The Eye of Beauty looks with Love upon Perfectionism

Here are some recent encaustic beeswax paintings I created in between packing. Making art is a beautiful way to balance the 'busy-ness' of moving and a great cosmic escape from clearing the mundane clutter! The painting above was one that I did not feel anything 'happened in' at first and almost threw away. What I love about painting with beeswax is that very often you are asked to deal with your need for perfection. When I placed the image on our Facebook page and asked readers to tell me what they saw, it opened up a whole new world. I love looking through different eyes - you can read the comments here and I'd love for you to share what YOU see.

We are looking forward to offering encaustic workshops from our new nest in Sherbrooke Forest. How clearly the bee will speak in that forest sanctuary! The details for this workshop will be available very soon xx

The Dreamer and the Dream - Kate Bush in her first interview

Forest Spirit Woman

Fox and Rabbit, Forest Spirit Woman Driftwood Sculpture Shaping Spirit on Etsy

Animal Digital - Chris Saunders

Future Totems - YoAz

Swan Blessing Story - Child of the Forest

The Barefoot Princess - Igor Oleynikov

Today I share the Swan Blessing story written by Kat or Kat-Fox as I call her. I never could really put my finger on why I called Kat that until her Swan Blessing and then I got a glimpse of the beautiful, wild girl that had been bound by a Past Life Vow of Silence. This is Kat's story of the untamed child, the child of the forest and how this wild knowing, our intuition, can be taught through nature, through the land itself. Even in present times, the self-taught child, the one who is comfortable playing on her own, or the child who communes more easily with trees and animals is still feared and misunderstood. Thankfully we are waking up. We are opening and I hope that we will find new ways to welcome the wild child, to learn from her before it is trained or tamed out of her. Those secrets of the wild world. It is time to lift our Vows of Silence, to break the ties that bind our voices, our unique expression. For all who feel this ancient restriction, particularly around the throat chakra, find ways to speak and write and sing your words - let the wise trees be your first audience.

She emerged from the waterfall and stepped towards me. Her skin was glowing olive smooth. She had toiled, but not in the sun. Her green almond-shaped eyes held the memory of a smile. Her white fine hair cascaded in waves down her back. She trod lightly, silently, her back was rod-straight.She led me back to her home, the entrance of which seemed to be an invisible knot in the trunk of a tree. Her home was without edges and warm with dusk light. A wooden table with two chairs, a few pots and pans, a kettle. Little but ample. Herbs drying in bunches hanging from the ceiling.Tea poured, she took my hands and looked into my eyes. My breath seared my throat as she took me back… 

A small girl, about eight years old, playing. A perfect circle of light gleaming down through the tall trees onto her honey curls. She lay on her belly, her feet languidly searching for clouds oblivious to the butterflies dancing between them. Her play was serious, focused: naming the plants for herself, steeping them in her kettle, experimenting.Barefoot she ran, darting between knees and dodging heavy baskets, through the dark clouded marketplace. She headed precisely to her destination, barely detected but not oblivious to predators. She approached his tiny table quietly, head bowed respectfully. He was small and gnarly, and benignly nodding his ragged grey beard towards the tiny bundle of sticks at the end of the table. She pawed them nimbly, knowing they were exactly what she had been seeking. With silent thanks, she turned and disappeared into the darkness, flying towards her clearing, eager to progress her research.A dark cloud loomed across those almond-shaped eyes as rivers streamed down our cheeks…They came for her: tall, black, hooded, angular. Grabbing her roughly by the arms, lifting her feet from the earth. She kicked and screamed, writhed and bit, like a wild wild thing. She summoned the image of her protectors: young, love, glowing. They were far far away, and could not help her now. The marketplace table of the gnarly old man was empty, his chair smashed on the cobblestones.
Times were changing.All that she had done, all that she had been, was wrong. A threat. Her solitude, her freedom, her enquiry, her craft: unacceptable. And those hooded ones: they did not even know half her story. 

