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“Gold lion’s going to tell me where the light is…” Yeah Yeah Yeahs

A woman is a shapeshifter, flowing from one life stage to another, just as each season gradually becomes the next. We trace each season of a woman’s life, with all its gifts and challenges, as it resonates with each phase of the Wheel of the Year.

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she embarks on an Underworld journey. Indeed, she will visit the Underworld more than once during the course of her lifetime. This journey may be precipitated by the loss of someone she loves, or by a life-threatening illness, or a grave disappointment in career or craft. When it happens, she feels that all is lost. She is separated from everything she holds dear. She is in shock. She despairs. She grieves. 

I wait for you at the

Dark waning of the Moon.

I imagine every artist creates a self portrait sooner or later, despite their medium or any physical resemblance to the artist recognizable in the final result. After all, as we were manifested at the will of the Creator, we too are innately driven to recreate in our own image, whether by bringing children into the world, creating visual, written or musical art, or simply infusing our life and work with personal energy.

The past few weeks have found me focused on a personal project of connecting to the lunar energies.  As a practicing witch I have worked with the lunar energies regularly for many years.  I have worked ritual, written poetry and offered up praise to Her in all of her phases.  So, it would seem that my connection is very deep already.  The beauty of this Path, however, is that there is always something more that can be learned.  Something new that can be experienced and a deeper level of knowing that can be brought into your work.  

I have been on a mission to fully experience the energies of the Moon in all of her cycles and through the lunation of travel through the Zodiacal Wheel.  Having a good working knowledge of astrology and planetary magick helps this journey, but the intent of connection to the phases of cycle is not dependent on it.  I am also an Air sun sign, so analysis comes more readily than the emotional and feeling nature.  This is precisely why I felt this work would be very productive. 

Hello, my name is Janice and I've recently relearned the importance of getting out into the yard and walking barefoot in the grass. This sounds like the opening statement of a person new to a 12 point program, and it could very well be. I guess I should say I'm a "barefoot grass-walking addict".

I've lived a relatively healthy life for the majority of my (soon to be) sixty years. In fact my doctor once told me as a patient I was boring since I presented no real health issues. Then my thyroid went south, and the Hypothyroid brought along its buddies of weight gain, lack of sleep, hair loss and a host of other symptoms that my doctor never warned me about. He didn't know I'm a bulldog on researching whatever comes into my head to uncover, like an archeologist sweeping grains of sands away from buried bones. I found several accompanying symptoms and at my next doctor's visit gave him the list and demanded treatment, one of these piggy-backing buddies of Hypothyroid for me was Stage 2 High Blood Pressure. From being a normal size 14 I ballooned up to a size 22+ in three or four months. And from a normal BP to dangerously high along with heart palpitations in a short period of time not only physically hurt but killed my self-esteem. I couldn't get up off the toilet without using my arms to lever myself up, and walking up a short set of five steps leading into our house was a project filmed in slow motion. I was totally out of breath by the time I got inside the house. Heat bothered me and sent my heart racing, my sex drive disappeared and I had to force myself to leave the house as depression surrounded me. During the past years of struggling to adjust my life to living with the Hypotension and everything it brought I had also allowed my connection to the Earth slip away. I was miserable all the time, I hurt, I was lethargic, and I felt old beyond my years. It happened like a sneak thief and I didn't realized how lost from myself and my spirituality I'd become. I no longer kept up my altar, no longer celebrated the Sabbats, no longer communed with the trees or even paid attention to the moon.