Isle of Ancestors

I had let the others go to the Isle ahead of me, had deliberately lingered in the Tavern of the Inn, sharing a night cap with the old woman who ran the place. We talked about the group I had bought to Duwamish and she marvelled at their implicit trust. "You do have a gift child" she said as she poured me a smooth musket. I laughed out loud and cynically told her that I most certainly had a gift for waxing lyrical. She looked at me with knowing eyes and said that she thought I needed to take the trip to the island instead of sitting here by myself trying to avoid truth.

So I got up from the bar stool and as I rose I heard footsteps behind me. As I turned I gasped. There, right before me was Dad, looking just as he had looked when he last stood at my door with his basket of homegrown vegetables in his hand. I dropped my glass as I stepped forward to greet him and glass splintered across the floor. I hugged him and held him tightly for ages.

"Come Heather! I have come to take you to the ferry woman. My grandmother will take you across to the island."

"But Dad! Can't we spend some time together?" I pleaded.

"Shush little one" he smiled, putting his finger to his lips. "There will be time for that later, after you have been to the island."

With that my father led me to the quay to journey to the Isle of Ancestors, led me to the boat my great grandmother steered. It came as no surprise that her boat was shaped as, was in fact a black mare.

Dad gave me a leg up and my great grandmother and I rode bareback without speaking to the Isle of the Ancestors. I knew that she would be by my side while I completed the journey, that she would witness a rebirth. She smiled, nodded in agreement with my thoughts and led me through the moonlit apple orchard towards the stone doors, carved curiously in the shape of a vagina.

The doorway was open and we walked together down the labyrinthine passage way. Memories of Chartres Cathedral swarmed back. Memories of walking the labyrinth gripped me.

On we walked, my great grandmother and I, her warm hand guiding me until finally we entered a space that looked like it had been woven by a raven. A raven's nest? But then, as we circled and approached the hooded figures who were waiting for me, I realised that this was the womb I had lain in all those years ago. For a moment I thought I could hear my mother's voice, feel her movements, hear her feel the quickening as I moved. But then there was silence and I looked at the women who had gathered to greet them and gave them the raven feather I had had tucked in a pocket for protection.

As I sat tears welled and I began to sob in the arms of my great grandmother. The tears I shed were tears that I have resisted shedding. They came in torrents, flooding, drenching us.

"Why?" I blurted almost incoherently. "Why have I had to carry such a burden of grief and loss? Why can't I know unbridled joy?"

The women rose as a collective, revealing themselves to be my grandmothers, dating back centuries. I had never known one of them in my physical life yet I knew them to be my grandmothers. These women embraced me, as a collective and held me until I stopped crying. No one spoke. I felt their empathy, their knowing and I knew that they knew my agony of isolation.

It is a blur now but at some point I realised that they had wrapped me in a cloak of their collective knowing, that they were the cloak, that they had transformed themselves and were a part of me. My great grandmother, the Ferry Woman, sat me on a throne, wearing my specially woven coat.

Bells sounded, announcing that it was time to lead and my grandmother led me out of the throne womb, back up the labyrinthine passage, through the stone vulva and we rode on her mare back to Duwamish.

I held her warm hand briefly, pulled the collar of my new coat up to block the dawn chill and, singing with joy danced towards the inn. The Innkeeper told me the others had been down at the bathhouse and hadn't noticed my absence. So I slipped quietly to my room and slept, still wearing my coat, a coat that will always distinguish me and name me wounded healer.

The agony of isolation is over. Praise be!

The Cave of the Enchantress

Inside the Cave of the Enchantress

I stand looking tentatively at the sealed cellar door that leads deep within, to a place I have been reluctant to enter alone. Others have bravely opened their tailor made doors, but this one has been haunting me for many years. I have seen it in there, amid the parched arid terrain, tightly, heavily closed and I have felt an overpowering apprehension. The fate of Pandora and her box has been well and truly etched into my psyche and I have dreaded the thought of opening it, only to release winged terrors.

Right at this moment something is very different. As I stand looking I can hear sounds that I have never heard before, soft voices calling me to explore the expansive chamber below. Intuitively I know that this will not be the last seal to break but I have been released from a stressful work-place and feel a little stronger, more able to cope and those voices are haunting me.

It has been a long day and I am weary. I am standing in harsh, flat, scrubby plains that have little appeal. I am confused! The Sibyl's Grotto is supposed to be in Umbria, Italy and this landscape most certainly is not Umbrian. The enchantress is not going to be impressed when she cannot find me at the appointed spot.

The voices become louder, urging me to lift open this door, at the bottom of stone steps. The steps remind me of an abandoned factory where I played, alone, as a child. At the end of those stairs there was a sealed door and I spent hours imagining what lay beyond. Curious!

With a strident, unfamiliar self confidence I grab the steel handle and pull it towards me. The hinges had appeared to be rusted but the door opens without so much as a creak. Relief washes over me as I pass through the doorway into refreshingly cool darkness. I lightly touch the chilled, stone ledge and make my way down into what feels like a vast chamber. It is the sounds, the smell that reveal the dimension of this place that I have entered. I sense that this is an enchanted, mystical , spiritual place that I have stumbled upon and stand quite still, adjusting my eyes to the light.

