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The New Teachers - Starlady

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Starlady and Mary


Last night I watched 'Queen of the Desert' one of the warmest, joyful and hopeful documentaries about community worker and hairdresser, Starlady and her work with young Aboriginal girls in communities in Central Australia. If you missed it, it is on again this Wednesday night on ABC2. Too much love for Starlady - smiled the whole way through. This is the new humane.

ABC: Opening Shot - Queen of the Desert

Queen of the Desert takes us on the road with the flamboyant hairdresser trainer and youth worker Starlady Nungari.

Starlady's hair salons began in the indigenous community of Kintore in 2002. Armed with only a bottle of bleach and a pair of clippers, it was a big success. No wonder - hair has always been important in Aboriginal culture. This first renegade salon sparked an idea - what if Starlady started hairdresser training for young people in remote communities right across the Central Desert? Starlady spent five years in Melbourne studying hairdressing and make up then returned to Alice Springs with just a few hundred dollars and a dream. It was a big gamble. The desert is harsh and cultural traditions stand strong; not everyone lasts long out here.

Initially some employers were skeptical about how Starlady might fit in. Having proved them wrong she now drives thousands of kilometres across the desert taking her mobile hair workshops to some of Australia's most isolated teenagers.

Director: Alex Kelly
Producer: Josephine Wright

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Encaustic Art Kits - Last order for the year

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Encaustic Oracle - She Speaks to the Eye of the Dolphin
Julia Inglis 2012
Last week I sold out of all beeswax encaustic supplies and have just received 2 more orders for the Encaustic Beginner Kits. So I will make one last order for the year for Beginner Kits ($115 plus postage) and also a full range of colours and papers. If you would like to order a new kit or supplies to take you over Christmas, please get in touch before Friday. Bee well, Julia x
Encaustic Oracle: Crow Mother
Julia Inglis 2012

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Eclipse Balance Sessions

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9th Wave Water Rites for the Eclipse

Last week I created an essence holding both Black Swan and Frog Medicine to be used  in a Self-Blessing Water Rite activated at the Solar Eclipse New Moon in Scorpio. I am over the moon with this particular essence - it's energetic presence is so profound. I journeyed deeply with me Celtic ancestors and the water elementals to create this water essence to be used in beautiful self-blessing rites. We are heading for the Lunar Eclipse next Thursday 29th November and for some this Eclipse period has been extremely testing and challenging. To assist in helping to release all energy no longer needed and to create flow and space for what is birthing in this new time, I have created Eclipse Balance Sessions to be held over the next 8 days. 

Eclipse Balance Sessions:  One Hour - $100

Tues 27th Nov: 11am, 1pm or 3pm
Wed 28th Nov: (Eve of the Lunar Eclipse) 2pm, 4.30pm 
Thurs 29th: (Full Moon Gemini Lunar Eclipse) 3pm, 4.30pm, 6pm
Sat 1st Dec: 12.30 and 2pm

In these sessions of balance and renewal you will receive a reading into the current energies and the Eclipse season is asking of you at the moment as well as a shamanic balance and gift of the 9th Wave Water Rites. We will be working with Black Swan & Frog Medicine to remove and cleanse your spirit from the deep memory of shame and guilt carried in the wound of the Divine Feminine. It is time for us all to sing and dance and in BEAUTY.  If you are feeling the heavy burden of energy that is coming up to be released at this potent season of ECLIPSE I encourage you to come and receive this deep and gentle release of the 9th Wave Water Rites.

9th Wave Water Rites Self-Blessing Essence and Ritual:

$25 (Free with an Eclipse Balance Session)

You may also purchase your own bottle of the 9th Wave Water Rites Self-Blessing Essence and Ritual instructions to be performed over the Lunar Eclipse period. This potent essence was activated at the Solar Eclipse New Moon in Scorpio 14.11.12 with Black Swan & Frog Medicine. Created in hand-drawn natural mineral spring water from the wells of the Wombat Forest in Victoria & organic plant essence of Blackthorn Flower. Self-Blessing Water Rites for women to cleanse and remove energy of shame and guilt or wound of the Divine Feminine from this life and past lives. Restoration of trust and knowing in the beauty, power and grace of  being Woman.

