Wednesday 4 June 2014

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BEAUTY




I would like to speak a little about the importance of beauty. I do not mean the drive for some form of distorted perfection that the media or Zeitgeist of the moment demands us to inspire to, and encourages us to pursue at the full cost of our happiness if not our health. This actually only leads to an increase in the blindness to beauty, in the ‘green eyed monster’ of jealousy and envy and the hopeless, endlessly painful path of comparison amongst each other and within our hearts. 

No, I am talking about the beauty of the miracle that is your body: your senses, skin, the magic of your organs and the way they function, the orchestra of hormones and delicately finely tuned communication of chemical compounds, the majesty of hair, of voice and body fluids, and the mystery contained in the spiralling of your DNA . I am speaking into the wonder of the aliveness in your body, the profoundly erotic love affair that existence is having with it self right here in you right now.

The deep mystery of our bodies, our physical form, is a way into experiencing yourself as the reflection of the Lover Goddess at any moment, and The Goddess of Love is Beauty. Beauty is Love manifested in physical form.  So often we do not have the eyes to truly see and honour our beauty, though we find it easy to see it in the landscape of rocks and fields, rivers and trees all around us, still somehow we are blind to the beauty of our own ‘sacred earth’, our body. 


The lack of importance given to the true meaning of beauty actually physically hurts our being, as we continuously dishonour our own sacred nature and form.

It is the grace of the Goddess which gives us the ‘eyes of love’ with which we see the good in the world, our own being or each other. As in when we are first in love and see our beloved as the most beautiful, the shining one, a flawless soul in a body that is beautiful and desirable to us. Beauty opens and softens our heart. This is because of the ability of beauty to make us feel and become more alive, as it draws more of our soul into our body and heart so that we may feel more connected to our physical presence, to our life’s purpose and to that which is outside of us.

With the opening of our heart, our soul feels its wings of possibility and wants to soar. This gives us greater ability to feel empathy, to be compassionate, to love. Beauty is one of the great gateways through which more soul enters our physical body. There are other gateways as well of course: grief, pain, love, orgasm, birthing and death to name a few. Beauty is a particularly delicious gateway, and open to us all at all time if we choose to have the eye to see, for beauty is everywhere, even if not always ‘pretty’.

“Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech? Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears….
Beauty is life when life unveils Her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror”.
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet on Beauty

When the Goddess of Love touches us, beauty manifests all around us and opens us to the mysteries. This is why we go soft and fluid, more at ease with the flow of life when we ‘fall in love’ and why we are moved by beauty. We feel more, become more alive when we are in the presence of beauty, Her mirror. It is the root of human longing to share this experience of the opening of the heart in love that expresses in ways as varied as the Valentine’s card, the Taj Mahal, Mona Lisa and the most profound love poetry ever written. 

The best of these expressions capture and communicate the beauty of love so that all who meet it can experience the feeling also. And the world becomes a little more enhanced with beauty, a better place, with each such creation.

This is also why the deliberate destruction of beauty or the creation of that which is ugly is so ‘soul destroying’ to us as a species, and to our heart-full place in our interactions with the natural world. For example, one only has to be surrounded by the deliberate monstrosity and sameness of Soviet architecture to feel the closing of the sensual aliveness of the heart. This, more than any social ideology, is precisely the purpose of this way of building, to numb the population. After all, it is a well-known patriarchal strategy which teaches that those who are hardened, afraid or less open, less alive in their heart, are so much more easily manipulated and controlled. When we feel less, we are much more likely to BE less as well, especially less compassionate, and therefore more capable of unkindness and cruelty.

The Goddess of Love allows for compassionate and loving behaviour by opening us through Her beauty, so that we can feel such kindness and goodwill we belief our self to be in love with the whole world. 

Let us start by honouring the beauty of our body, just as it is, in this moment, and thank it for all it’s beautiful ways it connects us to life, dances with sensual experience of what it means to be alive as a human being, enhances our experience of aliveness through pleasure and joy, and shines with the beauty of our uniquely individual expression of the Devine manifested in physical form. 

