Friday, July 27, 2018

Sacred Landscapes inspire Sacred Movement





This is my fourth time to Glastonbury - Avalon - a place of Dreams, Myth, Mystery and Movement. Ever since my teens, when I first read The Mists of Avalon, I've been pulled here and every time I make the pilgrimage, I feel a deep resonance with its ancestral echoes.

The feelings evoked by Avalon burst into vividness when I first see the Tor. Like many sacred monuments, it is on high land, visible from a variety of directions and distances. Like the Parthenon, which was built to stand within eyeshot of every Athenian in order to remind them of the Greek Ideal, the Tor, within eyeshot, reminds me of the layers of history and mystery that intertwine within this landscape in the ever-evolving Story of the Divine Feminine.

To see it is to move towards it. Every year, I make a personal, solitary pilgrimage to the Sacred Sites of Avalon - the Chalice Well, the White Spring, and onward to the Tor. I've been staying with friends on Hill Head, a ridge facing the Tor, and from their street one gets a direct eyeshot to it.

Walking towards is a meditation marked by the upward glance, symbolic of the evolutionary shifts I live through each time I come here. Every step is an act of reverence, trancelike, led by the upward glance and the sensuous contours of the land leading up to it. There is no doubting the subterranean currents of energy, or Lei Lines, that converge here. The land itself is alive with energy, and that energy moves through us in transformative ways.

This year will be my third time at the Glastonbury Goddess Conference, whose theme t is "The Moon Maidens". It's the last stop on my 2018 World Tour, which included four cities in Australia and two other stops in the UK before converging here. And what a way to wrap up the 2018 tour!

Most of you know that in addition to teaching dance-making and performance, I have been working with a personal interpretation of Ritual Embodiment for the past decade. Using movement, art and ritual as portals to Goddess Consciousness, I have created a series of Movement Journeys to the Goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, Athena and Artemis. And this is Artemis' year!

Three cities in Australia booked the Wild Woman and Warrior Ritual Embodiment series, wherein we invoke the Goddesses Artemis and Athena - virgins, "complete unto themselves", one a Huntress, the other a Warrior, both armed and dangerous (!), both known for coming to the aid of mortals in their Act of Power - to help us re-connect to our powers of Focus, Will, Vision and Mastery. We've had powerful sessions at every location, and now, my work with Artemis will be featured at the Conference with "Heart of the Huntress" - a magical journey to the Goddess of the Wild Instinct. In this Journey, we discover the Artemis Power Move and use it to make our mark - to the wildest, most epic music! Ritual Theater will open sacred time and space to express our intentions to the Goddess, and we will all witness each other in solidarity, safe in the knowledge that being blessed is is a state created by our intention to bless.

As I begin preparations with my friends on the Melissa Team - sewing, organizing, collecting, building, buzzing about - my anticipation is growing exponentially even as the Blood Moon overhead goes into eclipse and we prepare for the Full Moon bonfire tonight. Such timing!

Magic is afoot. In a few days, we will move with the Goddess in the Heart Chakra of the World - Avalon. We will shed old identities and emerge, Maiden-like, into a new consciousness. Blessed, renewed and re-connected to the primal life-force energy behind it all. Inspired!

Oh, can you feel it coming? The portal is about to open! I'll see you on the other side!




https://goddessconference.com/#program