A warm hand grabs mine and as my guides flashlight hits the walls I gasp. All around us is exquisite, sacred art, art that is calling up my past. The rocky overhangs have been transformed into magnificent galleries, adorned with hand stencilled images, painted with striking red ochres and yellow clay paint. A thousand eyes turn to look at me, eyes that had been motionless until I made my entrance. Figures turned in recognition, figures longing for life to be infused into them.

What artist painted these halls; carved these figures, shaped the towering rocky overhangs?

My guide turns, looks at me and smiles. I know her immediately to be the Enchantress that had said we were going to Umbria. "This has been a place of celebration and ceremony for thousands of years. These are to be your quarters for the coming months!" she tells me and before I can respond she has vanished.

Still holding my empty suitcase I look around. No longer dark or gloomy the cavern is filtered with a radiant luminosity. This hauntingly sacred place, so full of atmospheric secrecy, has no sign of permanent occupation. It is pristine, the ultimate refuge. Nearby are deep, dark, still pools, filled with reflections and memories by Mnemosyne, Goddess of Memory.

I put my suitcase on a ledge, leaving it open, ready to store the stories, images, artefacts and look for a place to rest. I am suddenly beyond weary. I yearn to sleep. The Enchantress is gone, riding, galloping towards the Lemurian Abbey. A night rider, dressed in black she is sure to return, eventually. I have faith that she will return.

A Myth To Live By

A Myth To Live By

"When Lemuria perished by volcanic fires it left but scattered fragments to mark where once it spread. For us it will be enough to trace the Divine Wisdom from the beginnings...to carry on the teaching of the divine instructors."

Gathered around a cradle, rocked beneath the shelter of the Himalayan peaks, the divine initiates, guardians of an ancient teaching, ancestral members of the divine sisterhood, gently prepare a girl baby for her earthly journey. This child is destined to protect the ancient teaching and bring it to humanity, wrapped in brown paper.

Silently, speaking only with actions, the sisterhood perform rituals, passed on by initiators before them, initiators whose strong hands carried the divine science safely through Lemurian fires and Atalantean floods.

A guardian, with long, luxuriant red hair, wrapped in a sapphire, brocade trimmed robe, steps forward and speaks.

"Lone Warrior Maiden. You must take this ancient teaching and go forth to a corner post of the old Lemuria, our homeland. The law we have given you will direct your life. All your actions must be in accordance with the law, which will in turn protect and preserve your destiny. You will be a member of an earth family, a citizen of the great universe, a part of the whole. You must not forget that you are a part of a circle and over time you will form a circle with other initiates who follow. You will find them in an eternal water garden."

Soft red light, like that emanating from a legendary Lemurian sunset bathes the crade and infuses the baby with a gentle warmth that will linger, fills her with a dynamic life force.

Quietly the Goddess lays down gifts beside the cradle.

There is a stylus, tablets, a loom and golden thread to weave, to hold for others to follow, a mirror carved with the words 'to thine self be true', a golden badge of honour to preserve dignity and last but not least, a treasure box to store the treasures of life.

Now to find the right womb...



From The Wintered Womb

Underneath the thrice ploughed, fertile, fallow field
Impregnated within a wintered, woven, womb
Of richly composted humus
I lay seeking sustenance, nourishment from
The oxygen filled wintered mist that
Drizzles, seeping, replenishing the amniotic fluids
That trickles through the membranous umbilical cord
Fertilizing, greening,
Ensuring a bountiful spring harvest.


Voices on the wind, drift through the chosen womb, throught the richly composted humus... a mother crying... she has three children already... how will she manage. Dr Salvaris reassures her. They will do a tubal ligation at the same time as this child is delivered, to ensure that her womb will lie fallow from this time on. What does this mean for me I wonder? 'Prove your worth that's what you will do....' more words come filtering into the womb filling me with apprehension. Will I ever be good enough?



Heather Lorraine Blakey
born 27th August 1950
St David's Hospital
Maffra, Victoria, Australia
daughter of Colin James Goodwin and
Dorothy Jean Goodwin

Born in the ward
giving precedence to
Graeme Chirpig who
tried to take
all the attention.

Born in time
for an extra slap
on the bottom
for so unceremoniously
disrupting Sister Cameron's morning tea.

With a deft knot in her mother's tubes
Dr Salvaris
ensured she would be
the last divinity to slip
unexpectedly
from her uterus

They said
the room filled with
radiant heated light
on that August morning
when she
triumpantly
entered the stage
looking radiant
brown eyes glowing
expectantly



It was perfectly evident
To all with eyes to see
And ears to hear
That this quaint child
Sheltered by the Great Dividing Range
Wore the mark of teacher
Emblazoned on her brow.