Allow yourself to see the beauty that is you, and notice that not only your heart can relax a little and your mind can let go a little of the old story of ‘not good enough’, but that the world around you actually begins to become a more beautiful place because of it.

With love and blessings
Katinka Soetens, extract from the e-book:
Teachings of Rhiannon, part one of Sacred Sexual Priestess Empowerment, available on Amazon.

Monday 5 May 2014

Soul Story: Marina, a Path Finder's Love story


Marina



There once was a woman who lived by the sea. All her life the salt waters had sung to her. The echo of wave whispers was her earliest memory, woven into the fabric of her being. Her dwelling was a hut high on the cliff, overlooking lace-foamed turquoise depths. It was made from what the tides had brought her and, over time, had taken on a shape of it’s own that blended into the land like a crouching animal at rest but alert. Most days she could be seen scanning the horizon, singing quietly to herself or to some distant tribe of creatures only she knew, while collecting flotsam on the beaches where the waters kiss the land. Her fingers would make treasures with what the waters washed up for her: wind chimes, wave charms, weather fanes. In the evenings she would make a driftwood fire and tell the stories each thing she had found let her see, sometimes to those who’d come to listen and share that flickering warmth, or to the waves and the stars themselves.

No one really knew where she had come from, for at the age of about nine she had been found on the shore of a grey sea in amongst windswept dunes and had not been able to tell anyone how she had got there or whereher family might be. It was noticed that she seemed to listen to some far off calling from over or under the water, stretching her neck so her ear was closer, more tuned in, to what ever she was listening to, until she would nod, perhaps smile a little, and carry on playing or singing her strange songs. She was thought to be a gipsy child, left behind by mistake or perhaps on purpose, or that some ship wrecked adventure had brought her to these shores, and people were a little afraid of her. They named her Marina, for the sea light that shone in her eyes. Out of the kindness of those who live intimately with the fickle flow of fate, they looked after her as much as she would let them, learning to appreciate the precision with which she seemed to know when the sea changes and wild weather were approaching, before even the gulls or old sea dogs could smell it on the wind. For the rest, they let her be. And so, for a while, she lived wild and happily enough amongst fishing nets and clinker build boats, not noticing the tugging call that every ebb would slip and suck a little deeper into her bones.

It was not until one year a summer moon, full and yellow in a milk-warm night, lit a path of such bedazzling light onto the sea stretching out into the future, that she felt that outgoing tide’s pull and acknowledged the deep longing that was singing in her blood. Her own moon-flow had echoed tides and season for some time and she was woman now, following her inner knowing, strong and free. Walking tall on wind swept shores through sun-slipped rain and bright light, she found empty places where only the seagull’s call led towards the messages left written in the ripples and patterns of weed and sand: her map to navigate by. And in her dreams she felt more then that she heard, a deep reverberation rumble softly like the song of crashing waves, setting her nerves on fire with the tingling knowing of home, somewhere out there to be found. Steady, steady following her map and that midnight- melody her feet danced her lightly along the coastline of lands she never saw. Edge-Walker she, long hair bleached by weather and woven with feathers and shining shells, kelp-skirted long brown limbs crusted with salt spray crystals: listening always to the sea she headed South with the wind and West with the sun towards warmer land and bluer waves.

Then one day, the land had stopped and she had found herself on tall pale cliffs with goat-path tracks leading down to the water’s edge. The sun was warm and gave the herb-filled earth-scent wings to mingle with the seabreeze and she had felt reluctant to turn the corner back. Instead she’d started singing to the sea again, like she had done so long ago when her legs were shorter and the water had been a different shade. With each breath the waves had whispered their answer of patience and of changing tides, so she had waited and watched for what the flow would bring.

Around her fire, women had come looking for wisdom or treasure, cures, spells and stories; medicine all, and men had asked the same or for some time to spend in her company. Youths of springtime, Beltane lovers, gentle fathers and wise old men had shared her bed from time to time and drowned a little in her eyes. Few however, had touched her heart, which was so full by now with slow deep songs of wet wave-filled horizons that only those who are true navigators of love could ever hope to reach or swim those depths.

