The traditional Native American teachings instruct men to treat things that are sacred with, “all due respect”

This respect included recognizing the sacredness of women during their Moon Time.

“It is well to be good to women in

 the strength of our manhood because

we must sit under their hands at both ends of our lives.”

— He Dog /Oglala Sioux

Read the complete article and related information at Treat The Sacred With All Due Respect

[Leslie Carol Botha: Honoring the Goddess. Honoring Cycles. How exciting. The Divine Feminine rises in the midst of the war on women.]

Cirque du Soleil unveils Amaluna A new touring show directed by Diane Paulus in Montreal’s Old Port Starting April 19

Press Release
April 4, 2012

Montreal, April 4, 2012 – Cirque du Soleil unveiled Amaluna today in Montreal, a new creation presented by Desjardins Group. Directed by Diane Paulus, a renowned theatre director from New York, Amaluna will be presented under the Big Top at the Old Port of Montreal as of April 19, and at the Port de Québec as of July 25.

The Show
 Amaluna invites the audience to a mysterious island governed by Goddesses and guided by the cycles of the moon. Their queen, Prospera, directs her daughter’s coming-of-age ceremony in a rite that honours femininity, renewal, rebirth and balance which marks the passing of these insights and values from one generation to the next.

In the wake of a storm caused by Prospera, a group of young men lands on the island, triggering an epic, emotional story of love between Prospera’s daughter and a brave young suitor. But theirs is a love that will be put to the test. The couple must face numerous demanding trials and overcome daunting setbacks before they can achieve mutual trust, faith and harmony.

The name
Amaluna is a fusion of the words ama, which refers to “mother” in many languages, and luna, which means “moon,” a symbol of femininity that evokes both the mother-daughter relationship and the idea of goddess and protector of the planet. Amaluna is also the name of the mysterious island where the story unfolds.

A tribute to the work and voice of women

For the first time at Cirque du Soleil, the cast of a show is 70% female and the band, 100%. “Amaluna is a tribute to the work and voice of women,” explains Director of Creation Fernand Rainville. “The show is a reflection on balance from a woman’s perspective,“ he adds. Show Director Diane Paulus says: “Amaluna is less about feminism and more about reconnecting to our world in a different way.”

Amaluna has a cast of 50 artists hailing from 15 different countries.

Diane Paulus
Diane Paulus is the Artistic Director of the A.R.T. (American Repertory Theatre). Her recent work with A.R.T. includes The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, a new production adapted by Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, and OBIE-winning composer Diedre Murray, playing on Broadway; Prometheus Bound; Death and The Powers: The Robots’ Opera, a new opera by Tod Machover in collaboration with MIT Media Lab, which world premiered at l’Opéra de Monte-Carlo; The Donkey Show, a disco adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which ran for six years Off-Broadway and toured internationally; Best of Both Worlds, and Johnny Baseball.

Diane’s other recent theatre credits include the Public Theatre’s Tony-Award winning revival of HAIR on Broadway and London’s West End and, as an opera director, The Magic Flute (Canadian Opera Company), Il mondo della luna at the Hayden Planetarium in New York, Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, Turn Of The Screw, Cosi fan tutte, and the Monteverdi trilogy Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Orfeo at the Chicago Opera Theatre.

Diane is a Professor of the Practice of Theatre in Harvard University’s English Department and was recently named one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Boston by Boston Magazine. She is a recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from Boston Conservatory. This is Diane Paulus’ first collaboration with Cirque du Soleil.

