Estuary holding clouds in visible flow above, below, between and through world perception shifting moments. wrf

Dear Soul Listeners, Troubadours, Heretics, Visionaries, Creatives, Midwives in the Betwixt and Between, Culture-Crafters, The Homeless In Current Tides ~

Welcome here in this Georgian Year of 2026. Thank you for arriving on this Substack tide for the first time or again in the continuing emerging shape known as Abbey Of Soul for now two years, and a lifelong, indeed many lives and lifetimes in the crafting; of pilgrimage and how a particular pilgrimage informs our* offerings, guiding, teaching here at Abbey Of Soul.

Abbey Of Soul was born from following the threads of specific wounds (by-to-other) through a particular historic cultural weaving, through revelations, alchemy, a thousand ancestral prayers, dancing within and between inner and outer worlds continuing into culture crafting from the depths of soul. Offering time now at Imbolc’s beginning when the promise of sun’s increasing feeling and felt light kiss is coming closer again here in the North. A moment to acknowledge and share some current musings and clarifications feeling their way into conversations stirring from Imbolc’s belly and milk so far.

First though, *we’re so deeply touched with the wisdom of these Celtic Seasons here in Dunbar, Alba/Scotland. Touched particularly with Imbolc arriving during this last week in full moon. One whole full day of dry sunshine arrived just before Imbolc amongst a month of rain, high winds and waves continuing. Part of Abbey Of Soul’s Sacred Conversations this month as our hearts opened and were taken by Mystery, was finding ourselves enthralled, in love with all the ways and languages of rain including all the particular songs when meeting sea, leaf, metal, concrete and more … such awe; praise be. Gaelic has an extensive vocabulary for rain, we’ve heard it said at least 100 words! In that glorious dry day too, we were moved to find ourselves in the garden without Goretex, hat, scarf and gloves beginning to clear last summers’ growth now moving for composting elsewhere.

One musing of many was a felt sensing presence of wise Celtic human ancestors behind us, then noticing and tracking ancestors behind them over millennia. These yearly beginning moments of a new season’s naming, timing and marking are acutely precise in long lineages of continuity. Feeling all close in a deep place of holding and belonging, we linger together in this life animating perpetual living ceremony. The felt perception of us goes way beyond ‘thinking’, a different kind of embodied knowing of who ‘one’ is.

There is beauty in listening, in tugging ‘dead’ growth gently as a breeze might, coming away easily at this ripe time having fed the soil over these winter months; now creating space for hidden seeds and shoots. An image arises, all these ancestors in red pulling new life forth into the world through the current living, falling back as future humans in blue are pulled in. A beautiful image of time circling back rather than forward as particular evolutionary images of ‘man’ show. Oh, the tears … New life cannot arrive in the living without the ancestors, the dead, tears-rain. Feed the ancestors, honour them. Oh deep gratitude as clearing becomes ceremony yet again.

Returning now to other current musings and clarifications feeling their way into conversations stirring in this current Imbolc belly at Abbey Of Soul two years and many life tides in. We’ll not go into fine details or examples which have been written about in previous posts so assuming you can make links yourself, or can look back to previous writing; though you are welcome to comment below for more, contribute further if needed:

~ Abbey Of Soul is a place and space to be with, explore, learn and live the Mysteries. A place to be with the dance of ‘knowing’ and ‘not knowing’ now, now, and now (and telling the difference between them;). A space to wonder and wander with what-who may be revealed and longing to emerge in these fierce times beyond what-who we currently know ourselves to be. For one example, going beyond particular historic humancentric and individualistic cultural adaptations needed to survive leading to, for i.e., what is currently named as narcissism. Then, having to become identified with adaptations, even disfigurements, as who we are in order to stay alive at all, or not, where senser becomes censor. In this dimension we are all lovers and killers in a cycle of power and survival. Pilgrimages into the Mysteries and initiation take us beyond the known into who we may be.

~ Abbey Of Soul is a place and space to be with, explore, learn and live the dance within and between inner and outer worlds, of what John Muir, born in Dunbar, expressed as “I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” Maybe ‘going in’ for a walk is also really going out. There is a mysterious dance going on here that we do not want to walk over. We’d rather linger there further into the rub, into a pilgrimage that we have found takes us to originality, source, soul, mythos, The Divine. A Divine so magnificent, so bright and dark concurrently that it takes a Pilgrimage to bear such felt sense in the body to embody in our unique way of renewal in and by Earth, Cosmic Community and way beyond current perceptions and expansions of ‘human being’. That’s our experience anyway and l’ve heard it said from humans who have worked with me (and why they do), colleagues, as well as previous teachers. The journey is not a ‘by-pass’ but an alchemical, initiation, ‘by-through’ to a … well, who knows. The whole pilgrimage is holy, a holy remembering. Again, deeply moved in writing here.

~ Abbey Of Soul is an animate, alive architecture offering a holding and hollowing place for alchemy; for gathering conversations and ceremonies with human and ‘more-other-than-human’ beings. Here, ‘more-than’ refers to the animacy of all life manifest, with animals, houses, plants, insects, rock, mountains, rivers, soil, oceans, clouds, all Earth and Earth Community, Cosmos (David Abram). Here, ‘other-than’ refers to the animate unseen, intangible, imaginal, dreaming, ancestors, future-ones, spirits, Gods and Goddesses, myths, archetypes from whom all manifested life emerges. As William Blake noted:

“What is now proved was once imagined.”

We believe such ways are, in fact, deeply ‘known’ and natural in the ‘human’ realm; are wild in ‘humans’ but have been schooled out hence the dominant Earth-killing ways of ‘humans’ currently. Abbey Of Soul is not a school, it’s more an ‘unschool’, or maybe in someways an ‘Unabbey’;).

~ Abbey Of Soul is not about ‘religion’ per se. It’s more a resecrational remembering of what and who we believe religions, mystics, shamans, artists, poets, heretics, visionaries, devotees … well … people, naturally follow at the core of each Earthborn life to live into the world as a particular Earth and Mystery expression like notes in music. It’s about indwelling in soul and the soul of the world which is ecological in ‘aligning with’ as cosmic-centred. It is not about therapy or ‘mental health’. It is not about ‘saving the world’.

~ Abbey Of Soul is a place and space for Planetary Intelligence and Planetary Imagination. It is not a place for Artificial Intelligence (as far as possible these days).

~ Through our, and others’, devotional attention to wounds (by-to-other-self) and revelations, listening deeply with and speaking ancient stories, creating different kinds of ways or forms for guiding human development over 40 years, we have now been developing spaces, rooms, nooks and crannies in Abbey Of Soul. We are remembering interweaving threads, tapestries and colours of Celtic Knotwork creating deeper resonances like notes in music. For example, Museletters, Soul’s Art, and Soul’s Poetry sing together within and between, separate and not in a wandering pattern as poetry and art spills also with all the other spaces such as Living Sanctuary, Immersions and Events. Abbey Of Soul spills into life rippling.

~ Whilst Abbey Of Soul is the current form of architecture for leaning-in to living from the depths of soul, it has developed from previous generations, from long lifelong experiences, research over many years, learning from teachers (human and more-other-than), dreams, soul encounters, teaching, apprenticing, guiding, remembering; from an increasing awareness spiral ~ up, down, around ~ and practices. This is particularly since the late 1980’s and early 1990’s with particular ‘in and out’ tide lines. All in a continuing listening to different voices, hence the ‘we’ in consciousness expansion.

~ Abbey Of Soul invites conscious shifting practices that support remembering and living more deeply from soul in the current everyday world of power over adaptations, distortions and disfigurements; where lines between known and unknown, inner and outer, falsity and truth, survival and blossoming can become clearer, or might that be alchemised into something different altogether.

~ Abbey Of Soul is home in the everyday locality around Dunbar, Scotland/Alba, as well as internationally; is both local and global. logal

~ Abbey Of Soul is guided with and by nature transforming nature; that is, nature transforming humans too through initiatory living (currently dammed, though not by beavers, in the mainstream culture); through particular conversations where our true names are remembered with encounters, eco-awakening, soul encounter, numinous experiences, dreams on a pilgrimage of soul. This is a pilgrimage of soul where, for example, binaries expand, become transformed, become blurred into poetic arts remembering more deeply an authentically embodiment of who we may be, indeed, are. Abbey Of Soul is not focussed with ‘going out into nature’ or ‘going out into the human-defined cultural world’ only for ‘wellbeing’ or ‘healing’ as extraction or returning to an Earth-killing culture.

~ Abbey Of Soul also attends ‘human’ wildness. For example how wild got separated from the domestic in life, land and Pan. Particularly through the nineteenth century, as well as previous, with the division of labour into paid and unpaid, public and private/domestic domains, urban and rural, ‘men’ and ‘women’ ie into motherhood (with deskilling wisdom, language, body, roles), professionalisation of law-medicine-education-social services, rise of middle (white) classes shaping race-class-gender-’disability’ in particular ways, experiences and identities around patriarchal, colonial, capitalist allying. Hence we find ourselves where we are today as ‘normal’. Our original published research in the 1980’s and early 90’s evidenced these changes where allying in village ways and communities of support were destroyed. We acknowledge the centring of parenting in a culture turned upside down and inside out.

~ Abbey Of Soul is also a portal. The social construction and thereby daily level of reality of people’s lives and identities expressed above are invited to be portals of wild realigning to Mystery rather than re-activating current constructs. Heartcracks, violence, war, conflicts etc become portals rather than activating circular patterning. Dreams, unbidden images, anything that shifts how we know ourselves, are vitally important and can enter conversations informing rewilding cultural forms and cultural shifts differently. The rewilding movement rarely addresses the need for human rewilding at the root. The rewilding movement can also be another portal. A poem excerpt:

Provenance

There is a truth
deeper than the surface
we have become;
a truth like a seed
knowing her own fruiting
and the fruits of all time;
everything is
in Her beginning.

Shed the surface
of all you think
you know now. …

Wendy Robertson Fyfe

Imbolc’s morning sea song before Imbolc dawn (listen with headphones if you can). The waves becoming a deep hum together

~ Abbey Of Soul is creating a place where, as Rumi said:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

~ Abbey Of Soul is a portal for trauma alchemy rather than eons repetition of unbearable grief and current trauma repeating from historical and current legacies such as colonialism, slavery, genocide, war, extinctions, patriarchy. In this way trauma can also lead to soul-centric living. It is also a place for impossible musings that go beyond individualising human sources of trauma like;

What if trauma is also a way cosmic energy is released, grounding the traumatic explosion of galaxies carried in our very cells. What if trauma is, in a way, beyond ‘human’ definition, and multifaceted. What are the ways trauma may also serve/hold purpose?

What if trauma is a result of not living into true Earth belonging, Earthborn potentiality connection never to emerge in the world; what then happens inside the knowing body and loss to our cultures over time? Does Earth find other ways?

What if we consider ‘human’ masses in population now as a kind of ‘land-body’, an ‘Earth geo-psyche’ and are new Earth plate layers ‘rubbing up’ like new kinds of fault lines and fractures of human being Earth geo-psyche. Maybe like fault lines in human cultural lands of disfigurement from the oligarchical/imperial movement and the current uprisings movements, across the world singing and offering life to? not knowing? Going round old stories again? Felt-sensing rather than censoring?

These are just a few ‘what ifs’ to stir imagination and expansion which is what we offer here … a space to explore, to speak what might otherwise be censored in opening windows of perception further.

~ Abbey Of Soul is a place for invitations for deep wandering, wondering, awe, origins, ceremony, praise, aliveness, animating, awakening.

~ Abbey Of Soul has been created through the work of many people in our particular manifestation from many centuries such as the ones who gave birth to the cave where the world was born; of C12th mystic heretic Marguerite Porete … “when we are one with God we cannot sin”; of the C17th one burning with her son child watching; from PI’A of Earth Mother lineage married to canyon wall, of ancient yew listening; carboniferous rock firing; Lewisian Gneiss longing; of Pan; Limos; Cailleach; Atlantic; Earthsong; Assagioli; Thomas Berry; Plotkin, Isle of Iona, Singing Forest, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Open University in Scotland, Lindisfarne, Institute of Psychosynthesis, Animas Valley Institute, Chieftain Warrior, Howling Coyotes, Full Moon Cosmic Eye, Mother, Father, Brother, Grandmothers, and so many more. Not all ‘ourself’ but by and from many, many human and more-other-than-human over one long life and longer lineage.

~ Abbey Of Soul was born from consummation of and abiding with loving up tomato plants into heart shaped tomatoes, blue tit’s conscious befriending, humble conversations with Great Skuas on a wild Orcadian Atlantic cliff, the merging with star at centre, singing with a singing forest, hummingbird to the heart, with a cracking heart of a canyon wall spilling and spinning into flowing gold and blue river lakes, of eternal flaming torches, of Holy Woman dreaming, leaping lizard heart, of mountain lion presence cave dweller anchorite, of tracking hummingbird to nest, being gifted and reclaiming Cailleach’s hammer of cosmic law, a place with ways for current homeless ones to craft cultural renaissance and so much more ...

~ Abbey Of Soul invites collaborations, events, soul guiding and Immersions. Examples are, and always an honour:

• Monthly Sacred Conversations for paid subscribers

• In-person events such as with poet Drew Dellinger and musician Melissa Bradd

• Podcast guest with Caroline Georgiou, Pioneer of Innerdance Sound Therapy Scotland for Prisons, Schools, Groups

• Publications ie Tending The Dead In Ceremony in Unpsychology Magazine

• Summit guest, Being Ushered By Celestial Landsong, with Actions For Change

• Under The Waterline, North Wall Art with Dunbar Harbour Trust

• Soul’s Art with Dunbar Art Route

• Podcast development, 1st with April Tierney; “Mothers Tending The Soul Of This World”…more podcasts in current conversation

• 10 day Iona Vigil

• Various day experientials on Holy Island, Lindisfarne

• Birth Story Ceremony

• 3 Day Matrimony Ceremony

• Death Ceremony

• Soul Guiding online through the magic zoom portal, and in person

• Current Companioning The Mystery online Writing Circle with poet, mother, crafter, culture-maker April Tierney

• Continuing to publish regular Museletters, Poetry, Art on Substack

~ Abbey Of Soul is one of new-ancient cultural forms currently developing in these times, perhaps like the way stone circles emerged from the ancestors through their time and lineage.

Perhaps you would like to invite a collaboration? Perhaps you too are curious about who and what lies beneath your daytime surface, under the waterline; would like to meet and explore soul guiding? Perhaps you too are longing to bring forth your own hidden and currently protected treasures through initiation into Earth’s Community’s feasting table? Or develop and embody them further?

Are you touched, moved? What and who sang or resonated with you? Would you like to join in conversations? Support the work with Abbey Of Soul in Alba/Scotland? you are

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If you know anyone who would be fed by this post, please share … ripple into the world transforming of the ‘other’ news.

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We have been so deeply, utterly, and pleasurably blessed to have written this post to you during the end of Samhain and the beginning of Imbolc mostly from our solid oak, comfy, cushioned, cosy-warm, dreamy wild bed amongst the cold howls of wind and rain outside. Revolutionary … or is that revelationary from our history also shaped partly by patriarchal dominating work-ethic calvinism, one of the origins of individualism. As they say, “Well, you made your bed, now lie in it” ~ Proverbs 1:31;) From a Samhain’s grandmother cave into Imbolc’s stretching arms and yawns.

Thank you for reading thus far, for your interest, and for your continuing subscription to Abbey Of Soul. Thank you, thank you, thank you for whatever in small and large ways you too are being called to bring your full voice and food to the feasting table of what we may be, and are.

Blessings of Imbolc to the inner and outer stirrings of you, your kith and kin through yesterday, today, the ‘morrow ~

Wendy/PI’A

“The seer views from the deeper eyes of eternal and prophetic vision beyond current individualism and human-centric identities prevalent in Western extraction cultures; from a deeper truth. The seer carries and brings forth a thread of the eternal through Earth’s generations.” wrf.

* We refers to Wendy as multiplicity of human/more-than identities/community. We refers to a wider group of humans/more-than. We are experimenting with a shift into wider inclusivity, exploring, remembering, defining being ‘human’/creature/more-than/other-than in living language and embodiment.

~ Living intimately as animate Earth Ceremony. wrf

… walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …

Photograph by Sally Anderson, Study of Artists, East Lothian; Earring by www.tempistjade.com; cloak by dreamworld. Hair by The Dreaming and Mirror, All from Mystery.

It’s 1.30a.m. and we’re in full wonder!! 9 December, 2025

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The Japanese Butterfly Box, wrf

Today we are offering three of the interweaving strands here at Abbey Of Soul with different stories of transformation in ancestral, personal, historical, cultural, inter-personal and ‘under the waterline’ immersions towards entering initiation pilgrimages in the mythic animate UnderOtherworlds. Here is ‘a story’, an ‘at home’ immersion, and a wild immersion on Iona in the way of “… walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …” towards cultural renaissance.

First:

The Japanese Butterfly Box

It’s a long, narrow, black lacquer box with stunning gold and red butterflies, a bit like a long cocoon and surprisingly light to lift. Our father brought it back, with a few other beauties such as a fragile hand-painted Japanese tea set that arrived unbroken, when he returned from the Isle of Me in Japan where he was taken after being rescued by the Australians from the Korean War. He served in R.E.M.E. for two years in the National Service shortly after he and our mother married in Aberdeen, before my brother and we were born. He always said he saw no action and slept through the little there was one night.

But there was action he never spoke of, had sworn with other men into secrecy of the horrors now seen daily on screens. When rescued, he was the only one surviving. He survived in deep minus temperatures, imagining with his comrades’ bodies overnight, not knowing what’s next and imagining all the feeling when seeing he was going to be ok. It is said that night is why he had asthma for the rest of his life. He began speaking about the experience after my brother emigrated to Australia.

As we know well now, not then, such enormous secrets are carried unspoken heavily into the everyday atmosphere of a life and passed on in the name of protecting those we love rather than honouring, alchemising, and releasing by love in community.

So it is that war and genocide/ecocide ripples far longer and wider in unseen ways in a world, especially when held without acknowledgement of initiation, passage, ceremony made visible. … Gaza now. Ukraine. Sudan ... so it will go on.

Are we all not also born from violence at some level too? The explosion of stars still resonating in and through us longing and terrified of transformation? Who of us has not experienced violence in our ancestry rippling through whether alchemised and initiated or not.

Maybe that’s something of what this beautiful box with flying butterflies held for our father. He kept his camera lenses in the butterfly box; lenses for the camera he loved taking family photos with whether in the mountains, at home, other travels, the brass bands he played with and more.

Artist Signature?