Twenty years…
That wild girl who had run like a fox and communed with the trees in a circle of light now lived somewhere stone, cold, square. Her back was straight. Her mouth firmly closed. Her eyes hooded, downcast. Her wild hair pulled back, lank and dull. She walked with muted purpose alongside those long cold walls. She washed, she swept.At night she lay staring up at the blank ceiling, that thick coarse rope biting into her back. Gritting her teeth she vowed that she would never completely dampen her flame, that ember in her womb, that spark of curiosity, that life that had been hers. One day, she knew, she would walk right out of that place. Until then, she would not speak, she would not sigh, she would hardly breathe.And then, that day came. It was all over.
Her chin rose, eyes meeting the horizon…The gates of that forbidding place were prized open by forces completely unknown and entirely irrelevant to her. Without loyalty, without regret and without rancour, she walked as she always had done: unseen. In the midst of the chaos. Right out of those front gates. As the walls crumbled around her. She walked.No direction but forward. She walked and walked and walked. Never looking back and never to return.The place that she found was not so different from that clearing where she had played as an ancient child. She made her home, stripping bark and twig slowly from one gnarly old man tree, taking her time, open to the gifts of the forest spirits and the seasons.She looked me straight in the eye. She saw me and showed me what I needed to see…
That vow of silence: it bound her forever. It was a vow she had been forced to take, symbolised by the rough rope binding her waist, constricting her breath, knots slicing into her spine. That ache would never quite leave her.The daughters of the well emerged from the waterfall and ignited the rope. It disintegrated to ashes, which dispersed on the breeze. We saw that we were now safe to nurture that ember, the flame that had been dampened for so many years. We understood we would nourish it back to crackling roaring life, one golden feather-like filament at a time.
This was our work.My almond-eyed olive-skinned crone took my hands for one last time.
She was safe. She welcomed fatigue, hunger, cold. She could endure.She lived alone and invisible to most. She was never lonely.And she healed, those tiny ones had started to arrive. Tiny as she had once been. Wordlessly peering into her window, gratefully pawing a lovingly-bundled collection of sticks carefully placed on the table within a small arm’s reach, knowing that it was exactly what they had been seeking. 

Post script: I have had a lower disc injury in my back, the origins of which has – up until the Swan Blessing – always been a mystery to me. 

Post post script: Whilst undertaking the Ninth Wave Water Rites to complete the Swan Blessing, I received my calling: to heal with words. Daughter of a nurse and an educator, gifted with words, I finally saw my life’s true purpose. The vow of silence, the prohibition on healing, had been broken. For this, I will be eternally grateful to Julia and Tony, and the daughters of the well.

Thank you Kat-Fox or Kat McNally as some of you may already know her, through Kat's writings and blog: I Saw You Dancing.  Tony and I are thrilled that you received the message about your true vocation in your Swan Blessing. Love to you Wordsmith and we can't wait to read and hear your beautiful healing stories. The fox is free xx

Platypus Dreaming at Olinda Falls

Well we have almost finished packing and our new home in Sherbrooke Forest calls to us daily, nightly...in our dreams. We have received messages and signs from the King Parrot and Magpie about wisdom to learn and share from that magical green world. A day ago we journeyed up to Olinda Falls and sat with the spirits of the land. We sat and meditated by the waterfall and I felt such a strong urge to thank. As I was thanking the water, the rocks, the trees, the aboriginal ancestors of this majestic land, I was taken to a cave in the mountain. Tony was greeted by the breath of Mother Earth, a swirling circle of energy that whispered: welcome.

We will be opening our doors on Saturday 9th February on the eve of the New Moon and Year of the Snake with new offerings of ceremony and sessions that we have received over our 'hermiting'. Last year I received the clear message that all we truly need is our body and the land. We look forward to holding sacred space for you to experience the majesty of Mother Mountain.

Can you see the giant platypus in the stone by the waterfall?

Whenever I come to this forest I can feel the spirit of the 'megafauna' the ancient and huge animals that used to live here. I just read that caves often act as 'time capsules' preserving fossil remains of ancient life. To the left of the platypus is the small cave I was being directed to in my meditation. 