Read the complete article and related information at Amaluna – a Play About Goddesses and Cycles Unveiled by Cirque du Soleil

Neolithic and Bronze Age matriarchal clans were shamanistic in nature

Neolithic Spain: Shamans, Priestesses and Goddesses http://suppressedhistories.net/ catalog/iberia.html

Their Priestesses were thought of as the Goddess’ earthly incarnation who, as part of their animistic rituals, mediated between the visible and spirit worlds . The holy women represented the feminine manifestation of the Trinity — Maiden, Mother and Crone. The primary role of the Shamanic Priestesses was to connect the clan to their deity through sacred rituals. Their ceremonial life, and that of the tribe was closely tied to the three phases of the moon — New, Full and Waning.  These rituals reinforced the sacred cycle of creative force that brought both life and death and linked the tribe to their cosmic source of blessings. In their role as tribal seers, these revered wise women used Shamanistic trance-states and dances that channel the creative energy of the Goddess to the tribe.

In the view of Shamanic Pantheism, (Goddess is everything and everything is Goddess) all nature is animate, and therefore divine. Their belief system was based on the connection of all living things, bound together in a symbiotic celebration of life. Their worship centered on the founding theory that the Earth Mother is alive, and is due reverence and respect. She is part of us and we of Her. We are dependent on Her for our very breath. This mysticism of Immanent Divinity– “Thou Art God/dess”; we are one with the universe, differs greatly from the theology of Transcendent Divinity – “God is Up There”; separate from humanity, as espoused by later writings.

The followers of the Goddess viewed Mother Nature, as the embodiment of universal Life.  She was Gaia, Earth Mother, and the living breath of planet. Reverence and respect for all nature was integral to the health and happiness of the people. They were spiritually connected to the blessing of the Mother. The Goddess culture intuitively understood the interdependences of Mother Earth and her people. The Goddess flourished or perished with the fate planet. She and her clan were one.

God, as worshiped by Christians, Moslems and Jews, is an indestructible, all-powerful, non-physical being, portrayed as an authoritarian father figure. He is a divine entity that existed apart from the world he himself called into being. This God was above all life, and HE made MAN in his own image, so man, in the name of God, had dominion over all of life on Earth.

Classically trained archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas, whose pioneering work, The Civilization of the Goddess, (Harper, 1991) chronicled Shamanic practices that survived a thousand year taboo in Britain, France and the rest of Western Europe. In the course of her research, Gimbutas [1] discovered Wicca traditions that survived from Lithuania miraculously revealing a continuum from the ancient times of the Divine Feminine.  Up until the twentieth century, villagers under the guidance of their wise women, honored the old ways: healing rituals; midwifery practices; recognition of the moon menstrual link; sexual mysteries; and the celebration of seasonal folk festivals marking the points of power in the old calendar. The continued recognition of these ancient cross quarter holy days is particularly relevant to the Divine Feminine. These were fire celebrations that were symbolic of the female sexual fire, sometimes referred to as kundalini.  In the Days of The Goddess, her people understood that sexuality was healthy, that the blissful joining of a man and a woman was blessed with the energy of the Goddess who granted her people good health, fertile fields and prosperity.

[1]During the 1950s and early 1960s Gimbutas lecturered at the Harvard Department of Anthropology, and was a Fellow of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, earning a reputation as a world-class specialist on the Indo-European Bronze Age, as well as on Lithuanian folk art and the prehistory of the Balts and Slavs.  In her definitive opus, Bronze Age Cultures of Central and Eastern Europe (1965), she reinterpreted European prehistory in light of her backgrounds in linguistics, ethnology, and the history of religions, and challenged many traditional assumptions about the beginnings of European civilization.

As a professor of archaeology at UCLA Gimbutas directed major excavations of Neolithic sites in southeastern Europe between 1967 and 1980, including Sitagroi and Achilleion in Thessaly (Greece). Digging through layers of earth representing a period of time before contemporary estimates for Neolithic habitation in Europe — where other archaeologists would not have expected further finds — she unearthed a great number of artifacts of daily life and of religious cults, which she researched and documented throughout her career.

 Her book, The Civilization of the Goddess, articulated what Gimbutas saw as the differences between the Old European system, which she considered goddess-and woman-centered (matristic), and the Bronze Age Indo-European patriarchal (androcrati”) culture which supplanted it. According to her interpretations, gynocentric and gylanic societies were peaceful, they honored homosexuals, and they espoused economic equality. The “androcratic”, or male-dominated, Kurgan peoples, on the other hand, invaded Europe and imposed upon its natives the hierarchical rule of male warriors.

