Imbolc and aquarius new moon blessings everybody. I have made my Bride's cross today because I am teaching a workshop on February 1st, when I will burn last year's in the fire. It's such a beautiful practice to go and gather the rushes from the pond and weave them together while singing to the spring maiden as she gently glides across the land, reflecting on how much has changed since you wove your last one. To honour Brigid in this way means her blessing will be on your hearth the whole year through. This year has brought infinite joy and wonderment and next year I will be making my cross with my sweet helper who will no doubt try and eat the rushes, if memory serves.
The heart-womb river
In every woman is a river that flows between the heart and the womb. In the original design of this connection, women conceive the desires of their heart and send those desires down to the womb to be gestated and birthed.
The woman can also receive the womb's wisdom up to her heart about her dreams-- the womb might say no, not right now. Or yes, but this needs to be birthed first.
How this connection is used in our modern world is to send pain down from the heart to the womb to be stored energetically, sometimes this energy can take physical form, and there may be a resistance to hearing the truth of the womb, who keeps getting louder. Then the connection becomes stuck and stagnant through misuse.
The beautiful thing about the womb is all she asks is that we listen. Sometimes during energy work you can feel the womb bursting to speak, and when you invite the woman to listen, the womb immediately changes energy. A daily practice of opening the heart-womb river can transform your life as you receive insights, messages, your manifestations speed up and unfold in their perfect time.
A heart and a womb in alignment is how a woman co-creates with the divine.
You can learn more about activating the heart-womb river in my online courses Sacred Womb Journeys and The Medicine Wheel of the Womb, and through my one to one offerings in South Wales.
Your womb is a mirror
Your womb is a mirror.
In the Australian Aboriginal tale of rainbow snake, there are two sisters. One gives birth and the sight of her blood flowing causes her sister to spontaneously menstruate, at which time they are both engulfed by the rainbow snake who takes them into the psychic watery underworld. In another version of the tale they make entwined rivers with their blood which summons the snake.
I can't remember the amount of times my womb has opened during a birth or directly after I've returned home. Often I have questioned our modern practice of fertile women birth tending, because traditionally it would have been maidens and crones holding this rite of passage. Women who would not spontaneously bleed in the presence of blood.
One of the biggest predictors of whether a woman will conceive is if the women in her friendship group or at work are pregnant. When I worked in a coffee shop we used to joke it was the office chair, but really our wombs were mirroring each other. It makes sense, historically we could have nursed each other's babies when needed, could have moved through the rite of passage together... Or maybe these are groups of souls agreeing to come down together.
I don't think it's a coincidence my own baby entered my womb in the month that I attended a birth and a baby blessing.
In the Yurok Native American tribe the story goes that the women used to menstruate together, where they would dive deep into a lake to retrieve precious shells that would increase their abundance. Whether you believe it was a literal lake or whether it refers to the potent psychic powers of the menstrual state, it doesn't matter.
If a woman was out of sync with her sisters she would sit under the full moon and ask to be aligned. We now know that exposure to bright light around the full moon causes menstruation with the new moon.
Premenstrual tension only exists in industrialised societies that have no spiritual beliefs surrounding menstruation or ritual to mark it as a time of rest and reflection, and women who experience PMT are more likely to have male partners living with them, children and full time jobs. At this time we lose the ability to gaslight ourselves that we are fine with our lives and our needs are being met. The womb screams as she mirrors our true feelings back to us.
When we go on our womb journey, we reclaim ancient wisdom that has been lost to us - the insights from the psychic depths of menstruation, consciously releasing from the womb, the ritual that meets a fundamental need for wholeness. The cosmic mystery of it all that mirrors the moon and the wombs of other women.
You can work with me one to one or through my online courses Sacred Womb Journeys and The Medicine Wheel of the Womb.