Introduction
Did you know that all our ova as women are created when we are just foetuses?
All our eggs, which will be released every month of our future life as mature women, are already ready when we are in our mother’s womb.
And our mother’s eggs?
Already ready when she’s still in our grandmother’s womb.
Yes.
It’s almost unbelievable, but part of us (the egg that gave birth to us) lived in our grandmother’s womb! ! !
Even more sensational, research* has revealed that our DNA is capable of reorganising itself and evolving according to our emotions. This is called epigenetics. The phenomenon is particularly intense during gestation. Depending on the emotions felt by its mother, the DNA of a foetus will be remodelled, particularly in the brain of the future infant.
We can therefore deduce that, since the ovum from which we are born was created at the time of our mother’s gestation in our grandmother’s womb, half of our DNA was also impacted by our grandmother’s emotions at the time of her pregnancy.
Crazy, isn’t it?
I’ll say it again: half of our DNA has been impacted by the emotions our grandmother felt during her pregnancy !!!!
So we’re inevitably closely linked to the grandmother archetype.
Our grandmothers are women who have acquired a great deal of wisdom through experience.
They have had their moons for years. They’ve had pregnancies. Joys. Sorrows. Children they’ve seen grow up. Hair that has turned white over time. They’ve come of age and offered up their energies for a long time, before saving them for themselves and for all their projects at the time of the menopause. They told us their stories, their discoveries and the tales they had heard as children about other women and their adventures. Each tale came at a time when we needed it: our first disappointment in love or our first bleed.
Their busy lives have given them the necessary hindsight to offer just the right amount of kindness, piercing us with wisdom.
Here, in a few words, is the general archetype of the grandmother.
The grandmothers of our lives may not have fit this archetype. They may have been ill, cold, too busy to take the time to be with us… or quite simply, we never had the chance to get to know them.
To tell the truth, it doesn’t really matter.
As women, we have a special relationship with the grandmother archetype.
Is it because of this physical link? The part of us that germinated in our grandmother’s womb? Is this also what explains our strong bond with the women in our ancestry?
Whether it’s a link in the real world with exchanges or in the etheric, karmic world (where we may have things to sort out that belong to our genealogical lineage), it’s certain that, as women, we need to listen to our grandmothers.
By extension, we also need to connect with the world of wise women.
That’s why grandmotherly teaching takes place in women’s circles, in the context of strong relationships and bonds – in short, in that feminine ecosystem where trust and sharing thrive.
Just ONE archetype ?
As with young and mature women, there’s no one-size-fits-all grandmother, as you’d expect!
Of course, there’s the kindly grandmother who tells us stories and makes us hot chocolate, but there’s also the athletic, adventurous grandmother who does her 5km Nordic walk every morning.
There’s the witch grandmother who always has a potion of dried herbs for our aches and pains, the grandmother who keeps the pedestal tables spinning, the one who spins wool in front of her fireplace, and so on!
Over the course of this year, we’ll be working with 13 archetypal grandmothers full of wisdom.
Each of them corresponds to a very specific energy of the year, that of the current lunar energy. And yet, here too, we may be in for some surprises! Like the archetypes of the Goddesses, the 13 Grandmothers can appear to each of us in a unique and appropriate way.
These archetypes are linked to our unconscious. And more specifically, to our collective unconscious.
We will make contact with them, especially through guided meditations, without ever forgetting that the information can be delivered to us in our everyday lives, in a completely personal way. That’s the magic of our unconscious!
By drawing on the collective stock of archetypes, our psyche is capable of extracting the essence of what we need to convey the message it deems most useful.
‘The 13 Clan Mothers never appear in the same way or in the same form to those who seek their guidance. Using their power to appear in all aspects of the feminine world, the Clan Mothers can touch and teach each person in a unique way. The flexibility of the forms they use is important because it is one of the foundations of their teachings.’ Jamie Sams, The 13 Original Mothers.
The 13 Clan Mothers and the 13 moon energies
The magnificent book by Jamie Sams (The 13 Original Mothers) will be our Ariadne’s thread for this journey through the 13 moons of the year.
You don’t need to buy it, but if you do, I can’t recommend it enough!
Jamie Sams talks about the Amerindian teachings she received (and other cross-references) that enabled her to link 13 archetypes of ancient sages with the 13 moons of the year.
The message of each moon is very profound, and each year we can understand a little better the energies that flow through us. We always learn more about nous m’aime (ourselves). I’ve already had several opportunities to work with the 13 original mothers. But this solitary work doesn’t have the charm and intensity of a group study. That’s why I’m really looking forward to starting this work with you! I’d like to invite you to connect to the Signal community, reserved for this circle only, so that we can talk to each other.
You’ll see that, no matter where you are in your personal evolution, every month you’ll get the information you need for your life. But this information, even more incredible, can also be of use to others…
The feminity gift
As someone who was a tomboy throughout my youth, for a long time I found it hard to see the benefits of a woman’s energies. I realised very early on that if I wanted to succeed in life….
…
then…
… I had to be a man!
Once I had succeeded (family, career, etc.), in other words 30 years later, I received the invitation from the sacred feminine.