 Joseph Campbell and Ashley Montagu each compared the importance of Marija Gimbutas’ output to the historical importance of the Rosetta Stone in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. Campbell provided a foreword to a new edition of Gimbutas’ The Language of the Goddess (1989) before he died, and often said how profoundly he regretted that her research on the Neolithic cultures of Europe had not been available when he was writing The Masks of God.

Excerpted with permission:

Goddess of Wonder, Goddess of Light, by Leslie C. Botha and H. Sandra Chevalier-Batik, 2004 Pleiades Publishing, ISBN 0-9716968-1-0

Read the complete article and related information at Shamanic Priestesses

Sacred Confluence of Fertility

Goddess worship, the center of Neolithic and Bronze Age clan spiritual life, realized the sacred confluence of fertility — women’s bodies, their sexuality and their menstrual cycles. Reverence for woman’s natural rhythms and monthly flow was at the very heart of Goddess worship. Woman’s sexuality, the sacred mystery of her menstruation and her ability to bless the clan with new life from her very body were considered magical.

Three European Venus figurines from the ice-age of ca. 25,000 years ago. From left to right: Venus of Dolni-Vestonice, Czech, burnt clay. Venus of Willendorf, Austria, Chalk. Venus of Les pugue, France, mammoth ivory. http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/venusfigures.htm

The central role that women’s mysteriously, non-fatal monthly blood flow played in the rituals of Goddess worship cannot be over stated.  At archeological digs throughout Europe, the Mid East and Central Asia, researchers have found remnant stains of red ochre.  The red markings symbolized the sacred monthly menstrual cycle. It was used to venerate holy places as well as the sacred gravesites of priestesses and wise women. To many researchers and experts in the Goddess religions, the use of red ochre, also known as “haematite (from the same root word as haematology— the study of blood) draws an obvious corollary between the symbolic use of red ochre and a woman moon-gift of blood. Red ochre figured prominently in the solemn ceremonies for the dead. Its use symbolized the portal of creation — the powerful mystery of menstruation and childbirth and the replenishment of life to the clan.

The Venus of Lauselles was originally covered in red ochre

The reverence for menstrual blood was literal as well as symbolic. Numerous ancient civilizations mixed the seeds for the first planting with menstrual blood to assure the blessings of the Goddess and continued bounty from mother earth.

Before the process of human procreation was understood, babies were a woman’s gift to the tribe.  Primordial peoples had yet to make the connection between sex and pregnancy. In this paradigm, men had no contribution to the miracle of propagation. Women were revered as the producers of life. The life brought forth from her body was integrally connected to the ‘birth’ of the crops from the body of mother earth.

Women held primacy with little distinction between her sacred and secular power. When the Goddess was revered, women were the sisters and daughters of divinity. Creators of life and sustenance they and all aspects of the feminine were respected and valued. The power and blessings of the Goddess passed from mother to daughter in a matriarchal line. The adulation of a woman’s sacred fertility rhythm, represented by her menstrual blood, was often expressed in Tantric art. Surviving feminine talismans show exaggerated breasts and belly. Representations of the Great Mother have been dated to 27,000 years ago, to the Aurignacian Cro-Magnon peoples. These images have been found all over continental Eurasia from Spain to Siberia These earliest images of woman (erroneously identified as “Venuses” by nineteenth and early twentieth century ‘male’ researchers) evoke a reverence for the miracle of birth and the ability to nurture life.

In their thought-provoking book about menstruation, The Wise Wound, Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove contend that Paleolithic clans instinctively accepted a woman’s monthly menstrual periods were influenced by the moon’s complex and powerful celestial cycles. Shuttle and Redgrove concurred with Alexander Marshack’s hypothesis that primitive woman, from necessity, developed the capacity to recognize abstracts and symbolic thought processes.

