WEAVING WISDOM WITH NATURE

I don't mean to categorise people, but for the purpose of this musing, I ask you to bear with me as I examine and grapple with what I am about. And before I begin, let me preface by saying that I truly mean no disrespect to anyone when I write this. Instead, I will be overviewing "themes" that I have encountered, witnessed and experienced within the spiritual community. In doing so, I am discovering my place and my philosophy within this space.

The Ritual's intention, if you don't already know, is to invite slower living. Earth-based Spirituality is a phrase that comes from my Gardnerian Witchcraft lineage. What I have come to notice is that when you say the words "Earth-based Spirituality" without understanding what they mean, your mind might start to imagine any number of ideas that the connotation of these words naturally conjures up. And so within this vein, allow me to outline three or four main categories of people I have found within Spirituality:

In no particular order, I will start with the free-spirited hippie. She wears colours of the forest floor, loves getting lost in the bush and has a global network of friends from all the rainbow gatherings she has attended. She often communes with forest nymphs and lives life through a somewhat psychedelic lens. As fun as their bush doofs and trance music are... That is more of a once-in-a-lifetime experience in my books. And so Goldilocks is moving on to the next bowl of soup!

Type two: the goddess, feminine rising, woman. She speaks in "beloveds" and roses and mostly has long hair and smells of roses. She is heavily invested in Womb Medicine and resurrecting the archetype of Mary Magdelene through the power of Roses. She shares snapshots of herself walking naked into sacred waters (the ocean or a river) and gifts offerings of her morning breakfast or beverage along with a rose to the water goddess. Her life seems fairytale and triggers me deeply for being loud, shouty, a wardrobe full of black and, well, not so heavily focused on the so-called light and God.

Moving on, we might be met with a group of women who just insist that natural (read wild) is the way to truly be real, true, authentic, and most connected to who we are at the core. These women, emerging from the 60s movement, insist on doing the bare minimum: embracing their greying hair and body hair while often painting their faces with their moon blood. Their ways are more shamanic, stemming from Native Indigenous American roots. In short, embracing the Haag and Crone archetype is what marks you as a Witch and powerful Woman. Generally speaking, I related to this group more than others but sadly was often met with condemnation and frowning for my love of beautiful objects, colouring my greys and not wanting to enhance the ageing process.

And then, finally, we come to this beautiful eclectic group of people who come from academic realms and those who have worked in the corporate world and, most often in high fashion, print media and design. Typically, these people, I have observed, have been around wealth (not necessarily always having it themselves), but they have been around it non the less: academia and media roles witness big bucks at play, and so they are playing in the same kind of realm and bring with them the most balanced perspective of life, at least in my eyes. Since I place aesthetics so highly, the latter group is the one that I feel that I have connected with most effortlessly. It is where I have experienced no shame or contemplation. It is where I have felt most seen. However, these Women seem to always be in the shadows. And in many ways, this is how I have always felt.

Now I've met all of these people along the way, and I have connected with all of them because, at the core, we all honour, practice, and see life from a similar foundation. But the differentiating factors, like soft voices and love and light talk or thirty-somethings going on sixty aesthetics, meant I always felt like I didn't fit in or welcome within these spaces. Recently for, eg. I ran into a Woman I have known for several years who facilitates women's gatherings, and she congratulated me on my recent successes. I thanked her and asked how she was, and she made a comment, "so, do you still even practice Witchcraft?" I was taken aback as she felt somewhat tongue-in-cheek and judgy with her tone. I replied sharply, "of course but now only in my Gucci pumps" (I don't even own Gucci pumps). She was rather disgusted and walked off. So you see, in short, I only partially fit their mould, never ticking all of the boxes towards their particular meaning of Spirituality. Suddenly I was not a real witch because I wanted to get a dermapen facial and my hair coloured every four weeks. Because I am now found in department stores, I somehow was another robot suppressing the hard work of the feminine movement.

