Seeking Feminine Solace Over the Seas!!!
Where I travelled:
Greece (Crete specifically)
England
Scotland
When? in May and June this year, 2022.
“We have all been wounded by the witch burning legacy”
Sure enough, after consultation, we all have female ancestors from Scotland and we all, in varying degrees, relate to the witch archetype, and feel her energy move through us. We have all been wounded by the witch burning legacy.
What an opportunity to chat and share, around the tiny memorial, a memorial you wouldn’t see unless you knew about it.
We lament the whole situation of the denigration, the blaming of women, the oppression, the suppression of female power and we tell each other our stories.
I can share with my new friends that I heard Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, speak in parliament recently, about the women who were burned alive in Scotland due to their healing practices, deemed witch practices.
She acknowledged their power threatened the patriarchy.
Nicola apologized on behalf of those in power prior to her leadership, those who arranged for the murder of these innocent women and she announced that she and her government, would now fund a significant and important memorial to appropriately acknowledge and pay respects to the murdered witches, a memorial to be prominent and revelatory, to be dedicated to their memory and their ultimate sacrifice for keeping their communities safe with their healing powers as herbalists and midwives.
This is the highlight of my day.
How wonderful and how easy is it to connect to other women, and how important that we share our stories and come together. You don’t have to organize these kinds of meetings, for if you trust the sacred feminine and the goddess, the opportunity will arrive. This encounter is living proof. Thank god we are witches!!
Equine Magic and Scottish Hills – It’s Time for my Equine Therapy.
I wake on the morning I am leaving Edinburgh, a fleeting visit for sure, but an important one, and prepare to pick up a rental car with the help of my friends, and from here I will drive to meet Midi, and Midi’s horses. It’s time for my equine therapy.
I am held up by dreadful roadworks in the city center, and email Midi that I am delayed. Who knows for how long!! It is raining, one of those endless drizzly days, so I am glad I bought a raincoat at the op shop and I am certainly going to need the leather boots also bought at the op shop, specifically to cater for the field of horses I was about to encounter.
I eventually escape the city and drive south. I am delighted that I have been upgraded by the rental company, and have a VW Golf for the next twelve days, and also GPS, so I can enter Midi’s address and feel confident I won’t lose too much time going around in circles (as I did often in Crete, having only a map to navigate by).
Country Road turns to Country Track and then Country Path! Where the hell am I!
In the end I am only twenty minutes late, having made up time on the mainly freeway journey. Once on the country road, it turns to country track and then country path!!! Where the hell am I!!!!! I feel like I am in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields and hills and clearly almost on the beach. I have certainly driven into a farm, the path metres from the sheds and barns and machinery!
But further along there is Midi’s car as promised, and I see at the gate to a field there are a herd of horses. I park beside the field and introduce myself. Midi is around my age; she has a beautiful working dog and a relaxed and comfortable persona. It is raining, and cold, so I rug up in every coat, rain jacket, gloves, hat and scarf that I have!!!
We will work together no matter the weather….I am in Scotland, home of the hardy types, where weather is of no consequence. It’s not pouring, just drizzling.
I am invited to approach the gate where the horses are waiting, four of them. I squeeze into the field because a large brown horse has positioned itself directly across the gates entrance. I stay, close to the horse and give it a pat but go no further. After a while Midi comments that the big brown horse is blocking my way….and….I am just letting it. What am I going to do about the big brown horse?
Together we uncover an historical theme from my childhood and young adulthood of being blocked in my life…
What unfolds is Midi supporting me to see that I am allowing the big brown horse to block my path. I have many options to move past it. Together we uncover an historical theme from my childhood and young adulthood of being blocked in my life, and then when blocked, staying stuck in my life’s path, fighting the block, certainly not compliant, but not making progress, not moving forward, not continuing my journey, not flowing with what I might do next.
It’s an interesting and confronting moment. I have been witnessed in my vulnerability to very old behavioral patterns. It’s obvious to me that my patterns prevent me from making other, maybe better choices.
This is my Vulnerability, and there’s ultimately no shame in being human, stuck in habits and having trouble in my life releasing these patterns.
I move past the big brown horse (a male) and go to the large, round white, and black speckled horse. This horse is huge, ROUND, and beautiful. This horse has a moustache and the strangest of muzzles, square and solid, not refined at all.
What is this horse!!!
I pat, and stroke and just look at this beautiful horse. I spend time with it, enjoying how it looks, its massiveness, as if someone has sculptured its shapes and curves. I am delighted by the flow of muscle, and I talk to it.
The horse moves around, very slowly, and I follow. We move together through the field, which is on a significant slope leading up, up, up. I know at the top of the slope is the cliff that ultimately looks out onto the North Sea.
Whilst patting, I keep looking around me, to the light that keeps changing, the rain that begins and then disappears, how the atmosphere of breezes comes and goes, and the sunshine that breaks through cloud intermittently. I am in the most spectacular seascape. The grass is long, unusual, golden. Its goldenness shimmers in the soft breeze and adds a sense of gentleness to the elements.
I can see it is indigenous. There is no other plant, tree or botanical close by. On the surrounding hills, sheltered in small pockets of trees, are little wooden houses. It is spectacular scenery, gobsmackingly gorgeous, and the light in the sky puts on a show of changing colours and shapes. I can’t believe I am here. Midi is leaving me be. I know she is taking photos from afar. She approaches and I exclaim in almost tears at how beautiful it all is. I keep repeating, “I am so glad I brought myself here”, “I can’t believe I am here!”.
What a gift I have given myself.
Whilst the other horses spread out across the field, and I also spend a bit of time with a palomino horse from the herd, I keep returning to my big, ROUND horse. Eventually I ask Midi about this magnificent animal.
Midi tells me, “She is the only female in the herd. Her name is Silvan”. She is a gypsy horse.
Technically she is called a cob. These horses are used to pull the gypsy wagons. They need to be big and very strong to do this labor intensive and important job.
I have chosen the only female in the herd, without even knowing and it couldn’t be more right.
I spend an hour and a half gently moving around the field. Its very rough and undulating underfoot. I must watch my footing. We walk higher and higher up the field towards the cliffs. But Silvan isn’t too interested in exercise. She is happy eating and being patted. She accepts my presence nonchalantly. And eventually, Midi approaches and shares some of her insights.
She noted many moments of deep connection, lovely moments of closeness that were emotionally moving to Midi herself, but she also noticed that after a period of this closeness, I would repeatedly break away, maybe saying something to Midi at a distance, or just physically moving back away from the horse.
Midi suggested that what she was witnessing was my difficulty with intimacy. That I could only take in so much closeness. That the psychic container I have for being close and relating wasn’t large enough to hold an ongoing connection of any lengthy duration.
In short, I cut off from feeling close after a period because I simply didn’t know how to continue and hold the feeling, to stay with the experience. Habitually, I broke off from the connection to return to a familiar separateness. Oh, Midi got it….this perception was so right…and yet again, her witnessing had been insightful and accurate.
I didn’t find it easy to be witnessed in this way, but oh, yes, it is important!
I need to understand my own limitations and subjective perspective. I can grow with a liberating insight that comes from the outside of my own narrow perception.
Of course, such insights don’t really change anything….it’s taking those insights and making the changes associated that transform.
I won’t do this easily, rapidly, or maybe even successfully, but I do have a greater understanding now, and I have the memory, of Silvan and me,
I keep with me the memory of this landscape, of birds singing, of sand under my boots and I have this huge, ROUND, strong and beautiful horse that now lives inside me, and I can remember her and our relationship, our connection, whenever I like.
What an experience!!!!!
