~INVITATION~

 

We invite you to join us for our very first in-person session of Sacred Weavers this summer from April 20th-24th on Cortes Island! For many, the yearning for belonging can evoke feelings of grief and disconnection from wholeness or home. Sacred Weavers offers pathways to healing through tending thresholds of belonging.

In this offering, you will be invited to explore relationships with land, village, and ancestors through ritual, song, story, and more. We will use weaving as a ritualized, embodied practice in belonging and ancestral connection.

We will journey with ancestral stories to retrieve our own personal myths of healing, belonging, and homecoming. The experience culminates with an initiatory ceremony, guided by lineage, weaving together the threads we discovered along the way.

Upcoming In-Person Offering
(April 20-24th 2023)
Rainbows End in Whaletown, Cortes Island:

• Thursday, April 20th: 6pm to 8pm (Opening Circle)
• Friday, April 21st: 10am to 6pm (Belonging with Land)
• Saturday, April 22nd: 10am to 6pm (Belonging with Village)
• Sunday, April 23rd: 10am to 10pm (Belonging with Ancestors & Ceremony)
• Monday, April 24th: 10am to 3pm (Closing Circle)

"Deepening into myth and personal story in a co-created container is a powerful process. Through song, story, and artful facilitation, Cadence and Rue weave potent threads that bring everyone together in transformative ways. Each session of Sacred Weavers has offered me new depths to uncover tenderness and I feel the web will call me back again for more." - Wren

~WHAT TO EXPECT~

This offering includes:

• Space for personal reflection, group sharing, and nature connection
• Invitations for hands-on, experiential learning
• Opportunities to learn different weaving techniques
• Ritual and ceremonial practice

~The journey of Sacred Weavers offers the cultivation of belonging in a supportive and resourced community learning space.~

~INVESTMENT~

We offer a range of pricing options to make this offering as accessible as possible. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds, please reach out if the cost is a barrier.

These are the registration options:

• Early Bird (until April 1st): $425
• Regular: $545
• Low Income: $445
• High Income: $645
• Payment Plan: two monthly payments of $272.50
• Scholarship (2 spaces): $200

*To secure your spot, register on Eventbrite (click register now button) or by Paypal @QueerDirections

~The offering culminates with an initiatory ceremony, guided by lineage, weaving together the healing threads we discovered along the way.~

~FACILITATORS~

Rue McDonald (they/them) - Founder and Learning Facilitator with Queer Directions Learning Center

~ story weaver / songster / researcher / educator ~

"My practice involves holding space for ancestral connection and lineage healing through working with ancestral stories. I'm a queer animist witch and my practice is informed by my own ancestral lineages of Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Norse and Swiss German ancestry."

Instagram @queerdirections

Instagram @rue_mcdonald

Cadence Moffat McCann (she/her) - Founder of Inner Cadence Healing

~ ritualist / healer / facilitator / guide ~

"I am a queer settler of mostly Celtic and Germanic/Slavic ancestry. I have facilitated land-based education and healing for nearly 20 years throughout Turtle Island (so-called North America). I am dedicated to helping us remember our place in the web of life through deep nature connection and sacred circles."

www.innercadence.com

"I had the most beautiful time with the Sacred Weavers group. I was surprised at how easy it was to connect authentically through story and by sharing our experiences in the group exercises. In a world full of superficial interaction I am grateful to have found this offering. I was given new tools to explore decolonial and anticapitalist paths into being present in my humanity by belonging in nature, with each other and inside myself." - Natalie

~CONTACT~

Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or want more information:

• Cadence: innercadence@gmail.com, 778-732-2972
• Rue: queerdirections@gmail.com

*With gratitude, this offering takes place on the unceded lands of the Klahoose, Tla’amin, Homalco Peoples. A portion of the proceeds will be given back to the Original Peoples of these lands.

Queer Astrology Spring Series

April 5th - Tracking the Invisible
Foundations of Astrology from a queer animist perspective, exploring signs and planets as they relate to the wheel of the year, the body, and practical magic for personal liberation.