When our father died, we kept the box with the butterflies beginning to flake away. We did not want to throw it away or let it go where not valued, trusting instead that the right person for the box would appear at the right time.

That person is the artist John Galloway in 2024, also a neighbour. We went to John Galloway’s exhibition in West Barns, Dunbar. He too experienced war in The Forces, is now making beauty from the used and disused otherwise tossed away to pollute the planet. He creates butterflies and feathers from old newspapers, sand and shells from Earth’s clay, pencils from small used rubbers and so much more. All items displayed in units and boxes like medical cabinets and libraries influenced by his time with medical autopsy. We passed this beauty butterfly box to him.

However, the box was returned to me later. The butterflies were not flaking off anymore. Inside the box were three beautiful butterflies made from newspaper and hand-painted by John as a gift.

Sometimes we wonder whether the biggest transformations of war are not in the corridors, rooms and state mansions or palaces of ‘power’, but in these loving intimate gestures and conversations between a few ‘everyday’ folk. We felt these butterflies deeply as a kind of acknowledgement also passing between two men with war experience who also offered/made/make beauty on return.

Sometimes, we see John at work in his upstairs art room. Sometimes, if we see each other, we both wave. One day we look up at his window to see a butterfly on the curtain. It turns out to be a real butterfly for which he opens the window to, as John said, “gently shepherd her back outside”.

We are reminded of Painted Lady butterflies who take ten generations to pilgrimage across lands and oceans of return.

~~~~~

The Japanese Butterfly Box and Butterflies can be seen as part of John Galloway’s current exhibition ‘Flowing: Current/People/Words/Trade/Blood’ at West Barns Studios, Mon-Sat, 11-4, until 5 November, 2025. It was also part of the recent Dunbar Art Route.

Three Butterflies, including Painted Lady. Made from newspapers and hand-painted by John Galloway. image wrf.

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~~~~~

Second:

Soul’s Art, Dunbar Art Route

A taste of Soul’s Art, 18/19 October, Venue 12

Exploring sources of Identity, including our own, over a lifetime; social, cultural, ancestral, personal, experiential, theoretical, maps and models, Earth and soul; the intertwining of different worlds, beings and identities in Mystery.

Identity beyond the current human-centric individualistic culture through the forgotten language of soul, the ‘under the skin’, ‘under the waterline’ …

… of image, dream, metaphor, UnderOtherworld, symbol, the real imaginal animate world, the ‘is’ of archetype, song and poetry all alive in conversation.

Source of being in Earth Community, the unseen ‘other’ conversation longing for our listening ear, eyes, heart, mouth, gut ... in conversation with the more-other-than human world …

What might such a way begin to look/feel in local community … in the outer-inner … embodying embedment in each of our lives.

The Green Room …

Music, Resonate, Sarah Class, Orchestra For The Earth

A few of the comments:

“I’ve come away with a new way of experiencing the world!”

“Thank you for noticing.” (talking about how he was noticed)

Art and poetry was not only on the walls, but in the people who came.

~~~~~

Third ~ Soul Guide

Cultivating Intimacy with Soul, Iona, October 2025

The many ways of soul initiation guiding which is to:

guide self-healing and ‘wholing’

invite space for disturbance

for the UnderOtherworld to enter in the betwixt and between

to a deeper listening of the forgotten and the remembering through animate encounters with Earth, Cosmos, Mystery who remembers our names

to hear who we most truly are born to be in service of Mystery, Earth, Earth Community and future life currently under the surface, the mountain behind the mountain, the hidden in plain sight.

What is the hidden treasure in your life that is yours only to live, ever?

Soul initiation, as Bill Plotkin speaks to, is the ceremonial metamorphosis from living the survival experiences and identities to the deeper shape of being, like from caterpillar and cocoon to butterfly. It is a forgotten natural, currently stalled, part of human stages of development. It goes way beyond a particular kind of ‘healing’ to ‘fit’ into an Earth killing culture but invites participation into remembering and reweaving ourselves into the ancient-new.

~ Such a deep honour to guide and withness a courageous and deeply ripe human on the pilgrimage of soul for many years over a particular deep transformational immersion with/on Isle of Iona. This time, guiding through the zoom portal as Soul’s Art rooms also transformed. Their deep listening participation with preparation, relinquish, descent, the dreaming Earth, deep encounters and conversations into the myth of their remembered being. Their return w/holy in previously unforseen ways now to live into and embody with its own challenges in the current culture. It is through such soft and fierce ceremonies that an ancient-new way comes through Mystery’s initiation as villages begin to form for a return that is way beyond the current imagination. It is deeply challenging without village, which is, to create it. Come home from war.

Continually astonished by Mystery and withness over many years.

“for the tender, fierce, and true guiding heart which pilgrimages alongside us~ and helping us continue to see, hear, feel and express the magic of this world~”

Maybe you too feel a call to Pilgrimage of Soul, creating village or Earth congregation. Maybe you are feeling towards a relinquishing of a life that has been and needs an experienced guide to the UnderOtherworld to be alongside. Maybe you too feel a long term commitment to soul, and the soul of the world.

~~~~~

Further offerings coming soon …

If you would like to become a paid subscriber with Abbey Of Soul to receive all posts, we offer weekly invitations and practices also as a lead-in to our monthly 1.5 hour Sacred Conversations, next on 3 November. Should you be interested in joining us or/and supporting the work at Abbey of Soul you can become a paid subscriber here:

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For the Celts all new life begins in the dark unseen hence the New Year begins as we descend into the dark here in the Northern Hemisphere. The approaching season is called Samhain (pronounced Sow’in). As we approach Samhain at dusk on 31 October also remember the season of The Cailleach who we have spoken about/with many a time. She is usually associated with fierceness in her way of creating new lands and protection of life. This year we invite her deep-rooted humour. Some of our funniest encounters has been with her ‘out-of-the-blue’ wild presence journey that has us in tears laughing. But that’s another story … May you experience her humour in your life, that’s if she hasn’t appeared that way to you already;)

faithfully,

For Mystery ~

Wendy/Pi’A

“The seer views from the deeper eyes of eternal and prophetic vision beyond current individualism and human-centric identities prevalent in Western extraction cultures; from a deeper truth. The seer carries and brings forth a thread of the eternal through Earth’s generations.” wrf.

… walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …

* We refers to Wendy as multiplicity of human/more-than identities/community. We refers to a wider group of humans/more-than. We are experimenting with a more expansive and inclusive embodiment of what and who it means to be human in shifting times; when we remember, it’s a big shift;)

Wendy in the garden of Soul’s Art, Venue 12, Dunbar Art Route, Image by A. M. Photographics

Dunadd, Dál Riata. The distinct lowest summit at the centre looks 360 degrees with sea and rolling greened volcanic rubble-like hill edged plains around; all inside the sky. The mythic and the every-day-to-day lives together wrf

Dear Friends,

You are invited to listen to this story in the audio above. It includes the everyday sounds and lives of where we live in Dunbar in the ‘everyday’ and ‘underworld’.

Threading-in from the previous two Museletters in this series, here follows an impossible story currently taking shape, stretching a lifetime and many; a story of what it is to surrender and be led by Mystery even when, or especially when we* have no idea where we’re being led in remembering listening deeply, receiving feeling resonances, seeing images, experiencing dreams, engaging in conversations (human and ‘more-than’), noting patterns and symbols along the way. As a saying goes, ‘The Way knows The Way' and, as William Stafford ends the poem The Way It Is, “Don’t let go of the thread.” Living such a remembering way shows the … walk … talk … dream … vision … myth … that Abbey Of Soul follows and leads by. May you know yours, or follow the particular way shown to you. May this story confirm or take you further too.

~~~~~

Last month we stayed with a friend visiting Arrochar {from Gaelic Ard Tir meaning High Land} who was visiting from USA. We drive a different route from usual through Glasgow’s south {Glasgow is from Gaelic Cleschi meaning Dear Green Place} and use a route-finder app for a particular part of the journey that has 3 motorways and various junctions that look complex at one point.

Well, what do you know, is that not just the very point when the route-finder cuts out … Lost, we come off the motorways altogether to re-group and ask, where are we? We find ourselves, unbelievably, or perhaps more ‘taken’ in Mystery’s ways, impossibly, exactly, in all the huge city, right at the road entrance to Pollock Park, and The Burrell Collection. The Burrell Collection and finance for the building was gifted to the city of Glasgow from 1944. Sir William Burrell’s wealth came from Empire shipping when Glasgow became a city of Empire. A history of people, places and ‘objects’ continuing to be reckoned with. Many of the items likely questionable in terms of source and price. The tapestries were mainly commissioned by and representing the lives of royalty and then emerging wealthy merchant classes. Why is The Burrell Collection significant in this story?

When we returned from England to live in Shawlands {woodlands}, Glasgow 34 years ago just down the road from Rockall Drive {You may hear Rockall, mid-Atlantic granite rock, in shipping forecasts. The name is from Gaelic: rock/roaring/spraying sea or mountain, and Rockabarraigh in Scots Gaelic folklore where in the myths, if the rock returns three times it foretells the end of the world}, Rockall Drive, Cathcart {Cath is from Gaelic Caer meaning fort or coed meaning woodland/Cart as in the River Cart, tributary of the Clyde, meaning mainly ‘lost’ but could mean ‘loud’} where we were born 67 years ago. We went to The Burrell Collection weekly at that time spending hours with the enormous tapestries that were like earlier versions of film with their larger than life (particular) stories in needle and colour threads. We particularly remember a larger than life diverse life story inside a vast wall tapestry. Previous to returning to Alba, we studied in Birmingham we had also taught film amongst other subjects as a post-grad at The Centre Of Contemporary Cultural Studies in late 80’s. We were also part of the management of, then, The Triangle alternative art cinema in Aston for a while. So we have an eye for moving story. We began writing short stories and more poetry at this time inspired by the tapestries, William Blake’s art housed at Pollock House nearby and other experiences in the mountains and by the sea.

So, navigating, here we are sitting at the entrance to Pollock Park asking a couple locking up an allotment there for directions. Now, you may or may not also be surprised to hear … we just happen to have a Pollock fish defrosting in the back of the car that we are going to cook and devour that very night, should we get to Ard Tir. Maybe you remember the sea god/spear fishing man from ‘Tending and Being Fed by the Holy and the Dead in Ceremony’ 6 Nov, 24? Well, earlier in the week, he very generously left a Pollock fish hanging on our kitchen door handle and, by good fortune, had not been devoured by Herring gulls nesting on neighbours’ roofs! So, of course, we are delighted to take it to Ard Tir.

The word ‘Pollock’ has origins in Scottish Gaelic meaning ‘a pool’. Apparently Pollock is one of oldest recorded surnames in Scotland/Alba, and a sept of Maxwell Clan. Pool reminds us of the poem Dragonfly Wings and pools of human transformation posted here on 5 April, 2024 though written much earlier from an experience in Salt Spring Island, Canada. We speak here of the roots of names in Alba/Scotland since they are land-based names, they speak of and from the land that human culture was shaped by. They can tell a different story, like hiding in plain sight or ‘the mountain behind the mountain’. We’re sewing-in the remembering of different histories around names that are land-based and generally forgotten ‘underneath/pre’ Empire and colony/race/class/gender as subjects to and participants in different ways; a reclamation.

Pollock fish, is also from the Gaelic ‘poll’, meaning cobbled fish, or type of hook used to catch Pollock (unless you’re spearfishing;); the scientific name Pollachius is derived from the Greek word pollux meaning sailor or navigator because of its swimming patterns. (wikipedia). Such interesting roots and connections in words across different languages. But then we experience words themselves as animate, perhaps also swimming. We bookmark another trip to come back to Pollock Park, The Burrell Collection, Pollock House for another arc in the spiral of return, Mystery willing.

Find our way out through Glasgow we did, arrive in Arrochar/Ard Tir, cook and eat the fish with friends gathering in warm midge-full sunshine, with deep conversation on the banks of Loch Long evening, were had. Delicious in every sense. We are struck by the magical Mystery tour that Mystery put our way. Ard Tir/Arrochar, is a place that has been very important over these 34 years; where friends had lived previously, where we had our first awakening experiences, our night walk in snow in full February moon to The Cobbler; our first astonishing encounter with Pan in the middle of the woods now ‘harvested’ for ‘profit’; where awareness began and grew as we opened to ‘more magic going on’ than we had been previously told and known. Celts refer to such ways as The Mountain Behind The Mountain; of land as multi-layered worlds with otherworld tingling, shimmering enchantments and resonances.

The Cobbler, Arrochar Alps, Argyll, wrf. So many memories of climbs and wanders of the inner and outer ‘Mountain Beyond the Mountain’ here over many years, especially with our brother Roger.

Next morning; the weather has changed dramatically, which can be the way in Alba/Scotland. These gorgeous months of hot, dry weather this Bealthaine is not usual. Today light is dark, air wet with mist and rain. We decide to drive the opposite direction to Dunbar, to the Rest and Be Thankful, before returning. The Rest and Be Thankful is a significant high mountain pass where landslides have descended in heavy rain these last few years. The old low pass is now used, a single lane deep in the valley with steep ascent. Traffic lights are used with long waits and movement is very slow to pass through. We can think of worse places to wait, here every direction is beauty. Being surrounded in such beauty is likely how our ancestors knew the world; how most animals live.

Loch Fyne, further on round the curving shapes of land holding sea’s mystery inside clouds, wrf

We find that, instead of turning back, we are ‘taken’ further on this stunning road. I wonder if we’re going to Temple Wood Standing Stones at Kilmartin Glen where we have also experienced deep encounters and instructions. But no, or rather, not quite first. Instead we find ourselves in ancient conversation at Dunadd, Dál Riata, where ancient Celtic Kings and those before them back to the Iron Age, were crowned after marrying the land first of all; their first priority was honouring the land.

We are finding these days that after years apprenticing and teaching ways of how to approach Mystery, places, The Beloved, Soul, Dream and more, it is us now who are taken by them; is now another way of living daily with The Holy as the veils between worlds vanish more. It seems that we now live embedded in knowingly current ways in this land beyond the veil of the ‘every-day’ and in the ‘every-day’ in plain sight as the Mystics of the middle ages and eons before have said. The ways we were earlier divorced from Mystery as normal, is now, it seems, being called to marry, evermore embedded, into the tapestry of animate Earth and Earth Community life …

Hearing Mystery and the land call we park the car, ready, responding to the passage ahead. Listening, making offerings of breath, whispers, song, words of our heart since we have nothing else to offer, empty-handed in the surprise of being here, being courted; saying yes in previous years again, and again. We begin walking up in mist and rain, on wet grass, stone, and mud-slippy path. One turn beyond a stone brings out wind weaver Kestrel who almost silently alights and flies. We wonder, for how many years a Kestrel has lived and flown here. The circular Holy Well before the low top now has a big flat slab of lichened stone angled down and across the mouth, unused. Foxgloves, grass and fern surround.

We walk slowly, feeling this land, the gravitas of generational memories embedded here, a place who is now a tourist destination rather than lived remembering in ceremonial alive invocation. Maybe such a place being a tourist destination is also a distant way of keeping and remembering long lost longings of the gone beyond.

Through the clear stone and grass passage, we are led to the place wherein a carved hollow foot can be found. We’ll not share here, or maybe to come, all that is invoked and felt as we step one foot into that foot-fitting place, as we make our vow as a ‘we’ here in an ever deeper way than previous to serve Earth, to serve Mystery, listening to a vow spoken to us. What we will say here, by way of deepening, widening, heightening invocation and withness, is that here King is not an ‘I’. Sovereignty, which in some cultures is articulated as an individual, genetically inherited King or/and Queen, is rather an embedded, holy, we’dded WE, noble with land, place; is sovereign in service of the land and life of which humans are one part, is a with. King here can also be a verb. One ancient understanding of King, or Chieftain, is ‘of the kin’, and, of course, ‘of the kin’ in this place of remembering is of and with all life, kinning/kinging. Chieftain, particularly, in Alba, is gender-neutral. Sovereignty is an invitation, a pilgrimage, a remembering intimacy. Dunadd, Dál Riata, is a living embedded embodied place and invocation we-aving ceremonial mythic remembering over eons. Likely there are such places embedded in the lands where you live. King and sovereignty are collaborators, in cahoot service with Earth, humans and Earth Community in service to Mystery. Earth too is in service to Mystery.

‘Something’ is invoked up there on that low rather than high ancient hill, continuing to ripple both there and here to who/what knows where … Mystery knows ...

Us? We descended changed by that invitational land, a different walk. The land too awakening, resonant, alive, shimmering like we’ve never seen or experienced before; sparkling colours dripping not only with the wet of rain but with a depth of Earth heart art rearranging enchantments. We can only fall to our knees in awe and tears in surrender of such magnificence; being we of many we’s bringing such a way of remembering experience and we-aving-in world-making. The “Yes” (again) was easy, as Rilke said, “… no more of your springtimes are needed/to win me over - even one flower/ is more than enough …”

What might happen if we humans continue remembering such a way and conversation, focus, and live this way into animate life today? What impact through resonance might this have on, in, and with Earth evolution today? Maybe the way Mystery is inviting. What if Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus, for one example of many ways that so many humans are we-aving, is another such ceremony invoking a deeper awakening in co-conspiring with Earth through a remembering Matrimony Ceremony …..with land, sky, sea and more where Mystery is primary, Earth is secondary, humans are …? Well, where do you see humans?

Maybe Mystery takes us/us on this magical horror mystery tour in a greater pilgrimage tapestry spiral of leaving and return that, like Celtic Knotwork’s sewing tapestry threads over eons and that the ancient tapestries picture so well, the land is sung and sings alive again in particular resonance longed for at this time in evolution. It is a magical thing, worth the pilgrimage needling of such a great Mystery whose intelligence is so much vaster than our own.

When that enchanted land releases us, we move to Temple Wood standing stone moon circle where we’ve been deeply blessed to be many times over these years … and that, our friends, is another story …

Where all this goes is far too soon to tell … besides, you’ve heard the tail/tale of the old woman, the tapestry thread, and dog … haven’t you?;)

What are the stories and memories of the lands and Matrimony/Marriage where you live/who live you?

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Meantime, you don’t ever let go of the needle; keep the needle threaded.

~~~~~

Postscript

Mythic Under/Dayworld visible remembering tapestry otherwise entitled ‘Birds and Beasts in a Landscape with a Mille-Fleurs Ground, Wyvern and Griffin, around 1525

Go back to The Burrell Collection we did, with a dear friend from those 34 years ago who now lives right across the road from where we lived in 1991 by Queens Park. Art, like written and spoken language is, of course, living, animate, alive in the co-conspiring. The remembered enormous life tapestry that we spent hours with was not there. What if it was a soul template of what and who is now lived into, living into, stitching in. Perhaps another tapestry you are seeing now.

