Your Rebirth Magic: Four Transformational Lessons for the Winter Season

Posted on:  Dec 6, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Sabbats

Winter can be an edgy time.  Nature strips itself bare in the face of harsh conditions of darkness, cold, death and scarcity.  These natural occurrences can trigger our primal fears of darkness, death, and the loss and suffering that come with our mortality. Our winter-season spiritual work can also be edgy as we turn inward to the dark, hidden places in our inner landscape, and come up against the painful, vulnerable parts of our life story.

It’s this very edginess that makes Winter one of the most powerful times of the year for transformational pathwork. Winter is the season of the Dark Goddess and Her rebirth magic. From darkness and death, new light and life are reborn. From the dark night of our personal wounding, we reclaim and rebirth our true, beautiful Self.

Here are four transformational lessons for your personal rebirth magic in the winter season.

1. Your personal rebirth magic arises from the depths of your inner darkness.   

Rebirth is a potent magic. It offers profound transformational change that can make your life anew. This magic doesn’t come from an outside source, nor from the things you already know and understand about yourself and your life. Rebirth is a special kind of transformative magic that emerges from the lost, forgotten and denied parts of your life story, secreted away in the dark folds of your inner landscape.

In Winter, Nature reveals the powerful workings of the Dark Goddess’s rebirth magic.  Beneath the outer dormancy and death of the natural realm, the seeds of Spring’s new growth gestate in the dark belly of the Earth. On the Winter Solstice, the darkest night births forth the light of the new solar year. Life and light are reborn from death and darkness.

Together these seeds can illuminate and guide your healing and personal growth in the months to come. When you find and reclaim your wounding, you awaken and reclaim your beauty. Just as life and light are reborn from death and darkness, so too your true beauty is reborn from your deep wounding — this is the personal rebirth magic that can make your life anew.

When you turn to your inner darkness in search of the deep roots of your healing and personal growth, you’re going to encounter your wounded self.  This is the part of you that carries your experiences and stories of loss, pain and sorrow, as well as your personal dysfunctions and tangled emotions related to your wounding experiences.

Our culture teaches us to fear and repress our wounding, and to run as fast as we can in the other direction. Yet none of this works, and will only block and delay your healing and personal growth.

To embrace your rebirth magic is to make an ally of your wounded self. This part of you has suffered on your behalf, and deserves your love and tender attention. As your cherished partner on your journey of soul, your wounded self can guide your way through a painful, limiting past and into a new, more positive and empowering future.

If you truly want to transform your life, you need to learn to cultivate inner silence and emptiness. Profound change, the kind the can make your life anew, happens when you step past the stuff-filled space of what you know, and your busy, noisy mind, into the open, empty space of greater truth and possibilities.

When you achieve this inner emptiness, you also become your own sacred witness — a silent, loving presence that watches whatever shows up in your inner emptiness, with curiosity, compassion, respect and gratitude. The silent witness doesn’t judge, take action or seek resolution.

Though these skills aren’t easy to master, they’re invaluable to your spiritual pathwork, and the ongoing challenges of your everyday life. What happens in this convergence of inner emptiness and sacred witness is transformational magic: whatever you need to focus on in your life, right now, shows up to guide your healing and personal evolution.

4. Whatever shows up is your work of soul at this time.

You are master of your own journey of soul, working at the level of depth and pace that are right for you. Self-care and self-responsibility are essential to your spiritual pathwork. And you always have a choice whether or not to do the soul work that shows up in your inner emptiness and explorations of your inner darkness. But you don’t control what shows up.

Life is meant to be a tricky, bumpy business. Great beauty, wisdom, complexity and resilience can emerge from the depths of our struggles. And sometimes things have to end, to die, for something new to be born. This is just how things are, inevitable, inescapable and essential for our healing and personal growth.

In your rebirth pathwork, honor that whatever shows up is your soul work at this time. Let your wounding and your beauty inform and guide your spiritual journey in the months to come. Expect things to be messy, challenging and confusing, as well as inspiring, breathtaking and life changing. Your life story, everything you’ve experienced, the beautiful and the wounding, matter; it’s the very stuff of your rebirth magic that can mend your soul and make your life anew.

Winter Journey – Your Rebirth Magic: Braving Your Inner Darkness

Turn Inwards ~ Discover Your Rebirth Magic ~ Make Your Life Anew

Let the Dark Goddess and Nature guide you in this season of darkness, death and rebirth magic.

Your Winter Journey includes: two pdf ebooks the Winter Journey Guidebook and Winter Journey Journal, and the Winter Journey Guided Meditation (mp3 audio).

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Walking with the Goddess: Four Ways to Weave the Sacred Feminine Into Your Daily Life

Posted on:  Mar 26, 2022 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Featured, Goddess

Consider for a moment that there are two versions of the everyday: the status quo where you live mostly on autopilot, following your regular routines and the outer dictates of family, work and culture; and the sacred feminine where you live from your deep, beautiful Self outward, connected to your soul-based needs and desires, the rhythms of the natural world and your body, and the self-chosen demands of your outer life.

