Red Catherine Johns

Red Catherine Johns on Facebook

I just discovered this lovely little film about my dear friend, Red Catherine Johns a wonderful and inspiring Romany woman and activist for our animal friends. I will be catching up with Red when she gallops into Melbourne in October and I'm hoping we can organise a night for her to share her Romany wisdom and deep well of knowledge of the Divine Feminine. Can't wait to see you Red and we've got the kettle on for you already!

Gypsy Vanner Horses

'Gypsy gold does not chink and glitter. 
It gleams in the sun and neighs in the dark.' 

Attributed to the Claddaugh Travellers of Galway

'Alfie' Gypsy Vanner Horse
 Australia's first Gypsy Horse & Drum Horse breeder, Arcadian Stables 

Gypsy Roma Travellers

Thanks Carolyn for this link to this great site: Gypsy Roma Traveller Leeds a permanent site for the Gypsy Roma Traveller communities. I have been engrossed in this beautiful collection of photos from the Gypsy Lore Society at Liverpool University. Their emblem and totem is the Wagtail a bird that travels far and wide and is found in Britain, Iceland, Norway, Africa and Australia.

The motto for Gypsy Lore Society is in Welsh Romani : 

'Oke Romano Chiriklo Dikasa E Kalen' 

('Behold a Wagtail...And You Shall See the Gypsies.')

Supermassive Black Hole

AFP Photo/Nature/Amadeo Bachar

'For the first time ever, astronomers say they've borne witness to a supermassive black hole consuming a star... link

The Path Within - Last Tarot Course for 2011

Hello Everyone,

I have just 2 places left in the final course of The Path Within. This circle will open on Full Moon, Monday 12th September and finish up at the ancient earth festival of Beltane on 31st October. This group will be very small - strictly limited to 6 participants only so that we can work deeply and will be the last time that I offer The Path Within for 2011. 

If you feel called to study the Tarot as a tool for creating healing, to reconnect to nature and to open up a direct pathway of communication with your Higher Self, please let me know,

Warm Wishes,

Julia

Spring Equinox Circle for the Koalas!

All funds from this open Healing & Meditation Spring Equinox Circle go to the Southern Ash Wildlife Shelter - click here to find out more. On the night of the Spring Equinox circle we will be working with the Celtic Water Goddesses and sacred water and essences from healing wells.

Spring is so close... can you feel it?

Encaustic Art - The Forest Oracle

Some new additions to The Forest Oracle we are creating. What do you see within?

 

Song To The Siren - Sinead O'Connor

Julia Margaret Cameron

'I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, 
and at length the longing has been satisfied.'

Julia Margaret Cameron

'Annie my first success'

Ophelia

Pomona (Alice Liddell - the real-life Alice in Wonderland as a young woman)

Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson (a photo he referred to as The Dirty Monk!)

Julia Jackson (niece of Julia Margaret Cameron and mother to writer, Virginia Woolfe)

Vivien and Merlin (featuring Julia's husband Henry Hay Cameron)
Photographs illustrating Tennyson's Idylls of the King

Vivien and Merlin (in front of 'the hollow oak' carried in from Tennyson's property next door)

Actress Ellen Terry at the age of 16 in 1864

Sinéad O'Connor 《 thank you for hearing me》live

Painting with Light: the Literary art of Harold Hitchcock

'The true function of the arts is to guide man towards his true destiny,

towards a true understanding of himself and his inner nature'...

Harold Hitchcock 

Sun Rising Through the Italian Alps 2008

www.haroldhitchcock.co.uk
'When I was a child I was staying with my grandparents in a little village called Thundersley. It was a very rural area. They had a long garden and at the bottom of it there was a row of very tall elm trees. I happened to be up early one morning, and I saw the sunlight shining right through the foliage of the trees. I remember the rays of light were spraying out, creating a sense of depth in the trees and the surrounding area, and glinting on the bark, giving them an almost jewel-like quality. I'll always remember the effect it had on me... it was a very uplifting feeling, and it remained with me throughout my life. This experience was the germ of it all. It drove me to become a painter, because I wanted to capture that atmosphere, that vision of light'.

Riverside Evening 1996

Thundersley 1978

'I paint to create the world I live in mentally or spiritually... the world of this vision. When I start to paint, I automatically find myself painting a picture which is a transcription of that world. When I paint I just follow this feeling, without letting myself think about it. The play of light on objects has fascinated me ever since. When I look at trees and at light, I look at where the light comes through the foliage, the planes of light passing through the trees; even in the darkest shadow you can still see the light passing through. Whenever I visit places, I gravitate towards those aspects that bring that memory back, a memory which, in its essence, has remained with me.'

