Beltane Blessings!

It is the time of the Blossoming, and all the green lands are celebrating the return of new life in abundance and beauty. The sap is rising and tonight we will leap the sacred Beltane fire to bless all we love and hold dear, to bless the commitment of love relationship new, old or renewed, and honour the beloved within. We will dance around the Maypole binding promises and wishes into the colourful weave of ribbon and movement and send our prayers of Love and peace out into the 9 directions of the sacred wheel.

 May the joyous radiance of Love bring us the softening of places in us that would hide or stay closed to self love, grand us all our heart’s desire and bless us with the gifts of life lived fully in service to each other and the MotherWorld this Beltane!

Italy

The blessed energy of Beltane is always an exciting time for me with many projects and courses taking off or initiating. This month I have just returned from a wonderful series of workshops in Northern Italy. It is such a pleasure and privilege to work with sister Priestesses of Avalon who are really creating the change of the lived MotherWorld in their areas. It fills me with humble gratitude to feel the amazing work their dedication is bringing in such a deeply patriarchic culture steeped in Catholicism and it is a special honour to be asked to come and bring the work of sacred sexuality and Goddess of Love to their groups.

Trento

In Trento Laura Ghianda organized an evening workshop ‘Remembering the empowerment of the Goddess of Love’ for about 20 women and men, in a lovely venue in this special ancient city in the Dolemites. It was great to meet new friends and connect to this part of beautiful Italy.

Venice

In Venice I held an evening ‘Art of Rhiannon, conscious love making’ workshop in Anna Bordin’s wonderful place, where she holds many of her own circles. She is a fabulous priestess and one of the great organizers of my Italian workshops, and around 30 women gathered till well past midnight to enjoy this intimate sacred workshop.

The work is really not so much ‘technique’ based, though there is much that our society and patriarchal religion teaches about sexuality that needs to be unlearned for our free sexual flow to be owned and experienced as sacred once more. Technique, or conscious love making skills, are useful, particularly when practising non goal oriented presence and surrender, but this Art of Rhiannon work is more a learning to listen to the body, learning to follow the energy that is your aliveness dancing uniquely in you, and being very honest about your authentic ‘Yes and No’, unhindered by the many layers of fear or resentment most of us carry in our sexual body. This ‘story’ comes from our wounding and creates a closed shielding around, or a hardening of the heart’s energetic field. Love and ecstasy open the heart and are the gateway into direct experience of the Devine, filling us with the lived experience of beauty and spiritual aliveness. This draws more of our soul into our physical body and ignites our essence. If we allow ourself the experience of presence and surrender, the Radiance that is Devine, Goddess and God, is embodied and Love is created in and through us: The Field of Love of Rhiannon that we are a part of is enhanced and manifested into our consciousness.

The weekend workshops: La Via di Rhiannon was the continuation of the Path of Rhiannon series we are running this year in preparation for the sacred sexual Priestess training which will start in December and run over 2 years. A wonderful group of women worked with the archetype of the PathFinder as Rhiannon in Her Fire aspect illuminates for us all.

Venice Old City

I also had the chance to visit the wonderful old city of Venice for a day, visiting some of the Goddess sites and generally enjoying walking around in the atmospheric city of bridges and waterways, grand basilicas and crumbling palaces. The rain certainly didn’t dampen my enjoyment; I didn’t stop smiling all day.

Glastonbury

Beltane Sunrise over the Tor, Glastonbury.

 Photo by Katie Player 

The next few weeks  I will be in Glastonbury working with the various groups of the Priestess and Brotherhood of Rhiannon trainings. I am developing a Priestess Teacher training for women who have done 2 or more years of the Rhiannon courses, so that more of this much needed work and all that Sacred Sexual Priestesses of the Goddess can offer, will go out to more places in the world.

Online Training nearly ready!

Another project that is nearing completion and almost ready for birthing into ‘trail stage’ is the online Soft Power / Full Desire program. Next month I will launch this online program in Budapest and run it in a special form for the group of women who have been working with me there. Below you can read a little of the general information. The program will become widely available and can be taken anywhere in the world from the end of the year, so stay tuned by joining the mailing list here!