One morning, on a following breeze, a sail filled with the sun had come a-floating into view, and as the day wore on, had steadily come closer, though the cliffs harboured no mooring, and the water was too deep for anchorage. Within the lee of the land the sails had flapped in protest of the breath of wind bereft them now, but still it came, this brave mad boat, carried on the current of the incoming tide. On board, a dark skinned man had flashed white teeth in laughter, which drew her down to the beach, to see him wave ahoy while dropping sail. Calculating recklessly or with the confidence of one with total trust in all his skills, he let the momentum of the breakers carry his vessel onto the pebbles. The hull, so used to liquid touch, protested loudly at the sudden solid rub of stone and sand and came to a jarring, careening stop. There he was before her, as if the haven of her arms had always been marked upon his sea chart. And in his dark eyes a burning, like glowing embers, and on his tongue the language of sunsets, and in his hair the scent of far off exotic places. His touch like desert wind, hot and hungry, drew moisture to her skin and painted her pleasure in colours she could not have imagined. His kiss ignited the spark of her desire, growing rapidly to a blaze that was a beacon on the horizon for all who looked into the West that night. It was rumoured ever after in those parts that the sunset lingered deep into the night that day and ever since, fires are lit each year on the cliffs to mark the occasion.

Their passion was steam under the stars, for if she was water: creating, flowing, dissolving, he was fire: consuming, transforming, warming, and they were well matched. But still, when sleep took them, wrapped together like sea weed on the sands after a gale-filled night in winter, they seemed to cling together with the same desperation held in the fleeting solidity of the moment those wave-plants ripped from their roots and elements. For still she could hear that old familiar calling; song of the sea, deep ocean booming, resonating in her bones and dreams.

One evening, while the blue smoke of her fire stung in their throats and drift-wood sparks crackled their joy to finally return to light and heat, she’d asked him to choose three things from amongst the sea-gift objects she had found and she would tell their meaning.

The first had been a piece of wood, beautifully white and polished now by long sanding of salt water, sun and stone, that once had been the branch of an old and mighty oak, that stood for many decades watching out into the wind on solid ground, well in land from the coast. She read the lifelines in the wood and felt the story of how high and wide the branches of this tree had reached into the sky, creating homes and food for many things and beings. Standing proud and strong through gales and droughts, with roots so deep into the crystal heart of Earth, the tree had been a re-assuring point of reference for all who lived near its shade. Until one day the floods had come, released from some much higher place, where sea winds had pushed moisture filled clouds and torrents caused the flash-flood streams. The water had dissolved the earth that held the roots bound tight and safe of that old oak which had seen so much of time and sky and life forever shifting all around while it stood still. It had not taken long for water’s hungry mouth to suck the strong foundations out and crashing down had come the tree. Smashed up, some bits were carried off towards the sea, where this branch had lain and was gently stripped of bark and edge until it now was smooth and shaped like sculpture, telling of the way that all things change.

Next he’d chosen a length of rope as thick as his wrist with flaying ends like chewed out liquorish root, which smelled still faintly of tar and shipyard works and whispered of the forces it once held at bay. Trusted by all whose hands would make it fast, great ships it held, ocean liners, ships of sail and trade that longed to travel all around the world. This rope had tied them onto land and held them there against the tug of tide or push of gale, and even stretching strong against the eager pull of engines roaring to be moving free. Until one night a tidal wave had swept into the harboured walls and lifted up the ship it held, ripping the rope as it tried to hold on against the flow so strong, one by one it’s fibres pulled and tore and then it dropped into the sea. There it learned the slow flow journey of the tides it once had stopped the ships from following. Now it tells softly of how none that really want to move can ever be kept tied for long but are best set free.

Last he’d picked a red pebble with a patterning of whitelines, and it had told her of how once it had been mud and deep deposits of bone and chalk. Of how it had become a mountain tall pushed high by the relentless movement of Earth’s plates shifting on their lava bed, so long ago, beyond the measurings of men. Then time’s slow teeth and ice and sun had ground away the cloud-capped heights and washed it bit by bit to sand and sea. And now it rolls in each caressing ocean wave, sighing of how nothing ever dies but changes always, how ever slow; energy’s flow that pulses in the stars makes mountains into sand and ocean beds into tall peaks of land. 