~~~~~

What living tapestry might you/s be sewing/be sewed into? Which stories are you/s currently holding a needle and thread for, or what way or we-aving creativity is calling/called to you?

If you/s would like to find out more about our work at Abbey Of Soul remembering and cultivating the ways and practices, would like to experience a 30 min gifted exploratory conversation in ‘your’ tapestry of life’s moving soul constellation threads embedding or longing to embed in the world, please message us here:

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Sending love from a place of Mystery’s tapestry in Alba/Scotland as the first Robin song of the season sings in the garden. May Mystery’s ripening Lughnasadh season in Earth’s North, or the season where you/s are, bring abundance for you/s and for these times in a sharing harvest for the world.

Wendy/Pi’A

"The seer views from the deeper eyes of eternal and prophetic vision beyond current individualism and human-centric identities prevalent in Western extraction cultures; from a deeper truth. The seer carries and brings forth a thread of the eternal through Earth’s generations." wrf.

… walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …

* We refers to Wendy as multiplicity of human/more-than identities/community. We refers to a wider group of humans/more-than. We are experimenting with a more expansive and inclusive embodiment of what and who it means to be human in shifting times; when we remember, it’s a big shift;)

Wendy, Dunbar Harbour; image by Jay Kirkland,

Sky Needle and Sunbeam Threads, Dunbar, May 2025, wrf

As we write in this glorious summer, we are looking out into the garden watching and listening to birdsong as the sowing of seeds in Spring returns to seeding. Curious about sew and sow.

…continuing from Wednesday 6 August, following Earth’s dreaming inner needle ‘ouch’ through consciously leaving open threads, following the inner needle, not knowing slowly in:

i. guide/ceremonialist with courageous betrothed, kith and kin in culture-making beyond the humancentric individual in a transformational initiation Ceremony for everyone (human and more-than-human, ancestral/future and more)… A Matrimony Ceremony in the Dolomites, July 2024

ii. Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2025 in April, A ‘Feed The Earth’ ceremony, rather than exploit/starve the Earth, deep listening and singing invocation offering as/with and for Earth creating a wave of human song, joining in with the songs of and as the world. Founded in 2018 and in the 8th year.

iii. Being In and Of The Congregational Earthchoir of the Cosmos; remembering Gaelic Psalm Singing in May and the song of the tree that had us singing in; the forest then echoing out; like perhaps Gaelic Psalm Singing is a deeper hidden remembering.

Also, speaking a little about this gorgeous Scottish summer in Part 1:

~ guiding the Celtic Iona Vigil including as invocation beyond guide/participant; Vigil by way of Soul Initiation, being shaped by Mystery into remembering the depths of the image we were born with, perhaps like a carving from survival stone returning to life again, into the world shaping;

~ launching ‘Under The Waterline’, as part of North Wall Art; entering further invitations to remember sea’s animacy in intimate conversation into local life and community.

~ offering a few soul and art guiding sessions in European Land Art Festival (ELAF) during the summer as well as participating in the renewed Dunbar Art Trail to come in October. All here in Dunbar where we are living.

Meantime continuing developing Abbey Of Soul, founded in 2024, by way of a place for courting revelation, ceremony and imagination; remembering the holy in life devotion. A place for community creating through regular offerings, invitations, and monthly Sacred Conversations where Mystery and Holy wonder enter. Concurrently, needling into local life and community as well as Internationally. Sometimes, we believe, being experienced as a ‘needling’ disturbance;)

Continuing in Part 2 …

How we see and experience, from where and who. This is not landscape, a form of e-scape, it’s human embedding in land, sky, sea in an animate tapestry of life rather than part of a current dominant culture’s shadow.

Iona’s Midsummer Solstice 2025:

As the star descends lighting up penetrating waters golden before the white sands of North Strand, a fuller tapestry of life becomes spontaneously seen as we’re walking; felt, smelt, alive, multicoloured. It’s incredibly quick, a matter of seconds. Much longer to write or speak. It’s as if the needle has been sewing all along with Mystery’s call into embedment; seeing the picture. Of course, we are always embedded even if we think and experience as disconnected from Earth. We’re speaking here of our conscious awareness remembering. Much of our work already includes eco-niche and place in an animate world as ‘more-than-human’, and embodiment. What we experience and speak here is embedment which, for us, is experiencing way, way deeper than before and maybe even moreso than belonging, the next depth ‘stitching in’, we might say.

Maybe this is something you already know/feel/experience/live, of course, and maybe, at some level, have never felt separate from, particularly if you are in a nature-based culture survived/surviving colonisation or returning. This is way more than nature-connection and way more than ‘well-being’, unless it’s nature-based and includes times of utter dissolution as ‘wellness’ rather than sickness too (of a person/kin/culture/beyond human/eon). Just for a starter glimpse of the further needlework here:

• needle entering the land at birth’s distinct emergence currently called Scotland/Alba … moving, or rather a ‘ripping’, from that land to the land currently called England, age 6, as father searched for paid work … piercing into an ongoing tapestry (some people prefer/may experience/call as ‘web’/creatrix or other) of those lands … a kind of exile from and entry into an already particular cultural tapestry of separation and objectification of Earth and human. 1950-60s

• The struggle and search for return firstly through deeper remembering including the unearthing of previous traumas/disenchantments and gifts of self, ancestral, cultural over eons as breadcrumbs on the pilgrimage of return; deeper awareness. 1970-80’s

• Entering Cultural Studies, particularly Feminist Cultural Historian in the human dayworld level; in the ways the current world is constructed through power relations, what is now experienced as ‘normal’, infact, a particular power-related social construction/creation, ie the formation of legal and medical professions as power relations to define gender, race, ‘normal’ boundaries, to fulfil roles in a particular economy. An Earth made for human consumption and entertainment (for some) rather than Earth as primary. No one told us then, didn’t ‘know’ that the Earth/Earth Community was alive, animate and in conversation though part of us has always felt it without language or a way in the culture to see/become visible. Life, disenchanted and nowhere to ‘fit’, where to go to sew an authentic life born to live. For us, the wisdom root of increasing depression/illness; a wise response. 1990’s.

• Coming out from England and entering Scotland/Alba again, returning 30 years later.

• Needle entering as researcher and teacher in social science, social policy and social welfare in The Open University, Scotland … needle in. Sharing learning and understanding in the formation and shaping of the current human culture here in Scotland/Alba. Following the needle in greater understanding, becoming deeper patterning in a tapestry. Needle out in sharing teachings in the world. 1990s

• Awakening/remembering the deeper song of the Earth through the tree singing and inviting us consciously back into the reciprocal resonant Cosmic tapestry. Now singing needle, needle of the Earth, begins a pilgrimage of deeper embedment again in a knowing animate, enchanted, Earth and Cosmos, not just in the human culture. 1990s

• Following Soul Encounters in a specific conversation we know is there for each and everyone, that’s our true lost birthright. What if the main trauma of today is for there not to be a place for such a conversation to be remembered and sung, sewn in again, remembering and experiencing embedment as normal. The embeddedness is both ‘here’ though mostly invisible like when learning to sew where there a marked pattern becoming visible to follow with needle and thread colours, and an art and craft of soul creation following often unseen patterns like breadcrumbs, encounters, dreams and more. We could say that the entanglements of human and ‘more-than-human’ shown in Celtic Artwork are ways of all life and Earth Community creating cosmic life tapestry. Ensouling the world, as James Hillman said. We know we are not alone in speaking of Ensouling the world.

• Training in Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy and practicing in service of new mothers and fathers sewing new life into the dayworld tapestry differently. Experiencing, training, and then practicing in the world. All the time life entering the tapestry of life; training and then sharing out into the world in different ways. 1990s-2010’s

• Entering a long apprenticeship in soul initiation guiding at Animas Valley Institute, Colorado; exiting into guiding in the world. At the same time, bringing the needle in to creating consistency in opportunities for other soul guides needed in Europe to train and apprentice for wider future regenerative growth in a way that hadn’t been rooted, sewn/embedded here previously to the extent in culture-making; exiting. 2010-2020’s

• Needle as pen in writing, poetry, art; images and words. For further examples, published book Whispers; Imagining Earth Community, Surrendering to Earth’s Wisdom, 2018 (still available); article published in Unpsychology Today: Tending The Dead in Ceremony (see Publications page 6 Aug, 2024) sewing death and bereavement in as animate, holy in culture-making, life feeding the Earth, metamorphosis rather than current consumer/extraction culture’s death denial. Birthing Stories Ceremony too as places of initiation and transformation. Poetry, such as Celestial Landsong 2024 (see Events page, 2 April, 2024).

• Remembering human as also multiplicity, as kaleidoscopic, in being and crafting offerings over time rather than the ‘one job for life’ in a machine cog. As we write, remembering Fritz Lang’s brilliant and innovatory film Metropolis, 1927, which seems ever more relevant today now with AI. If you haven’t seen the original, do so. This whole plethora of embedding threads and sharing over time in a kind of vast extent of Cultural Renaissance needed. In what ways might you have been limiting what you may be due to cultural stories/positions/roles of who you ‘are’? How might you begin/be a needle in another kind of tapestry of your life?

• Continuing soul guiding and teaching with people on the land and through the internet portal. Needle also as spear; a spear to the heart of an old story and as a way of spearing fish to feed the hungry.

• In daily practice and offerings with the sea, with the land, with the Earth inside the sky, inside the Cosmic singing creating and being created by Mystery’s tapestry.

Through all these years, it seems, sewing, being a needle as well as threads, in and out, in and out in various ways of creating cultural embedment (human and more-than-human), as with other folk. The Cailleach throws down stones to create land as one way of creating; perhaps she also throws down tapestry stone threads. This is not repair, though healing is part, for sure, as well as Martin Prechtel’s repair in terms of regular unravelling/and community building. It’s about invocation and crafting, world-making labour from the image we are born with to sew into the world (with song, poetry, words, food, dance …) between the upper/day/underworlds; seen and unseen, past/future; human and ‘more-than-human’. It is a pilgrimage from each and all of us, not just a chosen or ‘entitled’ few; a conscious living of Earth-born gifts into embedment. What resonates with you and your life here, or life longing? We’d love to hear from you.

Speaking of separation, someone said our garden this Summer is like the garden of Eden. This made us smile, and had us resonating in some ways with a return journey remembering a time before we were separated from ‘The Holy, The Divine’ through a particular notion of sin as separation of/by ‘Feminine’ . Perhaps it’s a particular separation from The Divine that is the cause that so many of us are being wrecked by and now wrecking Earth. What if Earth is a Divinity and is treated this way? Perhaps the Medieval Mystics and those before them going back eons, like the Pi’As’ of ancestral legacy pre 6,000BC, were destroyed because they were ‘onto’ something, remembering. Of course, The Holy, cannot be destroyed even when burned, hanged, speared, drowned, strangled, exiled, starved, boxed-in, misunderstood, controlled and more. The Holy is far more vast, will always return, is always present.

Just before we send this out, needle pulling thread/being pulled out into the world, we’d like to come back to the needle itself. Needlework is generally associated with women’s work, particularly here in the 19th and early 20th Centuries in Scotland where the constructed division of labour became more ‘normal’ in everyday lives in the creation of industrial (white) private/women and public/men domains. Remembering being told of our grandmother’s beautiful needlework and the haberdashery shop I.S.Robertson. in Aberdeen in the 1930’s and amazed how she did that then! Astounding! She probably sewed some of the clothes too.

She died at home, younger than us now, though we remember her as very old, being only 11 then. She was sitting sewing, found dead with her needle still between her forefinger and thumb. We have her brass thimble on our Altar, now holding deeper meaning. It is sitting inside a gold clay hummingbird’s nest we made before we knew what a hummingbird’s tiny nest looked like; before we tracked a hummingbird to her nest when exploring our way of soul guiding; how we track the signs. We hear her words now:

“Don’t forget the needle”.

So much of the Grandmothers’ sewing of those years now unwanted, unfashionable, found in charity shops whilst mass production is more generally chosen. Maybe our Granny, and many others’, was onto something, passing something on into the next generations from the previous, an exiting/entering a bigger tapestry. Whilst we have been terrible at ‘sewing’ that particular way, looks like we took it up in a different way in life, picking the needle up and passing the needle on. Maybe “don’t forget the needle” has been a message hidden in plain view all along the matrilineal eons deeper than an industrial construction of normality in what also became factory work for white working class women; embroidery for white middle class women.

We recently came across the embroidery of Ann Macbeth (1875 - 1948) who studied at the Glasgow School of Art and was also a suffragette. Women were not permitted to paint at the School then. Here is one of her sewing art that was not thrown out, Yonic Embroidery continuing to embed back into the worlds, recently in Dunbar. And now … what happens in your body as you see this image? What happens if you take her out onto the land, show her to the land … and, if you dare, show your own body where he/she/they/we/us/them came from, Earth Yoni

