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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Jane Meredith

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

All land has history – many millions of years of it – all natural places have living beings who reside there or pass through; all places have a landscape, an altitude, weather and seasons as well as a relationship to the four elements and all buildings have, as well as history, an intention or purpose informing them. Places can hold great resonances of emotion and just by being there we participate in it. Some locations gather layer upon layer of meaning, for example churches are often built on land, or on top of sites that were always considered sacred, as a method of colonising local religions. These places are often high points in the landscape with significant features of water, geography and relationship to the local spirits. Churches themselves are often majestic structures, containing art work of great beauty, reverence for the divine, interred bodies, memorials and the thousands of rituals that have occurred within them. Perhaps they also retain the whispers or cries of those who lived and worshipped here before this current building was constructed, from lineages that might stretch back untold generations.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

When my heart is sore, I go to the river. When I want to forget my human separateness and remember how I am merged with nature, I go to the river. When I wish I had a sister to talk to, or a lover to hold me, I go to the river. The river is always there.

Sometimes it is in a fierce mood, with a strong current and leaves and debris sweeping down. Often it is gentle, the water soft as it washes around me and the view above – a ribbon of sky, with clouds, birds, framed by tall trees on either side – holds me serenely, telling me of the changing constancy of this place. Today there’s a bird, tomorrow clouds, the next day I watch leaves falling down the height of the tallest tree towards me, swimming underneath. Sometimes the mood is sleepy, the water not moving if it hasn’t rained for a while, leaves gathering undisturbed on the surface and the temperature layered down, mild on the surface but cool, colder, cold as it chills down through the water’s depths.

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  • Jamie
    Jamie says #
    Ms. Meredith, Thanks for sharing that! I also honor the local river gods, but the water is too polluted to swim in. Textile mills

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

The south point is the base of the circle. In the northern hemisphere it is closest to the equator, but here in the southern hemisphere it’s closest to the South Pole. We think of it as the ground, in which things are planted and where seeds sprout and arise. It’s also a place of compost, death, dark – letting the old fall away and waiting. To see what will be born.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

There’s a chance to deepen our belonging to a place when we move around through the seasons in a circle, or a wheel. We learn our places, our moods and activities as related to the time of year and can map our own yearly cycles. When we are on a straight line, changes from one summer or winter to the next are perhaps not that noticeable, part of a changing scenery that we move through, not necessarily expecting repeats. But when we consciously travel around the seasons we are bound to notice – that the winter we just had was unseasonably mild, that the rains didn’t come when we needed and expected them, that the number of major weather events, worldwide, are increasing year by year.

I came back to the southern hemisphere in spring. I had known it would be spring, of course. On the calendar I knew it – but that’s quite a different thing than seeing it, feeling it, hearing it. 

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

Today my favourite picnic table is available. Then I ask, what does that mean, since I come here only for a few days, every couple of years?

My commitment to Local Magic came not after years of living in one place, although I felt committed to that place. My actual commitment was after I had moved, feeling uncertain and disconnected and – to an extent – unwilling to fall in love with the new land I was living on. I spent a year in that in-between state – living somewhere I hadn’t formed a deep magical bond with – before realising that days and months of my life were passing in disconnection and that not committing because I didn’t know the future was absurd. Sure, I might move and feel that my heart was wrenched out of me. Sure, this would be yet another place I loved and might be parted from, and so be it. This is the way of it; in place, in relationship, probably in all endeavours.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

After walking the labyrinth on New Year’s Day my magic group was inspired to continue the ritual the next day. Oh, and the day after that and the day after that… actually for another eight days. We went to every direction in our Circle of Eight, one after the other, in order. At the end of that we couldn’t quite bear to end, so we committed to another round of visits, this time weekly so we could fit it in to our busy lives. One of the most amazing things was the amount of time we spent sitting around outside having breakfast or dinner picnics or late-afternoon homemade strawberry cocktails. It was Blue-Mountains-in-the-summer weather. It rained on many of these excursions, usually a light passing rain or heavy cloud arising or descending. It didn’t stop our picnic, trance or conversation.

Some of our Circle came on every excursion, the whole nine days in a row. Others came to several, or one but either way we spent a lot more time together than we usually do and that was wonderful. It felt like a spell for 2017 – if we begin this year with nine days of ritual (ten really, as we had done a ritual together on New Year’s Eve) – what a potent and deepening way to enter into the year. Surely our whole year will be filled with ritual? – and with each other? – and at the moment, we can’t think of anything better. 

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

On New Year’s Day we walked our local labyrinth. It was raining. We took our clothes off in the carpark, to keep them dry and walked, wrapped in a sarong, a towel across the small footbridge and along the avenue of apples, in full leaf by now and with discarded baby green apples, half eaten by the birds crunching under our feet over the bark mulch covering the path. The rain was light, gentle, not warm exactly but not fiercely cold either, it’s high summer here though most of the time you wouldn’t know it. When we arrive the labyrinth looks washed clean, its coloured mosaic tiles gleaming and small puddles across the surface of it.

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