This view was reinforced by Professor Emerita of Sociology, Elise Boulding in her book, The Underside of History: A View of Women through Time. Boulding proposes that primordial woman mastered the basics of counting, in addition to the tracking and recording of time through rudimentary lunar calendars. “Every woman had a ‘body calendar’…her monthly menstrual cycle. She would be the first to notice the relationship between her own body cycle and the lunar cycle.”

Excerpted with permission:

Goddess of Wonder, Goddess of Light, by Leslie C. Botha and H. Sandra Chevalier-Batik, 2004 Pleiades Publishing, ISBN 0-9716968-1-0

Read the complete article and related information at The Body and Blood of the Mother

As above so below

In the name of the Maiden, the Mother

and the Wise Woman

From antiquity, the three aspects of the Goddess have been past down to us through our cultural mythology. We’ve come to know them as the Fates, the Furies, the Graces, the Muses, or even as Faith, Hope and Charity. The three discrete facets of the Goddess reflecting the three phases of the moon — waxing, full and waning pattern the three biological sequences of a woman’s life— Maiden, Mother, Crone.

To understand the triplicity of the Goddess is to realize and internalize the feminine mysteries. The sacrament of the Goddess is not external — but rather the inner benediction of harmony with her varying rhythms, changing from moon to moon, throughout the course of our lifetime.

The three faces of the Goddess mirror our own, and the women around us, each in our time and season. The various faces and voices of the Great Mother, speak to us urging self-knowledge and inner acceptance and tolerance with our sisters and ourselves.

There is a sacred universal rhythm that is linked by the three phases of the moon and the three phases of women. Our foremothers, the ancient goddesses on earth, embodied this universal rhythm as the sacred feminine; and revered their own bleeding time as a gift of grace, as they passed through each cycle.  Accepting this the dance of the universe and its connection to our feminine soul is a beginning to our healing.  As women learn to gratefully accept the changing raiment’s of the Goddess, we will move through the universality of our feminine cycles with a sense of inner peace and true body-ease. Women attuned to the Goddess energy, avoid dis-ease and lovingly reflect her vibrant expressions of the life passage — Maiden, Mother and Crone.

Maiden

Daughter of the waxing moon, the pure, untouched Maiden embodies unfurling potential and possibilities. She is the quickening seed of creative energy— a vital being, not yet burdened by disappointment or duty. As the crescent light of the moon, the Maiden is the face of innocence, the joyful expression of the woman-child, full of ideas and imagination. As the daughter she is also stubborn, temperamental, untamed, and independent. She tests the might of the Mother, laughing while dancing under the indulgent light of the new moon.

Mother

Powerful, passionate and seductive, Mother is the realization of the maiden’s potential. The resplendent reflection of the full moon, she is the lover who, through her womb brings life into being. Drawing from the full moon’s luminous energy she nurtures her charges, providing the many blessings of the earth. Mother is the face of compassion, forgiveness, healing, and love.  In the candescent glow of the full moon she is the Warrior Queen —protector of dreams and mentor of creation.

Crone

In the waning-moon light waits the wise woman, the ever-patient grandmother, the wisdom that whispers to you in the dark. Honor the Crone, the giver of death and rebirth as she walks in the shadows of the ebbing moon.  She is destruction, the hand of the spinning fates. Release to her the tired and worn, and she will guide them through the final passage of life’s fragile portal and return her grandchildren to life reborn. In your last hour her caress is your ending breath. Give her your sorrows, sadness, and grief. The Crone is the Goddesses’ final blessing. She harbors the hidden dreams of your heart, is the speaker of truth, the bringer of justice, closure and completion and peace.