The sacred feminine speaks to a life-centered practicality: your physical well-being, capacity for joy, the richness of your personal relationships, and the beauty of your connection to Nature.

Artist: Amanda Sage

If you’re like most people, the status quo version best reflects your everyday reality. You may get tastes of the sacred feminine through your spiritual beliefs and practice, and in special circumstances like a weekend retreat. But to live your day to day from this ethos may seem impossible given the hectic demands of the modern world where practicality, not soul, reigns supreme.

The sacred feminine is the feminine face of divinity. She is the Goddess, the love- and life-centered ethos that infuses all of creation, and the sacred matter of your human body and of the living Earth. How does this more esoteric understanding of the sacred feminine translate into your everyday life? And how can you access Her presence on a daily basis?

Though there are infinite answers to these questions, here are four concrete ways you can begin to weave the sacred feminine into your daily life.

1. Listen to and care for your body.

Your body is sacred. It’s the living expression of the sacred feminine and the home of your shining spirit. There is deep intelligence in your flesh and bones that can guide you in what you need to be healthy, present, joyful and connected to the patterns and energies of your inner landscape and the outer world.

Eat tasty, healthy food. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Make time for play, pleasure, quiet and repose.

Pay attention and respond when your body speaks. Discomfort, illness, pleasure and ease, these are the ways your body lets you know its needs. Love and welcome your body’s messages, no matter their form, and let them guide your healing and self-care.

2. Open to the beauty and rhythms of Nature.

Whether you live in a city or the country, every day and each season Nature gifts you with its beauty and bounty. Fresh air, sunshine, moonlight, rainstorms, snow-brushed landscapes, blossoms, green-growing things, birdsong — these things are food for your body and soul, anchoring your material connection to this Earth, your home.

Turn your awareness to what’s happening outside your doorstep in the natural realm. Spend time in your favorite green space. Breathe in the earthy scents. Feel the kiss of the elements on your skin. Look up at the sky. Bear witness to the wild things around you. Heed your responses. What ignites your wonder and joy? What nourishes you? What gives you delight and discomfort?

Practice gratitude. Honor the gifts and miracles of Nature by expressing your thanks in words and deeds. The best gift you can give back is to walk lightly on this Earth by bringing more consciousness to your environmental footprint and reducing what you consume.

3. Believe in yourself and the gifts you have to offer.

The sacred feminine is immanent. She is everywhere and in everything. You’re a part of Her living form and manifest beauty, a miraculous spark of creation, just as you are. With your struggles and faults, this may feel like a stretch to you. But even the hard, messy parts of your life are reflections of your beauty and true potential. Where you find your wounding, you also find your beauty; both are part of your journey of healing and personal growth.

Seek out your beauty and gifts. Turn your gaze inward to your soul-based desires and dreams. Heed the parts of your outer life that give you joy, satisfaction and a sense of achievement. Ask those closest to you what are you best qualities and skills. These are the markers of your beauty and gifts. Name and own them.

Commit yourself to self-love, self-acceptance and compassion. Your life, with its challenges and imperfections, is the vehicle of your evolution in this lifetime. Embrace your beauty and wounding, and let these things guide your pathwork of self-empowerment and wholeness.

4. Bring the very best of your love and goodness to your encounters with others.

Love, from a sacred feminine perspective, is an energetic, magnetic imperative rather than an emotional state; it is the primal desire of life to seek out, create and nurture life. In the face of the widespread negativity in our human society, both in the greater world and our personal lives, we hunger for goodness, compassion and kindness. These very things reflect the best of your human nature and the primal love at the core of your being.

Realize that love and goodness are always options in your encounters with others. When faced with a negative or challenging situation, or when your judgments and worst instincts arise, stop, breathe deep, and ask yourself: what else is true in this situation? Where are the places that draw out your compassion for the other person? How can you tap into your love and goodness to navigate these tricky interpersonal waters?

Practice simple acts of goodness. Goodness can be a smile, a word of acknowledgement, a gift, a dinner, a helping hand, or any kind act that fits the individual and the moment. Drink in your acts of goodness. Feel their impact on yourself and the other person. Let these encounters mend and expand your heart and your capacity for love.

The sacred feminine teaches us that all aspects of existence are interdependent and interwoven. On a practical level, this means change in one area of your life will naturally infuse and affect other areas. So start small and simple, and see where it leads you.

Name the daily practice you’re ready to follow. Make a commitment to this change, knowing that developing a new mindset and habit can be challenging. Pay attention to what works and what doesn’t, and what arises from within and outside of you to support or resist your new behaviors. Do your best and be patient and compassionate with yourself.

