She Changes Everything She Touches...

Hecate has set me off on a new road and opened up the space for other women to steer the circle...there will be guest facilitators now working with Tara so it will be refreshing to sample tastes of what our community of women has to offer. Thankyou to those women who have committed to helping the circle continue, Tara had a vision of creating women's community, which has flourished for some of us women who come along (no easy task in our segregrated world) and she is passionate about this circle growing. Growth always follows death which is never easy to assimilate but I think Tara and I are ready for the new cycle to find its rhythm, I hope to still throw ideas into the pot and have been researching the dynamics of womens/community groups for some time now-and rotating leadership is a common theme, whoever has the energy that will benefit the group will come forth to carry it into the future, which we have experienced when Cassandra stepped in whilst I was birthing my baby, this was a time that redefined roles and ideas about the group and shared the load.

As for me, I am taking care of my wild family and working at NatureCare College assisting Alexandra Pope with Women, Power and the Body this Saturday we are conducting a revisiting of the maiden in a menarche ceremony-will be great to initiate women into womanhood if they missed this important rite of passage earlier in life.
Also my artwork is available for viewing at www.myspace.com/maskera some of you circlegoers will recognize our Cauldron with the triple-faced Hecate...I hope there will be more Goddess-inspired art there real soon.

If you were at the last circle or heard about it, don't be alarmed by the power of the talking stick sometimes the underground rises up and needs to be examined( we did invoke the sea witch after all). If you need a concession to enable you to join the circle feel free to ask at the desk or when you book, the circle is open to all women in the community and beyond.

Tara has asked me to look after this blog(is there anyone out there reading?) I wonder if anyone who goes along would like to post occasionally as i won't be at every circle due to family commitments and it would be great to hear about the night as it happens???

I believe some of the circle got together on saturday to continue painting the songflags started at Minmia's retreat this would have been an interesting deepening of the animal journey we undertook last circle and a chance to have a smaller circle...it is hard to get together in between the monthly meeting as women we all seem to have overfull lives juggling many responsibilities so if you need to leave a comment or question here this can be your virtual circle-it might be a good place to help process anything that comes up.

Finally I hope to be welcomed back as a participant in the near future and I put out the call to circle goers of the past to rejoin the circle as it may just change your world again....

The History of the Circle

Many believe that the practice of meeting in circle more than likely originated when our ancestors first captured the spark of fire and began to carry the embers along with them from site to site. It made sense to put the fire in the centre in order to keep everyone safe and warm. Sitting in a circle allowed space for everyone to face the flame, thus illuminating each person's face and causing each to be recognised as a part of the tribe.
In time the circle bacame the primary social, political and spiritual structure as evidenced in paintings, carvings, petroglyphs, runes, crafts and, later, architecture. We see the remnants of circle-based cultures among indigenous peoples all around the world. For example, the Inuits of the Arctic still meet in circle as do most Native American tribes.
Carl Jung, a visionary psychiatrist in the time of Freud, noted that all humans share a number of images that seem to originate from a common source deep within the psyche. He called this source "the collective unconscious." Jung believed that over the course of millions of years the brain evolved and now represents the very history of which it is the result. Naturally, it carries with it the traces of that history, exactly as the body does. Acocording to Jung, "The deepest we can reach into our exploration of the unconscious mind is the layer where man [woman] is no longer a distinct individual, but where his [her] mind widens out and merges into the mind of mankind [humankind]- where we are all one."
As Christina Baldwin notes in Calling the Circle:
One of the symbols that led Jung to contemplate this point of oneness was the recurring imagery of the circle. The circle, often in the form of the Sun Wheel (a pie cut in eight equal pieces), is represented in different cultures as the Medicine Wheel, the Wheel of Law and Life, the Wheel of the Year and the Catherine Wheel. Jung traced the image of the circle back to the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods, when wheels were carved and painted as a sacred symbol, thousands of years before the wheel was invented as an actual tool. Based on this research, Jung saw the wheel as a primary symbol, one of the mythic motifs springing from the collective unconscious.
So it seems the circle has resided within us since the dawn of time, and is a form familiar to us at a deeply resonant level. Over and over again, when this mythic resonance is activated, people experience a sense of "having been here before" as they enter the circle. Sometimes we are buoyed up by this familiarity and proceed with confidence: "I know how to do this...I know how to behave here." Sometimes we are shaken by how even a vestige of circle carries profund impact.

Indeed, ancient stone carvings and other archelolgical evidence support this belief that the circle is one of humankind's oldest and most elemental symbols. We see evidence of the importance of the circle in archelolgical discoveries around the glove. The aborigines of Australia paint sacred spirals on the cave walls and on their bodies. The native tribes of the American plains constructed tepees and set them in circles, and some African peoples still build circular villages. In all these cultures, the circle is the common element.
Therefore, if we hold within our cells the memory of a time when we were all part of a cohesive culture that was structured around the circle, where the family was part of community and not an isolated unit, where life, with all its joys and sorrows, was celebrated in communal gatherings, when we form a circle we trigger this memory and reclaim our innate knowledge of circle. As Christina Baldwin says, "We are not different from our ancestors; they are still here, coded inside us. They are-I thoroughly believe-cheering us on."

