Tag Archives: home

Family, Inspirations, My Photography, The Land

Love the land, Love the Man

April 8, 2013 Astarté Earthwise 1 Comment

There is no moonlight yet, as the lunar light has not emerged over the distant hills, it’s nearing 8.00pm and all is dark moist and still here. I reflect on my day, and the Nature in it. I walked my arthritic dog at first light this morning, encouraging him to come with me; he has been giving up in the heat lately. It was lovely and cool, fresh and invigorating as we headed up the gravelled dirt road that feeds the property. Walking over the usual fox, hare and rabbit droppings that leave their foreign mark in the native landscape, light spills gently on the red gums that line the road, planted when this place was established back in 1849. They stand as the protectors, the keepers of the secrets of generations, each wise, majestic and aged for they have held the earth here for 110 years before I was born and I will be 54 this year. The newly born calves are running around in the paddock to our right, kicking their shiny black hoof’s in the air with delight as they run as far as they can till they realise it’s time to head back to mum, and they turn and dart right back. This makes my walking companion excited, he loves the little babies, and it gives him renewal and onward we continue. We make it through the gate, up past the lime orchard and the neighbours cows who stir as we approach, to the top of the second dirt stretch onto the tar road where I walk over to check the letterbox. We turn for home, and the vista before me takes my breath away, as the light from the sun still behind the hills of the national park is silhouetting the clouds with a golden redish aura…magic!

Before me is a beautiful valley filled with emerald green paddocks, with dams that shine like mirrors in the morning light. The paddocks studded with angus bovine and one merino ram, sweep down the hill to the hundreds of giant and ancient Lily Pilli’s that hug the rivers banks, sometimes in depths of two’s and threes, a haven for birdlife, and a retreat from the midday sun.

Living here for the last ten months has meant the world to me, it’s like waking up in a suburban home and walking outside into a camping area that you don’t have to share with anyone else. It feels like I am a thousand miles from anywhere and that I was planted into one of the most beautiful corners of the world.

15 years ago at the age of 40, I gave up just about everything I owned, I put my life into three suitcases, one was my computer, and I moved to live on the other side of the world, apart from my partner then I didn’t know a soul, and I went to what felt like the scariest place I’d ever been. I moved into an apartment that was archaic, half renovated, and unbeknown to me it was the local crack house. My only neighbours I shared the hall with were drug dealers and prostitutes, I was in a black neighbourhood in a very dangerous city in the US. I think I cried for the first month, I was terrified, vulnerable, and stunned, like an animal in the headlights. This time of my life seems also like a thousand miles away, what and adventure that cost me so much on so many levels. Life changed so radically for me, I dived into the darkest pools of grief, pain, physical and emotional torture.

Today thanks to the love, patience and understanding of the most amazing man, I now have the freedom to be exactly who I am, and sometimes to his detriment, the past has left many scars and yet this man weathers the storms and the fair weather with me equally.

Mark I love you so very deeply for being who you are, never doubt that xXx

Divination, Folk Magic, Inspirations, Magick, My Photography, Mystery's, Paganism, The Land, Witchcraft, Writings on the Land

Nightfall Magick

February 14, 2013 Astarté Earthwise Leave a comment

When you live in a place where there are no streetlights, the length of the sunsets, and the rays of the moonrise are lights that dance on every fibre of your being, Nature not only touches you, She caresses your very soul.

And the new moon night sky is your scrying mirror for powerful divination.

Wise & Blessed Be

Astarte

Ancestors, Inspirations, Magick, Mystery's, Paganism, The Land, Writings on the Land

I am Home!

January 13, 2013 Astarté Earthwise Leave a comment

Whist I was out weeding the rose garden yesterday, late in the day, after having had a day where the mercury made it over 44 degrees, I was enjoying the music, lights and the magic of the storms in the skies all around me. I looked to the Northern sky and saw an amazing rainbow with its feet planted firmly amongst the giant and ancient lilli pilli trees that line the river down the hill from me, on the property I live on. I stood up, as the colours stretched out across the sky above me and into the river behind me….talk about natural magic!

There I was standing right under a full spectacular rainbow…I felt so blessed to be a part of this gift of fire and water, that goes from the earth, through the air and repeats this cycle involving all the elements, and it moves my spirit, to a heightened awareness, and deepens my connection to the place I call home. Moments like these are where we can truly tap the bone, and connect with our ancestors, as it holds us in a place between the worlds.

I see this reflected before me as the sky to the North is a dark purplish deep grey before me, and behind me and to the left the South Western sky is bright blue with white clouds and sunshine! Here I stand between the worlds in the physical as well as the astral, two worlds, with an umbrella of radiant rainbow above me, reaching deeply back to earth, at each end, the river’s water embracing the colours as well as the mythical pots of gold.

Moments like this confirm for me my animistic path, and the connection becomes euphoric, heady and effervescent.

I lay in the paddock, surrounded by tall grass that has seen the extremes of 40 degrees 3 times in the last week; it’s cool yet crunchy in spots, my dog faithfully beside me, lies down with me. The cows surround us separated by the fences of worn grey timber and rusted barbed wire. Varied splashes of water fall on my skin, from the rain clouds above. The breeze gets stronger and is refreshing and stirs up the grass all around me. I too lay here seeking nourishment like the parched Earth; I accept each drop of water and each breath of air on the breeze into my being.

Here I lay in the embrace of the Mother, in a space between the waters of her luscious river curves, a pocket of earth, a century of acres of paradise, surrounded by her healing waters, that give all that dwell here much life.

I am blessed for these moments, for this place, and for the ancestors that guide me in my work. I am home!