swan medicine

Swan Story :: My Familiar Stranger

Thank you Julia, I have experienced so much healing from releasing this vow. I also feel that part of my soul experience has now become open to me within this life. You have shared a truly amazing gift, the gift of remembering who we are and all we can be, Kelly.

We are all made of stories and it is fascinating for me to sit with people as they remember ancient stories that feel like they happened only yesterday. After her Swan Ancestral Journey with me, Kelly sent me her Swan Story of retrieving the gift of her own ancestral wisdom from a ‘familiar stranger’.

“She came to me my familiar stranger and shared with me her emotions and memories. Her feelings reflected my own. The heavy ones that had lived so deeply within me for as long I could remember. I had taken them to be mine. I had taken them to be of this life, but they where not. They were the blonde haired girl's all along, and she was I. But that life has gone. She had lost her freedom to be herself when all her love was taken from her. This blonde haired girl had lived on the land amongst the natural people. These folk lived in small homes with lavish gardens and roaming wild life. Most of her days were spent running with the deer.

When I first encountered her she was outside with the women from the house chanting and sharing stories. I was drawn to her immediately. The youngest of the group, no more thirteen years. The wide-eyed, golden haired girl soaking up the lesson being offered by the wise women - with an awe of excitement.  This place was special, the Faerie played there. Together they worshipped the land healing plant, animal, and human alike.   People travelled far to see the natural people and be healed from both mental and physical ailments. No payment was exchanged. The risk of travel was enough and to arrive by the cover of night was they only request of the healers.

One night in a blink of an eye the blonde haired girl's life was turned to ash. By the men in black who travel the countryside, defusing the light in people’s hearts. On this night only one survived. The young girl was taken by the men and placed in a cold blue-stoned cell and robed in black. They tried to force her to use her abilities to heal their wounded men. Though she refused with conviction. As she laid in the darkness she bound her light and shielded her love, she would not share the magic of the land with those who were only out to destroy it.

Her magic was strong and her internal binding became physical. She herself was bound in rope by the men in black and left in the darkness - left to fade. Her sadness was deep, her conviction was strong and her intentions where true and clear. I could feel it. I had felt it before. I'd felt the bound girl inside, often a dull aching I could not quite place.  While connecting to this feeling I was transported to my sacred space. The space that I enter upon meditation and out of the water she emerged, that I of the past. She was now free I had become the one bound. Our eyes met, two of the same, she untied me from the rope she had once been bound in, and then she smiled.

And with that smile she whispered –

‘Thank you for coming back for me., now we are both free and in your world you don’t have to hide, you can dance under the moonlight without fear, you can use your magic, release our light and show others the way to theirs. Always remember the Faerie as they are still with you’. 

Kelly

Swan Medicine

Hi Julia, 

I just wanted to write and say thank you so much for the Swan blessing the other day. So much has 'unlocked' since then, especially in my dreams. I am in the process of writing it down but I just wanted to share these photos I took the following weekend :)    

Catherine after Swan Blessing 2013

Swan Blessing in Sydney

Dear Sydney friends, we will be in your neck of the woods next week and we are so excited to meet the artists, musicians, healers and all round wise folk who have booked in already for their Swan Blessing sessions. If you would like to book a personal Swan Blessing ceremony we have just 3 more sessions available. Please let us know as soon as you can if you would like to take one of these last places.

Our only workshop in Sydney will be held at Desire Books on Imbolc, 1st August : Swan Blessing Spirit Doll Workshop - The Art of Enchantment. In this workshop we will be clearing past life vows and contracts binding the Artisan and creativity and creating our own Spirit Doll Dreamer. Please contact Katy at Desire if you would like to take part: desire@desirebooks.

Oceans of love and see you all soon!

The Written Word - Swan Blessing

In the Word Wood by David Wyatt

The power of our Word in our lives is immense. And so too is the way we express our words in written form. I have long been a fan of hand-written letters. I love looking at the hand-writing of others and I enjoy the physical movement of writing by hand. Almost every morning after waking from dreaming I write for at least an hour - just for myself. I have a little ritual of making a cup of tea, choosing a favourite pen, gathering my journal and my Tarot cards and then settling Rory and I comfortably on the bed. This ritual and the time taken for myself afterwards is precious to me because it is so slow, quiet and almost in a dreaming state - a beautiful reverie. It is in these writing hours that I have learnt the most about myself, decoded my dreams, healed the past and heard the whisperings of my spirit. Writing, myth & storytelling are my medicine.

Rory my writing companion
At the end of The Swan Blessing I leave the room so that the client can have a quiet moment with their spirit to write by hand a new truth that they wish to live by. This truth is a replacement of the binding energy of oaths or vows that we have lived by in the past. Sometimes this truth, reached after journeying with the Swan is a direct flip or opposite of the sacred oath made in the past life. For instance, someone who had vowed to protect the tribe at all costs, would hear their heart create a new truth such as: I honour my spirit first and care for those I love in the best way I can. This is a removal of a once heavy vow to always put others before ourselves and to often carry great shame and guilt after lifetimes of not being able to protect everyone we love. Someone who had vowed to never share their gifts of healing again in a past life, may hear the new truth and write: I am free to express all of my gifts and talents. 
Last week Tony and I journeyed with a beautiful woman in her Swan Blessing and when we returned to the room she told me that something remarkable had happened. When she went to write her new truth, she began to write it in a very delicate and old-fashioned script. She remembered that this was the way she used to write as a child and that when she started a new school she had been scolded and demanded to write in a more childish way - to print her words like the other children. She had to lose her beautiful writing voice and learn to write in another. I was so happy to see this personal and beautiful mode of self-expression returned to her after more than 30 years. 
Swan was sacred to the Bard: the one who healed with words. The Bard honoured this totem by wearing a cloak made of Swan feathers. In these changing we times we are finding our truth, our voice again, some of us a rewriting history and totally reinventing ourselves.  I encourage you to write your words down in your own hand and if you can develop a writing practice that becomes a meditation, even for just 10 minutes a day. In that short space of time you will come to know the art of your unique handwriting again. Perhaps you come may come to love this practice of being the scribe for your own spirit so much that the union of pen and hand creates a key to open the door to your own mythic story.