Hello Friends,

I hadn’t posted in a while, and I had been posting frequently. Posting frequently is more in alignment with my joy; however, I have been extra busy–and I’m not even sure how time is organizing itself right now. As far as I am intuiting: The official start of the New Year, in terms of momentum, will come after this New Moon in Aquarius that also lines up with the Lunar New Year, 2023: the year of the Water Rabbit. I will be adding a lot of links today because there’s a lot of ground that I want to cover, and I’m not going to create all the content by myself. This might even become another post. First let’s get to the inspiration for today’s blog post. I am coming to the writing block today to bring you Maori artist Sofia Minson and the poet Fred Lamotte. A couple of weeks ago, in December, before the New Year, Fred and I had a brief exchange on email. I told him about how his poetry strikes me in a powerful way. I used different words. Words that were special, and just for him. As a result, I got a reply that I made his day (morning, as is was the first email he read that day). As you can imagine my elation, that I managed to make the day of this most wonderful poet. I’m going to post below one of his most well known poems, and for good reason:

My ancestry DNA results came in.

Just as I suspected, my great great grandfather
was a monarch butterfly.
Much of who I am is still wriggling under a stone.
I am part larva, but part hummingbird too.
There is dinosaur tar in my bone marrow.
My golden hair sprang out of a meadow in Palestine.

Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,
but I didn’t get his dimples.
My loins are loaded with banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,
but I descended from Ravanna, not Ram.
My uncle is a mastodon.

There are traces of white people in my saliva.
3.7 billion years ago I swirled in hydrogen dust,
dreaming of a planet overgrown with lingams and yonis.

More recently, say 60,000 B.C.
I walked on hairy paws across a land bridge
joining Sweden to Botswana.
I am the bastard of the sun and moon.
I can no longer hide my heritage of
raindrops and cougar scat.

My mud was molded with your grandmother’s tears.
I was the brother
who marched you to the sea and sold you.
I was the merchant from Savannah
and the cargo of blackness.
I was the chain.

Admit it, you have wings, vast and crystal,
like mine, like mine.
You have sweat, dark and salty,
like mine, like mine.
You have secrets silently singing in your blood,
like mine, like mine.

Don’t pretend that earth is not one family.
Don’t pretend we never hung from the same branch.
Don’t pretend we do not ripen on each other’s breath.
Don’t pretend we didn’t come here to forgive.

Ancestry by Fred LaMotte for Earth Day

Here is the link for Sofia Minson’s artwork that is combined with Fred LaMotte’s poem.

About me:

I have been working closely with the Medicine Woman Centre for Shamanic and Esoteric Studies for several years, under the tutelage of FRANCHELLE OFSOSKÉ-WYBER. I completed my first Rite of the Six Moons (28 week journey) in July 2019–3 months after my first child was born. For the last year, I have been acting in my esteemed role as an elder for 2 of the 3 programs that I had completed since then, one of which was rich with astrology and magic in the Rite of the Twelve Celestial Regents. In 2023, I was chosen to serve as an elder for another year and support those who are currently embarking on their journeys. This is my lineage under the House of Bee.

This is just one of my shamanic traditions that I am a practitioner in. My other tradition I have also been studying and practicing formally for over 7 years. This is in the tradition of the Four Winds. The Q’ero people passed on their sacred knowledge to Alberto Villodo a former anthropologist. What I have in common with Alberto Villodo is my studies as an anthropology student in my early years, which was really guidance for me to walk the shamanic path. Therefore my “shamanic training” began with education at University while I was undergoing deep processes in my Mind/Body/Spirit. The culmination of my University education was my traveling around the world to locations that were specifically off limits for many travelers–due to boycotts/embargos/political reasons, and also safety reasons. It was then that I also traveled from temple to temple exploring deeply my calling.

I am not a shaman in a particular tradition but I have an assemblage of my own lineage and traditions; ancestry to the ancient Italian practices, began being revealed to me in 2016 when I visited my grandparents’ respective home villages. I have a strong connection with the Maori (and the Polynesian cultures) since I was a young teen (and my soul of course), and was guided eventually to working with Franchelle as an apprentice. Franchelle is a Medicine Woman who teaches within her mystery school where our teachers are the NZ First Light Essences that are created from our teacher plants. My work and studies continue, and my life grows in its magic. My soul, born in balsamic moon phase, is quite an ancient one. It wasn’t until I traveled to Kauai in 2011 that I received my full transmission of my new spiritual name and my surrender to living a life in complete guidance by Spirit. This was the same year that I began this blog. I have since ended up with many spiritual names. One is Tibetan Buddhist Dechen Llamo, given to me by a Lama, and another is Shamanic within the Four Winds, given as Sees Through Water.

Some of you may know that I am now a Doctor of Acupuncture with a specialization in Chinese herbal medicine (DAcCHM). For the next 3 years, I will be delving deeper into my training within Western herbs by the guidance of Rosemary Gladstar, the foremost leader in Western herbal medicine, and working on my land where I currently live with my little family in S. California.

The reason I have for my blog: while it changes over time, I would say that my earliest expression of my Spirit as a child was that of an artist. I was also a writer and a poet. In 2017 I published my first book. My goal is to publish another poetry book before the end of the year. Astrology is also a theme throughout my blog– it is, to quote Shakespeare, “this brave o’erhanging firmament.” Basically, I want to write and connect, and just be me. I want to share my art in whatever form it arises.

I hope those of you who are new followers have enjoyed this introduction. For those of you who have known me a while but don’t really know some of the details, here is your “more.” I truly hope and believe it’s a ‘given’ that you have enjoyed Fred LaMotte’s poem and Sofia Minson’s art. I will close with two of my favorite pieces of hers that I just discovered today. One is Midnight Rose, and the other is about her portraiture.