April 12th - Queer Archetypes
We will explore the energy of the embodied cosmos in fluid conversations of queerness, and explore the inner queer pantheon of archetypes inside us all. As elders knew when making the queer liberation flag, our diversity is ancient, natural, and reflected in the rainbow. Come revel in the queer revealings in this unique class, and see astrology and gender and sexuality in whole new ways as we play with it all like artists.

April 19th - Love Languages
Study how you and your identity are defined by your Love languages, dating and relationship styles, attachment styles, cruising and crushing and falling styles, needs, desires, fantasies, intimacy, connection and visa versa…We all have diverse and unique ways of loving, and we simultaneously also have ancient ways of loving, and all of this we can study through the window of an astrology chart, as a personal map useful for orienting to what you and others need in love. We study the chart of the stars at the moment of birth as map to serve our dynamic rebirthing that is Love in action. Discover astral charts as an empathy building practice and tool, to gain clarity about personal needs and ways of loving, and deepen into the understanding of the massive diversity of ways of loving and getting desires met in relationship, and it is fascinating an useful!

April 26 - Crossroads of the Modes
This astrology foundations class will explore the Modes of astrology which create crossroads within the chart, containing one of each element in opposition and square to each other, teaching us about challenges and limitations that transform us under pressure. We will workshop embodying all of the forces of the modes, and practical magic for aligning with the well and forge inherent in this cyclical natural design.

May 3rd - Astral Radios and Belonging Magic
We will tune in to our own embodiment as a radio of the cosmos, where we will explore polarities and nonbinary magic. These key aspects of astrology serve our orientation to the wellness at our own center, coming home to the living bridge between our own opposites. We will practice new ways to be resourced and whole.

May 10th - Power and Powerlessness
We will explore astrology charts as maps of exiled power, that can be worked with as thresholds of initiatory personal and intergenerational healing. Learn how to dance with your shadow, because it always dances with you. We will explore unique practices with the stars as gates and guides to inner diversity inclusion and transformative healing.

WELL TENDERS: Queer Mysticisms for Dark Times

 

     

CLASSES

 

Crossroads Magic & Origin Stories - Sunday, December 11 ~ 2-5pm

Queering Myth - Sunday, December 18 ~ 2-5pm

Brigid’s Flame: Vitality & Pleasure - Sunday, Jan 8 ~ 2-5pm

Luminary Timekeepers - Sunday, Jan 22 ~ 2-5pm

Dreamwork, Divination & the Unseen - Sunday, Feb 5 ~ 2-5pm

Shapeshifters & Grief Practice - Sunday, Feb 19 ~ 2-5pm

An old story from Celtic Briton…In the old times when all we knew of ourselves in the world was cherished and shared by the art of storytelling, the land was dotted with sacred wells tended by sacred people, the well tenders. At the wells, the medicine herbs and trees grew. There came a time when the well tenders were not respected and, when they retreated, they took away with them the water and all the wells ran dry. Only when a young leader journeyed to bring back the well tenders, did the waters return to the earth. At a time when the water protectors around the world are rising, we must tend the stories that spring from the seeds in our bones and nourish our fighting spirit to sustain engagement in solidarity work and activism. Rooted in our respective ancestral traditions, this course offers connections to animist and herbal mysticisms of Celtic cultures to tend to our wellness. Particularly, daily devotional practices to honour nature and Brigid who aids our work with sacred wells, crossroad magic, life & death gates, herbs and the forge. Rise with the well tenders who protect the sacred, drink deeply of the sacred well and reweave our belonging with the gentle spun fibers of story.

Well Tenders is a narrative-based course for those seeking queer ways to re-enchant daily life, build spiritual resilience, vital energy, pleasure, grief metabolization and expanded capacity for relationship with the unseen. We are entering the season of storytelling. This course will hold us during the dark season, but also offer supportive practices for dark times of upheaval, uncertainty, death, grief, change and fear. Through ancestral songs, rituals, herbs, stories and embodied practice, over three months we will be building community and sharing skills for holding center through times of transition and change. It is a special experience to hear stories that have been cherished since ancient times. As we learn ancestral stories, we begin to feel held in this ancient web of belonging because they weave and come alive in our lives. Step into the web, reveal and awaken your own personal myth and join the Well Tenders at the winter hearth fire.

