pathworking

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 Story :: Retrieval of the Dreamer by Lucy Pierce

I love working with artists. It’s always special when you get to journey with someone whose art you admire. This painting, Soulskin by Lucy Pierce lives in my home. Years ago, when I lived in the forest, Lucy visited me to do a pathworking session together in a Swan Ancestral Journey. After her journey, Lucy wrote her recollection of this experience of finding the missing pieces in the form of a poem.

Retrieval

Like an unsung song I have always known,

I have experienced myself to be riddled

with incomplete spaces

and unlived places within.

As though essential clues were still buried,

deep inside the body,

indecipherable codes and locks and holds,

camouflaged and obscure,

deflecting light and attention and love.

And now like an awakened crusade,

I have mounted my stead and bare-breasted I ride,

powerful and fierce and exquisitely soft inside,

into the darkness of my history,

back through the gateways

of my deaths and my births,

eyes piercing the shadows,

anchored within the womb,

my vigilant sentry,

ancient seer, awakened.

The rhythmic stride of my mount unrelenting,

senses strained to their full,

I am retrieving myself piece by piece,

unbinding the vows of my past,

reclaiming the power held captive

beyond the reach of my memory.

I am calling her home to me

She who carries her medicine,

She who hungers to be seen,

She who knows the heart-seed of her purpose,

the unfolding mystery of being home

in the throne-room of her soul.

From between the plump, sticky folds of my motherhood,

my Huntress awakens,

sleek and honed

and dark as the night.

She is retrieving the Dreamer

to the heart of life,

searching for She who sees the vision

and holds within her,

clear and true and easefull

the capacity to respond.

The heavy compass of authority

swinging from the outer to within.

It is time and there is no other path

but this focused reclamation of myself ,

of my vision, my purpose,

my dream, my response,

my authority,

my love.

Lucy Pierce