Swan Past Life Story - Unbinding Plant Wisdom

Today I share again with you the moving Swan Past Life story of Nicole Ahava who remembered a time of working closely with plants as medicine. I will always be grateful to Nicole for awakening my own ancestral memory of doll making. It is a path that once re-awakened, is hard to ignore!

We both knew that there was a memory Nicole carried of still needing to hide and work in secret. This is something that many of us feel and it can be very hard to reconcile with only the rational mind. I hope Nicole's story helps all of those feeling this fear to come out of the darkness and share your wise gifts too.

I am walking barefoot through a familiar forest. I come upon the well. I look into the deep pool and see her. She is a tribal woman, with long dark hair and dark eyes. She takes my hand and we cross the threshold, I am there. It is dark, the land is barren.She dances around a fire. I see so much pain inside her. This is a dance of mourning. Her face is full of sorrow as she stomps and writhers around the fire.

She shows me her journey. I see her wondering naked on the bare earth. She is a very small child. There has been a great upheaval and her family has left her behind. She is found by a wise old woman who takes her in, raising her and teaching her wisdom. They walk the earth together. This is where she learns her medicine. Later she is a grown woman she takes me to her village. We are in front of her mud hut with her six children. They are so beautiful. They have very little but there is so much love. She shows me her work with plants making medicine.

There has been great famine, all the people in her village have been driven away from their lands. They now live on barren land, fighting starvation and illness. Her husband has gone to a far away land to work. The women from the village cover their heads as they go to her for medicine and scurry away quickly with her brew hidden in their robes back to their huts. She is living in fear and isolation. She shows me how they come, soldiers, tearing her children out of her arms. They are taking them away, she pleads with them desperately, she vows never to use her medicine again, but they take them all away.

Finally I see her lying on the bare earth, she is old and lonely, overwhelmed with grief. She lets her body go and is instantly free.

I am back in the forest at the water’s edge we are facing each other. I honour her. I understand why she made that vow. She smiles at me. She knows why we are here. It is time to let it go. We hold each other with deep love and she transforms into light she is surrounded and embraced by her family, her children, her husband, the wise old lady and her mother they are all free.

I am standing before the daughter of the well bound heavily. Together we cut the bindings and instantly I feel myself expand, I am free. She takes me into her sacred well, all the daughters are there. I am floating in the sacred well. The daughters are washing away all that burdens my soul. I am cleansed, pure, light and free.

The first time I got an email from Sacred Familiar about the Swan Journey Sessions I knew it was something that I just had to do. I put it aside for a while but the swan medicine continued to call me. It is a very sacred and profound blessing. In this life I was born a healer. As a child I would give healing to sick animals, I would lay in my bed at night and send healing to people. Years later when I began to explore my own healing I became a Reiki master and it all came back to me, but I would find that every time I shared my medicine the energy would get stuck with me or my children would get sick. I could not share my medicine because I was afraid that it would harm my children.

The swan journey really is very gentle as she continues to unfold and expand in my life. There have been many changes I have been able to share freely without fear, I feel as though a channel has been cleared from which I am free to connect and receive more clearly and my medicine is changing, becoming more potent. I extend my deepest gratitude for this journey and to Julia. Thank you.

Nicole 2013

Journey to the Magdalenes

A month ago Tony and I visited the site of the Magdalene Laundries at Abbotsford Convent here in Melbourne in preparation for workshop to beheld there. I have been wanting to visit the site for many years now but always doubted that I could be of any assistance - it always felt like such a huge undertaking. Would us gathering there be enough to help? Over the last year the reminders have grown, particularly with Royal Commission into Child Abuse being launched by the brave detective Peter Fox - some call him 'whistleblower' I call him the brave Fox. I knew that if I did not do something, that the rage and pain I felt for the women and children incarcerated there would only grow - maybe devour me.

When I sent out notice of this gathering, I began to have nightmarish visions and waves of fear moving through me particularly early in the morning. I received another vision to help me understand what I was feeling. I saw a young woman screaming at me and I felt her hysteria. Her hysteria, her madness, terrified me more than anything else. And I recognised it in myself, because it lives so deeply entrenched in the females in my family. We carry strong chords of madness, suicide, depression in my blood line, in our lineage. Many of the women in my family are psychic and Catholic - something that they never seemed to be able to hold together in harmony. And then in the vision I saw this frightening Lilith cowering but still hysterical as someone came towards her to help her. And she became like a small frightened dog who has been beaten too often. I saw the dog bite the hand that wanted to help it and return back to the abuser instead. The dog had lost all of it's natural animal instincts. I saw that this is what happened to the women when we had our ties to ancestral medicine and wisdom cut by religion and patriarchy. We lost our power and knowing of our own spirituality. We lost connection to our instincts and intuition. We no longer knew what was good or bad for us - we had become conditioned. To receive this message was huge for me, it has helped me to understand many of the women in my family, to understand my own poor choices of the past. In that moment, I felt the line of women in my family released and unbound from a belief that we needed to be forgiven.