Topics include:

• Ancestral herbalism
• Queering history, queering myths
• Ancestral myths & stories from Gaelic cultures
• Queer embodiment
• Shapeshifters & ecosexuality in ancestral stories
• Daily devotional practices to beloved Brigid
• Scots Gaelic songs & prayers for honouring fire, sun, moon, herbs & trees
• Grief practice & laments
• Living on the wheel with the seasons
• Luminary Timekeepers: Tracking moon and star cycles
• Divination & dreams

Register Now
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UPCOMING CLASSES

Monday, March 28 - Dandelion - 2hr workshop
5:30-7:30 pm pst

Monday, April 4th - Nettle - 2hr Workshop
5:30-7:30 pm pst

Sunday, April 10th - Seaweed - 3hr Ritual - Jupiter/Neptune conjunction
3-5pm pst

Monday, April 18th - Willow - 2hr Workshop
5:30-7:30 pm pst

Monday, April 25th - Cleavers - 2hr Workshop
5:30-7:30 pm pst

Once you've selected you payment tier (Sliding scale: $120- 260 / full course or $25- 60/ per class) OR reach out for the pay what you can option . To secure your spot please send an e-transfer to queerdirections@gmail.com

We invite you to join us on the journey of Sacred Weavers. For many of us, the yearning for belonging can evoke feelings of grief and disconnection from wholeness or home. Sacred Weavers offers pathways to healing through tending nested thresholds of belonging.

In this course, you will be invited to explore relationships with land, village, ancestors, and self through ritual, song, story, and more. We will explore willow weaving as a ritualized, embodied practice in belonging and ancestral connection.

We will be journeying with the Welsh story of Branwen to retrieve our own personal myths of healing, belonging and homecoming. The experience culminates with an initiatory ceremony, guided by lineage, weaving together the healing threads we discovered along the way.

Through this course, you will have gained the tools to guide your own ongoing relationships with skills and allies to tend to your wellness of body, mind, and spirit for each trip around the wheel of seasons. You will have deepened and expanded your fluency with astrology alongside the healing arts, and relationships to tend to your own wellness with your intuition and awaken lucidity.

Somatic Ancestral Healing

Trauma creates patterns that get handed down through the generations, and we see these patterns express in body, mind, and spirit.

It is time now to involve our politics with our healing, to have the skills to metabolize trauma and move it through so it does not bind our power and authentic self, causing illness which is just an expression of internalized intergenerational trauma.

Our ancestors lived with seasons, stories, and culture that tended to the aspects of health in all levels of our experience, and therefore cultivated relationships with things that continuously tended to well being.

For mental, emotional, social, and spiritual health we need meaning and understanding of our purpose, our initiations of evolution, our core authentic truth and nature that are unique to each of us and that are common among people.

These things tend to affect our health in ways that we can’t fully receive from going to a session with an expert in a health field to be fixed. We need to tend to and be tended by relational embodied culture.

Together we are creating a culture of wellness by tending relationships to aspects of health that were tended to in ancestral cultures that lived with the movements of nature.

Astrology: The ancestors lived with the stars, and have left us with maps to locate our purpose, gifts, channels for all of the elements that outline our authentic selves, as well as describe patterns of personal and ancestral trauma. Discover the challenges and limitations so that you better understand how to work with the initiations you are in. These edges where we meet adversity and trigger trauma responses, are the places we find the trapped ancestral power rattling our bones awake, we call it an adrenal response. Learn how to study your story on every level, from how you get triggered, where and why, and what you tend to do with that to better understanding your overall greater evolutionary work. Find your true self and your true work as a human and come home to a better understanding of how to align with that.

Herbal Support

Plant Allies: Plants are our oldest family, teachers, and healers. They are the first people, and do not suffer like humans in falling out of relationship with the energy flowing between the earth and sky and all of the elements. They bring us back to relationship, to center, and to wellness where we get polarized and stuck. It is like they sing us the song we need to here to remember our flow and our connection. They sing us back into remembering.

