Category: walkingwithmary

I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of Lebanon

Blessings to you as we reach the end of our

Thirty Days with Mary journey

During these days we have covered so many

aspects of the Divine Feminine and who and what

Mary is to us. We have peeled away the layers
and have stared deeply into the mirror darkly.

Thank you for sharing your images, your experiences,
your insights and your own resistances.

Each week you drew a card from your deck.
Now it is time to put them together and to read
the message for your Walking with Mary.
You may want to journal your cards
and continue to build on them with
each consecutive online Walking with Mary retreat.

Today I offer you these thoughts to ponder :

Preparing to greet the goddess

Do not think of her unless you are prepared
to be driven to your limits;
to rush forth from yourself
like a ritual bowl overflowing
with consecrated wine.

Do not summon her image
unless you are ready to be blinded,
to stand in the flash
of a center exploding,
yourself shattering into the landscape,
wavering bits of bark and water.

Do not speak her name
until you have said goodbye
to all your familiar trinkets –
your mirrors, your bracelets, 
your childhood adorations –
From now on you are nothing,
a ghost hovering at the window,
a voice singing under water. 

             – Dorothy Waters

Om Jai mata Mary Ma
Jai jai ma

Ave Maria Ave Maria Ave Maria

blessings
Hettienne

The Sutras of the Divine Maria

(Picture taken by myself at the holy lake of Black Madonna of Tindari in Sicily
during a full moon drumming and bathing ritual)

A metaphor.  

In choosing the path of the Mother as a set of keys and images to illuminate, interpret

and apply the deepest Wisdom within ourselves, we are reminded

that thinking in terms of a metaphor will unlock many doors.

If you are seeking the sacred marriage within yourself and you wish

to experience the Cosmic Kiss of Unity, then follow the metaphor.

Look past the literal arguments, the discourses on the why and what for;

put your critical ego-mind on the back seat and open your ears

and eyes to receive the eternal song of Love which pulsates

in the metaphors of the Madonna and Her Beloved.

This extract from my sutras of Isis-Maria-Sophia is a reflection

of your own journey of the light of your consciousness.

Your consciousness rise within yourself, cloaked as stirring desire and passion to

experience the ‘other’.  

This stirring and rising and descending is also the kundalini, or kundalini Ma

or Devi, Shakty or Divine Goddess, Ma and by many other names.

Knowledge and understanding of the kundalini has become hidden and enveloped

in mystery and riddles and ritualistic practises and often mistaken

for sexual mastery.  

Yes, it will ask for sacrifice, but it is the sacrifice of time, energy and attachment and

identification with ego.  Sometimes our attachment is ripped away from us in a

powerful way through disease, loss, an accident, a betrayal or disappointing oneself.

But the good news is, that none of these are a pre-requisite for awakening.

The light of consciousness is within us.  The spark of the Divine Mother

is resting in our energetic system and behind our mind and its

many defences.  She is waiting for our desire to find Her

and to come to know yourself as the ultimate fufillment of our potential as humanity.

Through regular and deep meditation, trance dance, surrendering to the creation of art and poetry and spending time in nature, the Mother within will answer your call for awakening.  

and your feelings, and you will not fail to dance in the sky of Her cathedrals

Picture taken by myself of SS Maria Incoronata 
in Foggia Italy

O Queen of the Holy Rosary
Bless as we chant
And offer thee our roses
In garlands day by day

Sacred Heart
Bridal Chamber of the Divine

Isis of a thousand names, throne of the world
I live gloriously in your protection

Blessed Mary Mother of the Golden Son
I am an instrument of they peace, love and mercy

Holy Sophia Queen of Heaven
Teach me joy;
The paradox that in my emptiness
I am most whole

Blessings to you
Hettienne

Hettienne

Blessings to you and welcome to Day 28 of Walking with Mary 2020

I have resisted the temptation to change the content

of these thirty days too much with each repeat of

Walking with Mary as new people are joining in every time

and they are looking forward to participating in the rituals etc.

