In these shadowed and fractured times, when visions of one world rise against one another, we must remember the Sacred Seamstress who eternally weaves worlds back into belonging. She appears as Na'ashjé'ii Asdzáá, Spider Grandmother of the Navajo, or as Amaterasu Omikami, the Japanese Shinto sun goddess, or the Valkyries of Norse legend just to name a few . . .This feminine archetype dwells in the shadows wearing a thousand forms and names. Perhaps she awaits within you? Now is the time to call her forth, and she will rise; nourish her, and she will flourish. Explore a few of her many faces and wisdoms in this blog.
Read MoreSacred Hare Divine Feminine: Where Moon, Sacred Hare & Womb Dance as One
What weaves its way like an underground warren beneath the borders of conquest and control, preserving our collective wild sisterhood with the earth across time, cultures and landscapes? The ancient link between hares, the divine feminine, and the moon journeyed from Asia to the Americas—carried by storytellers, pilgrims, healers, and wanderers. What might we reclaim if we traced their sacred steps?
Read MoreThe Sky Goddess: Generously Weaving Together Worlds
Bridging continents and cultures, the Eswatini folktale of Cloud Princess from Africa and the Haudenosaunee folktale of Sky Woman from North America, offer us their shared and relevant wisdom enriching, deepening and expanding our understanding of the meaning of “generosity” in unexpected ways. We learn generosity is the vital and sacred choice that can weave us back into relationship with each other, draw us into closer kinship with the wild, and open ourselves up to belonging to a larger whole.
Read MoreBoreal Bears and Feral Females: Twin Bear Folktales from East and West
The Norwegian folktale “East of the Sun West of the Moon” and the Japanese (indigenous Ainu) folktale entitled “Crescent Moon Bear” are folktales featuring fearless young women who dare to engage in greater intimacy with a bear whether it is marrying a bear, or having the courage to pluck the whisker of a bear. Both involve traversing a formidable boreal forest landscape to save their husbands from a “spell”. These folktales are so strikingly similar in theme and shared values, giving voice to their parallel nature deepens our sense of interconnected history, and rekindles a feeling of belonging to a shared storied boreal landscape, weaving together people, bears, ancestry, stories and hearts. . .
Read MoreEnemies Made Sacred: The Last Howl of the Gospel of the Grasslands
In the heart of the Mongolian grasslands wolves and sheep herders once lived in harmony with each other. Nomadic herders regarded their fiercest enemy as their sacred teacher, weaving wolf-wisdom into myth, ritual, and the rhythms of daily life. Their folklore—part gospel, part guide—taught them the ways of wolves: resilience, loyalty, and reverence for the wild, helping human communities endure the unforgiving land. Wolf Totem captures this vanishing world, where enemy became ancestor, and folklore fed both body and soul.
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Photo Credit: Thomas Bonometti on Unsplash.
Where the She-Wolf Howls: Awakening the scattered fragments of our wild humanity back into belonging
There is an ancient folktale from the desert Southwest about “a woman who was a wolf who was a woman” also known as “Loba Girl” or Wolf Woman who climbs the canyons, and sifts through the arroyos or dry riverbeds, gathering wolf bones over which she sings, until they spring back to life and run off laughing with the voice of a woman. Inspired by Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ retelling of this story in her book Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, this folktale invites us to call back to life those buried and discarded parts of ourselves, so that we can find our true voice again.
Read MoreFeathered Witch, Winter Weaver: How a Timeless Winter Spirit Wove Herself into Rhyme To Survive
Between the covers of a Mother Goose book, children’s rhymes and folktales are woven together with feathers and threads, preserving the magic of an ancient, shape-shifting winter spirit. Mother Goose, with her goose-foot and spinning-wheel roots, is said to echo Perchta, the pre-Christian Alpine goddess of winter, weaving, and liminal spaces. A guardian of thresholds—between old and new years, girlhood and cronehood, village and wilderness—she survives in story, rhyme, and legend, a powerful spirit whose magic endures in children’s tales across the centuries.
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