Ann Macbeth, Yonic Embroidery, photo by kind permission

~~~~~

Ok, Part 3 will be sewing in through the next few days or so when we’ll come back to the needle sewing tapestry, returning full circle to Glasgow where we were born, needle and threads coming together in an animate life tapestry, like most Mysteries, in a surprising way. Meantime you too might wonder about the tapestry of your embedment/or longing for in your life and the threads you may and may not be aware of, as yet unseen. What are the ways that you are already culture-making though you might not use those words? We’d love to hear from you, of course! Thank you for reading, your interest, and hanging in with this Earth needle and colour threads sewing over a period of time. May you and Earth be well fed, resonate, share …

If you would like to find out more about our work and experience a 30 min gifted exploratory session of this way of creativity in the tapestry of your life threads embedding or longing to embed in the world, please message us.

If you would like to support the work here at Abbey Of Soul or/and would like to receive weekly practices and join in a monthly Sacred Conversation, you can subscribe/message us here. We’re referring to subscribe also in the way of expressing and being in agreement or curiosity of knowing more with.

Testimonial

“A true soul initiation guide knows just how to get into and out of your way, and is in service to the beauty hidden deeply within you and deeply within your conversation with the Earth. Wendy is one such masterful guide.” Ama Verdery

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Sending love from yet another wild sunshine warm day in Scotland/Alba’s early Lughnasadh as many seeds in the garden begin bulging and drying. May Mystery’s ripening Lughnasadh season now or/and to come be abundant for you and for these times in a sharing harvest for the world.

Wendy/Pi’A

"The seer views from the deeper eyes of eternal and prophetic vision beyond current individualism and human-centric identities prevalent in Western extraction cultures; from a deeper truth. The seer carries and brings forth a thread of the eternal through Earth’s generations." wrf.

… walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …

* We refers to Wendy as multiplicity of human/more-than identities/community. We refers to a wider group of humans/more-than. We are experimenting with a more expansive and inclusive embodiment of what and who it means to be human in shifting times; when we remember, it’s a big shift;)

Sky, Sand, Dunes, Machair, North Strand, Wendy up close, Iona

Sky Needle and Sunbeam Threads, Dunbar, May 2025, wrf

Hello! It’s been a while since we’ve written and spoken here. We’ve been beavering away … The early days of Lughnasadh seem like the right kind of time to re-enter here.

… A dream, or was it deep imagery, we can’t exactly remember. We have so many journals it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Then both dream and deep imagination both, images and symbols, are some ways the soul speaks into the world …

“A very long needle is upright through my core, a womb eye. It feels physical, I can’t move or l’ll pierce my body from the inside. I want to get it out since l’m having to stay straight, can’t move.”

The temptation in seeing/feeling suffering is to help get it out/fix it and sometimes that is the way, other times not, especially in soul imagery deepening conversation.

Years later a very long needle, actual, finds the way into our big mythic painting. The painting is a cracked flaming burning heart canyon. The needle is inside the core blue waters of that crack, grief spilling through into burns, rivers, lochs, and seas of Earth in the shape of a long flowing dress out… the heart flames become wings either side of the crack (see Pilgrimage, in Poetry Jan 24). * Fiery Celtic beacons are on either side of the burning cracked heart. All are born from the black cave where the dark mothers give birth to the world and, embodying in the world, seen here stretching the canyon wall rock in Capitol Reef, Utah. How did the needle get in if not from the beginning, or by magic?

We did not remove the needle at the time of the dream/deep imagination. We lingered longer, slower, finding instead the needle keeping us in alignment with a deeper forgotten intelligence, Earth. We might say seeing Earth’s ‘sewing’ and ‘unravelling’ tapestries. We’re reminded of our series of 10 Museletters Weaving Unseen Colour Chords of Life through 2023 that led to founding Abbey Of Soul at the start of 2024. We’ve (weave;) also been following the needle, yielding to it, letting the needle guide us. We’re finding, for example, after beginning some threads such as:

i. guide/ceremonialist with two courageous betrothed and their kith and kin ….. in a Matrimony Ceremony in the Dolomites, July 2024

ii. Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2025 in April

iii. Being In and Of The Congregational Earthchoir of the Cosmos; remembering Gaelic Psalm Singing in May

and beginning to write the next part, or ‘completing’ part, that it was not to be written yet … there was an needling ouch. The ouch was different from protective ouches such as visibility/invisibility also there for sure.

We were curious, what was/is Mystery/the needle up to in pointing us in a particular direction? ** Just because something is painful doesn’t mean it’s bad/to be gotten rid of/fixed in these pain numbing times but rather wise and useful information for attending to including cultivating an increasing capacity for pain as well as joy, both/and. Follow some ‘other’ intelligence, we did. Something is beginning to emerge more now and so we’ll begin speaking.

Some might say that these unfinished threads over time are not a great ‘marketing’ move where ends are tied up neatly and quickly to get work ‘out there’, ‘branded’ and ‘calling folks in’, ‘making sales/income’ in the current way of economic necessity. Of course, there is also timely urgent desire to contribute to and enrich meaningful lives. Getting work out now is even quicker with ChatGPT hardly needing our own brain matter whilst using Earth limited resources as if a registered company ‘Earth Limited’ with profit before prophet. Holding to allow time for a thing to become ripe seems very ‘counter-culture’.

Maybe letting something grow in the dark (or midsummer light;) can be a way to go currently, to genuinely ‘not know’ in a world that does everything to not make that possible through a particular economic system of ownership and employment of particular ways of working in public and private spheres. We’re remembering our very first research around reproductive technologies in the 1980’s and how even the dark womb became a place of technological control and visibility ‘out there’ in a particular way.

How often do we (including we) move too quickly into acting/doing and therefore cut/break 'a thing’ off before it’s ripe, before it’s ready never fully feeling the wholiness/holiness of it/them. What if we linger longer like ‘slow food’ in the ‘not knowing’, like the needle’s way in hand-sewing craft over a life time.

Before going further, we’d like to sew in some beauty blossoming threads of this year’s Bealtaine/Beltane as we now move into the first days of Lughnasadh and the ripening towards harvest:

1. Guiding a stunning and powerful, transformational 10 day Celtic Iona Vigil through Summer Solstice with it’s beauty horror

~ turning upside down experiencing ‘You’ ‘I’ ‘We’ ‘They’;

~ living inside the Iona’s whirling, stilling, wholeness;

~ living with specific early ancestral Mystics’ ways such as from those called heretics in their union with ‘The Holy’ who were burned at the stake (ie early 14th Maguerite Porete). Actually it was those who burned them who are true heretics … Finding ourselves walking in Iona’s mists.

~ living conscious human ancestral return to and welcome again from land separations through The Clearances/Colonialism/search for paid work; what was/is Earth up to in all this?

~ singing Earthsongs and St Orin ancestral songs;

~ remembering ancient and ancestral Holy Women/Men/Multifaceted/Queer/Celtic Creatures/Land/Sea/Sky love entwining between human and more-than-human beings;

~ lingering, lingering, lingering; oh, and let’s linger a bit more, oh, and not name too quickly …

~ listening, listening, listening; oh, and let’s listen a bit more …

~ offerings, offerings, offerings; oh, and let’s offer a bit more …

~ in dying tomb/womb birthing, and ‘not sharing’ just quite yet in this otherwise current confessional, sharing, ‘get it out soonest’ world time …

and so very much more in this animate abundant song gratitude tapestry …

It’s easy to see where inspiration for Celtic Knotwork comes from: Dun I, Iona, wrf

Sky Patterns, Iona. wrf

One of many revelations for us: a wedding with Feast on North Strand, a Fast in the next bay along. We didn’t plan that and the ways/conversations that these two interweave/impact each other. Also, the astonishing balance in such a beautiful of way of eating/not with feasting and fasting in Ceremony, a different and more Earth needle authentic way from ongoing global insatiable famine (ie currently Gaza)/greed (ie currently techno billionaires). We’ve related with ceremony/desecration in earlier posts relating the myth of Goddesses Demeter and Limos with the destruction of the Sacred Grove and the pilgrimage of Soul Initiation; of alchemical metamorphosis. Fast and Feast, of eating and not, becoming Ceremony in love offering and receiving, body with body, human with and as ‘more-than-human’/Earth Community. Fast also as emptying in one way whilst filling in another way, Mystery, of service to/with Earth.

Part of our ‘soul blueprint’, a question, is around reciprocity, becoming holographic reciprocity, and ‘who gets to eat/who doesn’t’ from the seeds (and which) of life. We came across our very first poem recently in clearing. Written in 1990, 35 years ago, ‘Fixed/Unfixed’ leads to nourishing our inner seeds born with, and each other’s inner seeds, to grow and feed ourselves and the world. We’ll post that poem another time. The poem seemed to come full circle when seeing these two ceremonies in two bays on Iona in the full deep knowing and the bright light of Summer Solstice 35 years later; of love and honouring in different ways in balance, fasting from inner depth love seeds and outer feasting harvesting in love celebration with world culture-making. Fasting, of course, in such a ceremony is also opening to feasting and being feasted by Mystery in ways unimaginable beforehand. The earlier 3 day Matrimony Ceremony in The Dolomites as soul initiation guide and ceremonialist is also part of this sacred work we’re called to in culture-making.

A place of Matrimony, North Strand, Isle of Iona, wrf

The Celtic Iona Vigil creates a place where you can dive deep in with Mystery where the veils are already thin. The Vigil is not ‘only’ about courageous humans responding to Mystery’s call and devoting themselves to deep listening attending to the world (and more) for our original seed note, the Vigil is also an invocation in itself with and into the world, Earth and Cosmic Being; a creative generative aliveness in itself; or is that themselves. Maybe invocation, in-vocation, is part of what humans are here for. Perhaps what our ancestors were up to in places such as Temple Woods stone circle in Kilmartin Glen down the road from Iona where we found ourselves (unplanned) a few weeks ago. What if humans also prioritised invocation as prophetic rather than current emphasis on life as ‘profitic’.

Here is a testimonial from the recent Celtic Iona Vigil already rippling in the world in so many ways, seen and unseen, in/from the Isle, Mystery and beyond:

“To be guided by Wendy is to be called, like never before, to encounter just what it is you’re made of, and in the most life-affirming way. Wendy is a real, live, fire-breathing, mother-loving dragon of a Cailleach (old wise mother, death hag and initiatrix). Her attention to detail dances with her irreverence in a way that holds you well and holds you to it, and makes no assumptions about what Mystery has in store for you, what your life is about or where you’re headed.” 

Ama Verdery

2. North Wall Art, Dunbar Harbour Trust, Dunbar, Under The Waterline opened on 29 June until mid September’ish. As stated in our Event post in June, Under The Waterline is a panel of images on the North Wall of Dunbar Harbour continuing a wild conversation now ‘above the surface’ between human, boat, and sea. The panel is alongside fellow artist Jay Kirkland’s portraits All Weathers of local fisher-harbour-folk, and Community Art from local Schools and Groups. This work is very much part of participating in local community-creating work already happening in the town of Dunbar.

Raising The Panel, Dunbar Harbour, photograph by Jay Kirkwood, June 2025 In true Underworld style, the seat below the panel had a hole in it, literally, a portal you can fall through;)

Under The Waterline, wrf, North Wall Art, Dunbar Harbour Trust

Here is an image of the panel being fixed (sometimes fixing is useful;) and another image now on the North Wall stirring imaginations along the salt line. Images from the panel and other images from this exploration can also be ordered in a variety of ways so you may enjoy them as reminders of depths and beauty for yourself, or to send to dear kith and kin. Also as a way to support the work here at Abbey Of Soul. There are very frameable cards, solid oak framed wee ‘treasures’ and more. Contact us here at Abbey Of Soul for more information. More will be available in a forthcoming new page in Abbey Of Soul with Soul Art.

3. European Land Art Festival (ELAF), Dunbar in July. This Festival was founded by James Craig Page in 2017 inviting people into relationship with nature and art, particularly with stone stacking. People now travel Internationally to this Festival which has grown in interest with its beauty and nature connection. This year we offered two sessions in ELAF for the first time. The sessions became more conversational, exploratory and invitational in relation with soul pilgrimage and Earth’s animacy. Image and poetry to come. See the following website and facebook page if you are interested in the land art festival created by locals and visitors to this year’s Festival.

4. Dunbar Art Trail is returning during the weekend of 18/19 October with a new website and open studios. Our work will be part of this Art Trail. More on this to come.

5. We’ve also been invited into conversations offering soul crafting experiences with sea, art and poetry by Coastal Connections in Dunbar which is part of Sustaining Dunbar.

A vibrant town!!

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Ok, Part 2 will be sewing in through the next few days where we’ll be returning to Summer Solstice, Isle of Iona, needle and threads coming together in an animate life tapestry … Did we/did you expect it all in one full piece here?;) For now, thank you for reading, your interest, and hanging in with the threads over a period of time …

sending love from another wild sunshine warm day in Scotland/Alba early Lughnasadh. May Mystery’s ripening Lughnasadh season now or/and to come be abundant for you and for these times in a harvest for the world.

Wendy/Pi’A

"The seer views from the deeper eyes of eternal and prophetic vision beyond current individualism and human-centric identities prevalent in Western extraction cultures; from a deeper truth. The seer carries and brings forth a thread of the eternal through Earth’s generations." wrf.

… walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …

* We refers to Wendy as multiplicity of human/more-than identities/community. We refers to a wider group of humans/more-than. We are experimenting with a more expansive and inclusive embodiment of what and who it means to be human in shifting times; when we remember, it’s a big shift;)

* A curious note, in Scotland/Alba the word ‘burn’ relates to both fire and water.

**Look up ‘needle’ in Etymology and see all the roots and uses of this word/thing and please add your own here!

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North Strand, Isle of Iona, Inner Hebrides, Alba/Scotland, wrf

This is a 2-part Museletter/audio. The first part is more experiential. You are invited to listen to the first audio and then to the link for Gaelic Psalm Singing, Kilmarnock Psalm 16:8-9 from the Hebrides, below that. We recommend listening to the Gaelic Psalm Singing on headphones to get a …

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Image, The Observatory, Isle of Erraid, Argyll, Alba/Scotland wrf. (early 1990s)

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The Witness

Through whose eyes do you see,

and whose heart beats in you.

Whose energy is behind the breath.

Whose thoughts move through your mind,

and who dwells in thy Soul.

Through whose eyes do you see yourself.

Wendy Robertson Fyfe, 2008

Welcome, this Museletter articulates further something of the vision from Abbey Of Soul one year on and which continues taking shape alongside deep seeing through the eyes of PI’A of Earth Mother, PoEM, Holy Woman and village (human and more-than-human). The Museletter begins to articulate the world-making of ancient-new ways here; what you might expect and why. Abbey Of Soul is a place to cultivate a deeper sense of wonder and seeing as our felt sense of being Earth continues emerging, is lived and embodied into life with different Earth-born gifts to bring forth to serve this world. Abbey Of Soul is here for exploring, cultivating, apprenticing, co-conspiring, re-visioning for these times; living at the edges of the village, of the worlds. Where we is in italics, we refers to the multifaceted layers worlds/constellations and village of Wendy/PI’A. Where ‘we’ is written without italics it refers to the wider cultural ‘we’, though we are aware of challenges with that too as an ancient-new language emerges with the challenges of doing so acknowledged. Bear with, as we feel our way stretching too …

To articulate further, we need to place/position work within a much wider context as we have come to know at this point towards creating a different conversation that is soul-led in which, as Thomas Berry noted, Earth is Primary and humans are Secondary rather than Earth secondary and humans primary. There may well be resonances with where you are already, or/and your longings for such a place. You are invited to take some time here with this ‘more of an article, wander-weaving’. As we write, the stories grow arms and legs, eyes and mouths, hand and heart, brain and blood, and planets, within oceans, canyons and more. You may want to pause here, make a hot cuppa and come back as you offer attention, for which we are grateful. We wonder and wander with ‘human’ further in what follows, that a bigger story and conversation … perhaps even ground… may open up for deeper revelation. You’ll likely notice your own stories as you read and we’d love to hear them either in comments below or message us. If you find the writing helpful and would like to support the work taking shape you are warmly invited to become a paid subscriber if you are not already, or to offer a one-off payment of support. Such support is deeply appreciated, though not required. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

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We have now stepped into Imbolc in the Northern Hemisphere, the Celtic Season of Spring and life returning. This Museletter too follows an eye-line and mere glimpse particularly into the deeper waters of inner and outer seer, as ‘The Witness’ at the start wonders with, returning more openly and breaking through Samhain’s surface currently. The seer views from the deeper eyes of eternal and prophetic vision beyond current individualism and human-centric identities prevalent in Western extraction cultures; from a deeper truth. The seer carries and brings forth a thread of the eternal through Earth’s generations.

We spoke previously about stretching, even re-visioning, concepts and definitions of what it means to be ‘human’ in a time of deep transformation. As Thomas Berry said:

The historic mission of our times is
to reinvent the human—
at the species level,
with critical reflection,
within the community of life systems,
in a time-developmental context,
by means of story, and
shared dream experience.

This quote speaks to the work of Abbey Of Soul. We spoke in our last ‘Arousal’ Poem post about challenging ‘individualism’ and human-centric ways through using we as a multiplicity of human and more-than-human identity rather than squeezing into another definition as well as opening to playfulness and imagination, ‘trying it on’ to wonder ... We’ve heard this has opened/relaxed ways of being for some.

So let’s begin this Museletter now … or is that, begin again:

~~~~~

She’s looking at us as we both sit at the kitchen table. After a while we ask what she’s looking at, what she’s seeing. She says:

You have 20 eyes.

Seer to seer… One 6, one 66 … one taking a long lifetime cultivating and living fully into, acknowledging, honouring, encouraging others’; the other, Mystery willing, with a long life living and cultivating such a way. The seer is any age. Not that a seer is ‘special’ or ‘exceptional’. Rather, a seer is natural, a healthy normal capacity, an essential life-enhancing contribution/guide in and for any culture; a gift that offers food from a deeper root and fountain of wisdom. Seer, arousing and stirring, becoming tangible and embodied from the depths again being more widely seen and known through healing, vigil, ceremony, dreaming, deep imagination through and from multiple generations of oppression and repression by many in the dominant Western cultures. Seer, emerging, Earth-born for current critical times. It is so. The seer is surely needed. The difference of arrival is how the seer is mirrored and valued (intra/inter), and feels longing more than resistances enough to cultivate, practice, offer devotion to/for such a life-living-giving way.

~ Eyes ~

20 eyes; a pilgrimage. Imagine being 6, earlier for most people, and having to squeeze into a smaller distorted skin of ‘who you truly are’ to live in a culture that has been distorted for so long that the distortion too is forgotten, falsity now being ‘the norm’; when it can be challenging to tell the difference between distortion and clarity/truth more and more. However, the soul, and psyche in utter astonishing magnificence do not forget, move into action:

*by creating various protective personalities/dynamics/relations to live and keep i.e. the wounded/traumatised one safe. Imagine walking/living in a hall of curving mirrors (i.e. protectors such as victim, co-dependent, addict, conformist, robber baron, monster) with the clear deeper self, i.e. the seer, safe behind them unseen. Paradoxically, we can say how creative that response to mirroring generations of distortions initially is; a meaningful and important part of a story though not all of it. Imagine most people currently living in that world of distorted mirrors over time amplifying further into particular behaviours/economies such as war, poverty, extraction, extinctions and more whilst continually being mirrored as ‘the reality’. We call it ‘the reality loop’. This cycle goes round and round, or swings back and forth. In this loop, no one truly knows who they are, often lost which then initiates particular longings and searching. Whilst these protective parts genuinely feel/experience themselves/ourselves as if those distorted mirrors are the reality, all that’s known, also reflected wider culture and ‘the news’, they are not who we are underneath, at a deeper level. There’s usually a rub somewhere along the way such as ‘not fitting’ or ‘falling apart'. Whose eyes are you seeing through currently?

**The protectors created are very particular, like ‘breadcrumbs’ as it were, showing where to follow and track our way back home. Very particular too are the ways the psyche enables/cultivates the parts of wholeness such as a healthy nurturing parent/adult to bring home the co-dependent, the victim and so on. The protective parts, initially unconscious/in the shadow, are increasingly held and brought home with gratitude from parts with clearer mirrors, by cultivating more inner resources and resilience; for us a kind of moving hologram of kaleidoscopic colours. So, for example, first protectors keep both the wounded one/s (and, i.e. the seer safe), then ‘wholeness’ grows bringing them in…

***Longing and searching for/from the deeper self/ves increases as a love-longing affair emerges with soul. The seer, for example, begins being revealed breaking through the Imbolc soil surface of wholeness through holding the wounded one. The very particular sacred comes through the very particular wound. The psyche develops the exact capacities for the particular return pilgrimage home for a deeper transformation altogether; diving into soul and Mystery for the image, a gift, born with; a mythopoetic identity beyond the ‘human’ realm, an eco-niche in intimate reciprocity as Earth expression/conduit. This is why clear mirroring and tracking is so important.

Even in a healthy culture, there is a pilgrimage to return and find/be found by the gifts we’re born with. Though in a healthy culture, our intimacy depth is Earth-centred and part of Earth Community, is in conversation with a more-than-other-than-human world in a way currently not. There aren’t human-centric distorted lenses to the same extreme and there are healthy earth-based elders. We also wonder how far our understanding of ‘l’ and ‘self’ are from distorted mirrors too, hence exploring different pronouns. The points above are not necessarily so linear or neatly divided in daily life, though offer some brief clarity for purposes here.

~ Ears ~

Such ways seen above are also told in the old stories and myths where characters who, perhaps stuck in old identifications, are turned to stone and on return restored to flesh, movement and voice; from beast remembering beauty; landed selkie returning to sea with their true song/skin; Persephone’s descent into the Underworld and returning as Queen; Psyche assigned with all the return tasks to meet herself and Beloved Eros transformed into human/divine. Imagine cultural learning focussing on our authentic pilgrimage to remember, with skills and qualities to navigate an adventurous and mysterious life journey. Imagine transformation, retrieving inherited treasures we are born with and for our communities being of service to Earth and Cosmos rather than learning to ‘fit’ into an Earth-killing suicidal economy skin. There are many eyes here. Whose eyes, how many, are you seeing through now?

There are multiple levels within moving multiplicity within and between; all are like moving constellations that relate with the ways psyche creates stated above, not ‘fixed’:

~ Feet ~

One level is the ‘dayworld’, which is more horizontal/flat than vertical/depth level; with roles, responsibilities, jobs, careers, bills to pay. This level is often a distortion described above in order to live in a distorted world with distorted characters/personalities/economy. For example, Wendy (wend/wanderer) with the inner village of parts that psyche created also for the return pilgrimage. In earlier identifications and stories, her eyes were looking through many parts, such as victim, co-dependent, conformer, student, teacher, daughter, tenant, dancer, lover. These ones truly kept us alive, alert, not only in survival but also longing through study for adventures integral to moving towards authentic being in wholeness. For example, rebel as a teenager, later, to a certain degree becoming conforming to nature-based ways though not fully in alignment with a deeper place.

Then there’s the even deeper Underworld level of mythos. For example, for us, PI’A of Earth Mother/PoEM whom we’ve written about in earlier posts, even just the ‘I’ of PI’A pointing to Calleach’s Eye, Iona’s jellyfish eye seeing also down into the underworld/up to the upperworld, the ‘I’ of ‘I Am’ (in the Celtic world, everything) carved into canyon rock and co-breathing with Earth, seen and unseen including the dead. There are indeed many eyes (way more than 20) which expand the current dayworld definition of ‘human’ aching to be stretched into a different shape.

Imagine humans shapeshifting; with many eyes, the many eyes of protective parts, wild facets of wholeness, of mythos. For us the mythic eyes of gold eye butterfly woman, canyon, wind, water, Mystery, the ‘I Am’ all seeing life beyond human, hummingbird, lizard, yew, eucalyptus, kookaburra, snake, moon, sky, oceans, blackbird, coyote, mountain lion, chieftain warrior, and so much more and that’s even before including the ones we eat that become transformed in part of our now changed physical body.

Masks and costumes, deepening/embodying the distorted and the mythopoetic, here the latter. Venice. wrf.