As you may or may not know, I have been working on 

creating the Mysteries of the Black Madonna tarot deck the past

two years.  I have been researching the Black Madonna

for as long as I have researched the divine feminine

and it is a vast field of image and history and wisdom

 with so many powerful layers.

Today I am sharing a few of the shrines that I have created

for the tarot deck.  I am way over halfway and the Major Arcana

is virtually completed.  I do share some of the journey with my patrons

on Patreon and I invite you to have a look.

www.patreon.com/thefrenchmadonna

I also share an extract from a wonderful book with you –

In search of Mary, the woman and the symbol by Sally Cunneen

‘Women in particular have been looking more closely at their own experience

and discovering that the mother of Jesus can be a force to empower them today.

Even the idea of Mary as simple housewife, so uncongenial to me as a young

mother, still provides strength to some American women; being a housewife

is ’emotionally draining work and physically tiring’ addmitted one woman.

Its hard to remember that its service, physical, very direct service to human beings.

Thinking of Mary and how she would have been doing these

exact things helps very much.

Something is clearly going on in the interchange between Mary and women

today that works in two directions : empowering women and at the same time

changing their idea of her.

Mary Gordon claims that it is the ‘impulse to reexamine and to understand

in a deeper way the history of women, female genius,

female work, often anonymous, hidden, uncredited,

to look for the values that are not simply male values dressed for success,

that is leading women back to Mary’.

The Marian teaching that had a negative effect on women’s development

was part of a worldwide pattern in which male experience and

power were accepted as human norms.  Such assumptions, of course,

are by no means christian, nor are they inherent in Marian liturgy, art

and devotion.  As God-bearer, Mother of Mercy and

Queen of Heaven, Mary has been the carrier of the feminine divine

in Western culture.

https://youtu.be/6IHgCYmH_F8

O bearer of the eternal word, virgin Mary,

what voice, what human tongue can praise you well enough?

Your new star of the sea, window to the lofty heavens,

ladder from earth to heaven, from the lowest to the highest

You conceived eternity, you gave birth to your parent;

the make came from what he made, the creator from the creature.

        – O genetrix aeterni

Om jai mata Mary Ma

Om jai om jai om jai

O holy Mother thou who art in Earth and Cosmos

Whole are thy name

Thou who art our daily bread

and the Chalice of bliss

eternally springing from the Sacred Heart within

and flowing in compassion to all that lives

Ave Maria

Ave Ave Ave

Ave Maria

blessings

Hettienne

At Lourdes the beautiful lady asked that a chapel be built for her.
This was done in 1876, but the basilica soon became too small for the many
pilgrims that arrived to visit Lourdes.  And the Rosary Basilica was built :
Basilique Notre-Dame du Rosaire

When Our Lady appeared to Bernadette she was holding a rosary

in her hand.  The Basilica of the Rosary is dedicated to the rosary

in its architecture and magnificent chapels, mosaics, shrines and paintings.

The three arches depict the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries.

Around the central dome, the transepts and the sanctuary contain

15 Chapel of the Mysteries each one decorated with mosaics depicting

the 15 mysteries of the rosary.

The rosary was given to Bernadette and mankind by Mary, the
Queen of Roses, or the Rose Queen.  One can imagine that by repeating
the rosary, one hands Mary a rose and thus create a garland of roses for her.

The feminine form of God has been called by many names that
is directly related to the word rosary – or maybe the rosary is derived
from the many names of the Heavenly Rose.
Through the ages the goddesses Isis, Venus, Aphrodite and the Shekinah,
had been called Great Rose, the Rose Queen, Flower of Venus, the Rose Garden
the Cosmic Rose and the Mystical Rose.
The early Christians used the Psalms as a ‘rosary’.  Often they were
divided into three parts, each containing fifty Psalms.  Early
hermit monks describe these three designations by knotted ropes which they wore
tied around their waist.  With a certain number of prayers came to be ascribed
to Mary, they were termed Our Lady’s Psalm.