They’d laughed into each other’s arms, feeling all of space circling around them and they the still point of the centre. They’d left those treasures on the small beach to make love more fiercely alive then ever before and for the first time in so long she did not hear the ocean’s song that night.

Their love had flourished as they initiated each other into places further and deeper then either had journeyed into alone. Flowers grew along the headlands; spin-drift and sea-pinks, liver weed and wild orchids, filling the small hut with their fragrance.  But if she was of the ocean, he was of the land, and if she was content to wait and be, seeing what the flow brought her there along those cliffs, going with the changes while staying still, he felt the tidal rhythm urging his restless soul to wander all the seven seas to new exciting lands. The light of their loving brought up the dark places of the deep oceans of the heart for both, and storm rocked the heaven of their loving. They fought and stood their grounds, neither willing to trust the other, neither willing to let go, to surrender, instead tearing with teeth of anger at the threads of love between them, unyielding, sharp and shielded. An impossible stand off with neither quite brave enough to journey all the way into becoming what might be possible between a man and a woman.

So one day, his vessel stocked, his head heavy and the sunhigh up in the deep blue sky, the calling in his body became too strong and he knew he had to leave her if she would not follow. Raising sail with the ebb flow, and without looking back even once, he set out for the widening sea. Up on the cliffs she’d watched him go and with him went her heart, breaking open like the bowl of the horizon and all her love the waves between them. How could she ignore the deep dancing in her that listened to that endless calling, the slow song of longed for home and watch him go like the setting sun, never to rise and light her world again? Before his silken sail was out of reach she’d flung herself into the waves and swam, her body made for this, one with current and salt sea ripples. Riding gulf-streams and following the tidal rip out into the deep to catch him still.
The elements were with her, for with the dimming light the breeze had died and while the sun was setting red and made the fires of the sky, she’d reached his hull, singing. But when she tried to touch her hand up to the deck, she found it was no longer there, her form had changed, her soul’s skin shape now true: her body of the waves. Perhaps as once softly foretold by tree and rope and stone that night of flickering fire and star filled love, perhaps her fate always awaiting her and him just the catalyst of love’s opening. What else would have finally made her swim out beyond the horizon of the land?

She did not know what to do at first and tried to call to him, swimming around his boat, anxiously trying to understand what had happened to her and how to let him know that she was there, now that her eyes saw in a different way and she felt her body less defined by boundary. It was then that she heard it clear, as if in answer to her calling, the bone deep thrilling, booming, haunting sound, in the waves and of it, singing her name in a new tongue. There seemed to be such a sweet slowness to the song that for the first time she could grasp the meaning, like remembering a childhood language or the sounds surrounding earliest life, which, though not heard since babe-hood, are yet instantly recognisable when heard again. From deep below it came closer, till bubbles jellied in the waves and broke the water’s flow beside the boat in one loud fountainous blow and the mountainous rising of a great whale rolled up out of the sea, summoning her to follow. Barnacled and ancient, with eyes of watery mystery deep beyond song, and wisdom of star lit bioluminescence. Silent shifting magnetic poles guiding its long journeys, lonely through the deep ancestral womb waters of the Earth, to find the frenzied feeding feasts and meet the mate to dance into the sky with,  suspended weightlessly. Then dive back deep together, into the blue unending flow, which always welcomes back those born of it. Whale had come for her.

On board he’d heard the wet whale breath and quickly came up out on deck to see his love there in the swell beside the hull. For how could he not know her, though her tall limbs were fins and her body changed and smooth, belonging to this ocean realm. Their eyes met across the bow and through his tears that fell salt into the sea, their souls kissed. Forever joined in one perfect moment underneath a rising moon that bore witness to their farewell.

And he would find her time and time again in every woman he would love in lands far away or near, during his life path’s wandering. For it is true that every woman carries in her something of the sea and he would look until he found that echo in each one he meets.