In these ways, you’re doing the extraordinary work of walking with the Goddess and finding that sweet spot where the sacred feminine naturally informs and guides your everyday existence.

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

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

Gifts of the Summer Season

Posted on:  Jun 20, 2020 @ 22:41 Posted in:  Featured, Sabbats

The wheel of the year turns to the summer season and the peak in the powers of light and life.  Amidst Summer’s full blossoming — with its luscious displays of wild roses, foxgloves and green leafy canopies, and gardens overflowing onto our supper tables — my island home on the West Coast of Canada is rising up against racism and social injustice in our local community and around the world.

The summer season helps us imagine a better world, arising from the life-centered ways of Nature and gifting us soul lessons of abundance, goodness and beauty.

While Nature reaches toward the light, we humans, most especially those of us with white skin, need to reach into the shadow places in our hearts and collective society to face, heal and transform the systemic violence, oppression and inequality that are the daily reality of our BIPOC neighbors.

As I join my local community in its anti-racism work, and do my own personal work of listening, learning and unlearning the ways in which I’m part of the problem, I also turn to the Goddess and Nature in search of guidance that can hold and inform our deepest soul lessons and help bring a better world into being.

The summer season helps us imagine this better world and choose to align ourselves with its soul lessons of abundance, goodness and beauty. Another path is possible for our human society, arising from the life-centered ways of the Goddess and Nature, and it’s flourishing outside our doorstep at this very moment.

I’m not naive. I know that we can’t heal ourselves and resolve an endemic social issue like racism solely through Summer’s visions of abundance, goodness and beauty. 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 these things.

Yet our world needs to change. We need to change. We need to own, heal and transform our internalized and systemic racism into something better, based on equality, justice, safety, love and worthiness for all.  We need a vision of something different than the status quo: a vision of a unified wholeness, where difference is cherished, honored, necessary for the well-being and thriving of all; a vision of luscious, natural abundance, goodness and beauty; a vision to give us hope, something to aspire to. Nature in Summer offers us such a vision.

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’ve 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 guidance and 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.

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.

A Summer Solstice Teaching: Nature’s Vision of Abundance

Posted on:  Jun 17, 2020 @ 10:00 Posted in:  Featured, Sabbats

Our human world is stuck in a mindset of fear and scarcity. There’s not enough food, water, wealth, power, status, beauty or love to go around. An ethos of scarcity breeds a reality of scarcity, with a grab what you can social order with little regard for our impact on each other or our Earth home. From this miserly place, our scarcity ethos bears the fruit of poverty, social injustice, war, environmental destruction, and the countless greedy, fearful ways we wreak havoc on our world.

The natural realm offers a simple, glorious, counter-ethos: abundance. The wondrous thing is that this abundance exists now; we’re already living within its loving, generous embrace. At no time is this truth more evident than at the Summer Solstice when the Mother Earth lavishes us with goodness and beauty for our hungry bellies and souls.

Abundance is real and solid, woven of the raw elements of sun, soil, rain and seed. It springs from a natural generosity of giving more rather than less.

Bees are busy making honey from the sweet nectar of flowers. Flowers are scenting the air with their stunning blooms. Fruits are dripping from the branches, ripening in the heat of the summer sun.  Farm stalls are overloaded with fresh-picked produce. These things are the gifts of the Earth, given with an overflowing, life-centered munificence.

A little seed blossoms into a whole plant, or a bush, or a tree that proffers a plethora of food stuff and the seeds of future plants and harvests. The pit of a single plum grows into a tree that year after year offers up its fruits for our tables.

Imagine conceiving this same abundance in our human world, where power, worthiness, love, joy and other markers of personal satisfaction and social value are infinite and available for all.

Imagine embracing the notion that we each have gifts to offer, seeds of our best qualities and nature. And that we bring these gifts to the collective table of our humanity in a spirit of generosity and giving more, and only taking what we need in return.

Know that an ethos of abundance breeds a reality of abundance. Though we cannot make these choices and changes for others, we can begin to live this vision of abundance with ourselves, and within our family and communities.  Through our little seeds offering up their fruits of generosity, kindness and abundance for all, change can spread outward, inspiring others to act in kind. And in this way, our little seeds can be the making of a vision of abundance that can heal and transform our world.

Excerpt from: Path of She Book of Sabbats, available in paperback and e-book at Amazon.  Click here to purchase.

Make your own transformative magic for the summer season with the Summer Journey:  Thou Art Goddess. The Summer Journey guides you through seven, integrated lessons that take you into the depths of summer’s teachings of abundance, goodness, self-love and blossoming.

Your Summer Journey includes: two pdf ebooks: the Summer Journey Guidebook and Summer Journey Journal, and the Summer Journey Guided Meditation (mp3 audio).  The cost of this integrated Summer Journey package is $16.99.  Click here to purchase.

Photo Art by June Ferrol