The rosary is a universal form of prayer and present most religions.
In the Bhagavad Gita chapter 7, it is said that the Universe is a necklace and the string is the 

Atman or the Higher Self that holds all things together. 

 The prayer on each bead corresponds to breaths. This Hindu rosary is sacred to Sarasvati, Goddess of language. The goddess hears the words of the prayers and is the Word.
The Buddhist rosary has 108 beads. This is 12 times 9 to represent the cycles of the universe.
The Muslim rosary has 33 beads for the 99 names of God. In all instances, the rosary is a prayer wheel and a living mandala, a symbol of wholeness.

In the same way that our prayers string together a garland of roses, so do our

every thought and our every action.  What we say and do contribute to the

Sacred Garden, both within and without.  When we sow and nurture with love

and empathy, then we harvest and reap with love and empathy and all

those that live on Mother Earth, human and creature, will benefit.

Such is the way of the Mother – her cloak covers all.

blessings to you

Hettienne

Shrine in my garden

Welcome to day of Walking with Mary.
We are in the fourth and final week and we are focusing
on the Suit of Roses and amongst other aspects,
we focus on incarnation, manifestation and embodiment.

Today I would like to inspire you with Marian pilgrimages
in South Africa where I live.

Five years ago during my visit to the grotto and sanctuary of Lourdes

in the Alps of France, I had a very powerful experience.
My direct personal experience of the sacred Presence

of the Lady, irrevocably changed my understanding of life and set me on a new path.

I returned and felt compelled to devote all my work and actions to Her.

I created a sacred Mary Garden   Under Her guidance I founded

the Temple of Mary and She imparted the two year initiation program to me.

I felt called to create shrines in the ancient sacred altar tradition and this led

me to creating the Mysteries of Mary Tarot Deck.

Since then I have made four more pilgrimages to the grotto of Lourdes.

Years ago I had heard about the apparitions of Our Lady of Ngome.  

I did add it to my bucket list and then it sorted moved to the background

of life.  I started having dreams of Lourdes and I felt a deep compulsion
to visit the Lady and her sacred waters.
At the time of the dreams I started doing research on Ngome

only to discover that it is called the Lourdes of Africa! 

Ngome is an ancient sacred site where seven streams meet to form a 

spring of which the water has healing properties.  Previously this site
was sacred to the indigenous Zulu population and it was used for healing and
baptism.

Mary as Lady of Ngome

had appeared ten times to a local Benedictine nun and the image of the Lady

 of Ngome, Tabernacle of the Most High, cured many miraculously.

The apparitions were kept secret for years after the death of Sr Reinolde –

but I will share the full story in my next post.

Once I had read up on Ngome I decided that I am being called

to visit Our Lady of Ngome and immerse myself in Her sacred waters

and energy.  Three of us decided to go on a pilgrimage to Ngome in 

the new year.  We did not have any specific dates in mind and decided

to buy the best airfare tickets available which happened to be

9 to 14 February.  Only when I made the booking for the guesthouse

near Ngome did I realise the incredible synchronicity : we had planned

to spend the Saturday in Ngome.  As it turned out it was

Saturday 11 February, the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes!!

We took a local flight to Durban, spend the day and two nights, then drove five

hours to Ngome – a story on its own as we dodged cows, goats

and potholes.  As part of our pilgrimage we visited the Lady of Lourdes

shrines at Marianhill Monastery near Durban.  The monastery is

outside Durban in the green rolling hills of Natal.

Her story of the smiling Madonna and her miraculous cure
 is in the Mysteries of Mary deck

We are into the final days of Walking with Mary.
Walking with Mary started off as an online annual retreat
called Thirty Days with Mary.  When the Mysteries of Mary tarot deck
went out into the world I realised that there are many that would like
a practise or tools with which to re-connect or connect with
Mary, beyond the ways of religion of childhood.