Excerpted with permission:

Goddess of Wonder, Goddess of Light, by Leslie C. Botha and H. Sandra Chevalier-Batik, 2004 Pleiades Publishing, ISBN 0-9716968-1-0

Read the complete article and related information at The Triple Goddess

Hospital’s Possible Explanation For Weekend Baby Boom In Sacramento

The Huffington Post

Ileana Llorens
August 17, 2011

Strange things seem to happen when there’s a full moon, especially in the hospital.

That’s where an incredible 45 babies entered the world last weekend in Sacramento, Calif., according to FOX 40. But some say the mini “baby boom” was no accident.

Throughout a period of 48 hours, doctors at Sacramento’s Sutter Memorial delivered 45 newborns– a possible record for deliveries in a two-day period for the city, stated hospital spokesperson Gary Zavoral. While some doctors joke that the high number of births could be attributed to the full moon, hospital officials hint that the speculation might not be that far out. After all, menstruation and ovulation more or less follow a lunar cycle, so why can’t childbirth be affected, too?

The theory of the lunar effect on births is based off the fact that the moon’s gravitational pull causes high tides. Since the human body is made up of 80 percent water, the pull is believed to speed along the childbirth process, according to Discovery Health.

However, several studies suggest that the idea of the lunar effect influencing the number or frequency of deliveries is just, well, looney.

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Full Moon Leads To More Babies?

City Wire
Wealth Watch

United Kingdom
by David Campbell on Jun 03, 2011

The constituent parts read like a discarded plot line from The Da Vinci Code: the ancient Greek mathematical principle of the Golden Ratio, elements of chaos theory and systems analysis, lunar cycles, and the mysterious interaction of human behaviour with the natural world.

Its adherents – inherently cagey, and as they see it, guardians of information that can hold the key to remarkable wealth – are not keen to let the outside world in on their secrets. Welcome to the shadowy world of cyclical analysis.

While the examples above are at the fringes of a discipline that is essentially nothing more than an attempt to read the patterns of market behaviour, they are representative of its general approach.

Rumoured – and objectively, exceptionally successful – proponents of a correlation between markets and the lunar cycle include both George Soros and John Templeton.

‘As long as there is a logical link between natural life cycles and the markets then I think that sort of cycle analysis is valid,’ says Murray Gunn of The Society of Technical Analysts.

‘There has to be a link to natural cycles because as we are part of nature and mass human psychology drives the markets by exhibiting herding behaviour just like other natural animal forms. Nature has a rhythm and so it is not such a massive leap of faith to observe and believe the human-driven markets have a natural rhythm too.’

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Lunar cycles and Golden Ratios: exposing the weird world of chartism

Natural News

Tuesday, April 05, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

The narrow and mechanistic way in which modern science tends to investigate and explain life, the world, and human health has robbed generations of people of a true knowledge of how these things actually work. In an up-and-coming new book Blinded by Science, author Matthew Silverstone explores how vibrational energy, water, magnetism, and plants all play a crucial role in health, and how the Western scientific method as we know it has utterly failed to grasp the critical connection between the natural world and real health.

The field of modern medicine has been largely reduced to nothing more than a type of reactionary, drug-input system where only synthetic chemicals that induce a specific and narrowly-measurable response are considered scientifically valid. Trees, plants, water, sunlight — these and many other natural features of the world are ignored in favor of a “scientific method” that is not only biased but inherently flawed. And yet, it is the simple things in nature that have everything to do with promoting health.

In his book, Silverstone shares countless hours of research on ideas like vibrational energy, which is found in everything from plants and trees, to the sun and the entire universe. Even at the atomic level, electrons are constantly moving as they spin around nuclei. And understanding this inherent vibrational reality that exists all around us will help explain various unknown phenomena, including inexplicable health conditions, that modern science is incapable of truly explaining.

Building upon the reality of vibrations, Silverstone also explores how vibrational energy affects us and the world around us, including our moods, attitudes, and even our physical health. The vibrational properties of water, he says, make all the difference in how well plants grow, for instance. And the vibrational properties of water affect how beneficial it is in our bodies as well.

