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Swan Blessing Story - The Enchantress Reclaimed

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Ruth St. Denis 1910

Today I share a song of a Swan Blessing story by Lucille who reflects on the journey of the Ancestral Medicine of the Sacred Enchantress. In the rise of the Divine Feminine we are hearing our bodies call and sing again. The Swan invites you to know your own true beauty, to live on this incredible earth deeply, to FEEL again. This is Lucille's story, and I honour her for sharing it with us all. May it assist you on your own journey to release past lifetimes of shame, judgement and fear. Sister Swan you are Beauty!
My soul has memories. They have grown over the years. Burnings, vivid recall. Knowings of persecution, fear, judgement and hate. Triggered by images in movies, words of others, people and their looks of scorn. The word Bitch and the word Witch, only one letter separates them. I have oscillated between empowerment, true intuition and denial, depression and self loathing. Why am I this way? Why can I feel what you feel, even when I don’t want to? Why can I sense what you are thinking, even when I don’t care to? 
My Magic is movement, the beauty of my body. The form and the soft caress of my sway. I entice, inspire and engage the senses. I hypnotise you with my hips. My way is truly feminine, my undulations without shame. We dance, we love and we birth, all from the centre of our hips, the seat of our power, the lips of love. The gateway of desire, passion, life and power. 
Once a blessing, often a curse. They way of the enchantress Witch has been a hard way, our power when suppressed and denied, turns dark. It turns ugly and seeps out, from under the door like an angry thick  fog. Black magic, Sorcery. Hate is powerful, my emotions have caused great pain, unto others but most of all unto myself. 
The way of love and light is easy. The way out of the murk, the quick sand that threatens to eat you up is swift and painless. Those who judge me I now hold a mirror to, those who hate me, I now feel compassion for. Those who don’t want to know what I truly live for, can’t see my passion, desire and need for Magic, I let them go.  Those that come to me for healing, that feel called to be released from the shame of their bodies, from deep sensual wounds that have been carried for generations, I say come. Let me hold you, let me heal you, let me see you for the beauty and goodness that you truly are. Divine, Wonderous, Damp and Sexy. Woman.  
Trust your body! You’ll know when its right, because your Pussy will tinkle with delight.  She will bubble up when the flow is perfect, when you intuition says fly. Use her wisdom everyday, in everyway. 
Let’s take our power back, let’s turn the words around. 
Now I say,
I’m Bitchin, when I’m Witchin. 
The Swan Blessing. What can I say? It was when I came home.
Thank you Lucille, beautiful woman! You can invite the enchantress into your own life through Lucille's classes 'Awaken Serpent', enjoy the many riches she has to offer through her website: www.itsladylucille.com.  And visit her brand new store Cobra Culture!
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There is a light on in the Magdalene Laundries

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In the last 2 months, Tony and I have been making journeys to the Magdalene Laundries preparing the dreaming well for Femmina Unbound at the Convent. And every time we visit we see something that seems to be signaling that we are not alone in our wish to heal this site and the spirits of the women and children here. On one visit we discovered beautiful light sculptures inside the laundries themselves as part of an exhibition called Globelight. As we viewed them in silence I felt it was a powerful metaphor that an exhibition bringing light to this place was scheduled right before the workshop. Some powerful symbology here of the spiral, the spider-web and the wooden pyre crowned with a halo.

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The Grandmothers are Near

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Two nights ago just before falling asleep I saw an old woman with piercing blue eyes appear beside me. She was so clear, her eyes vivid and alive. She held my hands clutched in hers. Her eyes said : I am here. With you. Be strong. You are not alone. 

Here's a virtual movie of a second version of this entrancing 10th century Irish Poem..This version is a translation by the German Celtic language scholar Kuno Meyer (20 December 1858 -- 11 October 1919).

In this version from Ancient Irish Poetry Kuno Meyer has left out twelve quatrains. "The reason why she was called the Old Woman of Beare was that she had fifty foster-children in Beare. She, had seven periods of youth one after the other, so that every man who had lived with her came to die of old age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and races. For a hundred years she wore the veil which Cumine had blessed upon her head. Thereupon old age and infirmity came to her."

EBB TIDE to me as of the sea!

Old age causes me reproach.

Though I may grieve thereat --

Happiness comes out of fat.

I am the Old Woman of Beare,

An ever-new smock I used to wear:

Today -- such is my mean estate --

I wear not even a cast-off shift.

It is riches

Ye love, it is not men:

In the time when we lived

It was men.

Swift chariots,

And steeds that carried off the prize,--

Their day of plenty has been,

A blessing on the King who lent them!

My body with bitterness has dropt

Towards the abode we know:

When the Son of God deems it time

Let Him come to deliver His behest.

My arms when they are seen

Now are bony and thin:

Once they would fondle and caress

The bodies of glorious kings.

When my arms are seen,

And they bony and thin,

They are not fit, I declare,

To be raised over comely men.

The maidens rejoice

When May-day comes to them:

For me, sorrow the share;

I am wretched, I am an old hag.

I hold no sweet converse.

No wethers are killed for my wedding-feast,

My hair is all but grey,

The mean veil over it is no pity.