~ Mouth ~

Living such a wild embodiment into the world with others at this time, we believe, is also to be part of a wider metamorphosis of ‘embodying human’ differently, living into the next Earth ‘form’ which may be unrecognisable now. Would ‘apes’, as represented in early images of human evolution, have seen/recognised us now? Though maybe they too were carrying the imaginal cells/DNA, like a butterfly equivalent as it were, through generational pilgrimage. No one knows what/who is to come, but we believe courage is needed to dive in and live in deep authentic sincerity, to risk living differently, imagine. Is that what the cyanobacteria did in creating the ozone over millions of years ago? They knew to risk everything? Perhaps, in this way, sacrifice takes on a whole new depth. What is needed to be sacrificed now? We are inviting a stretch of imagination. Another way to look at this is through Rilke’s words:

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out

until they span the chasm between two

contradictions…For the God

wants to know himself in you.

Rilke

We may sound like part of a ‘fictional’ character here, but we’re feeling/experiencing being more real and undistorted, clearer than we’ve ever known ourselves through tracking for many years. PI’A, with others, as part of/bringing in future form, or rather, of the ancient/future and with other seers. Are you resonating with what is being said here? You might take some time to note, wonder, be curious. What and who are you seeing, through whose eyes now? Stretch practices, awaken eyes, gifts, powers and ….

~ Arms ~

It seems that part of the natural process of transformation and imaginary cells inside a caterpillar to butterfly cocoon includes resistance and being blocked. It seems parts of the old cells (ie * protective and distorted identities earlier), attack new cells in the caterpillar soup (towards *** wholeness, awakening to deeper understandings within an animate world, myth). It’s a mysterious thing, the old parts attacking; the new cells calling them home. The metaphor of caterpillar-cocoon-butterfly is offered by Plotkin for stages in human transformation on the descent to soul.

As we write here, we also wonder about the transformations currently happening in both ‘personal’ human and nature realms in inner and outer worlds by/from Earth. If this is the case, we wonder if, for one example, Trump is both ‘real’ (or ‘real distortion’;) and symbolic of such a resistance, old cells within Earth’s current metamorphosis attacking new cells. From this way of seeing, what then could be the way to go that is different through a deeper participation/contribution/understanding, of bringing home rather than swinging back and forth in conflict/counter resistance (or only). A shift in the conversation may become possible? We’ll come back to this a few paragraphs below …

Painted Lady Butterflies; it takes 10 generations to fly across lands and oceans to Scotland/Alba … and what if so for humans, and how many generations of caterpillars and moltings before …

For now we’d like to bring in one of our golden thread quotes that took us into our life work, first into Psychosynthesis in the mid 1990’s after completing a postgrad Masters in Cultural Studies and before training/apprenticing with Animas Valley Institute, a quote by Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet around 1600:

“My Lord, we know what we are now, but not what we may become.”

“What we may be” is also the title of a book by Pierro Ferrucci which influenced us in the 90s. We also found many moments (and longer;) on this Pilgrimage of Soul that we did not know what/who we were either, learning how essential it is ‘not to know’. The quote became more:

“My Lord, we know not what we are now, and not what we may become.”

(And sometimes … mmmm … and what we can be)

Sound familiar? Such an important part of the pilgrimage, to lean into disidentifying with attachments to ways of distortion (though experienced as real) that keep us in old stories so that there may be learning to trust the deeper seer not-knowing to become visible, all seeing. In fact, that is the journey of remembering, following breadcrumbs of return.

The poem, The Witness, at the start of this post is also a challenge to wonder about whose eyes, whose lenses even, ‘you’ see yourself/ves and the world through, and the lenses the world sees you/s now. Lens, conjunctiva (joining together, and separating membrane), we might say is like a veil between the worlds, the inner-outer-seen-unseen and more reminding us now of conjunctio, a key stage in the process of alchemising the union of opposites into a deeper seeing/new seeing altogether. Isn’t that amazing?!?!

~ Heart ~

Continuing now from the earlier previous paragraph regarding cocoon and bring in alchemy, what if one way of looking at the current political events in USA, with Trump returning to presidency and old cells destroying new cells, is the turning up of particular heat needed for a particular alchemising in Earth’s dreaming. From a particular conjunctio lens, perhaps Trump’s presidency is exactly the right thing. Seeing through the eyes of conjunctio such a seeing may enable another way of responding and being currently in service of the intense heat-building and looking for/seeing from Earth’s many eyes rather than reacting in and from a ‘dayworld’* surface level only swinging back and forth. Looking from a deeper place of Earth as primary, like focussing on Earth-seer mythos***.

For example, it could be said that, Musk’s billions in the outer world and focus on travel to the moon is, as a previous trainer Roger Evans used to say, “right intuition - wrong level”. In other words, the ‘real’ treasure is inner and born within; his protectors are out in force to protect the inner treasure whilst actually wrecking the outer, where even the mirroring of that deep loss of intimacy with the world, the moon, the liminal, the mystery and himself is distorted and celebrated. And, we don’t know him, it’s just a wondering … we wonder what the deep inner treasure and relation to the moon is. And, of course, to still ‘call out’/offer clear mirror/call home. Complete the alchemy.

~ Hand ~

The Pilgrimage of Soul offers a deep seeing from Earth’s eyes as Earth’s eyes’ through human expression and transformation as the way Earth is also alchemizing in the ancient-new way. Coming home from/disidentifying from current distorted ways of seeing/sensing, thinking, imagining, feeling enables other ways. Ways invited as from/with an Earth aligned/informed eco-niche-born place in conversation with an animate, alive, alive, alive world into soul encounter rather than being inside a distorted small skin. Another conversation and other possibilities altogether can be invited from deeper eyes. This is the kind of holy conversation invited and prepared for in Abbey Of Soul where Mystery’s revelations can take us forth, shape-shift us into whole different ways of seeing, or seer’ing altogether.

A ‘trickster’ way then, might be not only to follow/react/respond ‘only’ to ‘Trump’ and that particular discourse, whilst continuing cultivating resourcing and resilience where possible, but to come from another place/identity/somewhere/different altogether. For example to contribute and participate from the mythic Earth bringing a different element altogether into the alchemical mix in Earth evolution, with Earth as primary and humans as secondary. We wonder here whether the mythopoetic Pilgrimage of Soul alignment, or ‘homing’ also becomes part of what/who will be in the larger Earth alchemization that is Mystery-led. From this perspective, everything is in transformation, including the currently named map of the world, all in the Earth cocoon, including mythos; everything is in a big transformational soup, as it were:

“My Lord, we know maybe a little of what we are now, but not what we may become”.

~ Heart ~

Whatever ‘happens’ is it enough, indeed important, for example, to live PI’A and often the impossibility of just being PI’A as a presence. That’s enough. (We might wonder why we’re writing;) What if? In such a respect, what/who of you is important for you to live into/be and see, be seen, be with presence, through the eyes/lens at this point in conjunctio, in Earth transformation; essences of the bigger global alchemy?

Here are some examples of a few tracking experiences so far in our (PI’As) many eyes also looking through Earth’s many eyes in particular ways with some further poems by way of deeper illuminating and feeding beauty imaginal cells, aware folks have been locked up, disappeared, burned for less and more. We’re willing to take the risk. We also find links and stories/myths across human cultures and times hold deeper truths being articulated and listened to/for. Another way of Seer carrying and evoking threads of the eternal remembering beyond and within, rooted in Earth and Cosmos. As you read, you might consider your own eyes, and whose eyes you are seeing these words, or ears you are hearing these words, or heart, or breath, or thoughts; what risks you have already taken, or not. Imagine the following as a kind of collage format or dreaming scenes or paintings rather than linear structure (infact, read this whole Museletter like that). Please share any of your experiences/glimpses for further tracking below towards creating new languages/ways of seeing/being beyond what is currently ‘norm’. ...

One: The Alcove Eye

The Alcove Canyon Eye, Colorado, USA. wrf

Canyon Of The Ancients, Colorado – (11 June, 2017) Pi’A (Pi here as in Mystery; PI can at times be Planetary Intelligence or Imagination, as well as ‘eye’) offers a night ceremony praying for and listening to/seeing Earth, in a cave looking out towards Sleeping Ute Mountain, sacred to the Weeminuche Ute and descendants Ute Mountain Ute tribe. The Mountain is known as the shape of a Ute Chief with arms folded. It is said he will rise when the white man leaves. We first met this mountain with a local man who said before turning a bend in the road to view: “Here is the most beautiful woman you’ll ever see.” So far, he’s right. This is one of the places where the land and we are married; we did at one time consider applying for a Green Card for such a marriage and to challenge dayworld understandings;) Here are some excerpts written in 2017:

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“The Alcove curves and slopes like the shape of an eye, an eye of the world; an eye of Earth looking out. The back of the eye has a downward straight stripped strip of wet white, yellow and black moulds and mosses. There is a particular damp smell that slightly hits and catches at the back of my throat. In the middle of the eye is a small flattish ‘platform’ kind of space where l lay down my bag…

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… I feel ready for what the night offers, whatever it is l surrender to prayer, praise, gratitude, darkness; to imagining a great presence stirring beside me…. Someone else has left a small offering here; an animal thigh bone, old horseshoe and curving seed case. …

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… I stand in the middle of this place, imagining my place in this eye of the Earth; a pupil; and a pupil of this Earth surrounded by the ground’s fine, white, chalky sand here and the curving canyon eye-lip. I look out to the left where there are a number of smooth canyon curving walls and holes carved by wind and rain over eons. There is a sense of deep time remembered here. As the sun begins to set and cloud puffs turn pink l look out toward Ute Mountain to see cars with lights on travelling along the road across this canvas. It strikes me how small humans’ lives are experienced now in relation to the vastness of the physicality and Mystery of Earth; and yet how most human’s lives in Western Culture are experienced as so centrally big in relation; a kind of ‘inside-out/upside down’ perspective of what is ‘reality’. …

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… I am surprised at how comfortable l feel here up here in this ‘Eye’. Dusk arrives. I pray and rattle; l recite Rilke, You Darkness, …keeping focus and offerings. I look out as darkness falls. The canyon rocks below look like they have become a floor of opening and closing mouths. I wonder about the open mouths…is there a sound coming that l can’t hear from them? Perhaps song…a cry… perhaps a sign of hunger or thirst? It’s Earth in Ceremony with Moon, planets in Ceremony. I find my mouth wide open in awe too, joining in. Bats begin to fly around the space and out into the night; crickets croak the night in and sing a dark echo.

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It is not too long before the moon rises. It is just a few days after she has reached her zenith point and still in mercurial fullness. I look to my right and the dark space here is beginning to light from the moon. I notice the grace and slow motion of the moon’s white light kiss the back of the eye moving across. Before too long, l find myself surprised, looking out of this eye of the Earth to an eye of the Cosmos as the moon is the one becoming the Cosmic pupil. Who is witnessing and who is seeing who here, l wonder in astonishment. l feel a great presence stirring beside me…. In the moon’s light l see black bats become darting white flying creatures…”

Here there is a deeper way of seeing and being through the veils between the worlds; with an alive Earth, an alive moon, an alive cosmos, an alive Holy Ceremony stirring in the night when human eyes are closed, mouths open, in night’s dreaming.

We were sitting with a significant dying woman the other day, feeling in awe of the miracle of life and death, that any of us are here at all. Her mouth wide open as she breathes slowly. The way her mouth stayed open was just like the mouths of Earth that night in the Alcove Eye as if witnessing her being in Ceremony with/as Earth, as the land that night in 2017, co-breathing.

Two: Images of many creatures eyes

When exploring Ii/eye of PI’A further, we created a collage from National Geographic Magazines – seeing with the vision/eyes of many in shapeshifting imagination story of Earth eyes. As creatures become extinct, like now, our own eyes and humans become less seeing, we become distorted eyes even more. Some of these creatures are, almost literally, all eyes!

Eyes Collage. wrf 6 Feb, 21

Three: Beauty Eyes of Old Woman, Ros, on Cromwell Harbour Wall, Dunbar.

We took a break from writing, wandering on our usual saunter around East Beach, then the old stone wall harbour, round to Victoria Harbour and back. We met another older woman with a beautiful, colourful shaggy dog at the old cobb. We began chatting, commenting on the beauty of the colours this day, colours that we had not seen before ~ such is the ever-moving light here where colour too is in animate dance. She notes how she is never at home in herself, a wanderer. She then describes when a friend came over from America and was deeply moved by the slow time taken with sea and sand, birds, vibrant colours of life noting how she usually rushes through. She doesn’t usually LOOK. How grateful she was to take the time to see. The woman I’m speaking with now also hadn’t truly seen herself, maybe until this moment where now she is seeing her own way of seeing the world and feeling in her body her enormous love of and for the world, coming home to her place as Earth being Primary and in/of it. Moving towards full experiencing ourselves AS Earth in a way that there is no return. We might say, it takes only a matter of seconds to see more deeply through conjunctiva towards conjunctio. We might also note how far images are part of the language of soul deep intimacy

As one of William Stafford’s poems goes:

When l met my Muse

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

The sea with new colours for us that day from the old harbour stone walls: 18, Jan 25. wrf.

You might wonder about your eyes and “your own way of looking at things”, so needed in the world right now... What ways of seeing are bringing you more alive?

Four ~ A Glimpse of Etymology and Myth

Here are a few of the many musings and myths in different cultures and times of/from this thread of the sea our wander then took us, of eyes and seer … Let yourself wander too, see where you are led …

… as you likely know, water is associated with the pull of the moon, the liminal, transitional, the place of sensory threshold {perhaps like conjunctiva/conjunctio moist membrane}, the liminal watery moon associated with soul. Perhaps if this soulcrafting work was tended and supported deeply and more widely, there would be no need to send rockets to the moon. We are already for many years in deep conversation and ceremony with the moon/the moon with us.

Did you know that one of the sources of the word for sea is Greek? Thálassa, is the divine female personification in Greek mythology. She, daughter of Ether and Homera. She, Creatress of the sea giving birth to all sea life. She, creating a big wave, perhaps like a Tsunami, covering the Earth until she collides with another wave created by Pontus. She, then wed to Pontus, gives birth to all sea life. She, primordial mother of Aphrodite, hair of seaweed, arms of octopus. She, peaceful and serene, malicious and unmerciful.

In Celtic Mythology She, the sea, is Cliodhna, Goddess of the Otherworld, passion, love and deep beauty; daughter of Lir, God of the sea (different from the Children of Lir). She is also fairy queen of the sea, Queen of the Banshees, Tuatha Dé Danann, ruler as queen over the sheoques. We’ve heard it said from the wind that every ninth wave, higher and longer than others, contains her magic. We’ve also heard it said that in the Otherworld she has three bright coloured birds who eat apples from a mystic tree; that hearing her song is nectar healing. She sometimes takes the form of a seabird. Maybe it was Her wave we counted in 1991 on a WestCoast cobb during a storm before running along to experience being inside that wave. We were astonishingly surprised to experience a depth of silence never heard before or since that we nearly forgot to run back out before watching that very wave slam back into the stone wall.

In Norse, Njord is God of Sea, the Viking Goddess of the Water/Sea is Rán.

Here are a few of the many myths in different cultures and times of/from the eye/multiple eyes:

… as you likely know, embodying multiple unseen/inner/outer/seen eyes isn’t new. The ancients knew, narrating in the level of the mythic beyond surface sight. There are a number of myths speaking of/with multiple eyes. Here’s a few:

Dalikamata is a Visayan Goddess with a thousand eyes to see past, present and future. In the dark, she sees the harm being enacted in the world. It is said her tears form the dew in the dawn and are used for healing.

Shatakshi Devi, essence of beauty, The Goddess with Innumerable Eyes. She has a thousand eyes shedding salt water tears of divine mercy bringing nourishment to Earth after Vidas depletion.

In the Jewish, Christian and Islam stories, Seraphim are described as ‘many eyes’ with their omnipresence, their ‘all seeing’ beauty and praise.

The Greek God Argus/Argos (not the shopping store!) Panoptes, is an ‘all seeing’ giant with 100 eyes, in some accounts 1,000, all over his body.

Mokumokuren, meaning ‘many eyes’ is a Japanese spirit who could/can embody transformed genders and lives in haunted houses.

We’ve heard it said by some that myths are, in fact, a way of ‘humanising/personalising’ the more than human world within a human-centric culture lens. In some ways, this may also be so, to be noted in our current alchemising. Yet is there also something of that golden thread that intertwines animately like Celtic Knotwork between human and more-than-human world?

Five ~ Venus

We took another break from writing, going to The National Gallery, Scotland in Edinburgh finding ourselves lingering with Titian’s painting from around 1525, 600 years ago. Venus Rising from the Sea. Sea … Earth as Primary … She comes out of the water. Venus rising from the sea, wringing her long hair… but what is she looking at, what and who does she see? Beauty? The horror that also came with The Renaissance in the shift to rational scientific thought/mind domination needing the destruction and redefining of women’s bodies, intuition, wisdom, language, roles through ‘witch hunts’ and more, the seers, also beginning then (again?)? And now? What might she see today as we swing back and forth in a surface dayworld described earlier? What might we see today through her eyes? Do the cracks in this painting over the centuries become like a veil over sacred eyes, the holy?

Titian, Venus Rising From The Sea, face detail. 1525. wrf.

Six ~ Eyes

The sea has eyes. They can be seen when the veils are everso thin. What if everything has eyes, even if we don’t see them all. Imagine …

Sea Eyes. wrf.

Seven – Aurora Borealis

It’s May, 2024 and the Aurora Borealis is visible through a camera lens but not the naked eye. Friends are astonished, it’s a revelation of eyes and lenses where the invisible suddenly becomes seen through a different lens, like having new eyes; conjunctiva and conjunctio.

Through the camera lens only; Aurora Borealis, May 2025. wrf

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust

Our photography has been part of training/apprenticing to/with seer as beauty-making. To witness what we pass without noticing, taking time. Also, as a record of what/who is disappearing … becoming unseen, disappearing from sight, all.

~ Brain ~

“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. Terry Tempest Williams

We have shown a possible pilgrimage of alchemy and transformation of humans beyond currently known, both personally and culturally, as part of Earth’s current transformations within an animate cosmos. We described something of the process involved in levels of transformations from old stories to new ones informed by seeing and bringing home parts, opening to soul-seer with Earth’s dream/imaginal conversations. We have specifically focused on the seer, 20 eyes and more; a glimpse of different ways of seeing through multiple levels of limited awareness and personalities. We expanded into wholeness, enabling diving for gifts Earthborn in service of a greater story where Earth is Primary, humans are Secondary as part of; a story that relates to transformation beyond human knowing. “My Lord, we know what we are now, but not what we may become.”

