.)

Mirror Imaginings

My son’s friend said today how much my daughter and I look like each other, which is something I hear often… But I find it hard to see that myself, I guess it can be hard to see oneself.

Then just now I happened to see this photo of me in my teens… And I can see it could be her.

As she said “It looks scarily similar”

Seeing her, in me, as me, as her…

The taboo of Feminine & Female spirituality

I sense this is the last time I will be speaking about the archetype of the Temple Priestess, at least this side of The Rose Quest… The circle of women is all but complete and we are readying ourselves for the descent into the very heart of the Rose.

But I’ve realised there’s something I have to speak about first.

As I've been in the somaticontemplation of the Rose, and as I'm talking to the women called to Her, something has become clearer than ever before.

Although I’ve so far focused on the way the Temple Priestess is medicine for the sensual, bodily aspects of the Feminine, there’s an aspect of her that’s perhaps even more taboo.

A shamanic journey with the Rose 🌹

I was speaking to one of the women joining The Rose Quest, and she asked me whether she could microdose during the quest.

(The answer was “No, and…”)

In replying to her, I realised it was time to turn my attention back to the Rose herself, the one who initiated me into the mysteries of the Mythical Feminine in the first place, my most wise, loving, patient, and long-standing guide, and the spirit who will be our teacher for this quest.

Who are the women called? 🌹

The women called to The Rose Quest are very different, and yet, they share common wounds, such as…

They’ve experienced s xua l transgressions, or traumatic transgression of their boundaries in other ways.

They were raised within some form of religious doctrine - or conversely rigid atheism - which distorted or limited their natural spiritual connection.

But why the Sacred Prostitute..?! 🌹

(Instead of say, The Lover, or simply working with sensual reclamation? In short, why relate the sensual gifts of the Feminine to her at all?)

Side note: I will use the term, the ‘Temple Priestess’ (instead of more taboo descriptions) and ‘sensual’ (instead of the other S-word) throughout this post, censoring so you actually get to see this. If you haven’t seen my previous posts and don’t know the other ways I have referred to this archetype which provoked this question, take a look at the title of the podcast in the comments.

The Stars of the Soul

When I say I lived wild as a child…

I was seven years old, we were living in Ibiza, very much hand to mouth and by the grace of the land and the people… Our only shelter was canvas, tree, or flimsy structures made from whatever we could comb from the molten sands.

These are pages from my diary back then… a list of ways we might make some money. Looking back on my list, along with my father’s additions, I’m struck by several things…

I don’t know what I was thinking we’d do with the fir cones or whether they just seemed so beautiful to me that of course people would buy them.

What freedom looks like...

Before I joined Medicine, Mythical and Unio, my name was Vanessa. To some, it still is. 

Then, it was Venus: Shaman of radiant joy, queen of wild rage.

And it appears the longer you stay on the mythical path, the longer your name gets. 

You can now call me: Venus, Whirling warrior goddess, sacred phoenix heart, rose chalice of sweetness, surrender and celebration of life, criatura de fuego, daughter of the forest, hawk mother.

I am the shaman to the tortured genius superstar and a divine disruptor.

ARE YOU CALLED TO THE TABOO FEMININE..?

Six years later… ️

Six years ago, these (and three more women who couldn’t be with us but were in soul) gathered together in circle for the very first Waking The Wild Feminine that I’d ever created.

That circle lived into the quote I was following as a North Star back then…

“To discover who she is, a woman must trust the places of darkness where she can meet her own deepest nature and give it voice… sharing it with the women around her as she comes to a true and certain sense of herself.”

Judith Duerk

“We only have 18 summers with our children…” 💔

You might have seen these thought-provoking words before.

They are only partially true (because who knows how things will turn out, time with anyone is not guaranteed, we might have abundantly more, we might have heart-breakingly less, we might have soul-achingly none at all), and grasping onto or for anything is rarely a recipe for peace.

Why drink the disgusting medicine of humility?

(or how to get over yourself to grasp the unimaginable)

“Humble yourself to the sound of the water

You gotta bend down low and

Humble yourself to the sound of the water

You gotta know what it knows

And we will lift each other up

Higher and higher, we will lift each other up…”

This is a version (there are many) of the first verse of the medicine song Humble Yourself.