The practises of Walking with Mary/Thirty Days with Mary
are filled to the brim with ritual, mantra, prayer and tarot.
Probably too much if it is your first time participating.
Ideally you should take your time and do what you can
and take the practise over a couple of months and make it your own.
And as you know by now, the more you apply and engage with the
practises and the mantras, the deeper your experience and inner connection
goes.

The fourth week is dedicated to the Suit of Roses.

The Suit of Roses are traditionally Pentacles.
The colours are red, white and black.
This is the suit of embodiment; where body, soul and spirit
connect; where light and shadow dance in an eternal lovemaking.

Through the ages the goddesses Isis, Venus, Aphrodite and the Shekinah

had been called Great Rose, the Rose Queen, Flower of Venus,

the Rose Garden, the Cosmic Rose and the Mystical Rose.

The rosary is a universal form of prayer and is present in many religions.

In the Bhagavad Gita it is said that the Universe is a necklace and the string

is the Atman that holds all things together.  The Hindu rosary is sacred to

Sarasvati, Goddess of language.  Sarasvati hears the words of the prayers

and she is the Word.  The Buddhist rosary has 108 beads, as does the Hindu

mala and this number represents the cycles of the universe.  The Muslim rosary

has 33 beads for the 99 names of God.

The rose is an ancient symbol sacred to the goddess, to the feminine

and the Wisdom tradition.  Sacred places often carry the perfume of

roses and mystics experience the fragrance of the rose during ecstatic

moments. We are not excluded from these mystical experiences.

During my first San Garmano pilgrimage I visited the church

and body of Padre Pio and when I meditated in the sacred space

I was engulfed with the fragrance of roses.  It was so strong

I will never forget it.  During my visit to the Rosa Mystica shrine

a few years later I was attracted by the strong perfume of roses,

only to discover that the fragrance was coming from the statue of Padre Pio.

I also write about the fragrance of roses and honey at Lourdes

and in Lisieux at the body of St Terese and those who went with me

had the same experience.

 The radiant Lady of Lourdes stood over a wild rose bush

and she appeared with golden roses on her bare feet.  Her image made

in roses appeared on the inside of the cloak of  Juan Diego of Guadulupe.

The original rose flower used to be an open flower with five distinct

petals.  The five petals are similar to the inner core of an apple when cut in half;

you can clearly see the pentacle.  The apple is also a traditionally feminine

symbol.  The shape of the five petals and five segments in the apple’s

inner core, is similar to the five pointed pattern that Venus forms in her 

orbit when she gets closest to Earth.

These last seven days are dedicated to Mary, the Great Rose, 

the Rose Queen, Rose of Divine Love, the Rose Garden

and Our Lady of Love and Beauty.

My altar for the week – I chose the Priestesshood card

This week we draw the fourth card for the Thirty Days of Mary.

Place all four cards in a row on your altar and start writing the story.

You may find that by the end of the thirty days you will be adding

more insights into the story.

Hail Mary 

Ave Maria

Glory is the one who is our home

Glory for the presence in our hearts

Glory since the mystery transcends all words.

all songs, all signs

Glory is the hope that makes us live

Hail Mary 

Ave Maria

Glory is the wonder that we were and are

and will become

Glory is the Spirit who invades our bones

and makes them shine

Glory in the wind and in the  fire

Glory in the one breath

giving life to all the world

Hail Mary

Ave Maria

Glory in the rising earth

Glory embracing what we lost

Glory in assuming who we are

Glory in the woman who is whole

Hail Mary

Ave Maria

blessings

Hettienne

Juan Diego had something in common with the Lady who came to him on the hill of Tepeyac. They each had a cloak that was made of the fabric of created reality. She gave him a visual aid in order to teach him and us about this. She imprinted her picture graphically so that Her cloak – the entire cosmos – can now be seen upon his rough one.  This Lady is not interested in dogma or ideologies; she interfaces with us to teach us about our personal rose – our inner divinity – which is trying to become incarnate here.

