Autumn’s late blooming flowers remind us, year after year, we are meant to be flowering right when we do. The late bloomer comes in many guises, and appears in the folklore of the Baba Yaga, creatrix and witch, and the Selkie, a shapeshifting seal woman. In a world that often glorifies early achievements and rapid success, these two ancient folktales of late bloomers are still remarkably relevant and timeless in their wisdom. They teach us that even in the midst of challenges that slow us down, there is always the capacity for growth, transformation, and the emergence of something truly extraordinary.
Read MoreAutumn's Gifts: Beauty and Bereavement
Autumn gifts us with the beauty of dying leaves, or, in the words of Rebecca Solnit, the reminder that beauty and bereavement can sometimes intertwine. What the autumn reminds us of is how feelings of grief and loss (and the dying of the leaves) can be felt at the same times as we experience something beautiful and joyful (the vibrant golden colors of the leaves) and how this complex combination of opposites is often at the heart of our human experience and weaves its way into many ancient folktales.
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The Birch Goddess: Baba Yaga & The Wisdom of Fall
Inspired by the Slavic Folktale Katrina and the Bright Falcon, featuring Baba Yaga, the enduring powerful female wilderness creatrix from Russian folklore, beautifully described and redefined by Natalia Clarke in her book Baba Yaga: Slavic Earth Goddess which she writes from her own Siberian heritage. The wisdom this folktale offers is how a deep relationship with a wild Falcon and an unconventional wild elder woman who lives in the deep forest, can be a pathway to birth our True Authentic Selves.
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Caribou Sky, inspired by a folktale about the caribou and their connection to the seasonal cycle of the sun which draws loosely from several ancient stories from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, including many elements from indigenous Sami folklore. Here photographed in the process of being carved.
Summer 2023 Newsletter
Sharing several new handmade prints in my shop! Each print contains a precious folktale from the past, a mythos, reminding us of our ancient and intimate kinship with the wild, expressed with a multitude of endearing voices of the earth. Whether it is the sound of clanking antlers, or the mischievous pecking of a black crow, or the whisper of a tiger’s whiskers these heartwarming stories lyrically weave us into the circle of life and remind us of our extraordinary human imagination.
Read MoreSedna: Gift from the Salt Womb
Sedna is an Inuit folktale about how unimaginable pain can be transformed into our greatest gift to others. Though Sedna drowns at the hands of her father, she transforms from the role of victim, to the mighty goddess of the underworld who births all life. Complex, fallible and real like each one of us, Sedna is a deeply lovable character in a heartbreaking tale that offers up ancient wisdom that wakes us up, like the salty spray of an ocean wave.
Read MoreSelkie: Coming Home to Oneself
An ancient folktale from the Faroe Islands, Scotland, Ireland and Iceland about a seal-woman, or Selkie, who loses her pelt, and how she finds it again. Though this story is ancient, it still speaks deeply to the lived experience of those of us who offer our time and energy to others at sacrifice of something vital to us whether it is a love, a dream, or the potential to develop, and how important it is to reclaim it.
Read MoreThe Bird Woman Inside Us
Whether it is winged deities like the Hindu apsaras; airborne Christian mystics; Islamic Sufis; or the Greek Goddess Athena with her Little Owl, there is a consistent association between birds and a sense of fierce and powerful womanhood and femininity across cultures and geographies. In what small ways can we reclaim our power, rebel like these bird heroines, and embody the energy and spirit of wild birds?
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