Pagan Dreamer: Storytellers and Stewards of Her Beauty

Posted on:  Mar 26, 2023 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Pagan Dreamer, Pathwork

Our primal, natural place in the great weaving of life on this planet is not dominion, but sacred communion and protection. Of all of the Earth’s life forms, we have been given the gift of creative expression to give voice to the beauty and wonders of this world.

Open to Nature. See what speaks to your wonder. Give this communion your complete attention. You’re the storyteller and steward of Her beauty, the Earth, our home.

Artist: Lucy Campbell

This is what my deep dreaming tells me.

I wake up in the early hours of the morning, still half in my dreamscape. In my dream, I am writing about the country walk I had taken with my partner the night before.

I record the sensual minutia of the natural world: the slow track of a jet-black snail, with a thin band of shiny, silver slime marking its passage; the nuanced scents of the surrounding forest and farmland with hints of resin, flowers, and sun-warmed earth; the gun-smoke gray of the twilight sky juxtaposed against the rich chestnut of a horse’s coat; and a weighty silence that marks the fading of day into night.

As I slowly emerge from this dreaming, I bring with me a fierce, full-body love and awe that speak to my primal communion with the living landscape, and inspire the writing flowing from my heart onto the blank page.

I invite you into my dream world to experience this fierce, full-body truth for yourself.

Go for a walk or spend a quiet hour in a favorite natural setting close to your home. This can be a park, trail, or green space in an urban setting — anywhere you feel a strong heart connection to Nature.

Bring a journal or sketchbook with you, whichever is your preferred form of creative expression.

Anchor yourself in your body with a few deep, full breathes. Quiet your mind and be fully present to the landscape around you. Take in the sensual details of the wild world: the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of Nature. See what draws your attention and speaks to your wonder. Give this communion your complete attention.

Widen your awareness, open your heart and your body, and then write, draw, or record, in whatever way is free-flowing for you, the beauty before you.

Keep your mind and interpretations out of this. This moment is not about you, but about your capacity to storytell, in words or images, the beauty and wonders of this living, breathing Earth.

When this communion feels complete, put down your journal or sketchbook. Let go of words and images. Sink into your energetic connection to the natural world, your living body to its living body. Take in the sensations and emotions that arise in you, the raw love, joy, and awe that infuse your primal communion with the beauty and wonders of this world.

Breathe this connection into your body; imprint it in your memories; let it change you.

You are the storyteller and steward of Her beauty, the Earth, our home.

Check out Path of She book offerings in the Path Store.

The Imperative of Choice: Choosing Between the Beauty and Beast of Humanity

Posted on:  Nov 7, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Everyday Magic, Featured, Path Basics

The media feeds us an ongoing narrative of the horrors of humanity: political corruption, environmental devastation, mass shootings, to name but a few. Yet our lives are also touched by acts of philanthropy, creative expression and everyday goodness by the bright-souled, golden-hearted people in our midst. Between these polarities, we are left disoriented, torn between repulsion and reverence for these base aspects of our human nature.

Open your consciousness wide to encompass the totality of our human nature. We are beauty and beast. Then choose which of these polarities will rule your life.

Who are we as a species? Are we beauty or are we beast? Does fear or love drive us? What rules our world and our lives – an ethos of domination and destruction, or of nurturance and creation? And what do we make with our pain? Beauty and goodness, or more horror and pain?

I want to reach out and touch your heart. To feel your warm flesh and pulse under my palm. I want to tell you everything is going to be okay. That we can figure this out, we can find our way through the madness and destruction that dominate the headlines, and align ourselves with those that come into this world to spread goodness and beauty.

But I can’t. Because we live in a turning moment, a time of choice between all that we are and all that we can be.

Individually and collectively, we need to stop being afraid, stop judging and stop insulating ourselves from the raw truths of our joy and our pain. And hardest of all, we need to accept that the horrors the media feeds us and the beauty that touches our everyday lives are both expressions of our inner humanity.

In this acceptance, you can come to understand that you are not separate from the beastly and the beauty out there in the greater world. Your life story is woven from the best and worst of your personal history and makeup. And you, like every one of us, were born into and entrained within a collective ethos that produces terrorists, mass murders, poets and philanthropists.

What do you do with your personal pain? What do you do with your gifts and opportunities? Do you make more sorrow and pain for yourself and others? Or do you allow life to teach you, and help you blossom and grow into your true, big, shining self.

It all comes down to the imperative of choice making. In the face of the suffering and joy, and light and shadow of your life story, what do you choose?

Artist: Karina Pavlova

Summer Journey: Nature’s Magic of Beauty and Abundance

Posted on:  Jul 10, 2020 @ 11:00 Posted in:  Sabbats

I reach out to you as Summer deepens into its powers of light and life, and Nature gifts us with its transformative magic of beauty, abundance and goodness.

Your Summer Journey is a revolution in the making, with Nature’s bounty of beauty and abundance as the counterforce to negative mindset of our daily newsfeed.

I reach out to you as I struggle daily with the onslaught of bad news that relentlessly reinforces the mess we’ve made of this world, and the horrors of our destructive ways.

