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.

How your Sacred Wound can blind you to your gifts

As I weave Mythical Soul readings (from the golden strands of Kabbalah, astrology, mythical archetypes and shamanic wisdom), I’m seeing something that I’ve seen over the years in so many students… but now, writ large and clearer than ever before.

The Sacred Wound, unhealed and unalchemised, can create an immense blockage to a person knowing their gifts and walking their soul path - or even consciously setting foot on it, it can create a belief that they’re entirely different to who they really are.

Ready to go beyond 'nature connection'..? 🌳

One of the most profound shifts in my own life and then work came from going from disembodied non-dual spirituality into embodiment, rewilding, and more primal ways of living... and then finding myself falling into a wonderland beyond all of that.

That space is entered via the portal of connection with the wild that might look like forest bathing and tree-hugging but is something quite different.

Discovering our role in the village ♥️

As we’re coming to the end of this month’s quest in our soul academy, UNIO, I’m being brought present to all I’ve discovered about my role/s this month, as well as the path to self-gnosis and wholeness for all of us.

Synchronistically, I saw these words I wrote a couple of years ago…

“Returning lost soul parts, beauty, magic, power, light and gifts to the people who are ready to be united with their magnificence… what a job I have!

(And how I resisted it… which is how I know so well of the need for us to be ready, and what that takes.)”

I know now that even when I wrote those words there was *still* resistance.

NEED TO RECEIVE? ♥️

Do you need to receive “it” in order to move beyond needing it?

It could be someone’s acknowledgement or blessing.

It could be a particular kind of relationship dynamic.

It could be the confirmation that your intuition was accurate.

It could be a material resource.

It could be external evidence of an inner change.

It could be an experience of unconditional acceptance of who you are.

And yet, you also wonder if needing it is keeping you stuck and dependent.

In the latest guidance circle in our Academy of the Soul, UNIO, I responded to a student’s request for guidance.

I have lived a life of striving, of giving until I literally had no more to give. After thirty years of battling with my body, to live a life that I was conditioned to believe was a good life, to work hard and be happy, a combination of my health and the state of the world meant in 2020 I lost the life I had.

All I was left with was my curiosity and deep sense that there was something more out there, another way of being in this world. Which is when the breadcrumbs lead me to Lian and Jonathan. There was an instant knowing that this was the start of releasing the years of armour, of rediscovering my true self, but I had no idea of the depth of myself that was hidden under that armour.

“Is magic real..?” ✨

I was asking myself yesterday whether by this point, after everything I’ve experienced, I can say for certain now that magic is real.

This is a question that was so important to me and even two years ago still was an obstacle on a path that Spirit was telling me over and over, increasingly loudly, to walk down. It was a path that was filled with all of my doubts and fears, and so honestly, the obstacle was actually quite welcome.