From the book "Women Circling the Earth"-A Guide to Fostering Community, Healing and Empowerment by Beverly Engel ~ Chapter 1 - 'The Quiet Power of Woman's Circles pages 23-25.

Coming up Friday June 30

Please join us this friday night, end of school term for winter relaxation and reveal your animal selves...we will be sharing a fabulous story from "Women who run with the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes called "Sealskin Soulskin" and taking a trance journey with power animals...then we will pass the talking piece-our beautiful clay Venus and share from the heart....singing dancing raising up a storm should top off the night-
$20 doors open 6.30 for a 7pm start- c u there!
bookings Amy 0408 686 690 Tara 0414 527 481

Turning back the Sun at the Hecate Crossroads

11:22 and we've passed the deepest point of the year...midwinter...yuletide...soyal...celebrated by stoking the fire imbibing fine food and wine and drawing up and drawing images of Hecate and the mistress of fire HO! to the turning back the sun

Winter Magic Workshop next sunday @ Cronulla

Join us next Sunday 18th June for the first in a series of CHANGING WOMAN WORKSHOPS -Women's seasons and the Wheel of the year. From 10am - 5pm we will journey to deepen self-knowledge, acceptance and the celebrate the "Changing Woman".

Women mirror the changing face of nature, monthly and throughout our life cycle. By restoring value to our changing nature we create pathways to healing ourselves and the earth.

Explore the secrets of life through Yoga, the Tarot, shamanic mask making and a Hopi Indian Soyal ceremony.

Founders of the Cronulla Women's Circle Tara ER and Amy Scully, combine their skills to bring you a day of winter magic rich in creativity and ceremony.

Workshop will be held at Cronulla Yoga Centre
Suite 1, 57 - 61 Cronulla Street, Cronulla
Fee $70 (includes workbook/materials, morning tea)

enquiries/bookings Amy Scully 0408 686 690 Tara Er 0414 527 481 empressarts@hotmail.com

W.O.W.

Representing the Women's circle we opened, cleansed and blessed the W.O.W. evening( Women on Wednesdays ) at the Brass Monkey in Cronulla. This is a night created by Jamie Kearney to provide a showcase of local women artists and performers, a safe and supportive space for women to raise their voices! Jamie is a active wanai (young woman) who is passionate about creating community - a fine ally of our work. We were invited to open the night (held monthly) because I went to the first W.O.W. night to see Jo and Jacqi present a fashion parade launching their label "NISUOC" (cousin backwards- Jo and Jacqui are cousins with a passion for fashion - 2 very creative wanais who have many talents) so Jamie said we could teach about witchcraft at the night and I thought we could offer a smudging/drumming launch to the evening.

Tara smudged and feathered and i rattled my way through the audience we then met Jean and Kay onstage and banged our drums loud and clear! Tara led us in singing a song to call up the spirits and then a few more and I declared W.O.W. well and truly open it was great to see smilimg faces in the front row who were singing right back at us, a very public event different from our usual safe space of circle, but I thought it was a great opportunity to take what we do out into the world and give women a taste of what we offer...think we caused quite a stir...it was lots of fun and mysterious...we left flyers for the women and I think for most of the audience it was a new experience- HO!

Circle Gathering Friday 31st March

It had been the week of the New Moon and an Eclipse making the energy of the evening heightened, more so than an other Friday evening.

Amy and myself dressed up to draw in the energies of the activities we where to share with the other womyn this evening. Creating Sacred Space and using Meditation, creative art and talking circle our journey into 'What Character Are You' unfolded.

I asked the womyn what 'Stories' they were ready to 'let go' through the technique of 'Self-Observation' (pg60 'The Earth Path' - 'Grounding your spirit in the rhythms of Nature' by Starhawk). Questioning 'What internal dialogue do I have going on in my head?' 'What story does it represent?', 'What energy does it bring iwth it?' 'Does it feed my energy or drain it?, 'What emotions am I feeling?' 'What is my physical body telling me?', 'What muscles are tight?', 'How am I breathing?'.

Then we continued onto 'What Character Are You?' (pg60-61 'The Earth Path' - 'Grounding your spirit in the rhythms of Nature' by Starhawk). I continued the questions, 'In what ways is this character's experience of the world narrower or more constricted than it might be?', 'Are there ways in which this character expands my experience of the world, or serves me?', 'When I observe through this character's eyes, what do I not see or do?', 'How does this character influence the choices and decisions I make?', 'How would my experience change if I were a different character?', 'What do I want to do with this character?', 'Tell it to go away?'. 'Kill it?', 'Love it?', 'Absorb and integrate it?', 'Recognize and laugh at it?'.

From these questions we labeled our character(s) then to help us understand this character we created a mask, a very simple mask, a mask to help us understand this character better than we had ever understood this character before.

As always the circle was full of rich stories from the womyn who joined us. Together we put questions out there and by the end of the evening most of those questions were answered. It seemed to be an evening of restoring and healing and as always, learning.

Thank you to those sisters who joined us on this evenings journey.

Ho!

2006 Circle Dates

April 28, June 2, June 30, July 28, August 25, September 29, October 27, November 24