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for the lovers of Earth

Bjork by Laura Levine
Bjork (1991, Woodstock) - I'm often asked if I have a favorite photo and I can say without hesitation that it's this one right here. All of the elements combined to make it one of my favorite moments as a photographer, and it happened purely by chance. I met Bjork the night before when she invited herself along and joined some friends and me for a late night pool game up in Woodstock. At the time she was upstate recording with the Sugarcubes. I was already a fan, and had always wanted to photograph her, and when I asked her if I could she said sure. Just like that. We'd been talking all night, she trusted me, and I guess that was all she needed to go on. 

The next day I picked her up and brought her to my friend Ben's house, who helped out as my assistant for the shoot. I knew he had a lovely forest glade behind his house and I thought the setting fit in nicely with her freespiritedness. As happens often in shoots I've done (don't ask me why), she gradually began to to shed her clothes. I picked out a couple of oversized leaves (a la Eve in the Garden of Eden) and she stepped onto a large boulder. At that moment it started to drizzle, she stood on tippy-toe and opened her mouth to catch a raindrop on her tongue. Click. 

Having spent a long time talking with her the night before I felt this image really captured her essence - a woodland sprite, a free spirit, playful, earthy, and open . (Some other reasons why this is a favorite? No makeup artists, no stylists, no trendy fashions, no managers, no publicists, no record label politics, no artificial lighting, no gimmicks, no self-conciousness. Just natural light, some foliage, and Bjork.).  Laura Levine

Water for the Magdalenes


Sacred Mountain - Mt Donna Buang, Warburton
Late last week Tony and I went up to the draw water from the natural spring on top of Mt Donna Buang. It was a cold, rainy and very misty day - water everywhere. We were drawing water for our own drinking and cooking as usual but also for our ceremonies. On this day we were drawing for the medicine women ceremony for the Magdalenes to be held this sunday and as always it was a day of strange and magical occurrences. Driving up we saw not one but at least 10 Lyrebirds - a very mysterious creature that are normally hidden in the forest but this day they were so many by the roadside. I feel that Lyrebird is the totem for the Storyteller and Memory Keeper - they have recorded memory of hundreds of sounds and calls of the forest - some of these calls no longer exist because these animals no longer exist.
At the spring it was icy and I took out a plant wisdom doll carrying in her basket 3 acorns and places her under the fern tree at the well. I gave her to the spring and left a little note with her to tell whoever found her that she was theirs to keep. Afterwards we drew 'rock water' from a place where water pours from the rock and moss wall. Rock water is sacred water most often used by anyone making water essences and it will be used in our ritual and ceremony at Femmina Unbound. Finally we visited the waterfall and she was in full raging flow!
On Sunday Tony and I attended a day to honour 3 year anniversary of the passing of his father and on our way to meet his family I got a message from a beautiful man and his little boy saying they were the ones who had found the wisdom doll. The little boy was so excited and I was very happy that she came to live with them. His father told me that they too love the spring and visit often making sure to clear any rubbish and send good energy into this sacred site. 
The water from this spring is the most purest and life-giving gift you can give yourself and it's free! Water is life and a gift from the Earth to us. Clean water is our birthright and I encourage you to search out these sacred places and drink from them again.