Alice Savage

StagWoman Medicine Doll Drawn by Alice Savage

StagWoman Sacred Familiar doll drawn by Alice Savage This week I received the finished drawing of our StagWoman medicine doll by Italian artist, Alice Savage. And of course she came at a time when I really needed it. She is magnificent and this photo doesn't do her full justice - she is drawn with diamond ink and shimmers in the light. The StagWoman was a personal medicine doll that I created for myself last year when I first moved to the forest and now she lives with Alice and is working her magic across the oceans. I feel this doll helped me to grow stronger and more resilient in the forest - I wonder what she is sharing now?

I'm so happy to be involved in this collaboration with Alice!

A Doll for Alice Savage

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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.

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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

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Meeting My Spirit Dolls through Alice Savage

Stag Woman Sacred Familiar doll drawn by 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

MossWitch by Alice Savage

Stag Woman spirit doll by Sacred Familiar

Stag Woman spirit doll by Sacred Familiar

Death Doula - midwifing the dying