Her mother knew
That this child of her womb
Would be her last
that this child of Clotho and Laschesis
Was to be shielded from Atropos’s scissors

Her mother knew that this child was to be
Sheltered, protected, within the isolation of a remote outpost
That sacrifices had to be made to
Nurture, nourish and encourage her
To live out her carefully measured destiny.

Pandora's Gift

Prometey rejects Pandora’s gift -- Pandora's box with diseases, vices and disasters.
(Engraving on bronze, 2-3 B.C. Musee de Louvre, Paris)

Pandora’s Gift

Bearing Pandora’s gift prominently on her heart
Seared by Vulcan’s reddened, blazing, branding iron
She wore the scars of self-doubt
Her battle coat stained, shredded
By the beak of the very falcon
Who relentlessly clawed, pecked at Prometheus
Vulnerable, chained,
She stood defiant
Until the raven came
Bearing the self-sowing seeds of self-confidence

Goya's Devouring Monster

The Mystery of Goya's Saturn

The painting known as 'Saturn Devouring One of His Sons', by Francisco Goya, presents us with a terrifying cannibal god, Kronos, whom he depicts as a wild, revolting figure, consuming his offspring. The ancient deity looks crazed, his eyes are atrocious and the painting is one of those which imprints itself on the psyche of those who examine it closely.

'Saturn Devouring One of His Sons' springing from the Kronos myth, was a part of Goya's 'Black Painting' series when Goya 'carved his fates and inscribed his nighmares directly onto plaster.'

The earliest version of the Kronos myth--Saturn is the later Roman name--was written down by Hesiod in his Theogony, around the eighth century, B.C.E.

First comes Chaos; then Earth/Gaia; Tartarus in the bowels of Earth; and finally Eros. Earth gives birth to Heaven, also known as Ouranos, and then bears twelve of his children, the last, "most terrible of sons/The crooked-scheming Kronos." Earth and Ouranos have three more sons, so fearsome and mighty that Ouranos forces them back inside their mother, burying them alive. She forms a sickle, and asks her other sons to use it against their father, "For it was he/Who first began devising shameful acts." All are afraid, except Kronos. She gives him the sickle, hides him in her, and he castrates his father, preventing him from having more children, then assumes power among the Titans. But fear lives in his heart; a usurper himself, he learns that one of his own children will usurp him, and he devours them at birth:

As each child issued from the holy womb
And lay upon its mother's knees, each one
Was seized by mighty Kronos, and gulped down.

Through a ruse by his mother, the last born, Zeus, survives, leads a war against Kronos, and casts him down to Tartarus. Even gods cannot overcome Fate.

Reviewers have asked what it was that Goya recognized in himself that charged the work with such raw, wounding power? Jason Scott Morgan, for example, alludes to the traditional father and son narrative which has been presented in, amongst other documents, the Bible.

Maybe Goya was painting this narrative but I suspect not. Before he began the Black Paintings, Goya survived a near fatal illness, documented in his Self-portrait with Dr. Arrieta. Goya depicts himself as a "pained and weary artist, surrounded by dark, phantasmal faces." It is plausible that Saturn was painted as a way to express the lonely terror of mortality. Since my husband's body has been ravaged by a third round of bowel cancer, and we have faced the lonely terror of mortality, I have every reason to think that this is likely. If I could paint I would paint Atrophe, towering like a giant, scissors in hand, tormenting us with the reality that she has the power to cut the thread at any moment. Goya's Saturn touches me deeply because it expresses shared pain and his Atropos paints the dark dreams that haunt me.



So what charged Goya's painting of Saturn? As his health declined, as he stared creative impotence in the eyes - Saturn's eyes, Atrophos's scissors his work gathered momentum and a dark force. It doesn't really matter if Goya threw away his pastels and used someone like Saturn as a metaphor to represent the terror of creative impotence. Who cares if Goya used Saturn as a metaphor to depict the 'black dog' that consumes artists offspring -- that hungrily devours work deemed, for whatever reason, not to be of any merit, not to fit the stereotypical mould. The main thing is that Goya went right outside the square and painted with force that speaks with passion today.

I imagine Goya must have smiled wryly when he realised that he had captured the demonic figure who had lived with him all his life. But most of all I am grateful that he has so powerfully captured the demon who lurks in my nightmares, for I know now that I am not alone.

Lemurian Mysteries

"Raven gave birth to wind's egg. From this egg rose the Goddess of Love, the one who arouses desire and fuels creation. This Goddess who represent the spirit of love, fertility and creation, was the oldest and at the same time the youngest of the Goddesses. It was the Goddess, the matchmaker, who agitated(libido) and paired heaven and earth, ocean and and the land. Before Her no immortal beings existed. From the Goddess of Love came libido which in turn birthed the immortals who sprang to life on the wings of ravenous love."

For the purposes of this fantasy, for the purpose of creating The Lemurian Mysteries, I am proposing that Lemuria was a matriarchal society that sprang from a cosmic egg, that it was the site of the first Garden of Eden, was the place where people lived in peace and harmony.