She, whale-woman, rolled over in the waves’ salty embrace to look up one last time into his face before she filled her lungs and dived down deep into the unknown worlds below. Following her kin, her tribe, who ride the slip-streamed currents of the oceans all around the globe and know the joy of surface light as well as the dark dense cold hold of the dreamy deep, where all of life and even  heart   beats      slow       rig ht               d  o w   n        
Where songs swim further and echo longer then they ever could in air and are heard over distances unbelievable to man and travel beyond time. She sings there now to all her kin, of love and life, her journey resonating in the mix where she belongs; home, where finally her songs make sense.


By Katinka Soetens

Monday 28 April 2014

Soul-Story: 'Wind Reader', a deep diving Explorer's story


There once was a man who could read the wind. He lived in a small village on a mountain, his whole body a finely tuned instrument of sensual breath-fuelled connection to breeze.

He'd studied the colour of sky and the smell of the clouds, which sang to him deep in his nostrils. He knew the taste of the soils from the far corners of the Earth carried in pollen and dust on the airstreams, and could feel like no other, when, and from which direction, rain would come. When the soft winds would rise off the field warmed by sunlight, his skin prickled in alert anticipation before the first breath of breeze could reach him, and when the dark thunderstorm was but a thought in the cloudy mind of the heavens, his hair would tense up, pulling his awareness into presence to the pressure that had only just begun to build into airy ripples of high rising columns, gathering momentum to make love violently far overhead.

The people very much appreciated his skills and fore knowing, which seemed magical to them and helped greatly the safety of crops and children and the wellbeing of the community. In fact, often the news of the good fortune and abundance of the village would spread to other places and travellers would come to the village to seek him out, to sit with him and try to learn his secret wisdom. The man would share what he could, but never too much, as he found it impossible to teach, express or explain how he knew what he knew or did what he did. So after a while the seekers would leave, often disgruntled and speak far and wide of the wind-reading man, blackening his name and belittling his skills, and feeding the secret shame he carried close to his heart.

In his books and journals he had studied the names of the winds from all the directions, exploring their strange sounds on his tongue and sensing their character until he could feel them blowing around him, rustling pages, in his room. Tucking at his clothes and slipping into his dreams, their airy whispers would tell of strange places, would try to pull him up, into their lofty embrace, ready to take him high and far into adventure and freedom, like a beautiful woman inviting him into passion and bliss, which he longed to explore, to own and belong to, but was afraid that he couldn't. His deep held fear of inadequacy would not allow him to open to the journey offered.

Often these dreams would leave him terrified, waking in clammy sheets on soaking pillows, acutely aware of his lack of wings, his inability to fly and the danger of leaving all that was familiar and earth bound, for a leap into the unknowable alien expanse of the sky that surely was death. And though his body itched and ached as if for release on nights like these, and his racing heart pounded in his chest like a great winged horse longing to be set free, he would calm his heart rate with concentrated control and hard learned yoga breath practices, and tether his feather-twitching skin by thinking of all the responsibilities he carried which were the mark of a man. These thoughts usually weighed him down sufficiently for him to stop feeling the longing for surrender and power, and his practice succeeded, at least for the time being, to mask the great fear of his lack of wings. He felt calmer not feeling the truth of his body and safer not fully living in there.

And so it was that with time, at first the view from his window seemed less wide and bright, then the walls of his home began closing in. Little by little the space became smaller around him, increasing his acute sense of un-ease and the growing urgency to move, his great longing for sky and breeze through his hair. But he found himself almost paralysed and afraid so afraid of outside, unable to stand the shadow drift of cloud, the thought of the sky and the taste of the wind. The villagers tried to coax him outside for they missed his predictions and presence amongst them. Crops didn't do well now that the foresight of weather no longer made life on the mountain abundant. The village dwindled and one day a great dragon of lighting ripped through the village without any warning, taking with it, in it's passing, with a sweep of it's tail, the school house, and two of the people. 
'What good is a wind reader frightened of air? What use is a man who doesn't even dare to live with the fullness of his gift? What use is he to us?' grumbled the people and they left him alone with his shame and his pain. He was hungry and cold, lonely and afraid, in the little small room with the windows taped off so no breeze could squeeze in, too afraid and ashamed to explore horizons inside him or out there in the great wide spaces, he hid in the corner trying to stay unseen.