Freaks of Nature

Ferns of the Rocky Mountain National Park

I am embracing the term 'freak of nature' - isn't that what we all really are?!! Wouldn't life be so much easier if we realised their was nothing to change about ourselves, try to be, nothing to correct? In our strangeness is our beauty. This psychedelic beauty is a microscopic photograph of the reproductive structures of a fern taken by Igor Siwanowicz and winner in National Geographic photo competition. The beautiful FERN is the plant calling us to move our work and home into Sherbrooke Forest. I am so excited to learn from this plant and her medicine. Now if a plant can be this wild and colourful, couldn't our natural nature be just as strange?

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”

FRIDA KAHLO 

Clear Eyes - New Moon In Capricorn

Natura - Patricia Ariel

Did you feel the shift in energy this morning with the New Moon in Capricorn? Time to get going now. Now is the time for practical decision making and more importantly, active steps to put it into place. I have been sitting in rooms of boxes for the last 2 weeks as we prepare to leave our home in Williamstown and move to Sherbrooke Forest. As much as I am excited to be in that enchanted green world, I have always found the process of moving very difficult. Hence, the sitting in half-packed rooms, suddenly caught up in old journals, letters, memories...as with all big shifts, anything that had been left unresolved in the past was dredged up kicking an screaming to be dealt with. Today is the first day that I have felt calm in the centre of the storm. I know what needs to be done and I have the plans in place to do it. That is the gift of a Capricorn Moon. For anyone still dealing with the tail-end of 2012, I hope that this power-packed fresh New Moon helps you to clear away the clutter.

On our path it is hard to know sometimes where we need to place our focus. We are often standing with one foot in the past and the other in the future - while the present goes unnoticed. No surprise to learn that the present moment is the only time that is real and if we ignore it too long it has a way of shaking us awake! We are going to experience even more change an upheaval in 2013 and we will be asked to shed, release and let go. We are shedding the veils that have kept us blind to our innate wisdom and authentic self. Like the sure-footed Capricorn goat we have a chance this week to climb higher and get some perspective on the journey. But only if we stay right in the present moment, placing one deft foot in front of the other.  With all senses open we become the awakened dreamer.

Charles Allen Winter (1869-1942)

The Nouveau Kiss

The Kiss by Peter Behrens, 1898

Ever since the Venus Occultation last year I have been having a love affair with all things Art Nouveau. It is an artform I have loved ever since I was a child. I feel this is an form in synch with the Divine Feminine and I see a lot of parallels with this new time and the ideals of the Art Nouveau movement such as the honouring of nature. The Kiss by Peter Behrens is an iconic woodcut. Serpentine locks of hair intertwine around an androgynous couple. Androgyny in this period was associated with unbounded creativity and spirituality and we are seeing this explored in art and music and image again. Losing the bindings of gender and flowing into each other - very Neptunian don't you think? 

What I love most of all about the Art Nouveau movement was that it embraced all forms of art and craft. Many artists not only painted but created jewellery, furniture and architecture. Peter Behrens was both artist and architect and was a part of the German Jugendstil Art Nouveau movement. A movement that aimed to fuse art and life and to abolish the hierarchy between the 'high arts' and crafts. This feeling of limitless potential and removal of hierarchy resonates strongly at the moment as the rise of the Divine Feminine is urging us to find new ways to express our creativity that will also support us. As we turn away from cheap and mass-produced products and long to touch the hand-made, we become more discerning in our buying and are reminded again of the necessity for beauty married with practicality and quality. 

My wish and hope is to see younger artists approaching older craftspeople and artisans to learn their skills so that they do not die out and are forgotten. Let's embrace the role of 'apprentice' in many of these ancient crafts.  2013 will be a year for many to find sustainable work, and work that makes the heart sing. I look forward to seeing more blacksmiths, potters and woodworkers - have you been feeling a push to learn these 'earth crafts' again? A Nouveau Kiss for you all, artisans of the future.

Vase, Peter Behrens

Table Lamp by Peter Behrens

Octagonal teakettle of hammered silver, cane-wicker handle by Peter Behrens