A Doll for Alice Savage

I have just finished weaving a medicine doll for Alice Savage. Alice is an Italian illustrator and spirit sister and she has been creating illustrations inspired by my dolls. The illustration above is of the doll, Heart of Fox - with a little Vali Myers inspired moustache no less! I am so excited and honoured by this collaboration and I couldn't wait to create for Alice a doll to hold her very own personal medicine. Alice and I have spoken about the intention and healing wishes she would like her doll to hold and I came to feel that it was important for Alice's doll to be both strong and soft together. As I began I kept envisioning deep blue oceans and the creatures that journey to the deepest depths. When I looked into my medicine box, which is actually a very old hat-box, the first beauty to catch my eye was a cuttlefish bone.

I found the cuttlefish a few months ago on a foraging trip to Phillip Island in part of Cat Bay. That's a lovely weaving already as I know that the Cat is sacred to Alice and are her dear familiars. What I didn't foresee was that the doll would ask for a chestnut to be placed with the cuttlefish and at first I questioned the paring in my mind. Yesterday Alice told me a story of beautiful chestnut grove that she used to love to visit and hopes to return to it again. I love that the doll knew what medicine was needed. This information cannot come from the mind as it is unknown but by listening to the doll with your own childlike heart, you get a strong urge or pull towards what is needed. Alice's medicine is also linked to crystals and stones and she felt complete with the placement of a seed pearl in the centre of her heart. She is a beauty! Just like you Alice. Blessings on your journeys to the deep blue together.

And here is one of the latest medicine doll illustrations by Alice: Heart of Fox - complete with her own Vali Myers inspired spirit moustache! LOVE HER xx

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

Kindling for your Fire - Night Flower the Life & Art of Vali Myers

It's here - it's real!

YES!!! The new book: Night Flower - the Life & Art of Vali Myers has been birthed at a beautiful launch and exhibition at Outre Gallery in Melbourne on the Eve of the Spring Equinox. Thank you to everyone who turned up to celebrate Vali and her extraordinary life & art, what a fantastic night and it even included a visit by the cops - Vali would have loved that, she would have disarmed them with her fox ways and invited them inside. The biggest hugs in the world for Nicole Karidis & Ruth Cullen of the Vali Myers Art Gallery Trust and Martin McIntosh & Gemma Jones of Outre Gallery & Publishing. Wow - it's really here. I remember the first day years ago when all of sat around my dining room table and the seed of this dream was born and to hold this luminous, golden dream of a book in my hand right now is so exciting. 

It was an honour to be asked to write the foreword for Night Flower, to express in words the magic & wisdom that Vali gifted to me during our friendship. This gift is a creative 'quickening' that is open and available to you all in this book and I encourage you to READ IT, SPEAK OF IT, SHARE IT and then let it inspire you to CREATE. Wild, flaming love to you Queen of Foxes and to you all - THE DREAM IS REAL. Julia xxxx.

Night Flower is available from Outre Gallery where you can also see for a limited time Vali's original drawings, personal diaries and talismans in a current exhibition. Go and see it!!!

Inside the Outre Hive before opening with  Nicole Karidis & Ruth Cullen of the Vali Myers Trust with Gemma Jones & Martin McIntosh from Outre in the background

Night Flower with Vali's personal diaries and talismans

Original painting: Queen of Thorns Vali Myers

Original painting: Stella Maris by Vali Myers

love you Vali

Do You See What I See - In the Eyes of Venus

Frida Gustavsson for British Vogue via Sisterwolf

On Monday night we will experience the Full Moon Eclipse. The Moon is in fiery Sagittarius and just days away from the Venus Occultation when we will see Venus making a visible path across the Sun on 6th June. And so this week we will feel the mighty power of the Divine Feminine expressed through Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, Abundance and Love. Like a dancer, she will move across the face of the Sun unveiled, exposed and radiant. 

Astrologically there has been a lot of energy available to us in the last month to begin embracing our shadow, to bring all of the orphaned parts of ourselves into the light. When we do this we realise what we thought was unacceptable or unloveable is strangely beautiful. In these changing times we are being asked more and more: who are you and what is it that you truly want? To truly understand and feel the answer we must be able to look ourselves in the eye and see the incredible amount of potential and beauty that is innate, within us all, just waiting to be unleashed. Do not reject what is strange about yourself, but display it with love, this is your unique gift and this is what Venus can help us to see with our own eyes this week. 

Vali Myers diary inscription Paris, 1956    www.valimyers.com

Someone who taught me more about true beauty and fearless love was Australian artist, Vali Myers. Here is a photograph and inscription from her earliest surviving diary written in Paris in 1956-57. I love that she dedicates this diary to herself, simply 'My Book'. These inspiring diaries and Vali's paintings will be published in September in an exquisite book called Night Flower by Outre Press. I have read Vali's diaries many times but each time I pick them up I find new inspiration, an invitation to fall in love with your own spirit. On the day that Vali's diaries arrived at my home 2 weeks ago, I took a walk to Williamstown Beach with my friend Sarah and this is what we found waiting on the shore. A faerie house! A beautiful silver mystery waiting on the threshold between the worlds of land and sea. One of Vali's gifts was to teach us to look beyond the mask, the mundane, the ordinary to see the spirit within. May you be inspired this week to see yourself with the eyes of Venus, to look deeply into the mirror and glimpse your spirit. Welcome this spirit like a beautiful creature emerging from the forest, a creature that has never been named or classified because there has never been another like it before. Be YOU! 

Wild Full Moon love to you all x

Faerie House found at Williamstown

Golden Dreams for your Summer Solstice

Vali by Patricia Ariel

Good morning everyone! Wishing you a beautiful Summer Solstice today. The incredible painting 'Vali' by my dear friend Patricia Ariel above was channeled and painted in one evening after I introduced Patricia to Vali Myer's art and spirit. I don't think any other artist has captured the essence of Vali so perfectly. She was a Solar Queen! Such is the inspiration and magical power of art and intuition. I hope that you feel the pure gold essence and joy of the Sun today.

Riverside Evening, Harold Hitchcock

The direct point of the Midsummer will be at 4.30pm. Make a wish and step into the music. Let's show up as our true selves in the Golden Light of 2012. More sharing, more art, more passionate creativity in nature's wild embrace!

A deeply felt thank you and enormous hug to everyone who has shared with us this year and we look forward to welcoming you into the music in 2012.

Waterfalls of honey, Julia and Tony xxx

Happy Birthday to the Wilde Vixen

Photograph of Vali taken by a very young Mary Ellen Mark in Positano. www.valimyers.com

In our world, Australian artist Vali Myers would have turned 81 today - in her worlds she is eternally spiralling, diving, and dancing in a cosmos of energy as wild, ancient and mysterious as her beautiful self. Love to you Queen of Foxes, may your memory and visionary art keep inspiring us all. 

Wu man, Vali Myers www.outregallery.com

Desert Fox, Vali Myers (prints available from Outre Gallery)

Moon Hare, Vali Myers

Vali and her owl Jonnie

Vali playing her gramophone on the beach, photo: Flame Schon

Self portrait with Foxy

Vali & I in Naples 2000