Tree growing outside the Abbotsford Convent and former site of the Magdalene Laundries in Melbourne

Three nights ago I dreamt of an enormous tree. A tree like the Moreton Bay Fig at the top of this post. I took this photo 2 weeks ago while holding Swan Journey Sessions in Sydney - the place of my birth and family. In this dream I was shown that we are sleeping trees when we have not reclaimed our ancestral roots and gifts. But like a sleeping tree, when we are ready, we can blossom and grow to monumental heights. I received a vision on the morning of this dream and in it was shown that one of the most harming outcomes of religion and patriarchy on feminine mysteries was that it cut the tap root to the Ancient Mother.

When people move trees from different lands without wisdom, they often do not take care to look after the tap root - a root that travels far down into the earth way beyond the reach of the main roots. When they sever the tap root they cut a chord that draws from the deepest part of the Earth and this is vital to the health of the tree. And so when the tree is re-planted in a different environment, even when feed and watered and cared for, the tree never grows in the same way again and in many circumstances, the tree withers and dies. I understood this to mean that we are not dead, our wisdom is not so far removed from us in the modern world & that we can find our way to it again. By consciously creating an energetic tap root back to the healthy ancestors, we can awaken and leave our slumber to blossom fully in other lands and in the present time.

When I felt the gift of wisdom that came when I connected my own tap root back to the healthy ancestor, I was filled with such trust and love for my own way of being in the world again and a healing of my hiraeth, ancestral longing for the mother country of my ancestors. In that moment I felt the waves of fear and sadness I had been experiencing about returning to such a place as the Magdalene Laundries fall away. I felt the power of love to acknowledge, remember and assist the spirits of these women and children rise up. These buildings that held the incarcerated women and children are so superficial - so new in the ancient world. We are stronger than these buildings and false institutions.

I understand fears and concerns but I want you to know that these fears you feel do not belong with us in this time - they are from the past. Whether that be from a recent or distant past - they are past. Whether they are flowing from the wounds of your own blood lineage - grandmother to mother - they are past.

Tree growing in the quadrangle of the Magdelene Laundry compound which has razor wire on the high stone walls around it.

Here long before the convent and cruel Magdalene Laundries - Birrarung (Yarra River) which translates to river of mists and Wurundjeri people, part of the Kulin Nation, traditional custodians of the land and river.

Fear of Persecution - a Witch's Swan Journey

Another beautiful Swan Journey story to share with you today from Palliative Care nurse and death worker, Bec Walker.

I was in a small cottage in the woods, surrounded by small children , an elderly lady was crying as I  kissed them goodbye.  I knew they were coming for me. I knew I was a wise woman and they feared me. I actually felt at peace. I told the elderly woman it would be alright. I was quite young with beautiful long hair.

My next thought was to get away from cottage as I could see the torches in the distance.  I started running through the woods. They caught me about 500 meters from my cottage. My thought then was are my family are safe as I looked back towards the cottage? They had me on my knees with my head pulled back by my hair. I was surrounded by men and could feel the fear in their heart. I was taken under the cover of darkness. It was a lynch mob. A powerful man with the authority was behind the scenes. Orchestrating the outcome. I felt he was scared of my inner power.

The very next thing I saw was a vision of her standing on a pyre. It quite surreal as I stepped out as myself from the future to see my past self on the pyre. I could see a sea of what looked like Pilgrim hats, and a town square. She was searching frantically for someone or something in the faces before her; she knew this was going to happen. There was no hatred in her body, only sadness and compassion, for the people doing this to her. I watched as the tears streamed down my face. I stepped forward and her eyes locked onto to mine. She smiled at me and said with her eyes:  ah good you are here! I have been waiting. My soul felt like it exploded in to a million pieces, it was such a deep and profound connection.Her words to me were: You are free, Have no fear. They cannot come for you in this lifetime. Your family are safe. Be true to your soul and path. With that she closed her eyes and tilted her head skywards. And whispered 'I am ready” to the Heavens. As they lit the pyre. I saw a bright white light come down from above. She was enfolded by light and I could see two beings beside her. The flames had only reached her feet. But she was already free.

Julia thank you for releasing my fear/binding, in this life as a healer/witch/ wise woman. I hadn’t realised that this fear of judgement and persecution had been holding me back. Also my intense dislike of authority makes sense. My past self had no fear; No anger, she accepted it, in perilous times of who she was.  Her message to me was the gift of Freedom, acceptance and walking the path of self truth. No more Hiding.

With Love, Bec 2012