I reach out to you knowing that I’m not alone in my angst. We all sense, deep down, that change is coming at us, hard and fast — change that profoundly matters to our personal lives, to those we hold close and dear, to the oppressed and vulnerable in our midst, to our children and children’s children to come, to our Earth home, and to our very future as a species.

I reach out to you, offering a different voice, and a positive, empowering vision and path of change in the face of the noise and negativity of the daily news cycle that locks us in a mindset of scarcity, fear, and gross imbalances in power, wealth and wellbeing. This outer mindset is just one possibility and path for our human society, and another path, arising from the life-centered ways of the Goddess and Nature, is flourishing outside your doorstep at this very moment.

Come, take my hand, join me as I walk on a fine, sunny July day, following the same path that’s guided my questing feet for twenty years — down a secret forest trail on our land that leads to a tranquil, rural road surrounded by farmland.

The fir trees and sword ferns greet me as I pass, brushing me lightly with their bright green, new-leaf finery. My heart swells at the cry of nesting eagles in the treetops, and I sniff hungrily as I pass the hedgerow of ocean spray. Just out of sight, gardens are in full bloom, with tasty, green produce and plump, sweet berries juicy ripe for the picking.

This Nature’s transformative magic, an antidote and counterforce to the negative onslaught of the daily news cycle, and the madness and stresses of our human society. I’m not hiding out or seeking solace in the natural realm. No, this is a conscious act, a walking transformation, and a revolution in the making, with Nature and the Goddess as my teachers and guides in their ways of life, abundance and goodness.

I reach out from my place on this path and invite you to experience a bit of this Nature magic I speak of. However my story resonates with you, breathe these energies into your body and soul. Let them awaken your own connections to the beauty and gifts of summertime Nature in your part of the world.

You don’t have to live in a rural setting like I do. You just need to step outside your door and Nature is there: in the sky overhead, the earth beneath your feet, the birdsong and insect buzz, and your favorite green space or tree or flower bed; in the fresh, local produce at your grocery store; and the way your body feels when brushed by the wind and caressed by sunshine.

This is no mundane exchange with Nature. Great teachings beckon to you from your sensual, summer encounters with green-growing things, fragrant flowers, melodic birds, fresh-picked berries, warm-wind caresses, and the life-giving promise of sunshine. Simple, powerful, life- and world-changing lessons — abundance is real; life is good; and every living being is beautiful, worthy and essential to the web of life that holds us all.

Imagine these lessons as the foundations of a new, life-centered vision for your life and our shared society: where scarcity is replaced by abundance, love heals our fear, and everyone and everything are valued and supported for their beauty and contribution to our collective wellbeing.

I’m not naive. I know that we can’t heal ourselves and fix what ails our humanity solely through Summer’s visions of beauty, abundance and goodness. Nature, like humanity, has many sides and seasons. Winter brings hardship, scarcity, death and darkness, just as our lives are marked by pain, wounding and the shadow side of our nature. There are potent, transformative mysteries in light and life, and in darkness and death, and our lives and world are a complex weaving of all of these things.

I reach out to you in this post, and in everything I write and offer from the Path of She, from a fierce love and determination that are fueled by hope not despair. I believe in you, in me, and in the countless others that are waking and choosing to do what is needed to mend our souls, reclaim our lives, and help create a wiser, saner, more just and loving human society.

From my own intense, many-years, many-seasons journey of soul, and in my Path of She work with others, there’s one thing I know for sure: that everything we need to accomplish these mighty, daunting, exhilarating, transformative tasks is already here, within us and all around us, if we but learn to seek and source the teachings of the Goddess and Nature in new, powerful ways.

I have created the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess offering as part of a Guided Journey Series through the seasons to help you seek and source the transformative, life-centered teachings of the Goddess and Nature. The Summer Journey includes: a Guidebook (pdf ebook), Journal (pdf ebook), and Guided Meditation (mp3 audio)  that offer an integrated, seven lesson program with wisdom teachings, awareness practice and journaling exercises, and a guided meditation.

I hope this blog post will inspire you to dive deep into your Summer Journey with Nature, whether through your own self-directed pathwork or the Summer Journey: Thou Art Goddess offering.

During these COVID-19 times, when many of us are struggling and in need of spiritual inspiration, I’m offering my Summer Journey at sliding scale prices.

The full price is $16.99.  Use this coupon: summerdiscount to pay 50% of the purchase price. Use this coupon: summergift to download the Summer Journey package for free.

I ask you to pay what you can and to take what you need in support of your spiritual pathwork at this time.

Click here to go to the Path Store.  Add the Summer Journey to your cart, then enter the coupon on the checkout page.

Artwork by: Vincent van Gough

Tale of the Lost Daughter: One World, One Heart, One Breath

Posted on:  Jun 25, 2017 @ 13:14 Posted in:  From the Tale

Photo Credit: h heyerlein on Unsplash

Tale of the Lost Daughter: Like a Pearl

Posted on:  Mar 30, 2016 @ 10:00 Posted in:  From the Tale

 Photo Credit: Joshua Earle on Unsplash