The Path Within - Last Tarot Course for 2011

Hello Everyone,

I have just 2 places left in the final course of The Path Within. This circle will open on Full Moon, Monday 12th September and finish up at the ancient earth festival of Beltane on 31st October. This group will be very small - strictly limited to 6 participants only so that we can work deeply and will be the last time that I offer The Path Within for 2011. 

If you feel called to study the Tarot as a tool for creating healing, to reconnect to nature and to open up a direct pathway of communication with your Higher Self, please let me know,

Warm Wishes,

Julia

Spring is so close... can you feel it?

Encaustic Art - The Forest Oracle

Some new additions to The Forest Oracle we are creating. What do you see within?

Song To The Siren - Sinead O'Connor

Julia Margaret Cameron

'I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, 
and at length the longing has been satisfied.'

Julia Margaret Cameron

'Annie my first success'

Ophelia

Pomona (Alice Liddell - the real-life Alice in Wonderland as a young woman)

Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (a photo he referred to as The Dirty Monk!)

Julia Jackson (niece of Julia Margaret Cameron and mother to writer, Virginia Woolfe)

Vivien and Merlin (featuring Julia's husband Henry Hay Cameron) Photographs illustrating Tennyson's Idylls of the King

Vivien and Merlin (in front of 'the hollow oak' carried in from Tennyson's property next door)

Actress Ellen Terry at the age of 16 in 1864

Sinéad O'Connor 《 thank you for hearing me》live

Void Pisces Moon Soundtrack

Void Moon in Pisces - Dream a little Dream

From this 6.30pm this evening until Wednesday 10am, there is a very long Void Moon in the sign of Pisces. This is a particularly dreamy and potent time for meditation, dreaming, creating and drifting in to other dimensions. Reading Tarot for yourself and others is a good idea at this time as it is a highly intuitive and psychic period - especially if you are Pisces. Last Friday I picked up my 'Reverie Harp' from the very lovely and talented Peter Roberts. I am looking forward to making friends with this beautiful new instrument in tomorrow's Neptunian dreaming. 

May your dreams be sweet.

Healer, Mystic, Creatrix - Women's Course in Celtic Spirituality

Hello Everyone,

I hope you had a beautiful Full Moon in Aquarius. We are still experiencing Mercury in Retrograde so I hope this is not causing too many obstacles or problems for you all - check and recheck all contracts and financial forms (on the weekend I read that thousands of people had filled in their Census forms online and without pressing 'send'. Can't get more Mercury Retrograde than that!). And of course please remember to back up your computers.

This week we are back after a relaxing break where we spent time recording our new guided meditation CD: Beyond the Ninth Wave and creating new plant essences combining Sacred Water from wells here in Victoria and Findhorn in Scotland (you can read more about that here). I will be using these essences and sacred water in private healing consultations, Celtic Women's Course: Healer Mystic Creatrix and in our Spring Equinox Circle: Healing Waters, Sacred Wells where we will be donating all funds again to the Koalas (Water Animal Totem in Australia) at the Southern Ash Wildlife Shelter (www.samthekoala.com.au).

In 3 more days we will be passing beyond the Ninth Wave, the mythic wave that takes you beyond this world and into the Celtic Otherworld. In the five weeks that we will meet together we will develop healing and intuitive abilities to help us to heal and balance the Five Elements and the Seven Chakras or energy systems of our body as well as learning to read with oracles, connect to Animal Totems, Spirit Guides and Ancestral Wisdom.

Week 1 - EARTH: Returning Home, Travelling Beyond the Ninth Wave

Goddess: Rhiannon the Sovereign, Airmid Goddess of Healing and Herbcraft

Tools: Healing with Stones and Plant Totems 

Week 2 - WATER: Sacred Wells, Healing Love and Creativity

Goddess: Beg the Wisdom Keeper, Vivienne - Lady of the Lake

Tools: Energy Healing, Oracle Reading, Water Blessing

Week 3 - AIR: Oran Mor, Wisdom, Past Lives and Creating a New World

Goddess: An Cailleach the Crone Mother, Arianrhod the Silver Wheel

Tools: Shamanic Healing, Ancestral Totem, Past Life Regression

Week 4 - FIRE: Building Fire, Tending to our Sacred Flame

Goddess: Brighid the Exalted One, Scathach the Warrior Queen

Tools: Animal Totem, Candle Magic, Healing Movement

Week 5 - ETHER: You Are We, Embodying the Celtic Goddess

Goddess: Danu Mother Goddess of the Tuatha, Sovereign Queen

Tools: Rites of the Sidhe, Channeling Messages from the Goddess and your Guides

I have 2 places free in this Celtic Circle of Healing. If you feel this one of these places is for you, you can phone me: 0421 249 183 or email me: julia@sacredfamiliar.com.au Please let me know as soon as you can so that you have time to prepare. 

Warm Wishes for the Journey, Julia

Escape into Life by photographer, Rodney Smith

Sacred Waters, Healing Wells

Ten of Vessels (Water) - Happiness The Wildwood Tarot

Over the last 3 weeks Tony and I have been having a break to rest and play - I call this 'filling the well'. Playing and resting is an important way to tune into the element of Water, an element that helps us to bring flow and balance into our relationships, creative works and our own healing.  During this break I have been preparing for our new course on Women's Celtic Spirituality and so it's no surprise that I have been working deeply with this beautiful element that was so important to the Celts and to the Goddess. In this course and in the Spring Equinox Healing Waters Circle, we will be working with blended essences created from ancient and sacred wells of Findhorn in Scotland, Findhorn Flower Essences and the natural healing mineral springs from right here in Victoria.

This week Tony and I spent time in the Wombat Forest collecting water from the healing mineral springs around Kynteon, Trentham and Lyonville. Central Victoria has more natural mineral springs than anywhere in Australia and they are free for us all to use. Although always known to the local Aboriginal tribes in these areas, they were found by settlers during the gold rush in the mid-1800s. Very quickly these natural springs became centres for healing and well-being, for bathing and for drinking and today some of the pumps are still housed in beautiful victorian rotundas. My favourite is the Lyonville Spring which seems to magically appear in the middle of nowhere in the Wombat Forest with nothing around for miles but trees, trees, trees...

While researching the history of the mineral springs I came across these evocative photographs of groups enjoying the springs and also this hilarious 'professional opinion' from 1868:

A 'professional opinion' given in 1868, claimed that Victorian mineral water was beneficial "in diseases peculiar to young girls with general debility" and "for gentlemen who have lived rather too freely".

Kyneton Mineral Springs Pump

Kynton Minerals Springs Pavillion

Trentham Falls

Collecting water from the rocks at the top of Trentham Falls

The road to Lyonville Mineral Springs

Stairs leading down to 'the eye' of the minerals springs trench

A lovely gift of sacred water for our new essences and water blessing New Moon workshop

The Lyonville Spring pump in it's little home in the middle of the bush