Priestess Grove: Blossoming on the Spiral Path

A Priestess is a woman who acts as a conduit between the Heavenly and the Earthly realms, as our world shifts and turns and re-awakens it's ties to the Divine Feminine the role of the Priestess is once again coming out into the light of day. The Priestess Grove is a sanctuary of Priestess tools, ideas and inspiration to encourage the growth and re-emergence of Goddess consciousness back into the third dimensional world.

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The Wheel of the Year, a spiritual touchstone.

When I first began my Priestess training, forming a personal relationship with the wheel of the year: the four major elements, their corresponding season and corresponding Goddess archetype, is what lit me up and inspired a new way of being in the world for me.

 

As the years have continued to unfold since that first introduction to the way of the Priestess, my connection to the elements and their season and Goddess archetype have created a rooted sense of the sacred and magical in my life regardless of where I'm at locally or internally.

 

In the past year I have uprooted my family and moved from the spiritually progressive, big city life that we were living and into a small, serene town that is populated by a lot of religious people. 

 

There are pros and cons to this decision, the pros far out numbering the cons, quiet, open fields, affordability, family, and most of all a slower life style that removes the need for incessant movement and action and gives me space to focus on raising my family and continuing my Priestess path. It is exactly what I am looking for during the mother phase of my life. In this small town it feels as though the clocks have been turned back and it is much easier to be in the world but not of it. There are big open farmlands, the great lakes, forests and a complete lack of sky scrapers.

 

What I miss is the spiritual community that I had, a city that offered kirtan, goddess circles, workshops and classes every day and night of the week. I was pretty common where we lived, I'm quite eccentric where we are now. And there was a lushness to the West Coast that we lived in that is unparalleled. 

 

As Grandmother Winter begins to prepare for her slumber and the Goddess Brigit lights the first flames of what will soon be the spring sun, I am preparing for our fist spring in our new home. 

 

Every year after Imbolc has passed I get restless, I remind the women that I work with that this is not yet the time of year to take action. We are just beginning to awaken from our hibernation, this is time to take stock of what was revealed to us in the depths of our hibernating dreams, it is time to envision what it is that we will be rebirthing during the Spring Equinox. Despite this knowledge, my inner maiden becomes antsy and each year there is a new way that this shows up.

 

This year it is my yearning for community. I have been Priestessing this process by finely balancing offering the space for community to grow and allowing the people to flow to me. I am sitting on my restlessness right now and beginning to envision how a spiritual community and my desire for it might evolve.

 

In this envisioning, in this recognizing of the Imbolc energies that have been lit, I am brought back to my beginning days as a Priestess, my work with the wheel of the year and the elements, seasons and archetypes.

 

When Grandmother Winter arrived this year I cycled easily into my Crone archetype. The deep earth element that I connect to the North, the winter and the Crone archetype, grounded me into the present. Life was busy with family and festivities and home life and slow on responsibilities. I had more Goddess Gatherings than I have had to date in this new home and I slowed down. I felt grounded and un-rushed. Not only did I have my Goddess Gatherings but I also was cast as the lead role in a play that the community theatre performed. During the winter months I found an artistic community that is spread throughout the county of tiny cities and towns that make up our amalgamated city. My artistic self was re-awakened, I was reminded of my childhood and the inspiration that I found in the theatre and surrounded by artists. This was my exposure to the eccentrics before my move out west. In this community I have rekindled a love of the arts outside of my writing and Priestess work. 

 

Now that the fires are being lit and the fire element is preparing to rule in the upcoming spring, my maiden archetype is being awakened. I am preparing to discover how this freedom loving, wild, sensual and electric side of myself will show up in this land that I have not lived on in over 10 years. How does the Spring Maiden that is me show up in this small and quiet corner of the world? How does my passion, my work, my unconditioned side fit in? What will I birth into this community and how will it be accepted? What lessons are there for me to learn as I am reborn into the spring? I have noticed that I resist leading gatherings in circle one on one, it intimidates me. I feel raw, intimate and exposed. I cancelled the last Goddess Gathering because there was only one person that was able to attend. Will I be called to gather one woman at a time? Can I find my courage to do so? Will I grow deeper in our artistic community? Will my reach as a Priestess extend into this community in the upcoming season?

 

These are some of the springtime considerations that I am pondering as Grandmother Winter slowly falls asleep. 

