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The Spiral Path

Reflections, explorations and musings on the spiral path - in our daily lives, on our daily walks, on sacred journeys on ancient pilgrimage paths.  

The Spiral Path calls and challenges us to walk deeply and to live rooted and aligned, awake and aware. It calls us to be willing to connect with our core selves and from the depths of our deepest desires and dreams, aligned with our soul gifts, authentic beauty and creative genius, to live an extraordinary and free life! 

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How did I awaken to my Vagina, you may ask?!!

2/20/2015

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What if my strength and the core of my being ~
the tap root within my body is my vagina,
has been hidden in plain sight all along?


I was in Prague nearly 2 months ago, when I made a vow to cross the threshold.  I committed to taking a journey, a descent down to the Dark Goddess, to explore my shadow, my depths, my hidden and rich interior, to find the gold in the dark interior.

What would call me down...and in?  What could lure me across the threshold, and perhaps even show me the map of this journey?
  When and how am I going to go to the core and connect to my roots, cultivate my strength, and live my life, fully aligned with my soul and my soul's purpose? What will it take for me to go to the core?  It sounds like what will it take for me to "go to the mat?" 

What will give me the catalyst, and even more, give me the map with directions and a guide to take this seemingly perilous journey?  What, who will guide and provide for me every step of the way?

The Path.  The Path will guide and provide for me every step of the way.

My experience of walking a sacred pilgrimage is that there are places along the way that seem to have a pull on you and that you remember differently than other places.  They may just have a personal significance for you.  Something happened to you at that place.  Perhaps you had an insight, a breakdown, a breakthrough, an encounter that somehow changed you and in turn, this place becomes a personal sacred site for you.  Long after your actually being there, they continue to work on you, reverberating in you on a cellular level, opening minute spaces to light and awareness, and creating shifts and change on a molecular level. 

Also possible is that a site holds a more universal sacred energy.  Usually, energy ley lines converge here.  Something feels different. Special.  Heightened.  Resonating.  Often there is a well, a grove, a church, a Celtic cross, an ancient stone, or a stone circle at this very site as evidence that reflects and/or celebrates the converging energies, and that most likely, people have been gathering here for thousands of years to align with the energies, celebrate them, receive from them, use them.  There is so much that I could write about sacred sites - a whole book could be written.  Many books have been written.  I will create a Resource Page on my website so that you can easily access and find different books on sacred sites, pilgrimage, etc.

Boscowen'un

In all of my walking and pilgrimages, the site that continues to "work" on me the most deeply is Boscowen'un, the sacred stone circle that lies on the Mary Michael Line
in western Cornwall.

This sacred site has invited me, moved me, held me and challenged me both times that I have journeyed to it, first in June 2013 when I walked by myself for 15 days, and then again last summer in June 2014, when I was co-leading the Spiral Paths Pilgrimage
where we weave together the pilgrimage journey
with the sounding of the Earth
.  Here's what I wrote in June 2013:
The image of the sacred circle of stones with a vertical stone in the middle has been with me throughout this journey.  I experienced it at Boscawen-un just outside of St. Buryan in western Cornwall on the second day of my pilgrimage.  This circle is a very ancient, potent and powerful circle of stones that invited me in to lie down in the middle next to the vertical stone, with the intention to open and receive its energies. Since then, I have been mulling over the stone circles, and the image of the circle and the point in the middle.  I believe that it is an ancient symbol that speaks powerfully and directly to our heart, soul and psyche and does not even engage the mental mind.  
Picture
@Gifts from the Path. Boscowen'un Stone Circle, Penwith, Cornwall. June 2013
Over the past 20 months, Boscowen'un has worked and worked me, and has even become the core of the body of work that Wende and I are co-creating together.  As we work with the energies of our experiences together and develop our body of work together, we keep returning to Boscowen'un.  It was a central to our 2014 pilgrimage experience, and we continue to consciously use it as we co-create.  We both had very powerful experiences here this past summer, in profoundly different ways.  I will share mine in another blog post. 