Blinded by Science addresses these and many other fascinating concepts that will revolutionize the way you see the world around you. But the even greater thing about the book is that it is part of a “Book 2.0″ project where readers can participate in the writing of the final version.

Read the complete article and related information at ‘Blinded by Science’ explores the power of vibrational energy and water in healing and wellness

Blinded by Science

Chapter 3 – Introduction to The Sun and The Moon

By MATTHEW SILVERSTONE

“Whoever desires properly to investigate the art of medicine must first take into consideration the seasons of the year, and how each is capable of operating, for they not only do not resemble each other but differ widely the one from the other in the changes they bring about”.
Hippocrates, Greek physician 400 B.C.

It wasn’t until recently that I became aware of my complete ignorance about the moon. My knowledge was so limited I actually didn’t know how many times the moon goes round the earth each day. I also didn’t know if there were any nights in the month in which the moon does not appear. In fact there were lots of things about the moon I really had not bothered to think about. Even though I calculated I had looked at it over 10,000 times in my lifetime I had never really thought about it. So, when I did take the time to think about it in a very casual sort of way, my thoughts turned to the tides, as this was the only fact I was aware of. I thought if the moon can move oceans, which are just made of water, and we as humans are made up of seventy per cent water give or take, it would seem obvious the moon must be having an effect on the water in my body. How, or to what extent, I did not know, it just seemed to be logical that it did.

At the time of thinking about the moon, I did not really care how the moon achieved its effects just that it did. But it was the idea the moon must also be affecting the water in my body that caused me to question some very basic facts about how my body worked. What effect this internal tide had on me was completely unknown at the time, but my general western scientific education instilled in me a belief the moon does nothing. I imagined there were lots of scientific studies that have been done which proved this. But have they? Have studies been done that prove this beyond doubt? Spending time researching this question has in fact caused me to come to quite the opposite conclusion. Lots of studies have been conducted which show there is a direct link to the moon’s cycle and the behaviour of animals, plants and humans. The same with the sun but even more surprisingly to me was that it was not just the moon and the sun, but the other planets as well, such as Jupiter and Mars, they all affect the biological behaviour of living organisms.

Read More….

Read the complete article and related information at Madness, Menstruation and Manure

The Intelligencer
Canada

By Anne Elspeth Rector, Intelligencer Writers Group
March 17, 2011

The welcome season of spring officially arrive(d) Sunday (3/20), at 7:21 p.m.

This vernal equinox is one of eight key dates in the ancient calendar of the Celts, marking crucial moments in the passage of time. Exact dates of equinoxes and solstices vary about a day or two, year to year, governed as they are by natural cycles rather than human calendar.

Ancient Celts felt close to the land that sustained them, so their lives were guided by the passage of time, the changing seasons, the influence of the sun, and the lunar path. Certain activities were held in harmony with a particular phase of the moon.

Each part of the year is also associated with a specific tree, whose qualities hold sway over life for that period. March 18 to April 14 is believed influenced by the alder tree, (Fearn in Celt); characterized by fire, purification, and water resistance.

A symbol of staying power, durability, and persistence, it speaks to emotional strength.

Alder is also used to build boats and bridges, its potential to help cross life’s oceans, seas, obstacles and doubt.

Celts consulted animal divination and sacred herbs, and revered the power of place and the interpretation of dreams. Story, legend and myth intertwined with wisdom and knowledge.

Words were central to ancient Celtic culture, an almost exclusively oral tradition.

With Irish and Scottish heritage, I come by this honestly.

Known in ancient folklore as the solar festival of Oestre, spring’s equinox marks the peak of energy and a time of renewal in nature and home. Night and day are in equal balance, and the earth awakens as outdoor activities resume again.

The word equinox means “equal night.” Night and day are again equal six months later, on the autumnal equinox, or festival of Mabon – Sept. 23 this year.

Such cycles of natural and celestial worlds held spiritual significance.

Read Full Article…

Read the complete article and related information at Celtic faith has shaped our spring