MODERN MAGDALENE MYSTERY SCHOOL PRESENTS: SOFT POWER / FULL DESIRE. Online program for women in six modules over 6 months

When life seems a struggle, a constant battle with an experience of lack, how do you create and support the empowered abundance of your dreams? When relationships seem disappointing and challenging, how do you drop the shielding of the heart and own the healthy boundaries of your authentic ‘yes and no’? How do we surrender our defensiveness and patterns of competition and attack, to become empowered flowing love in action?

As women remembering who we are, remembering Goddess and awakening out of the Time of Great Forgetting, we are on the journey of becoming. We are remembering our Soft Power and are once more daring to own the wild radiance of our Full Desire. This is the time when we can really choose to step into the fullness of what we want from a place of love. To do so means we have to let go of our limiting beliefs and patterns. This is a journey of consciousness raising, which is challenging, especially in a society that is patriarchic.

In this 6 month long program, you will be guided through different energetic breath and movement practices, and initiated into deep connection to you womb, ovaries, yoni and heart through sacred creative processes, in six monthly downloadable modules.

You will be asked to keep a ‘huntress diary’ in which you will learn to track your shadow patterns that would keep you small, closed, shielded and reactive. Soft Power is about allowing your Essence, reclaiming your shine so we may be co-creating the Ways of Love in our self and in the world.

Soft Feminine Power comes from within and is cultivating the wisdom of – and relationship with Goddess in full aliveness in your being. It allows us to soften into Trust: Trust in our Soul path and the power of our essence; Trust in Her presence and all that She gives us, Trust in our ability to serve as a midwife to the birth of the Ways of Love in our life and on our planet.

Full Desire is the integrated fire of your sensual aliveness, the fully owned power of your sexual drive. It is the ecstatic flow of Bliss in your being, your radiance. Full Desire is free from the need for approval, justification or gratification from outside. It is the art of becoming Desire itself. Through Full Desire you experience all of life in its true essence; erotic and sexual-sensual. Our sexual energy and sensuality is our grounded-ness in life and holds the experience of our beautiful dance with life, loving itself.

Fear of our Desire and the disability to own Desire weakens our heart and our physical connection with self and others, cutting us off from joy, love, fulfillment, abundance, and a free fully lived life. This is Empty Desire, which leads to repressed life force and guilty suppression of sexual energy or to fixation on form and addictive behaviour. Both of these are ways of avoidance and the distortion of the true Essence of Desire, which is experienced as fullness, not as an empty place of lack or longing. When we soften our fear, our sensuality and sexuality becomes available to us, and our love-choices become free.

Full Desire allows you to drop your defenses, to become more empowered, to be more alive, more sexual and sensuous, to be radiant. This opens the place to really become co-creator with life and bringing your passion and dreams into manifestation. The Soft Power / Full Desire program will help you to start connecting intimately to the Illumination of your Radiance and Essence, gifts of the Goddess. It will guide you into feeling your empowerment, and help you to begin to recognize your shadow aspects and patterns. This program may assist you to know your purpose and empower you to find ways to manifest your unique gifts. This journey will open you to the soft power that is your source fire and to the wild freedom that is your full desire.

Slovakia

Meanwhile in Slovakia last month, Kristina Dubajova and Danika Pekarka, Tina and many of the other women who are now priestesses of Zivena, priestess of place in this wonderful centre European land, put together and performed the first showing of the ‘Slovak Wheel of the Year’. A dance, song and enacted ceremony show to bring more awareness of Goddess out amongst many. I’ve felt so deeply moved seeing the images of the KolaRoka performance in front of about 200 people in April, including dances, spoken word, creativity and ceremonies. Set to sacred songs which were created during the first Priestess of Zivena (centre Goddess of Slovakia) training spiral, mainly by Kristina and Danika, but recorded with many of the priestess voices.

The Goddesses of the 9 directions were represented in different forms in turn, Goddess of Air in the North ‘Meluzina’ is the icy winds of winter and the spaciousness of the cosmos from which the stars guide us, She was danced beautifully by Tina Kucharekova from ‘Sanca Tanca’ in Bratislava.

Maiden Goddess Zoritska was felt through an enactment of Menarche ceremony and Goddess of Water Dona by an anointment and cleansing water blessing ceremony.

