Who sits beside us as a tender, present witness at every threshold? Deep within our ancient and living heritages, Bear returns again and again—in folklore, ritual, ceremony, and legend—as a living presence in moments of transformation. Whether she appears as lover, mother, child, healer, midwife, shaman, or guide, within the spell of the telling, Bear offers us her hallowed den—a breathing, fluid space where psyche and nature, creature and cosmos curl together as one. Here, in the enduring pulse of her wild presence, she wraps us in her warmth and fur holding us steady as change reshapes us.
Read MoreThe Sacred Seamstress: Weaving the Web That Holds Worlds Together
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 MoreCarving Memory, Gathering Bones, Singing Her
La Huesera, the ancient folktale of the mythical Bone Woman of the desert southwest, wanders the arroyos gathering scattered bones of wolves, singing over them until they reassemble and return to life. Bone Woman’s song is sung the world over, it is the mythic medicine we can heal from if we dare to gather what’s been forgotten and scattered together into the same circle of honoring. This is Old Story Medicine, the elixir She offers from her sacred cauldron when the world seems starved of connection, and in need of healing and repair.
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 MoreFire Beneath the Frost: How a Little Bird Outsmarted Winter and Woke the World
Singebis is an ancient Ojibwe winter folktale about a beloved folk hero and wild grebe whose perseverance, courage, resilience, and loyalty in the face of Kabibona'kan, Winter Maker, shows us we can do the same in the face of adversity. This story asks us to reflect on what kinds of Kabibona'kans do we face in our lives today that threaten to divide us from others who might be our friends? This folktale reminds us we all have the capacity to tap into our inner Singebis, find our inner trickster, and remind ourselves that even a little wild bird can outsmart the Winter Maker!
Read MoreFox Woman: The Shapeshifting Woman at the Threshold Between Worlds
Fox Woman, also known as Kitsune in Japanese folklore, is a shapeshifting trickster character who resembles the elusive, clever fox from the wild. Although this folktale comes in many different variations and her story is told in many tongues, what they all have in common is a trickster character who shifts between human and fox, sometimes androgynous, living in multiple worlds, questioning the order of things through her mischief, playfulness, wit, deception, magic and defiance of authority. The tale of Fox Woman is almost always makes visible the tension between the need for order, and its reinvention.
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