And so it is that I never felt fully embraced or seen by a lot of the groups of people I've met along the way, which is funny when I think about it as I find it easy to talk to anyone even though I can count the number of good friends I have on one hand. I suppose it's because I have resistance to letting people in and because I don't do clichés, nor do I like to subscribe to a specific one way of being. I like to love people and let them into my life based on the conversations and laughs we have. Each of my friends is entirely different to the next, but the one thread that binds them all together is they do not judge those who are different, and we all love beautiful things. For some, those beautiful things are first edition books and her love of literature, for another, it is cinema and fashion, another food and winemaking. I have a small web of Women in my life who are so unique and quirky but all are just as hilarious as one another.

I am a chameleon: I am happy to mow the grass barefoot, my hands peeling from being in the dirt and looking like an old Haag because I haven't washed my hair for several days. But then I also have no problem with taking care of myself, scrubbing everything away and wearing beautiful clothing and some expensive scent that cost a fortune because it has something as extravagant as baby's tears from Babylonia it and gold dust from another galaxy! Because rather than trying to conform myself to a model that is already existing, I do what works for me. And I couldn't give a fuck about what other people are doing or what they have to say or think.

No matter what kind of people you naturally gravitate towards, they will always have an opinion of you anyway, whether they're your best friend or your arch enemy. Their opinion of you is based on their own projections and their own experiences, their own values and where they are in their own lives at that moment. I am always telling my clients that someone's opinion of you is none of your business. This is a powerful realisation, and it's so important that we keep reminding ourselves of that.

Someone else's opinion of you is non of your business

Most of my days, I spend my time rooted in Earth-based wisdom because I am of this Earth – I am sure that I have been in many other places but in this lifetime, as Brooke, I am of the Earth. And in Nature, I feel most powerful and capable of achieving anything and everything. Because Nature is healing and filled with possibilities, if you are near a window or reading this from your phone, take a moment to look up from the screen and see what's out there!

There is a reason they have rehabilitation gardens in therapy and use sand play for children who have experienced trauma. There is a reason why some of the world's most famous writers, poets, and musicians needed to escape alone to a cabin, a lodge, or an estate in Nature to get inspiration to get their creative juices flowing. Because we are literally made of the same elements of everything here on Earth: the land, the trees, the stars, the primordial fires at the centre of the Earth… The energy courses through us through our feet, and the flame ignites within. This is what the Earth does for us. And we're woven together in this union with the elements, the directions, with the seasons, with the wheel of the year…

So, when we think about how we are all interwoven with the Earth and the elements, we can see how the things that bind us together are the things that correspond to that which we know. So although a practice from the Indigenous South American tribes might be different from my own practices, they have something in common: such as the elements and the directions. If you look back to Ancient Greek Mythology, which I am just fascinated with, they had different gods for different things, similar to Celtic Mythology. And if, for a moment, we think very broadly about the life cycle of trees: they grow by digesting the rays of the Sun, and the Sun comes from our cosmos, which brings peace and balance in this electromagnetic field that we have here on Earth. And in doing so, it weaves within it these realms of above and below - just as we do, through our bodies and with our breath, our inhales and exhales. The above, the below, the in and the out are all interconnected to these directions and these elements, and nothing is separate. And we can draw these Sacred wheels around our bodies wherever we go – they exist within us.

In a past life regression a while back now, I discovered that I had a spinning wheel in my gut and anything that comes along that tries to harm or menace it causes the wheel to spin faster and more intensely, thus flickering things off from the speed at which it moves. So although these things might come at me (I am not immune), although they might hit me, and although it might hurt, it will flick off, these things will be pushed away, like water off a duck's back.

This is something we all have but how I feel that wheel spinning and becoming recalibrated within me with some gusto behind it is by connecting to Nature, by returning to Nature (and it could literally just be buying flowers and having them in a vase in your home). I am an animist, and so I believe that all living things have a spirit and a soul, and it's always about connecting back to that. By having an intimate relationship with Nature, we are connecting to the primary practice of the witch, which is weaving our consciousness with that of the Earth - to become part of this great mystery.

By having an intimate relationship with Nature, we are connecting to the primary practice of the witch, which is weaving our consciousness with that of the Earth - to become part of this great mystery.