Oceans of love for the unveiling and receiving of your True Spirit, Julia x

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The Written Word - Swan Blessing

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In the Word Wood by David Wyatt

The power of our Word in our lives is immense. And so too is the way we express our words in written form. I have long been a fan of hand-written letters. I love looking at the hand-writing of others and I enjoy the physical movement of writing by hand. Almost every morning after waking from dreaming I write for at least an hour - just for myself. I have a little ritual of making a cup of tea, choosing a favourite pen, gathering my journal and my Tarot cards and then settling Rory and I comfortably on the bed. This ritual and the time taken for myself afterwards is precious to me because it is so slow, quiet and almost in a dreaming state - a beautiful reverie. It is in these writing hours that I have learnt the most about myself, decoded my dreams, healed the past and heard the whisperings of my spirit. Writing, myth & storytelling are my medicine.

Rory my writing companion
At the end of The Swan Blessing I leave the room so that the client can have a quiet moment with their spirit to write by hand a new truth that they wish to live by. This truth is a replacement of the binding energy of oaths or vows that we have lived by in the past. Sometimes this truth, reached after journeying with the Swan is a direct flip or opposite of the sacred oath made in the past life. For instance, someone who had vowed to protect the tribe at all costs, would hear their heart create a new truth such as: I honour my spirit first and care for those I love in the best way I can. This is a removal of a once heavy vow to always put others before ourselves and to often carry great shame and guilt after lifetimes of not being able to protect everyone we love. Someone who had vowed to never share their gifts of healing again in a past life, may hear the new truth and write: I am free to express all of my gifts and talents. 
Last week Tony and I journeyed with a beautiful woman in her Swan Blessing and when we returned to the room she told me that something remarkable had happened. When she went to write her new truth, she began to write it in a very delicate and old-fashioned script. She remembered that this was the way she used to write as a child and that when she started a new school she had been scolded and demanded to write in a more childish way - to print her words like the other children. She had to lose her beautiful writing voice and learn to write in another. I was so happy to see this personal and beautiful mode of self-expression returned to her after more than 30 years. 
Swan was sacred to the Bard: the one who healed with words. The Bard honoured this totem by wearing a cloak made of Swan feathers. In these changing we times we are finding our truth, our voice again, some of us a rewriting history and totally reinventing ourselves.  I encourage you to write your words down in your own hand and if you can develop a writing practice that becomes a meditation, even for just 10 minutes a day. In that short space of time you will come to know the art of your unique handwriting again. Perhaps you come may come to love this practice of being the scribe for your own spirit so much that the union of pen and hand creates a key to open the door to your own mythic story. 
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Return of the Wise Woman

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In The Swan Blessing sessions we are seeing the return of the Wise Woman, the Knowing Crone, the Mystic Elder. SHE is here to take her place of honour and respect again.  Here is the Wise Woman Carmen Maya of Sacramonte in Granada, Spain reading in her cave in 1949. Photos taken by: Dmitri Kessel via The Gypsy Chronicles.  

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The Ghosts of Sanatorium Lake

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Two days ago Tony and I went to draw water from the wells in the Wombat Forest to create new essences next week at the powerful New Moon Eclipse. On the way home we were drawn to head up  to Hanging Rock country on Mount Macedon and discovered an area that we had not visited before. Sanatorium Lake is named after the Sanatorium that was built in the forest at Mount Macedon in 1899 for sufferers of tuberculosis. The sanatorium burnt down in 1910. As we walked amongst the trees there was a serene and peaceful presence here, it made me wonder what this place was truly called before the very European and victorian name of Sanatorium was applied... in a couple of weeks I will return with my beautiful shamanic sisters to journey into the land to hear the name it had before the last 100 years. Love to all of the ghosts at Sanatorium Lake and to the ancient spirits who have dwelled here for millions of years before.