The skies and our ancestors

 Let's start with Skywatch Friday!

Some dawns give interesting features...heavy frost (which I had to scrape off my car windows before going to an appointment that morning - but Barry our maintenance man helped!). And the fog rises from the river valley between my hill and the mountains to the south.

The mist changes second by second!

----------------

Our connections to the past:

 "Long ago, in shamanic cultures, we knew how to communicate with the Life of the Earth: with the spirits of the plants, the water, the mountains, the animals, and with the Life of the Cosmos — the sun, the moon and the stars in the night sky. We also knew how to communicate with the ancestors and their wisdom. Today, we have lost those skills and are increasingly losing the skill of communicating with each other, listening to each other, respecting each other.

All this has come about because, over centuries and millennia, the visible, material world has become separated from the invisible one. We have lost the thread of Ariadne that once connected us to our cosmic Source. Belief, directed by powerful priesthoods, became a substitute for direct shamanic experience of the Source. We have lost touch with our soul — even the awareness that we have a soul. Cut off from soul, our mind has become impoverished, rigid, dogmatic, and inflated. In compensation for the loss of relationship with soul, it has become driven by the need for ever more power and control, which is why we find ourselves in the extraordinary situation we are in today when millions are suffering the effects of wars and from physical and mental illness, and we are threatened with becoming inducted into a technology that could replace our species with a transhumanist one created by AI, which could bring our species to an end. We need urgently to find our way back the way we have come, towards nature and the ground of our own nature."

-Anne Baring, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.

Posted in Girl God Books from Norway on FB

Art by Jakki Moore

Sharing with Sepia Saturday - a week late on the needlework! Sorry, no musicians this week!

----------------------

Today's goddess:

In the unique ancient art of Cyprus, the female form of the Goddess is often associated with prayer and birth. It seems to be the birth of the world, the birth of trees and nature. Before Bronze Chalcolithic Limestone Praying Goddess, Cyprus, 3000-2500 BC.

The goddess smiles.

Thanks Jenny Mendez FB site

---------------

Winter Solstice is in 9 days

---------------

----------

New header (for phone reading where headers are cut!)

A bit of blurry Santa's sleigh, with the various cars to give juxtaposition across the street further in the distance. Taken through the Peri Social house window.

Divine Feminine

More photos from this program will be published at my new blog....Pagans and Goddesses soon!

Susa Silvermarie

I'm am so pleased to have talented friends who put on a great program of poetry and music last Sunday.

Annelinde (Linda) Metzner

I mentioned it here on another of my blogs.

Linda and Susa both write poetry, and are published in the 2015 WeMoon calendars.  That's why the cover was posted, as they sold both wall and spiral bound forms of these calendars during intermission.

Susa Silvermarie, Annelinde Metzner and Kim Hughes

These are some of the photos I took of the performance.

Kim's singing was truly wonderful

Linda composed the music which Kim sang, and recited poems she wrote also

Susa's poetry included her dramatic gestures

Intermission included lovely snacks with proceeds to benefit the church in which the event was held.

The program about the Divine Feminine attracted many woman and a few men.  Shelly speaks with Kim during intermission.

Nels Arnold and Susa had a discussion

Three talented women who inspired the audience!

Thank you so much dear powerful, beautiful, goddessing women!  The photos are available in higher resolution by request from blackmtnbarb AT gmail DOT com...just email me!

Foggy morning thoughts

Our ritual in honor of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers included three levels of setting intentions.  We asked for the level of our personal lives first...then for our family/community, and then for healing the earth.

We may not be Indigenous, nor grandmothers, but we honor the land, the web of indeterdependent life, and have a sense of how real power is shared between all aspects of life.

Our ideas for our future group meetings include perhaps welcoming men into the group, and maybe having a "goddess of the month" topic to share with each other.  But for now we are releasing the monthly meeting, and will have a last gathering to have a closing celebration of the past 5 years of the Women's Spirituality Group.

I know I will miss this regular sharing of spiritual ideas of the divine feminine.  It will certainly be included in my book.