Sacred Grove 2004

''All aspects of the creative process," says his son Leonard,"such as composition, coloring and color balance, effects of light etc. come about in Harold's case through a highly developed sensitivity which enables him to feel what to do next in a rather spontaneous way...the subject matter of the paintings (the world which is depicted) also springs from Harold's inner feeling and can be said to be descriptive or symbolic of a spiritual life and feeling. Harold is a truly simple man in the sense that—unlike the vast majority of us—he has retained the child-like ability to avoid labeling or classifying the world more than is absolutely necessary. It is my belief that through the incessant activity of our minds we constantly 'name' the world around us and in so doing reduce it to a dead thing. It is in those moments when we lose our 'map' of the world that suddenly we are surrounded and immersed in something awesome and mysterious and very beautiful." 

Forest Dwelling 1996

Dawn Visitation 1996

Medieval Glastonbury 1985

St Francis 1998

Untitled

Source: Artmagick

Void Pisces Moon Soundtrack

Void Moon in Pisces - Dream a little Dream

From this 6.30pm this evening until Wednesday 10am, there is a very long Void Moon in the sign of Pisces. This is a particularly dreamy and potent time for meditation, dreaming, creating and drifting in to other dimensions. Reading Tarot for yourself and others is a good idea at this time as it is a highly intuitive and psychic period - especially if you are Pisces. Last Friday I picked up my 'Reverie Harp' from the very lovely and talented Peter Roberts. I am looking forward to making friends with this beautiful new instrument in tomorrow's Neptunian dreaming. 

May your dreams be sweet.

Healer, Mystic, Creatrix - Women's Course in Celtic Spirituality

Hello Everyone,

I hope you had a beautiful Full Moon in Aquarius. We are still experiencing Mercury in Retrograde so I hope this is not causing too many obstacles or problems for you all - check and recheck all contracts and financial forms (on the weekend I read that thousands of people had filled in their Census forms online and without pressing 'send'. Can't get more Mercury Retrograde than that!). And of course please remember to back up your computers.

This week we are back after a relaxing break where we spent time recording our new guided meditation CD: Beyond the Ninth Wave and creating new plant essences combining Sacred Water from wells here in Victoria and Findhorn in Scotland (you can read more about that here). I will be using these essences and sacred water in private healing consultations, Celtic Women's Course: Healer Mystic Creatrix and in our Spring Equinox Circle: Healing Waters, Sacred Wells where we will be donating all funds again to the Koalas (Water Animal Totem in Australia) at the Southern Ash Wildlife Shelter (www.samthekoala.com.au).

In 3 more days we will be passing beyond the Ninth Wave, the mythic wave that takes you beyond this world and into the Celtic Otherworld. In the five weeks that we will meet together we will develop healing and intuitive abilities to help us to heal and balance the Five Elements and the Seven Chakras or energy systems of our body as well as learning to read with oracles, connect to Animal Totems, Spirit Guides and Ancestral Wisdom.

Week 1 - EARTH: Returning Home, Travelling Beyond the Ninth Wave

Goddess: Rhiannon the Sovereign, Airmid Goddess of Healing and Herbcraft

Tools: Healing with Stones and Plant Totems 

Week 2 - WATER: Sacred Wells, Healing Love and Creativity

Goddess: Beg the Wisdom Keeper, Vivienne - Lady of the Lake

Tools: Energy Healing, Oracle Reading, Water Blessing

Week 3 - AIR: Oran Mor, Wisdom, Past Lives and Creating a New World

Goddess: An Cailleach the Crone Mother, Arianrhod the Silver Wheel

Tools: Shamanic Healing, Ancestral Totem, Past Life Regression

Week 4 - FIRE: Building Fire, Tending to our Sacred Flame

Goddess: Brighid the Exalted One, Scathach the Warrior Queen

Tools: Animal Totem, Candle Magic, Healing Movement

Week 5 - ETHER: You Are We, Embodying the Celtic Goddess

Goddess: Danu Mother Goddess of the Tuatha, Sovereign Queen

Tools: Rites of the Sidhe, Channeling Messages from the Goddess and your Guides

I have 2 places free in this Celtic Circle of Healing. If you feel this one of these places is for you, you can phone me: 0421 249 183 or email me: julia@sacredfamiliar.com.au Please let me know as soon as you can so that you have time to prepare. 

Warm Wishes for the Journey, Julia

Escape into Life by photographer, Rodney Smith