Meeting My Spirit Dolls through Alice Savage

Stag Woman Sacred Familiar doll drawn by Alice Savage

'I believe in beauty.

I love animals and think they are the best part of us.'  

Alice Savage

I find it very hard to explain to people the full magic of the spirit dolls because they are so personal. Each doll has her own personality and medicine and it is so unique and authentic to the doll herself that it will be felt by everyone differently. Just like meeting someone new - we aren't all going to get along in the same way. If I have to put it in a nutshell or acorn shell! I would say that they are magical friends. They are magical companions, women and men who come to walk beside you for a little while in your life when you need a friend. It sounds simplistic and it is but it is also essentially very true. What I didn't know when I began opening this ancestral folk magic 12 months ago was how many new friends the dolls were going to bring to me.

Last month I was contacted by Italian artist, Alice Savage, who told me she was inspired by the dolls and asked me if she could make a drawing based on one. I was so honoured that an artist as skilled and talented as Alice would be inspired to do this. And I was excited to see through Alice's eyes the spirit of my own dolls. I see the personality and spirit of the dolls clearly as I am making them but I do not put a deep or outlined expression into their faces because I want the new keeper to see her as she needs to see her. The faces are there but they are more etheric, ephemeral - as if behind a veil.

When Alice began to send her drawings through to me by email I was astonished because they had the faces that I had already seen but were also interpreted through Alice's own spirit and because of this they had become a new being at the same time. I don't see them as separate from my dolls but as seen from a different realm and sometimes it's very helpful to me to understand their medicine even more. This happened particularly when Alice drew the Death Doula as a figure in a madonna-like pose. I was touched that she could feel the grace and compassion that this doll carried in her sacred medicine as midwife to the dying. Alice told me that the dolls were doing their healing on her own spirit as she drew them. They are speaking to her and I love that because they speak to me as I weave them too.

'This one so far speaks to me of the circle of time. It's like if she told me that she is very ancient, that she saw all the ages, and knows everything - she is fierce, not scared, not worried, because she saw all the seasons happening. I put a symbolized moon with the rays of the sun on the corners of the drawing to depict it. There are also some drop shapes (something I use often) to express the tears, but she is no more touched by them. She is sweet, and with the power of survival'. Alice's conversation with Moss Witch

As the drawings have grown, I have fallen more and more in love with this collaboration with Alice. We have had lovely chats about Vali Myers, our love of animals - especially foxes!

Dear Alice, thank you. It's such a delight to be weaving together across the oceans.

MossWitch medicine doll

MossWitch by Alice Savage

Stag Woman spirit doll by Sacred Familiar

Death Doula - midwifing the dying

An Cailleach Bhearra

I love this short film! it's the most magical creation I've discovered all week - sad and beautiful and profound.  Grandmother Medicine from Ireland.

New Forest Space for Sacred Familiar

Hello dreamers we have now opened our new space in Kallista surrounded by the green wonder of Sherbrooke Forest. Ancestral Medicine sessions will open on Monday at the New Moon Solar Eclipse. Hope to see you soon. We also offer sessions by Skype and telephone for our faraway friends. Green love to you all for your weekend wanderings, Julia and Tony x

New Medicine Dolls

Owl and Elm Forest Dweller medicine doll

a doll for finding the new path

Barn Owl Feathers, Elm Tree plant medicine

Heart of Mountain Ash Tree Resin

Celtic Sea Salt

Owl and Tree of Life golden talisman

Dragonfly and Mugwort medicine doll

a doll for assisting with change and transition

King Parrot Feathers, Dragonfly talisman

Mugwort plant medicine

breathing room for the spirit

Breath of Life, encaustic Sacred Familiar

 'What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit'. John Updike

Guardians of the Threshold - Death and Dying

Hello everyone our Death and Dying wisdom circle: Guardians of the Threshold is now completely full. For all those joining us we will meet on New Moon Saturday 1st March 1-5pm at Kumbada Studio. I will send out a preparation email tonight to all participants. We are looking forward to welcoming you to this beautiful and sacred work. 

For those who have missed out on a place, we will be holding a second workshop Rites of Passage in May and will have more details soon - get in touch if you would like to be included in this circle.

precious beauty of death + dying

Little Wing precious gift from Mother Earth

Whenever I commit to a new dream, Spirit begins showing me just how much that dreaming has always been close. I believe Intention brings more focus - just like the zoom lense of a camera, we begin to see the worlds within worlds around us. Now that we have begun taking enrolments for Guardians of the Threshold, a death and dying wisdom circle, I am seeing Death everywhere. And It sounds morbid but it truly isn't. Yes it is sad, there is always a loss when we face death but there is so much beauty. Death is the ultimate invitation to FEEL and she strips away our masks and armour to expose the tender heart. She makes us remember what it is to be truly human and alive.