For Mother Goddess Roda, the children, beautifully dressed in the colours of the directions danced to the sweet seasonal song filled with harmonies in honour of the Great Mother whose children we all are. Morana, Great Crone Goddess was sung and danced with sure power, the dancers all in black, creating the felt experience of what it is to meet this Goddess as She who is Setter of Tasks, Dark Mirror and Giver of Gifts. Finally, Zivena, Great Centre Goddess of these lands and the abundant joy of life She brings was celebrated, the women wearing beautiful traditional Slovakian dresses made specially for the occasion.

Here are a few pictures of the part of the wheel in the East, where the Goddess of Fire and all Her gifts are honoured and celebrated. Her name is Vesna or Vesnu. I hope you’ll enjoy this as much as i am and feel moved by Her beauty and creativity.

When we started the first Goddess workshops, 3 years ago, we didn’t really know the names of Goddess of that amazing land, didn’t know Her wheel. There were no songs in Her name, no dances to embody Her. Then came the first Priestess of Zivena training year, held by me with the help of 3 priestesses of Lebuse who had trained with me in the Czech Republic. During this year, Goddess opened the creativity of the women, and they co-created their poetry and tunes into beautiful songs which we sang and learned each spiral weekend. The centre Goddess song for Zivena is a particular favourite of mine and became the way to end the ceremonial opening of the wheel, the calling in, the becoming presence with Her presence with which we start each day. Riding the supportive energy of their sisterhood group and the love for what they were creating, a fabulous cd with professional sounding harmonies and instrumentals was produced of the songs of the Goddess wheel that year. You can buy it in Glastonbury in the Goddess Gift shop, or via the link at the end of this.

The Priestess training of Slovakia is now held each year by Andrea Sobotova and Kristina, with growing numbers of women wanting to re-connect to this indigenous European spiritual path of Goddess . I feel very proud of these beautiful powerful shining priestesses (and privileged to have been a small part of their journey of remembering) and what they have created, what they are showing the world, and their supportive families who are all helping bring Goddess back alive in the consciousness of a people.

I want to share this far and wide, and with it goes my gratitude to the Priestesses of Zivena for all that they are birthing and creating and holding with courage and love in service to Her. If you are interested in finding out more about the ‘KolaRoka’ (which means Wheel of the Year) performance or would like to order the very excellent cd of the sacred Goddess songs of the wheel of Slovakia, go to this website: www.koloroka.sk

Beltane Practise: opening the heart to the sensual presence of beauty

Next time you are outside, take a moment to really see the beauty of the blossoming of life’s celebration that this time of the year brings and deeply connect to drinking in your alive intimacy with all of nature. The abundance of beauty at this time of Beltane is easily missed if we don’t take the time to merge with and melt into the magic of delicious young green and fragrant flowers, bird song and warm sunlight lengthening the days into balmy evenings and star gazing nights.

First feel your feet on the Earth, the wind in your hair and the sun on your skin, now look, really look at the tree or flower you are connecting to. Notice the shifts in colour and shapes, the delicate petals and unique differences in form and shape. Let your gaze become soft, and instead of observing the shape or colours of leaves and blossom, allow your eyes to seek connection, to melt a little into that which you are seeing. What is it like to melt into the green, pink, purple or white of the flower of leaves you are looking into? Letting the shape and colour enter you, merging with your essence, feel what you’re seeing. Feel the breath you are sharing with that which you are eye gazing with sweetly flowing between you like a dance, perhaps you become aware of the subtle perfume or scent emitting from leaves or blossom. Allow the sensual experience of the essence of this natural expression of the exuberant dance of life with itself to become a part of you, feel it inside you and give yourself permission to be a part of this beauty. Keep looking with soft eyes, melting into the flowers of green of trees, allowing your heart to be touched. Feel the merging through colour, light and vision also softening and nourishing your heart. allow the connection of your heart to be in your eyes as you gaze.

This is ‘soul gazing’ and a wonderful practise which can bring a deep sense of gratitude and abundance into an everyday moment. It is also a way of creating, or rather: becoming present with, sacred space within you.

May all relationships, projects and things you love, that fill you with joy and which manifest beauty for the greater good of all, be Blessed by life’s abundance with ease, pleasure and magic this Beltane. 

Till next time, much love!

Katinka