To deepen our working with the energies of Boscowen'un, Wende and I decided to work more closely with the energies of Boscowen'un within the container of a coning in early January.
  Since this day, we both have had access to deeper wisdom and guidance, and have also experienced significant shifts in our lives, both independently and together, that is creating a flow of energy moving us forward.  Decisions have been undone and changed.  Directions have significantly shifted. Anything that was not fully aligned with the profound energies of Boscowen'un rapidly dropped by the wayside.  Choices and decisions that just a few months ago seem improbable are now in place.  Just to give you an idea:
  • Homeschooling my 13 year old daughter for the remainder of 8th grade.  She was hit by a cosmic 2x4 in early November.  Quite literally, she fell backwards and hit her head, ending up with a concussion and persistent, significant headache that made going to school impossible.  It became clear after the holidays (and the beginning of January) that going back to school was really not an option, thus homeschooling, a choice that has redirected and shifted both of our lives.
  • Waiting to offer the next Spiral Path Pilgrimage to Cornwall in 2016 instead of 2015.
  • Not leading a proposed hiking walk tour in Cornwall in June 2015 for a small group from Boulder.
  • Not offering a tour in July with my father for his historical saga, The Miner and the Viscount, choosing instead to focus on marketing the book to hundreds and thousands of people, expanding into the vision of the book becoming a TV or movie series, and creating a documentary.
  • Receiving invitations to walk in France, Scotland and even the Great Wall in China, yet it's not time to choose or do anything to define the future.
  • Enrolling in a crazily named class, Vagina Kung Fu, an 8-week class designed to strengthen the vagina.  More about this later!!
While each of these shifts and choices has been very unexpected, there has also been an inner experience that each has been divinely orchestrated.  I've just had to pay attention, accept what it, surrender, be willing, align myself with, and stay open to the flow.  Sure, I could fight and resist, but I can feel the rightness of all that is showing up and unfolding.  I am being asked to be present, responsive and open to receive the ancient wisdom and innate intelligence of this sacred site, and to trust this journey that it takes me on.

Only now am I now ready to fully receive the natural intelligence and innate wisdom held in the stones of Boscowen'un. 

A most powerful, personal sacred site, and an ancient sacred circle of stones that has been part of this wild landscape for thousands of years.  I experience this sacred site as a place of worship and celebration of the Goddess.  These sacred stones in a sacred configuration remind us of the dark feminine energies that pulsate in the Earth, and offers us a way to reconnect with Her and find our way home to ourselves through an intimate, loving, powerful, respectful, co-creative relationship with Her and all of her beauty and resources. 

This circle of stones is guiding and providing me with the map, the container, the calling and the pull into the core of my being, deep into my depths, my essence, my body and my Soul.
Picture@Wendalyn Bartley. The center stone at Boscowen'un, June 2014.
How can a circle of ancient stones have this kind of impact and influence on me and my life?

This stone circle is unlike most other sacred stone circles in that it has a center stone.  This powerful stone is angled and in many ways, appears to be very masculine and phallic, sticking out of the ground in the middle of the feminine circle of stones.  I would imagine that most assume that it is masculine.  At first, I too
made an assumption that it had to be masculine....until recently.  Aware of a deep unrest within me, I knew that this conclusion didn't feel right.

Picturefrom "The Sun and the Serpent" by Paul Broadhurst and Hamish Miller, Mythos, 2013.
As you can see from the picture, the center stone is in alignment with the energy line.  One question may be, does the stone align with the flow of the energy line, or is the direction of the energy line created by the stone?  Turns out that I am asking the same questions as Paul Broadhurst and Hamish Miller.  It was their seminal book, The Sun and the Serpent, that called me to England to walk the Mary Michael Pilgrims Path in the land of my ancestors, and as it turns out, the land of my family, and me.

In The Sun and the Serpent, Paul Broadhurst and Hamish Miller explored and questioned this specific alignment, wondering if it was a natural or intentional occurrence:
According to our observations this stone, erected in the Bronze Age or earlier, actually caused the energy flow to re-orientate or it marked the precise spot where this happened naturally.  Either way, this could throw light on the argument that has raged between antiquarians about whether the stone had originally been upright, and subsided, perhaps through excavation, or whether it had been meticulously set at this angle thousands of years ago.  It if was raised with this intention, then it must surely mean that there is a long shaft of stone buried beneath the ground in order to counteract natural subsidence. 
                                                                                                                p. 123
Given that everything about these ancient stone circles is about intention, precision, alignment, balance and sacred connection between the stars, Sun and Earth, I firmly believe that this center stone was intentionally and meticulously set to align with the feminine energy current.  This then begs the question about the energy of the stone itself?  Is it masculine aligning itself with the feminine as a way of bringing the masculine and feminine together in sacred relationship?  

