March 25, 2011

connection and DNA

to join, link, or fasten together; unite or bind


Mitochondrial DNA - stuff that feeds the cells so they can grow into humans! Very important stuff..... stuff found in females and stuff that allows scientists to trace female lineage way back into the recesses of time...

So why do we follow a paternal inheritence??? Fact is, the important stuff needed to fuel life is provided by the female...... in the male, this important stuff is either killed off during fertilisation, or... and I like this bit.... hunted down and destroyed in the embryo.

Tell me again why the paternal line is so important?

So when you are trying to trace your lineage, it is best to trace through your mother line......

"Because mtDNA is transmitted from mother to child (both male and female), it can be a useful tool in genealogical research into a person's maternal line."

dragon alchemy

ouroborous knot - Celtic

transformation:  from one form to another

alchemy: transmutation into gold, attainment of ultimate wisdom

Dragons have long been associated with alchemy and indeed, appear in many cultures on all continents. Typically, the dragon is biting its tail, creating an unbroken circle...this is known as the Ouroborous.

That the dragon has persisted throughout human history suggests that there is some element of truth behind the legend. The myths and stories paint the dragon in positive and negative light, but all stories have some message for the reader....

Eastern medicine believed that dragon bones and teeth could heal a person's spiritual (or psychological, in today's terms) problems. Such remedies found their way into European mythology as we see in the Norse story of Sigurd and the dragon.

...To kill Fafnir the dragon, Regin advises him to dig a pit, wait for Fafnir to walk over it, and then stab the dragon. Odin, posing as an old man, advises Sigurd to dig trenches also to drain the blood, and to bathe in it after killing the dragon; bathing in Fafnir's blood confers invulnerability. Sigurd does so and kills Fafnir; Sigurd then bathes in the dragon's blood, which touches all of his body except for one of his shoulders where a leaf was stuck. Regin then asked Sigurd to give him Fafnir's heart for himself. Sigurd drinks some of Fafnir's blood and gains the ability to understand the language of birds. Birds advise him to kill Regin, since Regin is plotting Sigurd's death. Sigurd beheads Regin, roasts Fafnir's heart and consumes part of it. This gives him the gift of "wisdom" (prophecy)...



So here we see the transformational powers of a dragon.....

March 10, 2011

transformation

"Transformation is not just a static process, it is dynamic...organic. It is personal, profound and life-altering. It is the right of each woman and it is not a solitary event. Transformation is the deep healing, where one goes beyond the revealing of aspects of an issue, of understanding and analysing it, to the 'surrender place', where it changes and thus you change."
(Sherwood, 2011)

transformation
BUT

"The hardest moments in life are often those of transformation. Journeying from one place into another, leaving familiarity and heading through cloudy lands of change, we stumble and fall on strange ground...Even if we are confidently walking proud and sure, we are likely to be dragging with us some baggage of the past, some now redundant belief or behaviour...complicating life with its defiant and coarse irrelevance."
(Resatll Orr, 2008, P108)

March 6, 2011

virgin magic

"There is something in the psyche of our post-industrial society that infuses the notion of virgin land with a magical haze. We dream of such places, places that have not been touched by the felling, tilling, paving, civilising hand of humanity. It holds an unmistakeable allure, a fascination that provokes a craving that is deeply instinctive. It is prized like a great treasure. It inspires a yearning desire to hunt it down, to explore it, to discover the nature of its depths, to conquer its challenges, to bathe in its potentials."
(Restall Orr, 2008 p103)
Middle Earth - New Zealand... http://www.ianbrodie.net/


March 2, 2011

creativity

"Creativity most often begins deep within, an as internal response to some event in the world around...

...some creativity is never meant to be expressed openly at all. Lingering on the edges of our consciousness, it remains within, as an internal occupation for the exploration and pleasure of our own soul. Swathed by veils, hidden beneath the canopy, we work on it alone in dreams of the imagination and journeys through otherworlds. Wild fantasies, sweet tales and complex sagas, magical relationships of the soul, symphonies never to be heard aloud, songs of the heart and of the wind...

...Locked away in moments of solitude, we labour on such secret adventures, their developments measured only by the glint in our eyes, or the satisfaction and serenity with which we live our lives."
(Restall Orr, 2008, pp64-5)


March 1, 2011

Cycladic

before us

Those who walked before us

Minoan Snake Goddess


venus of Laussel




Cycladic figurine
 

Sheila na gig


and now....

  • She makes the commitment to nourish her various states of being and in particular acknowledges the need for creativity, freedom of expression and personal time and space
  • She moves in deepening surrender to her connection and calling
  • She honours the ancestors and the spirit of this land
  • She acknowledges the roots of her own ancestral traditions
  • she acknowledges and embodies her connections to the cycles of nature, and uses this knowledge to live more powerfully and beautifully
  • She works for a life filled with unguarded momenets of immense beauty

Venus of Willendorf