It is like the knowing look of a true friend that reminds us of the truth and from there we flow back into our true flow in every way. Nature has a knowing of flow, and truth, and relationship and wellness and plants bring ease to our sufferings and illnesses of body, mind, and spirit because they are allies that know the way back to this flow.

* This herbal advice is not a substitute for medical care *

Magic

Everyday Magic: Every time we breathe we are in communication with plants. Our garbage is their food, and their garbage is our food. In this earthbound realm, the ones who feed on death feed the roots of the parts that feed on light...and we are the same. We need to tend to the (r)evolutionary work of reclaiming our power that has been exiled in realms of shadow, and heal our ancestral trauma patterns in that process. We aim to offer the tools of the healing arts to heal patterns of illness in body, mind, and spirit created by internalized intergenerational oppression. This path will guide you in building your own relationships with physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual wellness as justice work. We will offer practical magic. We can live in prayer. It is all sacred. Our bodies, our food, our homes, we are made of the earth and always held by it. We are mostly made of water, and water is with our daily lives in many ways.

The sacred fire that is the sun dancing on the surface of the water is the same one that lights the spark of nerve and heartbeat and eye shine. Magic is already here all over the place. We will explore practices and exercises to learn how to work with it and awaken your life with intentional relationship. This is a dream, we are becoming lucid!

Somatic Healing

Movement: We are a living bridge between the earth and sky, a river of energy constantly changing form and flowing through. Internalized trauma patterns create blocks in the flow and form patterns of mental, emotional, psychic, and physical illness. Movement is life. We will practice Medical Qi Gong movement and meditations from ancient Chinese medicine traditions that clear illnesses from all levels of body, mind, and spirit, restoring the flows between the earth and the sky in our bodies. The practices will be designed specially for the energies of each astrological sign’s animist weather as we travel through the astrological Zodiac, weaving our movements with the movements of the whole.

Meditation: Embodied trance journeys to Planets, constellations, etc. As well as qi gong meditations that address various aspects of healing and spiritual relationship

This is queer mysticism for social (r)evolution. In this march through the astrological zodiac, we will explore old stories, songs, and astrology as it relates to health, herbalism, politics, pop culture, and current events all informed by a witchy radical queer lens. We begin our journey in Imbolc - at the start of the Celtic calendar - with a dive into Aquarius alongside a figure in Irish and Scottish myth called the Cailleach, who travels the cross roads of the queer directions of the seasonal year.

Stories are alive and a way to awaken magic in your life, so in this way astrology gets awakened. You may notice themes of stories showing up as you work with them, and begin to interplay with the astrological weather in your chart and in the current sky as you connect with them.

Stories are the tools of the wisdom traditions of our ancestors, and with astrology we can invite a personal weave of story magic that helps deepen our relationship to the evolutionary initiations guided by the stars. In this work we can find our connections to ancestral traditions deepen as well.

The intention is to build resiliency and wellness by deepening relationships with the ancestral stories as guides for this time of world-changing magic.

Revolutionary Astrology

Otis Bell, RAc is a queer transgender animist astrologer, acupuncturist, herbalist, artist witch. His ancestors are from a white colonial settler background and have roots in Western and Northern European peoples.

"Truly we should always learn astrology alongside stories, because in stories we find the context and connections that build the archetypal nature of the signs and planets in astrology. Astrology is a map of energies in the universe that weave through seasons and life cycles, including our emotional, mental, social, and spiritual landscapes, and fundamentally it is story magic."

Ancestral Story Work

Rue McDonald is a non-binary queer witch, story weaver, songster, artist, researcher and works with kids outdoor place-based learning. They share ancestral stories from their ancestry - of Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Norse and Swiss German blood lineages.

"Weaving story into present relevance in your life deepens magical animist relationships in the world and story work is a tool for liberation through ancestor connection and lineage healing. Story work is a process of cultural reclamation that can resource us to show up with greater wisdom and groundedness for enacting revolutionary social change."

Invitations to Practice

With each sign there will be invitations to practice for wellness and resiliency building including, but not limited to the following offerings:

• Nature connection
• Spiritual and physical health support
• Attunement with moon cycles
• Movement, meditation suggestions