Or, what if the stone actually feminine?  So deeply and sacredly, divinely feminine that its truth is hidden in plain sight?

What if it's actually not phallic at all?

What if it's actually vaginal?  As in the female genitalia of the Sacred Feminine herself - the clitoris and the vagina, the center and the core of the beautiful feminine, Goddess body, and I will add, the human woman's body too?  The clitoris being the exposed tip of the stone, and the vagina buried deep in the earth, synchronistically at a very similar angle to the vagina in a woman's body?

Even Broadhurst and Miller said,
"
It if was raised with this intention, then it must surely mean that there is a long shaft of stone buried beneath the ground in order to counteract natural subsidence."

Underground lies a massive stone that balances, roots and stabilizes the angled stone
in the center of the circle, and toward the center of the Earth?  What if the shaft is not phallic at all but a feminine vagina leading to the sacred womb of Mother Earth herself?

WHAT IF THE STONE AT THE CENTER OF BOSCOWEN'UN IS FEMININE?

How does this awareness shift MY - and our - experience of this sacred stone circle, and in turn, of ourselves and our relationship with the Earth, and the Goddess?

I have been distracted for many of these past 18 months in believing that my strength and power lay in my embracing more of my inner masculine energy, and this has only created more of the same. 

In waking up to the core as feminine, and even more explicitly, the core as our VAGINA, I find myself excited that the source of my power lies WITHIN me, and I want to surrender to this sacred feminine power that has been within me all along!  I want to fling the doors open and dive into Her, and go wherever she wants me to go!

It's just so obvious, and simple. 

OUR CORE FEMININE STRENGTH, POWER AND CONNECTION LIES IN OUR VAGINAS.
 

MY CORE STRENGTH, POWER AND CONNECTION LIES IN MY VAGINA.

The center stone of Boscowen'un demonstrates this to us this truth with its magnificent center stone intentionally set into the earth at a remarkable angle, aligned with the Mary Line.  Mistaken as a masculine phallus, this core stone actually mimics the feminine vagina, with the bulk of its shaft anchored deep in the earth.  Touching this stone, sitting at its base, leaning our bodies into it, communicating and listening to it, sounding with it - these visceral experiences invite us to breathe into our vaginas, connect with our feminine bodies, and in turn, to embrace the magnificent power of our vaginas - passion, desire, creativity, sexuality, conception, birthing, strength, and to to re-connect with the sacred Feminine and these lost aspects of ourselves. 


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Wonderful new video on the Mary Michael Pilgrims Way

9/10/2013

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Here's a lovely new video just produced by Richard Dealler and Rachel Cornish.  It speaks to my heart of the gifts of sacred pilgrimage and the experiences of the Mary Michael Pilgrims Way in particular.  

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The outer pilgrimage provides the context and the opportunity for inner transformation.

5/26/2013

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Here's a quote from the guidebook for the Mary Michael Pilgrim's Way that I will be walking in June.  This quote speaks to me of why I walk sacred pilgrimages...what calls me and invites me to spend my days walking an ancient and sacred path.

www.marymichaelpilgrimsway.org
Facebook

The Sun and the Serpent 


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    Sarah

    I love to walk.  I love to write.
     

    I am a pilgrim. 
    I am a Womb Shaman.
    I am the Feminine Christ Awakened.  
    ​I am becoming the Feminine Christ Embodied. 


    I walk the sacred spirals of the ancient pilgrimage paths and sacred sites along the "dragon" ley lines of the Earth.  I walk local paths. I walk to be in Nature.  I walk labyrinths and spirals. I walk to move and celebrate my body. I walk to come home to the truth of who I truly am, to connect with the Earth and Spirit, and to live my life aligned with my soul's path. My intention is to walk In Love, As Love, For Love.

    I have led Spiral Path Pilgrimage Walks & Retreats in Cornwall in the very southwest of England.

    Mostly, I have been walking the sacred paths of the Womb Spiral - internally and in Penwith, Cornwall.  These sacred journeys continue to take me more and more deeply in to the core essence of who I am - as a women and as the embodiment of the Divine Feminine.  As I root more deeply into my essence, I have experienced a strength and presence within myself that cultivates a clarity and ferocity that demands a willingness to stand in truth and love.  This in and of itself has created a tsunami of change in my life that 

    Picture
    Sarah at Chalice Well, Glastonbury, England, September 2014.

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