I didn’t happily reconnect with this beautiful gift. On the contrary, at first it was painful. To tell the truth, I was furious when the woman arrived in my intuitive paintings! Victorious, almost naked women… that wasn’t me, that couldn’t be my style of painting, it wasn’t serious enough, it wasn’t abstract enough, it wasn’t contemporary enough!
My vision quests in shamanic painting were even more formal: Woman. Woman. WOMAN!
I did a lot of meditating, researching and analysing, and finally agreed to meet, embody and paint feminine energies.
For me, they’re a mixture of compassion, care, receiving and giving life (whether in the form of children in matter… or projects, creations).
And in this universe of healing, we absolutely have to start by healing ourselves.
Healing the woman we are, her wounds, her disappointments, her regrets, her remorse…
We need to look after every part of our Self. From body to soul.
In this year’s journey, we’ll be taking care of ourselves and our personal feminine energies in particular, because :
- When we heal ourselves, we heal others.
- When we take care of our dreams, we give birth to the dreams of humanity.
- When we move forward as loving aspects of Mother Earth, we become the fertile givers of life, the Mothers of the Creative Force.
- When we honour our bodies, our health and our emotional needs, we give space for our dreams to come true.
- When we speak truth from our healed hearts, we allow the abundance of life to continue on our Mother Planet.
Jamie Sams
For all these reasons, but also because :
- we can carry within us the eggs of our future grandchildren, …
- because we can heal the feminine today for our future daughters and granddaughters,
- we can preserve our Earth, not out of fear of the future and of our own annihilation, but out of love for her and her welcome.
By being part of this circle, we commit ourselves to honouring all women equally, to discovering our particular gift or talent that will enable us to serve the common good in our own way, and to becoming role models.
In this way, by exploring the 13 archetypes and their gifts, you can reconnect with your own. One month’s work will no doubt seem more exciting and easier than the others, but there’s no doubt in your mind that you’ll need to keep digging into the themes you’ve explored.
Here too, whatever stage we’re at in our evolution, the information we receive will always be done in a spirit of benevolence. We take what we need. We don’t have to try to understand everything, learn everything, swallow everything and put ourselves in a stressful situation… our unconscious knows exactly how much information we need: let’s not be resentful about reading other people’s experiences, we’re all different and that’s fine.
Menstruation seasons
Together, we’re going to go through 13 periods of menstruation. So we can start by talking about it straight away!
We can see our bleeding in many ways (absence of pregnancy, inner purification, sharing of energies with the Earth, etc.).
Here, I’d like to talk about the heightened sensitivity of women during this time.
For menstruation is the equivalent of a vision quest for men!
A vision quest, in shamanism, is the creation of an intense environment and living conditions to enable the human spirit to connect with the energies (elemental, Earth, Masters, etc.). The man fasts for 3 days, lives outdoors, far from everyone, day and night, waiting for a sacred message.
The energies of menstruation and the frequent pains plunge women into a kind of trance-like state, in a very natural way, without under-nourishing our bodies. It’s a state of hypersensitivity that explains our heightened emotions and overwhelming reactions. The body and mind receive everything more strongly. The veil between the conscious and unconscious worlds dissipates for … 3 days.
Yes, mankind hasn’t invented anything in the quest for vision!
Jamie Sams talks in her book about a Native American initiation (the mysteries of Healing) and especially about a necessary step: it is a one-year period of preparation, during which the woman who will be initiated will have to keep a 3-day period of silence at the beginning of her menstruations (or equivalent in the case of postmenopausal women).
The goal of this retreat time is to learn to connect deeply to everything that the woman can receive during this moment of her cycle. According to this tradition, it is a question of honoring this link with the invisible worlds, as much as seeking to receive meaning.
For us, as for these initiated women, it can become essential to guard against external influences, such as television, reading, music, … whose contents could interfere with our receptions (intuitions, ideas, project seeds, etc.) at the time of our menstruation. On the contrary, we can focus on our gifts and our personal expressions at this precise moment: writing everything that comes to us, singing, playing the drum, painting… the goal being to fill ourselves, nourish ourselves, to give birth to our dreams and rise!
Without forgetting to give thanks and express gratitude for the gift of being a woman today.
It can be used to create a sacred space at home to allow us to live this key moment in our lives: an altar, a calm, warm place (and warm in our body too with a hot water bottle, a kettle, and tons of soft blankets…)
It is also the time to take care of the basic needs of your body: with simple and quality food and pure water.
You can start to connect with your menstruation and the sacred in a very small way: with a simple change of vocabulary.
For example, let’s stop talking about « periods » at home. I always hated it when my mother said that I was finally « periodic ». It was as if the deal was done, settled… no, on the contrary, nothing was! It was quite the opposite. Nothing made any sense anymore, I felt everything too strongly. I was suffocating without understanding.
Today, I know that words can influence us. All the more so, in this very important moment of our monthly life.
They influence the vibrations that surround us and inevitably, the feminine energies that we will focus on for a year.
Let’s start by trying to no longer have « our periods » every month. We can choose to have our menstruation, our moons, our sacred flows, our lunar or celestial dews…
What do you choose to call your menstruation?
Is it easy on a daily basis or do you feel like you are making an effort for this transformation?
Do you already feel a change in your feminine energies?
I am so excited to meet you and to connect with the first grandmother. Until then, I send you a big hug, dear sister!
Love and benedictions.
Fanny