We looked from other eyes and conjunctiva to what may be happening in relation to Trump’s re-election not only as a story of protective parts, but also as part of a bigger Earth story of which he too is part as well as we: old cells attacking new cells in the cocoon and how this might inform responses towards cultivating different awareness and conversations. Regardless, i.e. perhaps important to not get ‘caught’ overly identified only, with specific agendas or we stay swinging one way to the other without transformation completing. The world is bigger than the USA and the whole global system is part of the transformation happening. This is not to ‘justify’ or condone what’s happening around the world, rather to wonder from another depth that is not human-centric. What sacrifices are needed in order that the full transformation can occur, and more quickly, as part of an alchemical process as seen through conjunctio … the heat’s being turned up. We sense it is important to continue the work of whichever element each human finds ourselves in. We may not know what any of us may become, but perhaps important to be the essence we are, live further into the essence, the nectar we are in the alchemy shifting into ancient-new form.

We have looked through the meta and mesa worlds of conjunctiva and conjunctio in ways such as shifting consciousness and reinventing ancient-new human as contribution to alchemy through Ceremony like The Alcove Eye story; through the deep imagination of the many eyes collage; the way this work enters the dayworld community such as a wander on Cromwell Harbour walls one day and ‘your own way of seeing’, of the way the seer lives at the edges of communities; of etymology and threads of myths of sea and eyes across time and different lands of human cultures; of a particular moment in art and cultural history/evolution; of a literal and revelatory new lens of seeing like the Aurora Borealis. Seeing a depth, breadth and height of human and more-than-human life, 20 eyes and more. Seer, normal and a gift that offers food from a deeper root and fountain of wisdom. Seer, arousing and stirring, becoming tangible and embodied from the depths again being more widely seen and known. What ways will you be seeing, showing up in essence?

What if such work was placed, valued at the centre of cultures again, with eyes for wending into the liminal pull of moon and star, fur and stone, leaf and bird, mountain and river, body of human, weaving intimacy between? Imagine … Not only work in particular programmes, important as they are, is called for, it’s the day-to-day discipline and practice, to be able to strengthen unused muscles for a new normal with commitment needed. The seer views from the deeper eyes of eternal and prophetic vision beyond current individualism and human-centric identities prevalent in Western extraction cultures; from a deeper truth. The seer is deeply needed and being called forth in these transformation times. May we carry, bring forth a thread of the eternal through Earth’s generations in the ways called forth. It is so.

With this Museletter in mind Abbey Of Soul is bringing in different levels and changes in subscription/‘dragonfly pools’ (see poem Dragonfly Wings) of transformation to focus more deeply in making manifest what has been seen and spoken in this Museletter a place for the seer. To provide a place and space for the world described here further. The information will follow.

She’s looking at me as we both sit at the kitchen table. After a while we ask what she’s looking at, what she’s seeing. She says:

“You have 20 eyes”.

~ Blood ~

~~~~~

Extinguish my eyes, l’ll go on seeing you.

Seal my ears, l’ll go on hearing you,

Without a mouth l can swear your name.

Break off my arms, l’ll take hold of you

With my heart as with a hand.

Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.

And if you consume my brain with fire,

I’ll feel you burn in every drop of my blood

Rilke’s Book of Hours; Love Poems to God. II,7

Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

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Wendy/PI’A, Cromwell Harbour on a cold approach to Imbolc

“I love how you stretch and expand my perspective, how you invite me to consider it all in ways that I would never have done. It's like you hand me a periscope each time we meet. You challenge me, at times it feels uncomfortable, but you offer such a held container to be with that challenge and to expand as a result. A true elder.” BS

Earthsong blessings to you, your kith and kin this Imbolc season of returning light and greening of the world in the Northern Hemisphere.

Wendy/PI’A

~ Living intimately as animate Earth Ceremony. wrf

… walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …

Following the call, looking up to Doss Del Sabion, wrf

"If your journey is indeed a pilgrimage, a soulful journey, it will be rigorous. Ancient wisdom suggests if you aren't trembling as you approach the sacred, it isn't the real thing. The sacred, in its various guises as holy ground, art, or knowledge, evokes emotion and commotion." Phil Cousineau

As we (Wendy) feel our way into writing this second part Museletter six months after the first*, indeed in a New Year according to the Gregorian Calendar, we find ourselves trembling again … Sometimes an Earthsong takes a while to linger and fly on various unseen wings before landing on soil, water, sand, mud, hair, skin, lung, ears. Sometimes wings can be clipped; words can be written, spoken, responded with too soon. The mystery of ‘the thing’, here ‘soul-world-making’, can be disturbed other than life-enhancing ways from the breath of the unseen moving into the world finding their own place in the shape of lives transforming, renewing. As Bayo Akómoláfé stated:

“The times are urgent, let us be slowed down by the beings that exceed us. The times are urgent, let us be released from the traps of the things we already know.”

Let us be exceeded here, as we continue in these holy liminal darkest days of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Today, approaching a particular day of bringing gifts and revelations from the holy dark to the holy (or there already in Australia). Today, when festive lights are switched off here in Scotland/Alba as sunlight expands, returns noticeably once more in Earth’s astonishing spin towards Sun having reached as far as Earth can turn away. The planets know how far they can go; perhaps only by going too far do humans know. Will we be exceeded anyway by beak and claw, teeth and horns, feather and fur, shedding skins and feathered wings, turning stones and mountains, wind and moving water, tree, fire and song …

We acknowledge the particular form of Matrimony Ceremony here will not be possible or even desirable for everyone, particularly where these ways are already remembered. Maybe resonances of kinds will yet sing on your skin, in your cells. May it inspire, bring life. We’d love to hear.

May this Matrimony Ceremony also feed you, Earth, Mystery, grief, love, beauty-village-world-making …

~~~~~

Let’s recall, begin here a little earlier than intended at the end of Part 1*, with the vitally important preparations …

As stated in Part 1, we (Wendy) are approached in February 2024 by Kelly Ann and Lou (now Louis Francis):

“We need someone who can help us hold the vision of our marriage and wedding as a Sacred Ceremony while also allowing Mystery a seat at the table.”

They are longing to find/be open/be found for the right kind of trouble asking if we would be willing to lead/guide the Ceremony. So begins a conversation since we really need them to be clear about what they are asking for, as far is possible, and the rumbling disturbances they could get into. Are they down for deep love work and willingness to surrender to something greater than, exceeding themselves/ourselves; to be called in. In other words, are they ready for:

~ a Ceremony that acknowledges and listens to Matrimony; what Matrimony wants with them

~ Matrimony as village-making/“an act of remembering culture” (Stephen Jenkinson)

~ being asked ‘everything’ from them and their people rather than ‘about/centring them’

~ a pilgrimage of deep soul transformation in ways that will initially seem impossible

~ inviting ‘the Otherworld into this world’

~ changing plans already made, considerably

~ saying ‘Yes’ to who they are now not knowing who they will be by the time of a ‘Yes(?)’ in Ceremony

~ surrendering response to a “Yes/No” from the village/Earth Community/from Mystery.

~ Holy Ceremony as the way.

“Who would do that?”, a question we find ourselves saying inwardly and outwardly over this journey. They insist they are ready to step in, that this is exactly what they are longing for though hadn’t articulated/known is available/possible. They offer and prepare for their marriage to belong to Mystery, to the village, as a village-making/re-making/remembering Ceremony; a Ceremony also within a wider animate, conversational, love-potion Earth Community commitment for life. They also sign up, perfect timing, to Stephen Jenkinson and Kimberly Ann Johnson’s conversations about Matrimony and Forgotten Pillars.

We (Wendy) want to acknowledge a wondering paradox of writing at this point. There is one thing articulating one such Ceremony, if it can be, and another expressing in a way that Mystery is not lost. Much of the Ceremony here is very much stepping in, feeling into and with the unknown. Practically no one knew what’s ahead, no rehearsal or pre-experience. Everyone held so much trust and love in not knowing, held enough curiosity to come. Articulating here in fullness might ruin it for anyone considering embarking on such a way, become rote, as l remember myself doing earlier in my life, of ‘death by analysis’, rationalising, labelling, ‘knowing’, appropriating. It feels a balance to offer enough that curiosity can be evoked without ‘giving everything away’, even to which poems are spoken; a bit like true magic, a true spell, organic. Yet it is also possible in the telling that an even deeper experience can be made possible too and be shared whilst every Ceremony is unique. Of course, Stephen Jenkinson is publishing more fully about his work; not for us to write here though our experience is. We also offer some differences in holding this journey too at Abbey Of Soul. Of course, as always, interested in your experience and how/the ways you receive this Museletter.

Coming closer, The Doss. wrf

The date and place for the Matrimony Ceremony is already made for 4 July in Doss Del Sabion, Pinzolo in the Dolomites, Italy. Pinzolo is where human ancestors and kin of Louis Francis are historically rooted, a ‘returning home’. Kelly Ann and he currently live in USA following his ancestral grandfather’s emigration many years ago. Louis Francis has a strong connection in Pinzolo where his family continue to hold a home. A hearty number of people are travelling over from USA for the Ceremony too and there are already plans for the days before with approximately forty guests/participants. The time of the Ceremony is now increased from one day to three. In the liminal time between February and July, Kelly Ann and Louis Francis have the immense task of their ‘everyday’ lives and work, practicalities of organising, and their deepening soulcraft conversations relationally within, with each other, and with their people. Letters offering invitations and essential information such as now shift to three days and to bring a hand-crafted gift to the Ceremony are offered to all their kith and kin.

Additional letters are sent to all their chosen ‘co-conspirators’. Co-conspirators, as Stephen Jenkinson created in his work, are co-conspiring with Mystery. Each of the betrothed choose their ‘team’ as it were with a ‘leader’ for each. Here, it was a team of women and a team of men.

For the next four months intense, beauty, fierce, soft, deep, shedding, expanding, shooting, separating, entangling, piercing, pollinating, vulnerable, opening, love, inner & outer Beloveds soulwork begins. As stated in Part 1, the betrothed have already been deepening with themselves and each other in relationship for over 10 years. They are indeed ripe and ready. The love here is exquisite nectar honey for this world. We (Wendy) are so deeply touched, moved and heart-cracked in honey love reminding us too how much we love this way of working in the world; particularly when more is asked of us. Perhaps you too long or love to be asked more of in the best kind of way of showing up. Louis Francis and Kelly Ann live/speak their own stories into this hungry world. Look out for them.

I don’t know the work that Stephen Jenkinson offers during the usual year with the betrothed on their way to Matrimony Ceremony. Our (Wendy) Pilgrimage of Soul, as a soul initiation guide, work entails meeting on zoom every two weeks with deep listening to Mystery and soul through:

~ stepping further into nurturing generative adulthood

~ dream-tending

~ invitational wanders/listening on the land (solo, together, with co-conspirators)

~ attending unbidden images

~ poetry

~ creating Altar

~ deep imagery

~ art

~ ancestral and future beings

~ welcoming home those of their wounded and fragmented parts emerging at this time born

to survive in cultures of relational co-dependency/conformity/extraction

~ intimacy

~ beauty-making

~ deepening invitations

~ making offerings to Matrimony

~ severing from ‘single’ lives/who is dying

~ grief tending

~ desires and fears

~ ever deeper intimacy

~ greater articulation

~ what feels ‘can’t be said’

~ imagining their own deaths

~ stepping further into their mythos

~ being with the truth at the heart of the matter.

It looks like a long list here, but is a more vibrant, wild, lived embodying experience that is challenging to convey in a wee Museletter. Do you get the drift? Even so, you might agree, who would do this? They do, and with such deep dripping open love there are times we are all brought to tears. Stunning, imagining a world where such ways of preparation, of life become widely normal.

Ripples and shifts of this deep work are already being felt in their kinship. How can they not? For example, Louis Francis’ father now undertakes heart surgery before the Ceremony and at one point there is a question of him being well enough to travel. He makes it. Our kinships (human and more-than) are so deeply intertwined, complex, and resonance or dischord.

The co-conspirators too participate in a kind of shedding/dying process so that the betrothed can go even deeper with support that ‘the unknown’ can emerge. Their preparation includes supporting each of the betrothed through the time together before and during the Ceremony, as well as playing a part in the holding of the Ceremony itself. Each of the two betrothed co-conspirers teams are asked to craft a screen/veil to be held in poles for the Ceremony. All preparation for making it more possible for the Otherworld to enter this one through the Ceremony days. As part of the village-making these connections can be life-long in terms of feeding and remembering the village, which is my experience so far. Any marriage is too much for only two people to hold, needs to be held more widely in the human and other-than-human worlds. As far as we can tell, everyone changes through the preparation experience. All part of beauty village-making by the village.

One of the images/threads emerging ever more deeply for the betrothed is rose with Kelly Ann and bee with Louis Francis. The deeper we go, the more mythic this journey becomes beyond the current ‘everyday’, that is, mythic in the sense of deeper truths under the veils of our everyday world whether we are conscious of them or not; truths that take us to our core image born to live into this life.

So much courage, so much courage … everyone! Beauty nectar. Who, indeed, would do this … and what is the potential cost, loss, poverty, of not?

On our last preparation zoom call together, soul guide Emma Duke, aka Snake Picaflor, from Colorado USA, joins us as one entering as support guide/ceremonialist in the three day Matrimony Ceremony now approaching very soon. Sometimes there is a ‘just right’.

Already noted but worth noting again:

~ the poverty that such a way of preparation as well as Matrimony Ceremony herself is not readily available

~ a possibility of deep shedding of skins within ancestral villages

~ a way of being and expressing deepest love in the everyday

~ a way of inviting the Otherworld, Ancestral, Future, ‘other-than-human’, unseen and more as a way of embodying life in the multiplicity of our being within a Cosmic/Earth Community. For example, the betrothed also now embody a rooted arousing presence in the world of their mythos (another story) becoming more embodied; Kelly Ann aka Tsunami/Enchanted Elf with rose and Louis Francis aka Piercing Heart with bee at this time.

So Matrimony Ceremony is also about more than them, and their human village it is also about remembering humans as/in Earth and Cosmic Community. For one example, the Ceremony to take place is as much a kind of reenactment reverence in romance between rose and bee, for pollination that this world so deeply depends on and needs at this time; deeply matters. Imagine too the possibility of releases and marriages on multi-dimensions and worlds here that our ancestors and future-ones remember and that the current humancentric, individualised ways have forgotten.

We are listening to, hearing, tending and following the call of Doss Del Sabion, staying at the place where a single pine tree stood after a torrent and a new place created at the feet of a windy, solid, majestic and magnificent mountain whose name means sand. We are indeed called and gathering into the mythic arousing world-love-making in the best possible kind of trouble where we will bow low for a while, humbly and mightily calling, inviting the veils between the worlds to respond, to open. We are prepared as we are ever going to be at this moment for whatever and whoever exceeds us; surrendering … trembling … and, as far as possible, “released from the traps of the things we already know.”

Who, indeed, would do this? What on Earth might happen when we do …

Pinzolo Campiglio Express, wrf

… To be continued in Part 3 …

*To read Part 1 which includes all acknowledgements. https://abbeyofsoul.substack.com/p/ceremony-as-alchemy-matrimony-in

** Stephen Jenkinson’s book will be published by Sounds True this year.

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If you are interested in exploring the kind of soul guiding enacted, expressed and embodied here there are various ways you can work with us at Abbey Of Soul. Contact Wendy for further information or/and a gifted 30m exploratory zoom call.

Deep gratitude to our paid subscribers. If you are interested in stepping more deeply into Abbey Of Soul you can become a paid Subscriber for weekly posts, a monthly Sacred Conversation (this coming Wednesday for January’s!), and additions to free subscriber posts. You also support the work of Abbey Of Soul developing. See link below.

If you have appreciated this Museletter, you are welcome to comment/start a conversation. We are interested to hear/see where this post takes you …

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~~~~~

Forthcoming explorations:

Wild At Heart an 8 week course meeting weekly through the zoom portal beginning this month, 22 January. Contact us now if you are interested. If you have been touched by this Museletter, the 8 weeks of Wild At Heart may be for you. I mean, who would do this? Maybe you too are ready to go deeper, or ready for the Pilgrimage of Soul.

The She Tree monthly slow-soul-deepening gathering for women on the Pilgrimage of Soul beginning February 2025

Testimonials

"Wendy's presence in my life has not only been one of support, guidance, challenge, wisdom and nurture, it has been entirely transformational. Wendy is, without question, the elder I was seeking and far, far more. She is soft yet fierce, tender yet challenging, wise and playful and sees the things that are in my blind spot.” Beth

“She wove stories of me I had forgotten to parts of me I have never been able to hear. I felt seen and guided in a very dark place, many dark places, that had now more space to breathe and receive light and love. Truly precious. I am not sure even I can paint a picture on this time together, it just was beautiful, both exciting and safe, to be in her presence and the unknown. I am so grateful as this time is still alive in me.” Maya

Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is approaching the 8^th year. Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is a Feed The Earth gift Ceremony at dawn around the Earth yearly on 1 April. It is self-organising with lots of resources on the website which can be added to. You can organise a particular Ceremony for your people wherever you are on Earth. You can subscribe for further auditory/visionary posts and information and for your participation to be noted. This Ceremony has now reached people in 87 countries. How might you participate/offer this year. More to come soon with more news …

https://www.earthsongwave.com/

Forthcoming: Summer of 2025

Under The Waterline ~ Poetry and Images, Dunbar Harbour Walls, Scotland/Alba

May your journey in Midwinter’s dark bring gems to the world; may your journey in Midsummer’s light bring gifts to your people; may both bring revelations for these turning times.

Wendy/PI’A

A dark bright sunrise on approach to Solstice, East Beach Dunbar, December, 2024, wrf

Welcome ~

The Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere brings my focus to an even deeper experiencing of darker depths, and brighter light. At this time yearly now l am also brought closer to tending the dead as l approach the anniversary of the sudden death of my brother in Australia 3 years ago. Flowing alongside a number of other significant deaths it became like a confluence of the rivers of death, like estuary to ocean. I found myself beside the sea in Australia and Scotland, listening, seeing, learning, in ceremony, praise and gratitude, being re-shaped significantly by the watery alter/Altar of bereavement, grief and tending on a number of levels. I have written previously and published musings and experiences previously, and particularly this year.

I have found tending the dead ceremonially vital for birthing life to come in these turning times. If you want new life, tend the dead. Maybe that new life which follows will be as sudden and unexpected as my brother’s death or maybe linger longer, pause before the horizon at a Solstice.

Every death, every birth is unique, also by way of impact. Maybe you will remember your experiences of people, animals, trees, and all who are leaving/have left as you read these words. Maybe you will feel the way your heart too has shattered/is shattering a thousand times and expanded in release or tightened by trying to hold it all in as the heartbeats. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that deaths related to the heart continue rising as the current norm is to tighten/hold in. I remember hearing when my brother died on the other side of the world, of the physical impact; l could hardly move for weeks.