So going back to the three or so genres of women that I outlined at the beginning of this piece, I notice that social media (and I am not trying to go on another rant about social media) is always feeding us the same regurgitated crap over and over again and nothing new. There are a few good ones out there, but oftentimes we are sold the same stuff whose freely blanketed empowering messages are a cover for their real goal of making money. It's all part of a brainwashing tactic: to make you believe there is something wrong with you and that you need their knowledge, having gone through x, y, z, themselves and finding the be all end all solution to living a life free of x, y, z forever (or just as long as you keep paying them because healing is ever evolving and you will have some sort of variation of their experience in time anyway). This is extremely dangerous. It is a toxic attachment and creates codependency in order to make money. This is fraud and no better then those that are collecting our data on these very apps.

I have been invited to teach and speak on some rather big platforms and I have declined because they were truly inauthentic, simply trying to jump on a bandwagon, riding the wave of what was currently trending. When I got to know them, they were simply the exact opposite of what they were portraying themselves to be because being something else, didn't sell quite as well at this time. And so this is why we have groups of people not being who they are. They are hiding behind covers encouraging us to try these things that sound different and might be more inclusive. They are selling a phenomenon of feeling seen, and it is inauthentic.

We need to be careful with whom we are sharing our energy and with whom we are sharing our ideas. We need to be careful because like attracts like, and if we're allowing our time, our money, our energy and our beliefs to be based on what some wounded human that day is projecting and saying (and let me be clear: we ALL have wounds!), then we are not being authentic to who we are. I worry for this younger generation who has access to all this information but no real guidance on navigating or using their discernment when engaging with it. They all pick things up from whatever is being said at the moment and, as a result, start to think the same and dress the same… This is one of the many reasons I have stopped talking about astrology: because I don't want to be lumped into that bag. (And even so, when I first came to the practice, it was to understand and follow the moon, Nature and the wheel of the year, so, in truth, I never really identified as an astrologer).

We all want to belong: to someone, to something in some way, shape or form because we are human and we come from a tribal society. But unfortunately, our community is not like that anymore.

When I was younger, I was always the centre of attention, the life of the party, but I never really knew who my friends were. And then, when I got sick, and I left my job at a fashion magazine and stopped working at the labels I was working with, so did the people around me. And when I decided I didn't want to do drugs or drink anymore, people just dropped off even more. And when I got really sick, no one came to visit me. And it caused me to wonder what I had been wasting all my time on. I was wasting my time and my life on these people that never got me anyway.

So maybe, it's time to clear things out, to weed people, thoughts, and experiences that are no longer serving us out. I do this for my garden and wardrobe, so why wouldn't I do it with my life? It's important for us to do a clean-up within our lives: wash the car, change the sheets, upgrade the clothes, wash the dishes, wash ourselves… But what about cleaning our relationships so we can have a better understanding of who we are and what we like and don't like so that we can come from a place of being deeply rooted in the Earth and firmly grounded in ourselves? I.e. I can live and work in the corporate world, and because I come from a place of integrity, I can do it in a way that works for me.

And this is how our lives begin to shift. By following this wheel, by allowing things to deflect, clear out, and spin away, in order to invite new things in. The wheel then spins freely without rigidity, and this great spiral of life works in our favour. If we learn the truths and laws of Nature, we might know how to participate just as she does, blossoming and creating when the time is ripe and renewing and retreating into the fertile darkness when the time calls for it.

I feel like I've said this before, but it is my hope that by hearing it in a few different ways, you might begin to understand and weave this magick from the natural world within your own life, slowly allowing any rigidity or resistance to dissolve. With time, with greater and more expansive understanding, these teachings will continually deepen (I am always integrating, deepening, and adding to my own repertoire every time that I choose to be present).

So go for a walk along the beach, go for a swim in the lake or the creeks, go into the mountains for a hike and hear the sound, smell the smells, see the different colours, shapes, and the light that flickers in and out, taste the salt in the air, and allow these things to be the springboard from which you shoot off and up! Within Nature, everything drops away and becomes insignificant, and I can be present, firmly rooted in the ground and connected to and interwoven with the wisdom within. So the invocations, spells, and practices that I have been a part of and continue to master allow me to build my life from different foundations. Nature is the access point to the wisdom that lies within you, of your true self.

Amoureuse,

Brooke x