 

Regardless of how this next wheel of the year will unfold, I have a constant, and that is, that east or west, big city or small town, surrounded by community or walking with a few side by side, an ever present companion for me is the wheel of the year.

 

In the winter the Grandmother Crone will bring me into her cave to hibernate, to dream, to process all that I have harvested from the previous year. She will pull the seeds that have remained from the harvest season and bring them deep into the earth and I will be placed in a state of stasis, to rejuvenate, and to go deep within. I will be able to slumber and to learn from the wisdom of my ancestors and all of the Crones that I am attuned to. This will be a time for me to focus on my spirit, my soul, my deep inner work, a time of rest and inspiration and preparation. 

 

In the springtime the Spring Maiden will be reborn through me, she will light me up and ignite my passion, she will impel me to expose myself to the world and to reveal my gifts, my lessons and my offerings as seeds that sprout, seeds that germinated throughout the winter months in the dark and are now revealed in the light of the spring sun.

 

In the summer the Mother Goddess will envelop me in her oceanic womb, she will nourish the seeds that have sprouted in the spring, she will shower me with love as I tend to the life that I have created, the dreams, projects and children that I have birthed. I will relax and flow with her, enjoying the fruits of my labour, I will bask and I will ooze femininity in this full and blossoming season. 

 

In the autumn the Windy Enchantress will come blowing in, shaking loose all of the seeds that I will gather to come into hibernation with me. She will reveal the deeper lessons that I have learnt and through divine alchemy she will take the life that bloomed in the previous seasons and merge it with the transformation of death to create a new life that will be cocooned throughout the winter season to be reborn in the spring. She will whisper to me in magical languages and she will insist that I work with my magic and strengthen my mystical gifts, I will be brought face to face with death and all of her deep messages and lessons and I will face my shadow.

 

And then the winter will return and the wheel will turn once more, another cycle of the sun completed and another turn to hibernate and prepare for rebirth, the wheel of the year will continue to turn until I take my last breath in this body that I call self.

 

The wheel of the year is my touchstone, it goes with me wherever I go, whatever stage of life I am in. I first began to work with the wheel of the year as a fiery Maiden living in a big and exciting city. It revealed to me many thrilling paths and opportunities, and now that I have cycled into my watery Mother phase of life in a small and quiet town I am observing how this same model will reveal new and inspiring ways of being in the world. I will continue to learn through the wheel of the year as an Enchantress and a Crone, Goddess willing, and those years to come are a delicious mystery to me for now.

 

I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, an actor, a poet, a lover, a Priestess, I am many expressions of womanly Divine essence becoming manifest through my life. How these phases of life evolve through the wheel of the year is the mystery that is slowly unfolding in front of my eyes as I continue on this spiral path of embodied life.

 

I bow down to the women that have walked before me, to the Crones that left behind the ancient medicine of the wheel of the year and I give thanks for a shifting, evolving, feminine wheel that will continue to reveal both new and familiar layers of self to me, preparing me to be my most authentic expression in this lifetime.

 

I wish you all a bright and passionate spring in the upcoming months and invite you to discover the medicine that the wheel of the year has to offer everyone of us walking this spiral path. Enter into the wheel of the year and ask that she teach you and fill you with her ancient medicine and join me as we turn another link on the wheel of this year.

 

Grace Be With You,

Priestess of Grace,

Candise Soaring Butterfly

 

 

image taken from: http://www.telp.com/seasonsweb.jpg

 

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Candise is an ordained Priestess, a professional psychic channel, writer, workshop, ceremony and ritual facilitator and an energy worker.
She is a Priestess of Grace who works with the Butterfly Spirit which is her totem.
Candise practices a faith that she has named 'Lunar Mysticism'. In mysticism we acknowledge One Source and recognize all else as human hypnotism. In Lunar spirituality we embrace duality and marry it, forming non-duality. It is through the practice of Lunar Mysticism that Candise utilizes ritual as a tool to see beyond the hypnotic suggestion of this realm.
Priestess' have practiced the art of marrying the energies from this Earth realm and the Higher realms together for many moons now.
Mystics endeavour to find Source behind the suggestions of illusion.
Thus the Lunar Mystic approach to life is to marry the Truth of perfection with the human experience. This is the path that Candise Priestess', the Spiral Path of Grace, the path of the Feminine Mystic.
Her services are offered both in person and via distance, one on one or in group settings, depending on what it is that you are in need of. You can find her services at : priestessofgrace.wordpress.com

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