Woman-Becoming Rites of passage

In my community I co- facilitate two lodges for girls. Birthing these lodges has been a wonderful deepening of my own path. The reason for birthing them was my two daughters, as i wanted a community of women to be there for them as the journey on their path to womanhood. Each of the women in the two circles brings their own unique medicine to the girls. This was my intention for the girls, I wanted them to have the opportunity to hear as many different women’s voices and wisdom as they could. The awakening women here in West Wales have so much to share with the girls. When we sit in council and share with the girls present, it lifts my heart to hear the gifts of wise words that they have for the daughters. The daughters love listening to them and I can see the little lights go on inside them. These are the sparks of their inner flames which will become a fire of their own unique truth and path in life. This inner flame is being fed by each woman in the circle. The inner fire in each girl, which is being fed by our community lodge is their emerging natural self which expresses their medicine. The spiritual quest of teenager-hood is the journey of self-discovery from which the girls will be able to hear and feel their own unique medicine, and be able to give it to the world. So I give thanks for this work and the community of women that are willing to share this journey with our daughters.

My own wisdom which I bring to the girls in our circles, is my medicine work which has shamanic roots and an indigenous heart. My guides work with me to bring this mentoring to girls, helping them to keep their sense of belonging to the land, to have a strong sense of self and connection to their guides and inner truth…working with ceremony and shamanic practices and medicine stories enabling them to stay connected to their inner soul life as they separate and begin to make their way in what can be a culture of soul loss.

I have an animal guide who has come to me to guide me with mentoring work. Recently I have been guided to create something for girls using the medicine of the animal helpers. So I have begun to dream for the writing to come for this project. I asked for help from the animal helpers and for the animal helpers who want to be part of this project to come and share with me.

I am trustee of the Live Earth trust which buys land and gives it back to Mother Earth, and we have our first site which we call the Eartheart. This land has become sacred land and is being re-wilded. We have made a medicine wheel up at the top of the field. It is made from blue stone as the land is situated on the slopes of the site where the bluestone came from in the Preseli hills.

I always feel deeply connected to the Celtic ancestors there and use the medicine wheel for journeying and dreaming.

So for my new project I journeyed in the medicine wheel, and prayed for guidance to be able to write words that would guide girls on their path to womanhood. I want to share this journey with you all.

I was taken to what looked like Siberia or the tundra. I passed herds of reindeer and followed an ice river and a vast forest in the snow. The forest was so wild and deep. I was told that it was the deep heart of the divine feminine. The living, breathing, pulsing life force of raw feminine power. Awesome in its power I could feel its immensity, its pulsing rhythm, endlessly giving and growing. The untamed wilderness, without walls, fences, without domestication. I felt this energy of raw female power surging through me as I journeyed, I could feel my own vibrant life force connected to this wilderness. I felt my untamed heart , my deep feminine instinct and intuition which comes from being truly free and wild natured. The bears came to take me deeper into the landscape of the wilderness, the landscape of the undomesticated female power…into myself. In the awesome nature of the wild feminine I travelled and I saw the faces of our ancestral women from tribal lands. I saw many different female faces from all the native cultures, from the mountains, rainforests, from the bush, from the deserts, from the ice and snow and felt deeply connected to them all. Their eyes were expressing the freedom of living in the wild and being free, of being deeply connected to the spirits of their place as well as their land. These were the wise shamanka’s.

Eventually I came to a cave, inside was paintings of all manner of animals on the walls and there was a young girl sat in the cave wrapped in a bearskin. She told me of the deep connection our ancestors had with the spirit world and the animal helpers. They knew all the animals deeply and the animal’s medicine was deep and strong as they lived free. I sat with this young ancestral girl with her eyes pouring into me the profound reverence she felt for the animals and for all life. I was touched deeply by her strength, insight and connection. She is now my guide for connection to the deep ancestral wisdom and understanding of the animals and there medicine. She is guiding me to feel more deeply, to listen more deeply, to open my shamanic ancestral eyes and to use the book of indigenous knowledge I have been given to help regenerate culture for our next seven generations.

When I arrived back at the Eartheart, I sat and relished the new feeling in my bones, an awakening of ancestral dreaming.

We can still feel this deep feminine instinct inside us , calling us home back to the wild. Our soul less culture which keeps perpetuating a human family suffering from soul loss, is a reflection of the loss of the wilderness, the truly wild places on earth. The wilderness is where we can feel our connection to spirit, where the spirit of the land is strong and we can feel the truth that we are all connected to this wild. It is inside us longing to be expressed and set free. No matter how much our culture tries to build fences and walls inside us and outside us in the natural world, there is a primal call to be set free and to return to living  from the heart, from instinct, from intuition, deep knowing, from our dreams an our medicine and calling.

I give thanks for the wilderness and our native ancestors and I pray for the last remaining native cultures on Earth to be left to be free so we can learn from them. They can help us with the work of returning home. I pray for the last remaining wild places to be left wild before we lose them forever.

If you would like some guidance and help to work with our daughters and for setting up community lodges see my online mentoring courses.

Eartha Love Varda (Angharad)