The Clan Mother Speaks: Our Banshee
Hello dear Sisters—seekers of the Fierce Feminine.
As Banshee Clan Mother I say hello and greet you as JaneOwl. This birthing—this ‘coming out’ of Banshee to you right here, right now, has been quite something. Quite a process. Like a birth of sorts. I have been writing this through the waxing moon to full Scorpio super moon of April 2021 and just days out from Samhain when the veils are thin between worlds.
Firstly, I would like to share with you some words that Banshee spoke one day when I was beside the ocean in March. I am in a constant place of questioning…
Who am I ?
And what am I here to do ?
What is my purpose ?
Life has no meaning... No reason to stay. If there is no purpose
I Am that I Am
I Am that I Am
I Am that I Am
It feels as simple as that. It's taken a life journey to this age of my 60th year to get to this clarity; to this simplicity. Or perhaps even its taken lifetimes...
I am Banshee
I am an anchor for her medicine. She yearns for the wild She yearns for the depths. She dives deep She seeks connection Meaningful connection. She seeks to be seen. She seeks to feel comfortable with this ability to traverse and hold the depths of all human emotions. The light emotions but equally the dark emotions that come with trauma and crisis in this human life. She seeks to feel safe. She seeks to feel welcomed for this ability—for this ability to hold life's frailties and vulnerabilities. She seeks a place in Circle. She seeks rightful place in Circle. She seeks to feel she belongs. Often times in life and even sometimes in Circle she feels she has no place. Too deep. Too dark.
But with this darkness Banshee holds the Light. She holds the extremities of the polarity of this dual existence of life here on earth. In her aloneness and in her isolation she feels ONE. And the place she feels the least One is in this paradigm of humans. She seeks solace in the ocean. She seeks connection and intimacy with the rocks. And with the stars and with the sky She feels so at home. So so at home And what she yearns for more than deeply than anything is human connection with fellow travellers. I Am that I Am. I am Banshee.
Meeting the Vision Mother of the Amazonian Arts
I met Akhalita at the end of September 2019 where fellow sisters gathered at the School of Shamanic Womancraft MerConference. It was there that she shared a short video of herself emerging out of a river with a spear aimed straight at us. I was spellbound. I thought to myself, Who was this force of a woman owning her beauty and power from the inside and from the outside? Embodying what she then went on to explain was a pathway to explore 13 archetypes that culminates in the emergence of the Fierce Feminine. A new way of Be - ing that the Earth needs NOW.
I remain stunned to this day at the amount of work, dedication purity of intent and countless hours that Akhalita has put into this emerging soul calling. Everything feels of the highest order and of the greatest integrity, beauty and creativity. Warrior Queen, Akhalita, speaks to me with her beauty and grace.
Claiming the Banshee as Clan Mother
In December of 2019 Akhalita invited me to claim Clan Mother of Banshee. I wasn’t able to accept this invitation immediately as I was deep in the abyss and suffering from chronic fatigue. In March 2020 when I had found my way out of the Dark Night, I received and accepted a deeper calling with such clarity directly from Banshee. As life would have it and is written and confirmed in the stars in my Amazonian Arts astrology reading in October 2019, I have been travelling the path of Banshee since in my mother's womb.
In June 2020 I had the pleasure and honour to immerse myself in the land where Akhalita resides on the outskirts of the town of Dorrigo in Northern New South Wales, Australia. This land spoke to me in all its beauty, power and grace. I stayed in a small stone cabin dreamed and crafted into being by her partner Russell. This experience would certainly be right up there as a highlight of my life—to reside for 7 days and 7 nights in what feels like the edge of the world—the edge of forever in a dwelling crafted in the configuration of the spiral. This experience felt like a return to the womb of creation and was so powerfully restorative and healing. Russell speaks to me through his creativity, skilled craftmanship and stunning construction of the sacred dwellings on this land.
My earliest life callings were creative in nature. For this reason from high school I went on to further my studies in creativity and art. I have a bachelor degree in fine arts. I hold a deep reverence and love for the ancient technology of the frame drum for its transformative power and medicine. For this reason I am called to drum keeper. Equally I have a reverence and passion for Shamanic Journeying to the beat of the frame drum as a path of direct revelation, self empowerment and healing. One could say it is meditation on steroids. A path not for the faint hearted but rather a path of authentic initiation.
I am a Water Whisperer which expresses itself in the world as a teacher of swimming—I am a magnet to those with special needs and those who have experienced trauma in and around water. I hold space for ‘fear’ in the element of water. The Ocean is an ever deepening ally.
Apprenticing to the School of Shamanic Womancraft
In 2013 I completed the 4 season Journey with the Shamanic School of Womancraft. This was a deep dive into the Women’s Mysteries and the cyclical nature of Life. It was here I birthed my first frame drum. Last year I completed my first of three years as an apprentice teacher to the 4 seasons Journey with the school. My spiritual mentor of 35 years brought me to a place of gradual awakening on a multitude of levels over this long association. She modelled and shared with me intimately family love and unbounded compassion and kindness that I had never known in my family of origin. She loved me unconditionally for who I am and did the same for all who came into her orbit. We spoke on the phone for 30 years every day.