Roger’s death also brought me to an even deeper felt experiencing/knowing of the dying within and around us currently in human and other-than-human worlds, of the current Western culture; the increase of dying to come. What is clear to me, l’m not alone in this, is that new life emerging from the dead cannot be planned; is a holy mysterious thing; a continual tending the dead, tending what and who is to come by participation and change. Perhaps new life to come in these times is also like tending a kind of advent, an unseen miracle yet to arrive and trusting that it will despite all the odds and will be nothing possibly, currently, imagined.

I felt moved recently reading Nick Cave on the matter of Grief and tending in relation with the sudden death of his 15-year-old son, Arthur, in 2015. Do you know it already? I offer this one here on the Solstice. Nick Cave was asked the question by Cynthia who had written to him:

“I have experienced the death of my father, my sister, and my first love in the past few years and feel that I have some communication with them, mostly through dreams. They are helping me. Are you and Susie feeling that your son Arthur is with you and communicating in some way?”

His reply:

Dear Cynthia,

This is very beautiful question and l’m grateful that you have asked it. It seems to me that if we love, we grieve; that’s the deal, that’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny trembling clusters of atoms subsumed with grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe, that whirling Gaia all manner of madness exist, ghosts and spirits and dream visitations and everything else that we in our anguish will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid, as real, as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.

I feel the presence of my son all around but he may not be there. I hear him talk to me, parent me, guide me, though he may not be there.

He visits Susie in her sleep, regularly speaks to her, comforts her. But he may not be there.

Dread grief trails bright phantoms in its wake. These spirits are ideas essentially. They are our stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity like ideas. These spirits speak of possibility. Follow your ideas because on the other side of the idea is change and growth and redemption.

Create your spirits, call to them, will them alive, speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.

With love

Nick

What else is there to say … the vastness … limits of the universe … the whirling Gaia, madness, ghosts, spirits, dream visitations and everything else. We are speaking another kind of language here, another kind of aliveness, another kind of invisibility being called forth by conversation into the tangible. The deep dark and the bright phantoms; stunned imaginations reawakening after the calamity like ideas; redemption; into the world from which we were jettisoned. I’m also imagining that world as a clarity song of animate cosmos with as yet so much unknown/unknowable, a vibrant and multidimensional entwining in a way we can only glimpse currently but a thread l also follow. A glimpse of a different inheritance for our young.

So, as we step into this Solstice l warmly invite you to enter the pause … with the dead … thus. Maybe this too is ‘the deal’, ‘the pact’:

Create your spirits, call to them, will them alive, speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.

~~~~~

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~~~~~

Current Offerings with Abbey Of Soul

Individual Soul Guide sessions and Soul Currachs (ancient small Celtic round boat) can also be booked as a way to dive deeper into underworld soul waters, Mysteries and revelations of your treasure, your gift born to live into and feed the world. Message me for information and 30min exploratory call tracking where your sweet nectar lives.

Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus will be singing in again in January for the 8th year with some wild new Earthsongs … you can sign up at www.earthsongwave.com for gift, Feed The Earth Ceremony around the globe: Dawn 1 April, 2025

Wild At Heart

You are welcome to contact Abbey Of Soul regarding current offerings. There is a 30 min free exploratory call about the work we offer here.

Blessings to you and your kin in this world and remembering those in the worlds through the veils, and ‘everything else’.

Wendy

Fishing boat going out to sea in one silent December morning mist, Dunbar. wrf

Dead Gold Spotted Mullet, close-in

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Pinzolo, The Dolomites, Italy

I awoke this morning, my ears alert and listening through the open bedroom window to the everso soft murmuring song of alighting starlings with their fast flapping wings flying from my garden. I remember Stephen Jenkinson words of Matrimony as a “murmuring of the generations.” Sometimes it takes a while for notes to land. I’m imagining them landing for a while, or even a lifetime.

~~~~~

This multi-part Museletter reflects upon one of the ways Abbey Of Soul has been called and said ‘yes’ to show up in leading a three day Matrimony Ceremony in Pinzolo, The Dolomites, Italy for Louis Francis and Kelly Ann. Who would do such a thing, any of us; and why on earth would we show up so fully?

I’m exploring here a number of threads including the current poverty, as Stephen Jenkinson speaks, of true Ceremony with the alchemy it offers us such as with Matrimony as “an act of cultural memory.” Such a poverty makes a human life small, un-lived, and rational rather than entering into the largest, mythic, soul to village story we can live into and are born for. I believe it’s a trauma not to live into a ceremonial life living into our bigger story also as an act of cultural memory and regeneration. Ceremony is a way of creating a particular place/container and time to remember the holy, the OtherUnseenMysticalWorld beyond and within ‘the human’. Ceremony is a way to weave that world into the ‘everyday’ in a particular more conduit conscious love story way so that our more ego-centric ‘self’ can surrender with more ease, trusting into a more vulnerable expansion of experience of who we truly are. Ceremony can bring what is previously unknown to us, from Mystery and a bigger conversation where revelation can enter within a deeper ancestral human and more-than-human world where, as Neruda says:

“… the clay and the flower,
the mud and the roots
know your name.”

Ceremony is not a programme or retreat, though does need to be held. It’s more a way of living and learning to live intimately connected with knowing all life is/as sacred. Ceremony is a way of living a life as holy communion Thomas Berry might say, in the many ways life is lived within the village and wider Earth community. In Matrimony, it’s possible for ceremony not only to go into the wild consciousness shifting places in the world beyond human, it can take the very ‘human village’ too ‘out of the everyday’ that Mystery may enter more clearly and deeply with alchemizing presence into a wild cultural regeneration beyond these current privatised individualised, planned and rehearsed, human-centric times. Matrimony Ceremony is an opportunity for village alchemy, life-changing, world-changing experience like our early ancestors knew and heartbreakingly destroyed over many eons now returning home … wherever that might be. Here, it’s Pinzolo where there are deep ancestral village roots with the Betrothed. Of course, nature-based cultures have not forgotten.

One of the challenges l’m finding in writing is how to honour the depth, aliveness, and mystery of Ceremony without a kind of death by rational analysis and ‘fixing’, as well as honouring all involved. I want to let the writing happen; to write in a way that shares something of an experience which will continue taking us with it yet slow us down enough for life-changing ways to express and happen. Maybe like the way the mother’s milk of any animal of Earth, indeed perhaps like the breasts of Earth Mother herself, feeds an original transformational experience for new life to continue. Matrimony, Stephen Jenkinson notes, “is the mothering of a culture”. Ceremony makes demands of us to show up and participate for alchemy to occur matters, that:

 “how you stand here is important. How you 

listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.” 

William Stafford

Matrimony Ceremony creates ‘something else.’ Maybe like these times right now, there is a demand to show up in a bigger story of what it means to be alive today and to offer ‘our milk’, as it were, to contribute to an Earth in transformation, even in cosmic transformation. Matrimony, l’ve learned, is one such way.

~~~~~

There are many places l could begin: the first contact with the then Kelly and Lou, their births, my birth, when the tunnels were built through the mountains on the way to the Dolomites from Milan to Pinzolo, the great great grandparents births, the Cenozoic era with the dinosaurs, the cyanobacteria creating oxygen beginning 3.5 billion years ago, ‘the big bang’ of (currently thought) 13.8 billion years ago. Did all these intelligences know what/who was coming ahead, did they just show up and do what they had to do without knowing? Is it like the far extended Painted Lady Butterflies who pilgrimage over ten generations to arrive in a particular place? Maybe for us too, the importance is to lean into what and who calls us forth to show up without having to know exactly what life lies before us. However, l think l’ll start here: 

Louis Francis and Kelly Ann who have been loving together for ten years and more through turmoils, changes, flows, stalls, beauty deepening and more were now stepping closer towards marriage. They had been engaged for some years and were now wondering, amongst other things, how “marriage might allow us to shift our focus from the relationship between us towards our relationship with the wider world together … allowing Mystery a seat at the table…” These were some of the words sitting in their email drafts asking me for guidance and holding for what they felt was a Sacred Ceremony, a Ceremony they sensed had already begun. They were right. They continued: “it is an extraordinarily big invitation that we recognise asks for so much but the pain of not asking is too big so here we are.”

Synchronistically, l sent them information on Stephen Jenkinson’s Forgotten Pillars due to start in March earlier this year. They sent the email my way.

The acknowledgement of “the pain of not asking” pricked my attention and brought forth conversation. I knew love was in and l heard their deep longing. I was clear about what l could offer them as we entered a conversation to explore possibilities. If they wanted a three-day Matrimony Ceremony with their village participating in invitations where none of us knew what would happen in the alchemy of it all, or who any of us would be by then, or even if a marriage would take place after all that, then l may be the Holy Woman for them.

It was already late with just over four months to go with some plans and bookings made already. Stephen Jenkinson suggests a year of preparation, particularly in relation with ancestral conversations as l heard. The betrothed had worked with me previously so there were some threads already and they were already on the path, or rather, in the corridor. I said yes.

We prepared intensely over the next four months …

I’m not sure they imagined then (though they know now) that the tables, the seats, the beauty, the vastness is rather Mystery’s ways as they opened their hearts evermore deeply to themselves, the world, of each and both of them ‘being had’ by Mystery’s call to a deeper romance with themselves, each other, their village and the world. They will be reading this Museletter, they are welcome to comment with their experience below.

And so it is that l arrived in Pinzolo, one might say an ordinary Northern Italian town, one where the Sarca River’s cold mountain water the colour of sage runs through from the mountains; Pinzolo, nestling within the deep valley at the feet of the majestic and magnificent, solid and craggy Doss Del Sabion, The Dolomites, Italy; Pinzolo, l heard named from a single pine tree (pin sol) standing after a torrent took the previous ‘village’ Baldino; Pinzolo, a particular confluence, where l arrived late on Monday 1 July. I arrive with Emma, a soul guide from Colorado, who also courageously said yes to the call to step in during the last weeks to assist guide/holder/ceremonialist/alchemist for Matrimony Ceremony. I knew we were in the best kind of trouble when l heard that Sabion means sand. We arrived in Pinzolo where we were all magnificently ‘had’ by Matrimony and l, for one, glad not to have it any other way.

Sarca River, Pinzolo

~~~~~

Before l say more about the courage, love, magic, grief, pain, holy alchemy and more of these life, perhaps world, changing days l want to acknowledge the ‘known’ lineage of the work of such ceremony weaving which took place in the wild Dolomite mountains. Usually, gratitude and acknowledgements are made in a separate place at the beginning or end of a piece of writing. However, l’m honouring people here as part of the writing and weaving itself of a different kind of village too alongside the Earth, cyanobacteria, shooting stars, sun, moon, and more; without them showing up previously there would be nothing happened or written here:

Gratitude to The Great Mystery, the Great Cosmos.

Gratitude to Mayan, Martín Prechtel for his stunningly deep rich work in ceremony, an alive world and particularly with regard to our debt in living by feeding the dead who birth life with song, grief, beauty and hand-craft making life/death reciprocity. So much more to say of which l’ll be speaking some in an article being published next month in Unpsychology Magazine. He has published many books well worthy of taking time to read; any of them.

Gratitude to Stephen Jenkinson whose next book regarding Matrimony, is currently being prepared for publication. I cannot recommend him/it more highly; it’s a must if you are interested in cultural regeneration. If there is an opportunity to see his recent course Forgotten Pillars: Patrimony, Matrimony, Kinship, Ancestors, and Ceremony with Kimberly Ann Johnson, l recommend that highly too. I hope the course can become more widely available. The possibility of such an extraordinary Matrimony Ceremony is due to his deep life work in remembering/taking forward ways of Forgotten Pillars towards creating mature adults and elders participating in the world. With the Matrimony Ceremony in Italy l was inspired by his work in and with Matrimony, with “Matrimony as an act of cultural memory” and “the mothering of a culture”. The Matrimony Ceremony being ‘the villages’ focus rather than a privatised/individualist/fairytale/nuclear family ‘happy ever after’ romance between two humans of these modern/post-modern times. Please note l am not trained by Stephen Jenkinson.

Gratitude to April and Trevor Tierney for their love, courage and generosity in calling in Matrimony Ceremony for their marriage in 2018. l was invited to participate in a particular way here that so powerfully called me in and made demands of me, and others, in ways of showing up that the curse never let me go (thankfully). The Matrimony Ceremony in the Rockies deeply fed the Ceremony in Pinzolo.

Gratitude to Bill Plotkin and Animas Valley Institute for their call to soul and journey of soul initiation within an animate cosmos and Earth Community including ‘human’. Here, we enter the deeper world beyond surface remembering a wilder and deeper conversation stepping into our unique mythos, an image we are each born to live into this world that will be lost forever otherwise. The world is witnessing the horror pain of such a big loss tear in the web and forgetting in the world today. Bill Plotkin speaks to stages of human development including a natural metamorphosis into mature adulthood and eldering that is led by Mystery (not human-centred). The metamorphosis is currently prevented within an extractive, medicalised, military, rational, human-centric matrix.  Any of his books too are worthy reading; a must if you are interested in cultural regeneration. Bill Plotkin and Stephen Jenkinson come from their distinct perspectives, though that’s another interesting study, including whether it’s actually possible (or impossible) for me to draw on both as l have. The dream world isn’t so rational. The Matrimony Ceremony in Italy called upon his/their work upon many others including my own in listening with and including the mountains, wind, trees, clouds, grasses, sand, the valley, the flowers, the scents, tastes, conversations and more with their participation too. Particularly with Animas, the soul guiding of the multifaceted and mythos aspects of the betrothed previously and intensely in the months preceding Matrimony Ceremony (whenever that began) with years previous; that the Beloveds arrived embodying all currently known (and presently unknown) layering and multifaceted beings they are, human and more-than-human including here such as rose, bee, pollination, honey, and their Mythos. There is, of course, more l can say and have said elsewhere about the work above.

Gratitude to Louis Francis and Kelly Ann who had the courage to say yes to showing up in Matrimony Ceremony and who completely turned around their initial plans so swiftly in their readiness and deep longing to enter deeply and meaningfully into another way of 'wedding', to let go of old stories to live fully into what was/is being mysteriously called forth from them now. Bless them for weeping for what they would have lost if not saying yes to Matrimony Ceremony; again, for what Stephen Jenkinson calls the poverty of these times. Bless them for including all the ways of vulnerable intimacy, seen and unseen costs, the deep preparation being asked for, and needed extra days showing the way that all guests chose to participate vulnerably even with not knowing what it was all about for embodying village. Praise to the village.

Gratitude to Emma Duke, a soul guide from Colorado who came in at the last moment to assist and showed up deliciously fully making a difference.

Gratitude to the many Ancestors, known and unknown, human and other-than-human of those present and not present. I felt my brother particularly.

Gratitude for the Future Ones brought in with their love letters to us.

Gratitude latterly for soul guide Annie Bloom, and business coach Andrea Callanan whilst treading water in high seas of Grief and learning breast stroke again.

Gratitude to ‘my own’ soul pilgrimage taking me around and inside Earth’s Dreaming to Ancestral lands dreaming me, and all Earth life particularly from the dark women who birthed the cave where the world was born and where there are veils and portals consistently emerging through from the cosmos to enter and be entered. A central image amongst many is one of being married to canyon wall, Earth conduit, remembering the ancient BC lineage of PI’A of Earth Mother, PoEM, Holy Woman, Cailleach’s Eye, Chieftain Warrior who spears the heart; rememberer of Celtic Knotworks of Sacred Feminine, Sacred Masculine, Sacred Creature and more; now founder of Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2018, and Abbey Of Soul 2024. Listening deeply, Holy Woman developed the Matrimony Ceremony further in ways l’ll speak as l write along the way.

“… That somehow modern and sacred traditions were woven into the same tapestry. How our time is/has been saturated in unbelievable joy and praise but also deep grief…” Kelly Ann

Meantime, let us slow down, take time, for …

“I will never have

this version of me again

let me slow down

and be with her.” (him/them/it)

Rupi Kaur

Wendy/Cailleach’s Eye, Pinzolo. Image by Emma

~~~~~

Abbey Of Soul

was founded earlier this year. Abbey Of Soul is a place and portal for remembering and living life as sacred, for carrying the ancient sacred fire in ever emerging ways; for Ceremony; for tending the hollows where the veils are thin and Gods, Goddesses, humans, Earth Community and Mystery can sing together in remembering our unique, tending the dead life-giving songs intertwining within/as an animate and intelligent Cosmos; where revelation is the way Mystery orients life to guide us.

~~~~~~

Forthcoming Offerings

CRAFTING INTIMACY WITH SOUL

Friday 2 August, tidal Holy Island Lindisfarne, Northumberland &

Tuesday 3 - Saturday 7 September, tidal Isle of Erraid, Inner Hebrides

Contact Wendy for Information.

Also for Soul Guide/Ceremony Enquiries

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Blessings coming to you, your kith and kin as we approach Lughnasadh harvesting ~

Wendy

…walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …

Where revelation is the way Mystery guides us ~

Waters’ Parting, Causeway, Holy Island. wrf

Welcome to June’s Museletter in New Moon waxing as we approach the Summer Sun’s Zenith of light in the North and dark in the South. With the Full Moon too on 22nd the light will be bright, bright, bright and we might …

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The Sacred Grove, Demeter, Limos and Erysichthon

Welcome. Thank you for opening this Museletter which is more like an article than a Museletter, so you might like to choose/offer a time to read and consider connections, be curious.

As the Celtic Ceremonial Fast approaches, l’ve been considering the myth as above continuing to track me as l track her, as beloved lovers. I experience, maybe you do too, that myths are to be lived deeper in our lives if we are so blessed and cursed to be found by and hear them. This particular myth brought me to consider offering the Celtic Ceremonial Fast as holy feast whilst emptying/surrendering ourselves as an offering in holy fast by way of creating space for the Gods, Goddesses, Earth/Cosmic Community, Ancestors, Future Ones and Others to sing in and be present with. Here’s a taste of ‘the why’ in more detail below.

First though, my relationship with myths are that they hold remembering chords of ways we’re kidnapped from as well as draw attention to our deeper purpose life; with Earth and Cosmos community’s wild conversations and songs, animate dreams, deep imagination, sacred speech and wild wanders who continue to sing us by our true name when we those around forget. Kidnapped, of course, drawing upon a theme from Isle of Erraid’s famous writer Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.