Then one night the great Night Mare of the Sky Goddess came, bursting into that room: manes a flurry of flame, and breath taking terrible her tornado like tail. Wild lust in her eyes, flanks of black ice and sheet rain, dust devil neck whipping round, foaming storm cloud lips, coming at him to tear lose the great fear stored in his heart. A furry of neighing, hail stone teeth at his throat, great gleaming hoofs like hurricanes rising high over his head, baring down like thunder, shaking him to death.
Into darkness he fell, a great terrible empty, a nothing, filled with regret and life left un-lived, a small place of no breath and poorly formed shapes, hard to see clearly: his dreams and potential left stunted and empty. 

In that moment he choose to let go, to surrender, to give up all that had held on so tightly, being smaller then small didn't work any longer, to stay shut down no longer an option. His fear might be strong but his courage was greater, cracking open the frozen parts of his body, feeling the kiss of pain (or was it pleasure?), as life forced sensation into forbidden places. The only way through was to let go completely, was to feel so fully, to be so fully, to be it all: his sex aflame and legs stretching wide, arms raised up, this leap into faith out of shame is taking all that he's got. To reach, to reach, to reach, to explore the possibility of the possible .... and to take the reins of his destiny firmly in hand. No longer a question of permission or politeness, within him the place wanting life demanding to breathe. And the pounding, the pounding, the pounding of wings, with his terror and tears, breaking free from his skin.

HA, to take to the sky, to be one with the wind, the embrace of the air and clean taste of his freedom. Wild he rises up above fear and the shackles of shame that made him belief his own story of 'not good enough' and had held him down to the thoughts that for him it was impossible to ever take flight, earth bound and heavy; well look at him now! Choosing to become what he is and always has been, he claims his freedom, the passion and realm of his choice, his wild free responsibility, his joy. 

And the blood pumps strong in the whole of his body. Wind flyer, Sky rider, this is what he is made for, is made of, this, this is his form, his truth and his power. Great Pegasus rising free as the wind, his dance magnificent, shifting and swirling, painting dawn-like the clouds that he passes, he is part of the sky and his vision is wide. He can feel what is coming way beyond the horizon, with such ease, with such grace.... 
and the words of wind wisdom and weather ways rain down inside him like the knowledge of spells.

There once was a man who could read the wind. He lived in a small village on a mountain, his whole body a finely tuned instrument of sensual breath-fuelled connection to breeze. When ever he chooses, he takes to the sky and travels far with the winds from each corner of the Earth. Having embraced the Night Mare he resisted, he's befriended his shadow. Now he takes care of his village, his realm and his body, which thrive in abundance and health. Much loved and surrounded by life lived fully, he teaches his wisdom to those who come seeking, sky readers and wind dwellers, his pupils, his people, and he is home.

Friday 25 April 2014

RHIANNON OF THE LOVING MIRROR



Rhiannon, like many of the Lover Goddesses from all over the world, is a Mirror Goddess. For the Goddesses of Love are the Illuminators of the World. Lover Goddess is Beauty, and Beauty is Love manifested in physical form.

It is Her touch which gives us the ‘eyes of love’, when we see the good in the world or each other, or when we are first in love and see our beloved as the most beautiful, the flawless soul in a body that is beauty and desirable to us. Beauty opens and softens our heart.

Beauty makes us become more alive, draws more of our soul into our body and heart so that we can feel more connected to our physical presence, to our life’s purpose and to that which is outside of us. With the opening of our heart, our soul feels its wings of possibility and wants to soar. This gives us greater ability to feel empathy, to be compassionate, to love. Beauty is one of the great gateways through which more soul enters our physical body.