Medicine of Owl
Upon reflection and unbeknown to me at the time, at the beginning of this lifetime journey together she gifted me with the medicine of Owl. Officiating this by handing me an exquisite figurine of an owl. It wasn’t until 2013 that I claimed this medicine as my own. I still have the figurine and hold it to this day for every and all important, challenging life occasions and thresholds including the water births of both my daughters. At the age of 27 with no knowledge of what life trajectory it would take me on, I stepped into supporting her in the creation of a healing centre in the heart of Sydney. It was a very powerful portal of transformation where much awakening and spiritual energy was anchored. She herself was known globally as the Owl Lady—carrying profound medicine of healing and love.
My First Circles
It was there that I sat in my first Circles in the 80s witnessing with the ears of my heart the traumas, vulnerabilities, challenges and joys of the human experience. It was there that I came to understood that my greatest pursuit in life was the coming home to Self. To explore life's biggest of questions—who am I and where am I ? And from that time a lifelong passion and pursuit emerged of taking self responsibility and discipline to raising my own personal Light quotient and in turn resulting over the years to feeling inspired to Be-ing a Way Shower for others on the path to Know Thyself. We all chose a ‘spiritual name' at the Centre randomly from pieces of paper in a hat. The name that claimed me was Vibhuti—a magical ash of super human powers. People would often bring me the manifested ash from the then famed Guru Sai Baba in India.
Meeting with Shaman Sandra Ingerman
I met my first spirit/power animal—Swan—in my first shamanic journey when Sandra Ingerman who was visiting my mentor in Sydney in 1985. She conducted a power animal retrieval workshop at the centre where I supported as High Priestess to my spiritual teacher and mentor. I later went on to participate in other of Sandra's online teachings including Shamans Light : Dark Night of the Soul. It was then on Sandra's instruction and guidance that I voluntarily entered the abyss of the Dark Night—this was revelatory.
The Sacred Land of Hawaii
In the 90s I followed an impulse and travelled to Hawaii a number of times to immerse in the energy of this sacred land. It was a homecoming. A homecoming to the land, its ancestors and to myself and to others. I sought out a teacher and immersed myself in the trainings of Lomi Mai Ka Na’au—teachings from the Centre of being, on the island of Kauai. This was sacred body work whose source of the teachings were direct from the Hawaiian masters and the principles and values that they lived. Most recently I was a participant in the global Shamans Visionary Circle with the now late Hank Wesselman MD who had a direct association with the Polynesian Mysteries through his relationship with Hawaiian indigenous Elder Kupuna Hale Kealohalani Makua. This was most certainly a deep privilege and honour.
Coming Home to the Banshee
It is not by chance that there was a life intercept with Akhalita, the Amazonian Arts and Banshee. Last year was my second Saturn return right on que with Banshee coming into my life. Together without really knowing the full extent of it, last year was the deepest of dives into the polarities of Life itself for me. I journeyed deep into the abyss of ‘the dark’ and equally into the heights of ‘the light’ and everything in between. What I now recognise to be true as the Medicine Banshee holds. Firstly a 6 month immersion into the heights of residing in the luminous love light of The One and then followed by a 6 month deepest of dives into the initiatory experiences of the Abyss, the dark night, where I felt surely I would not return. I have had my fair share through this life of moments of deep shock and immeasurable suffering that has so deeply rocked me to invoke Banshee's primal scream. Crisis and suffering that has dropped me to my knees in gut wrenching despair. Not once but over and over again. Finally on the other side of my second Saturn return I am able with a sense of great relief and celebration to claim the multitude of blessings I have experienced and received in this life. I have been blessed with the most profound acts of selfless love, generosity and service in support of this life and my spiritual path. Deep interpersonal experiences of love, bliss and connection in humanness, and profoundly exquisite deep connection with Nature and its animals. In this thus far short association with Banshee, she has shown me a pathway to transcend this suffering and pain and transmute it into fierce tenderness—the way of the fierce feminine that the Amazonian Arts speaks to and of.
I resonate deeply with the stories of the Phoenicians mentioned in the Pathway to the Banshee where the legend of the Phoenix resides. In my own personal life I have honed and developed skills in rising from devastating losses over and over. Mastering the spiritual practice of 'being with what is' in an ever deepening capacity. Consequently, the gift I see in this role is that I have travelled this path of Banshee deep and well.
It is of timely significance that I am on the other side of my second Saturn return—in recognising the life cycle of woman as Maiden, Mother, Maga, Crone. I am in the Maga phase of my life. The offering is in the anchoring and embodiment of Banshee. I have shared here relevant aspects of my life journey and self that is in distinct and uncanny alignment with the Banshee. Banshee dives deeply in places not all travel in a lifetime. We all have encounters with challenge, trauma and inevitably with change but not all travel to the extreme polarity of the Dark. Some never go there in a lifetime as confirmed by world renowned Sandra Ingerman, shamanic practitioner who has spent a lifetime traversing the Dark Night and being a teacher to thousands of students on a Shamanic Path.
Currently we are experiencing a Global Dark Night and those who have traversed these waters I feel can be of great service to those who are suffering and for Mother Earth herself. I feel honoured to be of service as anchor of this archetype and I am so very excited to step into and surrender to this adventure into the Mystery—with the map that Akhalita and the Amazonian Arts team are so skillfully and artfully bringing into this world of manifestation.
I’ll meet you there In love,
JaneOwl