Here is Little Wing the wing of a dear parrot who passed away on my doorstep on the day we signed the lease on a new home in the forest. For the last 12 months, this house has been my private bird sanctuary, so many feathered friends visit us here every day and owls come to keep us company at night. This ending is of course the threshold I must cross to begin again. I feel sad to leave but also excited about the new chapter awaiting. The next home is still in our beloved Sherbrooke Forest but in a house that is more open to welcoming to visitors and seekers. After year of sabbatical, I am ready to begin seeing more clients. I could not hold this work in our current home. And so this week I feel like I am in limbo - I know I am moving and yet I can't seem to make myself pack yet. it's been manifesting as a constant underlying anxiety and obsession with tiny, unimportant details. I feel exhausted and I realised yesterday it is because I have not let myself feel the grief of this change.

This is also a common experience when we lose someone we love and it can manifest in a much deeper and traumatic way when we repress our deepest grief and pain. In my family there is a long history of suicide in both my mother's and father's families. Suicide is still such a taboo subject and can be one of the hardest causes of death to talk about. In my family there is a gaping hole that is filled with silence and deep pain. This hole, this wound is a source of soul loss for many family members and instead of feeling and speaking and facing the many unanswered questions, the pain has been repressed and has manifested as deep depression. Recently, in Vision, I asked to know more about this spirit of depression that has followed my family for generations and I was shown not a horrible demon as I had expected but instead, the lost and forgotten spirits of family members who had taken their own lives and were never spoken of again. They were asking me for acknowledgement and remembrance and that is something we can all do and give. Often all Death requires is for us to be truly present.  It was this vision and the incredible healing that came after it, that pushed me to create a circle where we can finally release this unacknowledged pain, ask questions about death and dying and share our stories of loved ones no longer with us. To remember with love. We will also speak of the beauty and rebirth that occurs in this crossing of the threshold. The mystery of the afterlife and the visions and visitations that Spirit often gifts back to the living to help us to understand that there is nothing to fear.

When I need to cry and release I often head to the water and yesterday we drove to Phillip Island. It was the best gift I could give to myself - to just step away from it all and dive into the soft embrace of Mamma Ocean. As we arrived at the beach, we saw Bunjil, the wedge tailed eagle circling above and as we left the ocean we came upon a beach memorial that we hadn't noticed on the way down. The memorial was in a grove of trees and when we arrived it was being guarded by a blue tongued lizard. I was touched by this small and public altar to a beautiful young girl. It was decorated with toys and shells and was accompanied by this dedication:

'Where there is love the heart is light.
Where there is love the day is bright.
Where there is love there is quiet peace.
A tranquil place where troubles cease.
Oh blest are those who walk in love.
They also walk with god above.
Fly free Miranda you are loved.'

Whether you have healing to do around the loss of a loved one, are living with a loved one right now at the sacred threshold of dying, or want to come and heal the taboo and fear of speaking about death and the afterlife, you are welcome to join us in this wisdom circle. Together we will remember what it is to embrace the natural wisdom of the endless and eternal cycle of life.

Details of Guardians of the Threshold - Wild Wisdom of Death and Dying with Sacred Familiar and Rainbowalker.

Memorial for Miranda

letting go letting flow

thresholds

the wild wisdom of death and dying

Hello everyone, on the New Moon last friday, we met with Rainbowalker to consciously open the dreaming well for Guardians of the Threshold. In this circle we will be sharing practical information on how to care for loved ones during the shamanic threshold death and dying. You will also have the space to share your own stories and wisdom, together we can bring light back to an area of our lives that is so beautiful and natural but has been shrouded in fear and taboo.  

Not too long ago this wisdom was a part of ancestral wisdom or 'granny wisdom' as I call it. There would have been someone in the family that was called on whenever a family or community member was nearing the threshold of death. They would have come to your home and gently consoled the family and made the dying as comfortable as they could be. Most importantly they brought peace and solace to the dying, often just by being a calm and gentle presence in the room and held their hand as they made the Great Journey. And this wisdom would have been passed to a child who perhaps at a young age began to accompany the granny in her work and showed a natural ease and knowing with this medicine. 

This is very specific medicine that may not call to many of you, but if you are feeling drawn to know more or if you are already making the journey with a loved one in your family, we encourage you to get in touch. For too long this natural process has been surrounded by fear and just as it is important to have a conscious life, it is important to have a conscious death.  When we lose our fear of death we can begin to truly live.

Click here to register for Guardians of the Threshold

Farewell to the Water Snake

Hey Rainbow Weavers, we are gathering to farewell that wild beauty the Water Snake and thank her for all of the much needed change that she midwifed us through in 2013. Smudging and release ceremony as we meet the birth of the Wooden Horse.

Come and Be. You are Welcome. You are Free.

Mother of the Mountain

another early morning birth Mother of the Mountain Sacred Familiar encaustic oracle