Not only does Rhiannon hold the mirror to reflect Her beauty, Her reflected light also illuminates shadow. She shows the ways of the Heart and the reflection of what our outer situations and choices are really showing us about our inner life.

Our shadow involves the places we try so very hard to hide from our self, to avoid looking into, and which we have become so good at projecting onto others so that we do not have to feel or own them ourselves. The Mirror of the Goddess asks us to see our empowerment, our shining gift, our loving nature and greatness as well as all the places of smallness, of avoidance, of shadow, which are also part of our gift if we become conscious of them. She shows us how to become more visible. This then is the Soul Quest of women and men called to the Path of Rhiannon.

For women, this ‘becoming visible’ is a conscious choice requiring courage, and the support of healthy sisterhood circles. Deeply rooted fear places have a strong hold after centuries in which being visible has been very dangerous. However, it is an important part of the soul journey into healthy femininity, free from the patterns and undermining ways of patriarchy which we so often unconsciously perpetuate. To become visible as who we really are means to become more conscious, and this is empowering. In choosing to live our empowerment, we have a need to initiate into the embodied forms of the Mature Healthy Feminine archetypes.

Archetypes which reveal them self through the Teachings of Rhiannon and Her wheel of the year. As well as the Maiden, Lover, Mother and Crone aspects of Goddess, The Wheel of Rhiannon reveals the Path Finder, Deep Diver, Queen and Soul Song Singer on the elemental quarters of the Wheel.


In the East of the Wheel, we find Rhiannon of Fire. She manifests as Path Finder and is the courageous Explorer as well as Kundalini or Snake Dancer.  As the young healthy feminine archetype She holds the place of true originality and anarchy, the opposite of both conformity and rebellion. She  guides into healthy exploration of the self and creativity both in relation to others and as trailblazer daring to be different. She seeks outside of what is given and constructs her own responses to life. At this time, none of us experienced this exploration in fullness, as we all come from and through patriarchy. This has far reaching consequences for the initiation into healthy womanhood and the mature feminine archetype of the Queen on the opposite side of the Wheel. Rhiannon as Path Finder helps us to find our way back to the Real, to the Radiance of Goddess within us and lights our Kundalini fire.

In the South of the Wheel, Rhiannon of Water, Goddess of Flow is the Deep Diver into truth, sexuality and owning of emotions. She is the Mermaid self, Vessel for the Devine energies, watery mirror of the deep tides, completely free in Her joyous expression of self, celebration and sexuality. She holds the comb to untangle all that belongs to us, from the expectations and projections of others. She brings the gifts of insight and compassion and sings the irresistible soul song of the heart that calls our destiny towards us and into being. Rhiannon as Deep Diver brings our deep receptivity and the surrender to go with the flow of life in the wisdom of our body.

In the West, we find the other point of balance between the light and dark in the year, and here we meet Rigatona: Great Queen Rhiannon, She who manifests and owns Her Realm. Owning meaning both claiming that which she has created as well as  knowing her shadow self. Realm being all that for which she chooses to take responsibility. She invites shared responsibility and is the Freedom Rider of Her own Path which She determines with clarity, dignity and ease. She has gained from Her life’s experience and the full extent of the path finding Her Explorer Self has undertaken. With directed action She chooses Her path and knows how to stay present to receiving. She brings her gifts of self-responsibility, gratitude, joyful maturity, empowerment, and abundance. Queen Rhiannon leads to the realization that now is the only time you have got and so to stand in your power of each moment.

In the North segment of the Wheel, Rhiannon of Air manifests as the Ancestral Enchantress of Destiny, She of the Magical Birds, deep dreams, sweet scent and clear vision. She is the soul song Singer, as well as the great Nothing, the Void into which we drop when we surrender in ecstasy, trust, faith and death. She is the space that holds the Soul Song longing to be sung into being from within the Void itself. As Singer of this Soul Song, Rhiannon of Air holds the karmic pathways of the Path of Love and guides us to our destiny and brings attunement with the wisdom of our body.