I do not deem it ill

That a white veil be on my head;

Time was when cloths of every hue

Bedecked my head as we drank good ale.

The Stone of the Kings on Femen,

The Chair of Ronan in Bregon,

Long since storms have reached them:

The slabs of their tombs are old and decayed.

The wave of the great sea talks aloud,

Winter has arisen:

Fermuid the son of Mugh today

I do not expect on a visit.

I know what they are doing:

They row and row across

The reeds of the Ford of Alma --

Cold is the place where they sleep.

'Tis "O my God!''

To me today, whatever will come of it.

I must cover myself even in the sun:

The time is at hand that shall renew me.

Youth's summer in which we were

I have spent with its autumn:

Winter-age which overwhelms all men,

To me has come its beginning.

Amen! Woe is me!

Every acorn has to drop

After feasting by shining candles

To be in the gloom of a prayer-house!

I had my day with kings

Drinking mead and wine:

To-day I drink whey-water

Among shrivelled old hags.

I see upon my cloak the hair of old age,

My reason has beguiled me:

Grey is the hair that grows through my skin --

'Tis thus! I am an old woman.

The flood-wave And the second ebb tide --

They have reached me,

I know them well.

The flood wave

Will not reach the silence of my kitchen:

Though many are my company in darkness,

A hand has been laid upon them all.

O happy the isle of the great sea

Which the flood reaches after the ebb!

As for me, I do not expect

Flood after ebb to come to me.

There is scarce a little place today

That I can recognise:

What was on flood

Is all on ebb.

Kind Regards

Jim Clark

All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2012

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Swan Blessing - Releasing the Vow of the Outcast

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Sylvia Ji - Shapeshifters

On this Full Blue Moon morning I share again with you Kristan's Swan Blessing Story of the Outcast. In her past life, Kristan belonged to a tribe that could not accept the powerful medicine that she carried. In her tribe this medicine was seen as taboo for woman to hold. She was asked to obey or to leave. She chose to say NO to the tribe so that she could say YES to her spirit.


Many of us have experienced similar stories in past lives and in our present lives. We have felt that to truly be ourselves, we must journey alone. Or we have put up with behaviour that hurts us just to stay a part of the tribe whether that tribe is family, society, peers. In this time of the rise of the Divine Feminine we are being called out of the shadows to embrace all of our natural gifts and to release the fear of being rejected and cast out by those who do not understand or accept us. Saying NO when it is right for us is a practice of honouring ourselves. When we release the belief that there was ever anything 'wrong' with us we remember that we are all creatures of the earth - as individual as every animal and plant and an integral part in the wheel of life.

Looking into the waters of the crystal ball of consciousness, I stared and I waited and I imagined I would not see anything. And I saw nothing for what felt like such a long, long time, I was beginning to feel I would not see, that my mind was too strong to allow my soul to show me what I needed and wanted to see

I stayed with prayer, asking and pleading at one moment to see, please let me see  . . .  and then the mists began to clear and I could see a clearing in the mountains, green pine all around, the smell of freshness and soil, and a teepee 

And horses, many horses And then I saw HER, myself in another time By the teepee, the wild life of the mountains surrounding HER  Ah, she was alone, living an isolated life, no tribe, a sadness surrounded herI could also sense an understanding, acceptance of her situation as the best possible outcome for her at that time and place We saw each other, she smiledI could see her deer skin clothing, her turquoise choker with red beads HER long, long braids of dark black hair I could feel HER and I felt a relief that we had met, that the veils had parted and that we could meet I began to track why she was alone in the woods, her only communication with the forest life; the birds, woodland creatures, trees, the natural world who heard her and loved her 

A new vision appeared
I found myself within a tribe of teepees A fire A Father, a Chief at the door of his teepeeAnd a Mother and more children (my siblings) sitting at the door of her teepee I stood by my Father, the Chief as he asked me again if I would do what was expected of me
and again, the 12 year old HER (me) said NO
I would NOT 

I was banished from my tribe 

For being who I was For speaking who I was For saying NO to what was not true for me I caught the eye of my mother and she caught mine sadness but understanding i saw there
and in my father too, not as cheif, but as my father a sadness and again an understanding
And away SHE went, alone, to live a life of isolation, to be herself
Again, I find myself back at HER teepee This time we connect, we stand in a pool of water, a water fall, falling behind us The vines from below come up, writhing and cover her, strangle her, snake like she is bound I connect with HER, I cut with my teeth the binding reedy vines I free HER She smiles at me, she becomes as of light and as a shooting star Returns  

The wounding: I will be rejected, cast out, banished from my tribe if I am myself, authentic and truth speaking, if I say NO to what does not feel right I release this binding, this wounding as I bite and free the vines of that lifetime  

The blessing: authentic, true and free, I express myself fully, I am my actualized self, accepted, loved and cherished by my tribe, now and for eternity


Thank you Kristan Read, for sharing your beauty, strength and truth. Kristan is a Shamanic Midwife, Teacher and crafting creatrix extraordinaire! You can experience Kristan's inspiring medicine for yourself through her work at www.atmypractice.comand www.thecrafthive.com