sister of avalon

 

Here is a quick little post about my dedication experience in Glasto.

I don’t feel like there is a lot to say, as I want to keep the ritual and so on secret, so if you ever decide to do the course, it will be a surprise to you! No spoilers. But I will talk a little bit about how I feel about it.

The ceremony was super intense. I felt like I came up against all my resistance to this Goddess Path that I have been battling against this last year sitting in that ceremony – that spirituality is silly, that I am not doing it correctly, that this can’t be for me. I felt really nervous that I would get stuff wrong! I’m always quiet and shy in rituals where I’m meant to be the beneficiary, and totally fine and outgoing in ones where I am helping leading! I ended up having to say “Fuck You!” to all those resistance thoughts, because I knew that they were just thoughts, not my truth. I had spent a whole year with the Goddess knowing what my truth was, and some silly little fear thoughts were not going to stop me.

It was deeply profound and amazing. I felt like we were transported to another place – you know when in the film the Mists of Avalon in the sacred circle, you can sometimes hear the bells of the monastery coming from another non-Avalon world? I totally had that experience. Mental.

I had super sexy black eye makeup on that night and I cried so much I am pretty sure it went everywhere. Was cleaning it up in car wingmirrors on the way home.

But, I didn’t honour my natural way of processing this. After the ceremony, there was so much celebrating and my new bro’s and sisters of Avalon were so happy and wanted to go to the pub to celebrate, but I just wanted to be quiet and feel into the landscape, stare at the stars and snuggle into a tree. That’s what I needed to do, even though that’s not what my sisters and brothers want to do. I didn’t listen though, I went partying with my peeps cos I only get to see some of them three times a year.

This meant the next night, after a day of partying, I went out on the land and just kind of collapsed and sobbed a lot. Even now I can’t really explain why gracefully. I just felt so overwhelmed by everything that had happened and what it meant and how I had no freaking idea how I was going to be this Sister of Avalon person. I was just so overwhelmed by the presence of the Goddess I just didn’t know what to do with it! So I cried a lot, lay on the land in the dark in a little snuggly ball, and got it out of my system.

I said I would spend the next day all quiet and still, spending time on my own and walking the land. Well, kind of ended up priestessing in a ceremony that night, and spending a lot of the day prepping and walking the land with the other priestesses, so fail again really, but I was quiet and really in my own space for most of it, so I kinda listened to what I needed and I felt a lot better.

Listening to what I need and doing it, no matter what other people are up to, is something I am still learning to do. I’ve been working a lot with mermaid inspiration recently, and one of the things the mermaids teach us is to honour our needs and desires, and that we don’t need to justify them to anyone or anything else, and I have found remembering that really helpful post-dedication.

Honestly, I came back to regular life and was way out of whack for about a week – just out of it sad and grumpy and not knowing quite how to get back into my normal life. After the magic of Avalon, coming back to the same old office and the same old admin and hustling just felt jarring and sad. I was really emotionally everywhere, usually ending up in tears before bedtime.

It’s been three weeks since dedication, and I feel like I am slowly picking up again. I’ve had a really sporadic spiritual practice in that time, weird motivational issues, and insane amounts of being busy and working like a mofo, so I feel like I am just coming back to myself. I think I have been hiding a little bit. I know it’s time for shit to get real with Goddess, and maybe I have been a bit nervous because it is so big and important.

It feels like I am on the edge of something, and it’s felt that way for a long time, but it’s just about getting through the resistance and allowing myself to go through that door, rather than staying safe and pretending it’s not there.

So that’s my long and personal dedication diary of my own personal experience dedicating to the goddess. It’s not a perfect experience, and it’s not all kittens and rainbows, and it’s not the way that I felt I should experience and process my dedication if I was a good little priestess (of course I should have been skipping on clouds of bliss and receiving technicolour visions of splendour or something spectacularly priestessy like that), but it’s my true experience. There is no such thing as a “perfect” priestess or a “perfect” experience. There is just what is real and authentic to you – that’s all there is and that’s totally fine. That’s what people need to hear.

Goddess thinks you are pretty damn awesome as you are anyway.