The Pre-Christian Apparition of Queen Isis

Painting of Isis by Hettienne

 When she appeared to Apuleius she was crowned with the headdress of the moon and two vipers, with corn stalks woven in her hair. Her multi-colored robe was woven with flowers and fruit, and her black mantle embroidered with stars and the moon. There is much similarity between the vision of Apuleius and that of Juan Diego, the visionary of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The mantle of Isis is covered on the outside by the night sky – by stars. Like Our Lady of Guadalupe, she is dressed in the cosmos itself as if it is her robe. 

 Spirit “wears” materiality like a garment. 
This garment is Earth’s physical nature –  her Body. 
She/we are the Immaculate Conception!


Prayer for today :

Week 4

Suit of Roses

Mary as Rose Queen

Today I share with you one of my favourite tarot layouts, 

the Rosa Mystica reading.

The Rosa Mystica is the Three of Distaff (Swords)

in the Mysteries of Mary tarot deck.

The apparition and miracle of Mary in the story of the

Rosa Mystica is based on the three swords that are transformed

into three roses.

The roses are said to have been blue, pink and golden.

These are the exact same colours of the triple flames of the

esoteric (hidden) heart chakra, also known as the higher heart

or the sacred heart in the Ascended Master tradition.

In 1947 in Montechiari, Italy, the Radiant Lady appeared to

Pierrina Gilli.  She wore a violet dress and a white veil.

She had three big  swords through her heart.  The second

time that she appeared to Pierrina she was wearing a white dress 

and three roses had replaced the three swords.

The messages apparently had to do with the clergy of the church,

but the symbolism was that the three swords in her heart

had been transformed into three flowering roses through three

redeeming acts on the part of those that had caused her sorrow.

The pierced heart is a universal symbol.  It signifies

pain and suffering but also the awakening of the heart and the

transformation of the mind which is the gift of working

consciously and consistently with one’s pain and suffering.

This is not a morbid belief in martyrdom but the understanding

that hardship and loss need not be regarded as pointless.

If one looks at challenges and betrayals in your life 

as opportunities  to allow yourself to be informed to your

false beliefs and conditioning, as well as the inner strength

and unconditional love and forgiveness that you are capable of 

you will be rewarded with a greater sense of clarity and inner-seeing.

Spiritual growth is never possible without going through

the pain and the suffering in the same way that it is not possible

to give birth without going through the labour.

So, for the Rosa Mystica layout I drew the three roses

and the three swords.

Then I call on the presence of the Rosa Mystica and Our Lady of Lourdes,

the Immaculate conception and I place those two cards on the layout.

The three roses symbolically represent the three flames of kundalini

and the divine ‘braid of energy’ that is formed in your spiritual body.

The ida, pingala and sushumna.

They are not truly so distinct and separate, as shakty and shiva/

ida and pingala are not truly separate, but for the purposes of a 

reading we can separate these into three distinct aspects.

In this layout you are looking at three areas of your life;

and i separated them into action, receptivity and outcome.

The Questions :

Which challenge/obstacle do I face in each of these three areas of my life?

You can specify the three areas of your life before you do the layout.

Pick three cards, and place one on each sword.

How will these challenges be transformed into gifts/grace/positive outcomes?

What will be expected from me?

Pick three cards, and place one on each rose.

Afterwards I realised that it will on an intellectual level make more sense to turn the layout

around, that is to have the swords at the bottom of the layout and the roses on top.

But up is not always down, so I was quite happy to keep it this way.

Mary, Sophia, Mother Wisdom, Gnosis, Holy Spirit or one of the many

names that have been given to her by different tradtions, speaks to and

awakens the highest point of consciousness as symbolised by the

apex of the triangle with its three sides.

She is the source of intuitive knowing and its the veils of the

mind that obscures the knowing and the bliss.

blessings

Hettienne