The Priestess of Rhiannon training for the Glastonbury Goddess Temple works with the wisdom of these Archetypes and the mirror they offer us. Rhiannon’s mirror guides us to re-integrating the Sacred Sexual Priestess Self over the course of the year’s journey. Facing our fears and shame is an un-avoidable choice we make in taking this training and an essential part of being called to this path. But this is also the great gift of initiation as Her priestess.
In becoming Sacred Sexual Priestess in particular, we work with Her Wheel to find the exquisite treasures as well as the shameful shadow wounds and see what was hidden within in order to be free from habits that would keep us small, ashamed, fearful or guilty, less than we are, and in competition with each other. The Goddess of Love teaches a different way of being, a way of wholeness, authenticity and love. 
It is a pleasure to serve Her ways.

With Blessings
Katinka Soetens

Priestess of Rhiannon training is held every year between October and September in Glastonbury by Katinka Soetens. More information can be found on the Goddess Temple website and on www.Herpathoflove.com

This is an extract from the soon to be available e-book Teachings of Rhiannon, Sacred Sexual Priestess Empowerment: part 1. £4.99 on www.Herpathoflove.com

Wild versus Domestication; reclaiming the essence of our Free Innocence


In working with the reclaiming of our Innocence as an important part of the journey into Freedom, I felt like speaking into the theme of the wild versus domestication a little. 

These two concepts are not really opposites, as they are two such different energies in their true essence. 
Wild can never be domesticated, not without it becoming something that is no longer wild. 
Domestication, in the meaning of moral rules from the heart and in service of the community and life is a good thing if we think of Wild as the instinctual selfish survival urges and impulses only. In this meaning, domestication creates healthy loving boundaries for the sub or un conscious. 
Unconscious wildness is unpleasant and dangerous to be around and expresses in the ways of repressed/un-owned, distorted or rebellious 'wild'/out of control, aggressive, in-authentic behaviour; 'the feral in a domesticated world'. Domestication has become the means to impose ways of being in a power-over structure of domination.

The Wild in true meaning is an important part of our essence, it is from where all our creativity comes, it is magic, shape shifting, free, and it is not controllable. The Wild within is our Innocence: our complete presence in the moment, no past, no future, in total connection to what is.
It is responsible and conscious, and does not need to have boundaries put on it, as it is boundaried /calm and limitless at the same time. It is not controllable from the outside in any power-over form. The Wild is always Free.




For all power-over systems, Wilderness is therefore dangerous.The very reason why we, in our society, are at war with Nature. And it is true that there are risks involved in entering or engaging with the Wild. Wilderness is not 'safe', within the understanding of our illusion of what safety is in patriarchy. Wilderness is not necessarily pretty, but we are a part of it and it is a part of us, and it is alive within us, calling us to awaken to our Freedom. 

True wilderness is our essence, our nature.
For this essence in us, Wilderness, both in our human nature (especially the sexual, which is our life energy) as well as the Natural world out there, is not dangerous or scary, it is HOME. 

This is the belonging, the owning of source we seek to find through the layers of 'domestication' imposed by judgemental power over structures. Wilderness in this essence, is free and none destructive; in tune with the Flow of Life, fully in the heart. It does not need to rebel or dominate, but instead leads us to true power, clarity, co-operation and self responsibility.

The normal re-action to Domestication in our society and in the immature feminine and masculine is either conformity or rebellion, and usually a combination of the two. This just feeds domestication and gives it a reason d'etre. Real response to Domestication is Freedom in the true meaning of the word: self responsible Wildness, unhindered by the patterns of our own wounding and immaturity. 

Don't attack domestication, it has it's place and function, see it for what it is, and which, like something that is no longer of use, can be left behind. No need for getting trapped in Victim mode once the places of your domestication, the cutting down (or off) of Wilderness in you, has been identified. 
Let it go, move, become, be free...in fact, feel the wild which does not really need to do anything to be.

Wilderness needs to be nurtured and being out in Natural places, spending time in the Wild will enhance your relationship with Wilderness as the close lover asleep in your own heart. Authenticity, honesty, owning your needs and desires, enhances Wilderness.



Much joy in the exploring and sharing. 
With Blessings
Katinka