Yes, we can glimpse hints in myths towards possible trembling remembering of a deeper life and soul purpose; of original patterning when there is an almost absence of healthy elders who would normally speak them in our current human world ‘leadership’. That is, apart from a few elders such as Joanna Macy, Bill Plotkin, Stephen Jenkinson, Michael Meade, Pat McCabe, and Bayo Akomolafe. l also hold a listening ear, heart, body for any conversations that might be even earlier than the ancient myths, or, indeed, new myths emerging. The myth of the The Sacred Grove with Goddesses Demeter and Limos, and Erysichthon, King of Thessaly is one, however, who tracks me over a lifetime. l’ve now been tracking this myth more consciously over these last seven years or so like prey … preyed … prey …. pray …

The Sacred Grove, Demeter and Limos, and Erysichthon, King of Thessaly root stems at least from Ovid’s Metamorphosis which was written 8^th Century AD from the way of Roman Mythology. The Romans, of course, coming over to Celtic lands in Alba/Scotland and conquering for short periods, as the Vikings did during the 9^th Century AD and the English later. There is a reminder here too of the ongoing interweaving struggle/domination of cultures such as the Celts, Romans, Vikings, English, then ‘Western’, ‘Eastern’, ‘Middle East’, ‘Indigenous’ and so forth; and how far Celtic culture is entangled with or resonates with other travelling cultures as all strands morph, weave, and struggle into temporary hegemonic alliances.

I do not claim to be an expert on Ovid’s books of poems by any means, or indeed, all of this particular story of human history, though l am drawing upon my earlier cultural historian knowledge, l’m just offering a particular brief context to this particular myth who has travelled my way, seeded me and is living/speaking in a particular way. May you resonate here with who speaks and sings you that brings you too to deeper, richer living.

The first sentence of Metamorphosis goes:

“In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas / corpora; which is "I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities". (and often from the monstrous).

Like ancient Celtic myths, Metamorphosis applies to human and more-than-human worlds, into and from blurred and animate boundaries between plants, animals, fungi, pebbles and more. The world of metamorphosis can be mythically violent, unpleasant, ugly… who in their right mind would willingly go there? In fact, we might even ask if experiencing/feeling violence is in some way and times an essential part of metamorphosis; a core wound that strikes our heartbreak in the loss of innocence perhaps; the shift into sacred wound, from being one thing into another and being healed enough to hold a different experience, perhaps of ‘being taken’. Does a caterpillar changing into cocoon experience this death as violent/violation we might wonder, or as smooth transition, or both/and? This is not to make a moral judgement about violence, more life itself having violent aspects such as the explosions of galaxies, the crashing of earth plates in the making of mountains, dreamworld characters, humans now being a layer of Earth embodying a kind of human geology explosion in Earth’s current metamorphosis. The thing here is merely to wonder about, be curious, to be able at least to ask the questions in a world of metamorphosis.

But for now, continuing with Ovid’s books of poetry, l have heard it said that change and love are two constants and that trying to shape chaos is futile since we move in laws way more powerful than and beyond humancentric-individualistic-defined-by-power laws. We may as well be asking stars and galaxies not to collide and, of course, we too are made of the stuff and fluff of stars.

This particular myth The Sacred Grove, Demeter and Limos, and Erysichthon, King of Thessaly who has me weaving and being weaved in its chords for years is one who is very rarely told and l’m curious why this is so. I don’t recall ever speaking of Limos and of her being known or heard of by anyone. Maybe this myth is just way too monstrous (for me) to truly face. It highlights, l believe, distortions and contortions of ways of living today that kidnap us from deep and animate intimacy with each other and the world. See and feel what you notice as you read and hear this myth.

As with soulcentric dreamwork the invitation is to let the myth have its way with you should you feel the myth living you or resonating. Whilst l believe each myth character has their own innate integrity, you might wonder what aspects, imagining all as animate, tug at and spill into/from your heart chords or/and repel you; what ways the myth has you in their net too. Which part has you identifying with/becoming them or not, and which parts you see enacting in the wider world right now. I’d love to hear.

~~~~~

The Sacred Grove, Demeter, Limos and Erysichthon

“ … now, this is the myth of The Sacred Grove where-in dwells abundant scented pine, juicy pear, and deliciously sweet apple trees. In the warmth of the day you can smell the scent of pine in the air. When the fruit ripens you can smell their enticing aroma from quite the distance. The colours of the apples are an unbelievable deep red whilst the pears turn an astonishing bright yellow. It is said that at times they look like lights on dark-leafed branches in the uniquely shaped trees. The Sacred Grove is filled with the songs of birds. In Celtic ways, The Sacred Grove is associated with the centre, a dwelling place for the Deity and sacred law; a place and pathway for initiation rites and ceremony; a place also for The Fey.

This Sacred Grove is devotedly tended by Demeter. Demeter, as you may well know, is the beautiful Goddess of agriculture, harvest, fertility and sacred law; provider of food. You might remember her also by way of her daughter Persephone being kidnapped by Hades and taken down into the Underworld, but that’s another myth such as the way these myths interweave one with another … A favourite tree of Hers in The Sacred Grove is another tree altogether than mentioned yet, the tallest of tall poplar trees, though some say, in fact, that it is oak. Whichever, you can hardly see the tree top unless from far, far away. It is said the water that springs forth from this ground is of the freshest thirst-quenching kind. Demeter is completely, devotedly, tending The Sacred Grove, with the holiest of holy trees. It is also said that at times it is difficult to distinguish the body of these trees from the body of Demeter Herself.

The myth l hear is that Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, is preparing to build a lush banquet hall for a special feast fit only for a king and his regal guests. Upon hearing about these sacred trees Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, hastens, travelling quickly to The Sacred Grove with many of his giant strong men carrying their long and short handle axes wherefore they begin chopping the trees down before losing any time. Demeter, so devoted to The Sacred Grove, first begins feeling the pain of the chopping of the trees in her body before hearing the screams of the holiest of trees which Erysichthon, King of Thessaly and his men have now started chopping down. She rushes to The Sacred Grove to stop the desecration of this place where she practices her devotion to the Gods and Goddesses. However, Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, does not recognise who she is and tells her to leave before he chops her down too for he needs the wood to build a banquet hall for his feasting. Many of his strong men however, do recognise Demeter and these ones flee hastily away. Some of these giant men remain doing so only out of constraint. Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, proceeds to cut down all the sacred of sacred trees until there are no trees left in The Sacred Grove.

It is said that the cry of these trees can be heard in the lands across the waters. Maybe you can hear them. The Sacred Grove which was once a place for the devotion of the Gods and Goddesses, a holy place of Demeter, Goddess of agriculture, harvest, fertility and sacred law is no more. The place with the scented pine, holiest of tall trees whether poplar or oak, the astonishing bright juicy yellow pear trees, unbelievably delicious deep red sweet apple trees is now utterly barren.

Demeter is so enraged that The Sacred Grove is made desolate, that she sends one of her nymphs with a message to Limos in the North. Demeter cannot go herself since it is said that Demeter and Limos can never meet. Now Limos is not someone anyone would willingly want to meet and even the nymph found a way to pass the message on without seeing her face, the ugliest face, the face of Limos. Demeter’s nymph going only as she was instructed to do so. Though when l say ‘her’ face, l’m also told that Limos can be known as ‘he’ in some myths as well as ‘her’ in different cultures and times. However, the myth l hear whispered in my ear one day is that no one sees her as much as feels her presence and it is definitely not nice, or lovely. It is said that she sits at the gate of the Underworld in the service of Hades. Her image is also very rarely found in those by artists who prefer Demeter; this heightens the mystery around Limos even more.

It is said that Limos is the ugliest and barren of creatures; old, coarse white hair, darkened eyes inset a sallow face that does not light up like the yellow pears. Her opaque skin barely covers her visible skeleton and organs, her empty sagging breasts stretch to her visibly hollow belly. She is the one from whom a kiss cracks open a hunger so unsatiable that a life eventually can do no other than eat itself for want of a longing impossible to satisfy. Sometimes Limos goes by the name Fames, meaning source of famine.

But back to enrage; in her rage, Demeter sends a message to Limos via one of her nymphs since, remember, she could not go herself for remember Demeter and Limos cannot meet. Her message asks Limos to kiss Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, for his desecration of The Sacred Grove. Limos agrees to the kissing. She does so one night as he sleeps since, for sure, he would not - and who would, see her and be willingly kissed by her. As he sleeps, she quietly holds him in her bony thin-skinned arms and kisses him in a way of entering his very body as emptiness itself; entering his heart, mind, nose, ears, lungs, belly, genitals; his arms and fingers, legs and toes, and all the other parts of him not yet mentioned here, before returning North again.

When he wakes the very next morning, Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, wakes to a hunger pain he has never known before. He begins eating everything including the whole banquet he had laid out; eventually selling everything he has, including the new banquet hall made with trees from The Sacred Grove to buy food in an attempt to satisfy his hunger. But he is never able to satiate such a hunger. He even sells his palace to pay for food. Lastly, he sells his own daughter, since she is a shapeshifter a number of times, to slavery before finally eating himself.

Here ends the myth of The Sacred Grove, Demeter, Limos and Erysichthon, King of Thessaly …

Demeter Sculpture, nothing of Limos

~~~~~

You will likely have grasped what a multi-layered myth this is and a number of ways to explore. However, l’d like to bring your attention to just a few chords l notice at this point:

The Sacred Grove of plenty beauty harvest is devotedly attended by the Goddess Demeter in remembering holy tending ways; they are intimately intertwined. Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, hearing of The Sacred Grove, gathers his men leaving at speed; he’s not beating around the bush. Like the current world situation, there’s no slowing down and taking time which can but surely lead to quickening death. Yet, The Sacred Grove has something he wants, that he hasn’t come across elsewhere and feels a rush towards. ‘Something’ recognised but not yet fully fleshed out. Perhaps a clue to what is needed for his own wholeness and the sacred, towards deep and intimate relationship with The Beloved, Soul, Mystery such as Demeter has cultivated. However, perhaps this also shows a nudge, a longing, his own soul beginning to speak. As David Whyte says:

The soul lives contented

by listening,

if it wants to change

into the beauty of

terrifying shapes,

it tries to speak.

At this point, as one uninitiated into the ways of soul, the only way for Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, is to go down into the descent, into the pilgrimage of soul initiation. At this point though, he clearly forsakes his priceless soul for outer material power, wealth, and social prestige to build a feasting banquet hall with the sacred wood from the destruction of The Sacred Grove. In so doing, he is instead kidnapped by an old story of his particular Kingdom desire of power and control, destroying instead the sacred harvest feast he otherwise deeply seeks to serve in his banquet hall. We might say his shadow aspect core wound disconnection from The Sacred Grove and The Beloved/Golden Harvest Sacred Feminine; from a rich, deeper, full life.

His actions have consequences, as actions will want to do, setting a chain in motion. For Demeter the response to The Sacred Grove being desecrated is rage leading to a connecting alliance with Limos through a nymph since Demeter harvest/feast and Limos hunger/famine can never meet. There is a deeper and more powerful sacred law than the human-centred decreed law, or even of the Gods and Goddesses. Here it relates with the sacred feminine (both Gold and Dark) as initiators. However, Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, is unlikely to experience initiation it is at this point but more as punishment; that’s if he knew what was/is happening for he is unconscious. Any of this sounding familiar to you too, and in the world today ie violence and destruction, unconscious action? Nothing new.

We might notice the Limos kiss, a kind of shadow intimacy filling a body with emptiness and a longing hunger; perhaps also like the consumer world today eating the planet in an empty longing of a deeper life, or current increase in addictive survival ways. Indeed, we might ask what you/we too are hungering or thirsting for and the ways these show up currently in you. Meanwhile Earth, and as Earth, is also being destroyed, being descrated. I’m remembering a quote, though not sure where from: “they talk about my eating but not about my hunger, they talk about my drinking but not about my thirst.”

Whatever, Limos, being a gatekeeper of the Underworld, is another kind of annunciation, of ‘going down’, with a particular kind of hunger; a hunger that the King cannot buy his way through because he is paying attention only to his surface survival wound, not his deeper soul hunger. His soul is priceless, cannot be bought. As the myth goes, the longing hunger pain at this point is so great that everything is eaten including himself … again, like the planet too is being consumed in an addictive longing for particular survival; where sacred groves are being chopped down to create certain ‘undernourishing banquet halls’ and sold for money to buy poisoned food whilst abandoning priceless holy lands … or even dropping bombs alongside food parcels. Perhaps the greater the unravelling/destruction of land; the greater the annunciation into the Underworld becomes. In his hunger even the shapeshifter daughter of Erysichthon is sacrificed over and over as is the future sacred feminine life that the king also denies in himself.

It is also interesting to consider what and who is not in this myth. For example, there are no healthy men or ways of the sacred masculine here. Here, it’s the absence of the sacred masculine and the presence of the sacred feminine who annunciate the entrance to the descent to soul and a world of dream, metaphor, symbol, deep imagination, the unbidden, and possibly never seen/heard/felt/touched before. But we also have that clue, devotion to The Sacred Grove, the Beloved and marriage with the land that we are.

I’ll not go into connections with other myths fully now, but just note threads of this story with other myths such as: not looking directly at the face of the Dark Goddess (Medusa); the kiss of a mythic old woman (Cailleach); a father sacrificing daughter (Psyche, The Handless Maiden); The King and relation with creating barren lands when not marrying the land as in Celtic Myths. Such is the way myths can become needed elders when we see wider threads in the web that have us but are not made visible.

This myth ends with the king eating himself. With death. The myth can’t continue as it is. Maybe you recognise something of this in your life previously, now or to come. Maybe you recognise the human way of life currently in/as Planet Earth too, Earth dying, morphing in consumption. Such is the way when we cannot see, feel, become lost, disorientated, unravel, dissolve …

In terms of human development, this myth is showing a way beyond death. What if, in his death, Erysichthon is now entering a dissolving cocoon of metamorphosis, a particular kind of death; his old life has indeed died. Heartbreakingly, l believe people do die quite literally at this point or suffer greatly such as through the mental health system since in this current ‘Western’ culture there are very few ways of being and seeing this as pilgrimage and providing preparation as a way of living and time ‘in the wilderness’ to surrender, create ways of offering. It is also not possible at this point to know who or what will emerge; is not assured, certain or planned unlike a particular workforce needed for a particular economy and the harm that creates. The latest figures from EAPA  (Employee Assistance Professional Association)  state that £300billion was spent on mental health in England alone last year, more than the financial cost of Covid 19 Pandemic.  

It can be tempting to think that there is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in this myth. I prefer to think in terms of different stages of human development or as Bill Plotkin notes, arrested development. However, l believe all are holy; everything here is holy all being part of Earth, an Earth ecology, of Earth Community; they might all be particularly needed, have their place in a particular way in order that a particular metamorphosis becomes possible to bring a unique gift into the world that we don’t know what or who beforehand. Maybe there is also something else going on in the world right now that this myth helps us with in relating all the unravelling, destruction, violence alongside the beauty of Earth more to myth and the Underworld rather than a particular rationality; maybe there is a different conversation and invitation to die and live into a shift of Earth consciousness.

In many ways we could say this particular mythic ecology reflects something of a pilgrimage of soul where the old story of survival, though needed at the time, is surrendered through developing wholeness, becoming whole (or hole, holy) before/during a descent to soul when old skins are shed and wounded/protective/addicts/shadow parts are brought home all whilst the hunger longing pain for the divine home, The Sacred Grove becomes more conscious, lived and longed for in remembering our birth uniqueness gift contribution to life.

Perhaps the longing for The Sacred Grove, for tending an entangled and intimate reciprocal belonging is possible in this pilgrimage. Perhaps it is possible to make the transition from core wound to sacred wound, to The Sacred Grove where we also meet Earth’s longing hunger for us belonging in deep love conversations, each in unique Earthborn ways. Perhaps it’s not, for example, that Erysichthon isn’t holy but rather his relationship to and with the holy of whom he and the world already are, that is distorted. The current distorted world of a separate, human-centred rational controlling individual life as king can become a soul uniqueness within a particular ecological place as Earth Community. Or as Bill Plotkin states:

“The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it. It's not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place. Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity and challenge. The offering of that gift — your true self — is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs." (Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche p.13)

The Celtic Ceremonial Fast offers a way to make a particular pilgrimage through/as the holy tending becoming a feast for Mystery whilst emptying, surrendering in longing hunger love for The Beloved to come in through a particular portal; to surrender to the chaos Ovid speak of rather than attempt to control … the divine; or the emptiness so many people are currently experiencing. In this way, maybe it is possible for feast and fast to meet in a resecration of both human and land in a descent to soul. Maybe it is possible that in doing so the holy is realigned in a person, in a culture and in Earth. We do not know and cannot know who or what will emerge through the alignment and maybe that’s not the point.

Is this kind of Celtic Ceremonial Fast calling you, are you feeling the hunger call?

An aspect of the image of my mythos, PI’A of Earth Mother, is that she is married physically, in union with, the canyon wall. One aspect of her being is that she has one breast facing out to feed the world and another breast facing in to feed her/the Earth. Here is an open flow of holy intimate reciprocity with Earth and sacred law. The sacred wound of desecration she experienced previously through eons, with similar hunger longing pains relating with the Dark Goddess Limos and the kiss of descent, her empty sagging breasts, with self-healing, healing, and wholing work, opens her to soul ready with an experience of a different kind of Sacred Grove, the singing forest; for which she has offered a lifetime’s devotion to the holy Earth. She too is annunciation of the Underworld Pilgrimage of Soul.

May this myth of The Sacred Grove, Demeter, Limos, and Erysichthon carried by PI’A like a deep Earth seam conduit feed these hungry times; feed you. May this Celtic Ceremonial Fast contribute towards realigning death and life personally, mythically, culturally in and as Earth metamorphosis/Cosmos; be a prayer, a poem, a song where the gods, goddesses, human and more-than-human, others, ancestors, future ones can circle together; where you remember and live your true name. Where living your true name is all the world needs.

It is so.

~~~~~~

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The Depth and ways of sharing soulcraft practices by you has been very valuable to me. Seeing the journey as keeping the conversation with soul and mystery going has been paramount for me. This realization keeps bringing me gently back to all the different ways to court Soul… the way you shared Love without pleasing the other MS

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Wendy is a true Elder. Her deep connection to the natural world and her profound respect for and celebration of all life is the ground from which she draws her wisdom and experience. She has a deep commitment to helping those she guides and mentors to develop their inner knowing and to strengthen their life of soul. She has a wide knowledge of the human psyche and experienced in the path of soul initiation. She is wise, funny, insightful, thoughtful, intuitive - all this and much more she brings into the sessions she offers to individuals and groups. I found her attentive listening, her thoughtful enquiry and her creative invitations challenging, grounding and life-giving. I am inspired by her passionate fealty to the songs of the Earth. I believe that those people privileged to work with her will cherish the experience. LR

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May you and your kin enjoy a great feast as the sun descends and dusk approaches here with the arrival of Beltaine in Alba/Scotland. May your tending flourish.

Wend

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