I’ve not been posting here too much recently. This is because I’ve been busily creating the follow-up to Virgins & Lovers: Ancient Wisdom for the Modern Woman.

So, I’m very pleased to announce that Mothers & Crones will be pre-launched to my newsletter subscribers on Tuesday. I just cannot wait to share with you all the new stories, visualisations, creative exercises and more loads of prompts to explore in your journal!

As you probably discerned from its title, this product focuses on mother goddesses and crones goddesses – please do keep in mind that all of these lifestage archetypes can be experienced by anyone and everyone! You don’t need to be a mum to mother yourself back to health and wholeness. You don’t need to be a woman in her 70s to access your inner wisdom.

I like to think of every human being as a multi-faceted diamond who was born to shine.

Each of these facets represent a different aspect of self – a different archetype, if you will. My work with the goddesses through these two products, Virgins & Lovers and Mothers & Crones, helps you to unveil another facet. I’m supporting you to shine brighter.

If you’re interested in shining your bright and beautiful self, and you think that Mothers & Crones might be for you, then you can get a copy when I prelaunch on Tuesday for a greatly discounted price by subscribing to my newsletter.

I am so so thrilled that I get to connect you to these beautiful goddesses – I just know you’re going to love exploring their stories!

Yesterday, on the full moon, I took a moment or two to refresh my financial flow altar. I first created it last year during a period of time when my finances felt stagnant and my energy around money was exceptionally sluggish. This practice of creating an altar really helped me and my financial situation, and so I’m sharing it with you today (along with pictures!).

(I’m also sharing a wee gift with you too, so make sure you read to the bottom of this post!)

Now, please do not get me wrong – I am not saying that the creation of an altar will solve all your money woes. My own beliefs surround the practice of altar creation is that it acts as a tangible point of focus that can raise your awareness of a specific issue. And remember – energy flows where attention goes!

By focusing my attention on my financial flow, I found it much easier to follow my inner guidance on how to create abundance in my business, and I became much more conscious of the specifics of monthly money management. However, I really do feel that it was the altar that helped me to make this shift.

If a financial flow altar doesn’t appeal, but a ‘get a publishing deal’ altar does, or a romance altar, a new home altar or a more general spirituality altar does, then you can take the same principles and apply them to achieve the results that you seek. Just select items that resonate with your intention to invite your dreams into reality. Go with your intuition!

This is an image taken this morning of what my financial flow altar looks like. Why financial flow? Because I have a firm belief that money is just another form of energy and as such, everyone benefits so much more when it flows than when it is stockpiled. I would much rather have a lively and ever-flowing financial spring that a stagnant pool of reserved and unused energetic resources.

Currently, on my financial flow altar, I have a big church candle which, you might be able to see, is sitting on top of a white envelope. Inside that envelope is a letter to my abundant self listing all the ways that I plan to direct my finances, including treats, luxuries, basics, charity and investments. Every time I light the candle, I am activating that list – filling it up with good juju, if you will

Resting against the candle is an oracle card taken from Doreen Virtue’s Healing With the Fairies deck which is called ‘Financial Flow’ and depicts a fairy connected to the universe by strands of shimmering light. I’ve found this is a really lovely image to hold when I’m feeling a bit depleted and disconnected. We live in an abundant interconnected universe, and this card reminds me of that.

Also, when I light the candle I state my intention by speaking the following words aloud: I am open to receiving the gifts that the universe wishes to give me.

I learned through Jo Anna Rothman’s Receiving Project last year, that I can attract and manifest all the wealth I can dream of, but if I can’t truly receive, then it’s all been for nought. And so, I consciously take a moment or two every morning to increase my receptivity. I then try to carry this throughout my day, offering gratitude and recognising gifts as and when they enter my day. This has made no end of difference to my world.

Behind the candle you can see my abundance dream board. Now the way I see the difference between a vision board and a dream board is that a vision board is composed of images that you’ve consciously sought out to represent that which you wish to invite into your life. A dream board is a much more intuitive process.

When creating my abundance dream board, I held my focus quite lightly in my mind, lit some incense, played some lovely soothing music, and then started working my way through a pile of magazines, looking for images that caused my intuition to tingle. Some of the images are explicit depictions of finances – pictures of money, piles of gold, full purses etc. But many more images evoke the spirit of financial flow and what that means to me.

To be honest, even after sitting with it for a year, I still don’t know what some of the images ‘mean’ – but every one of them call to my heart, and create a feeling of abundance for me.

Once I had my pile of images, I created a collage using the back of a cereal packet. The height and the folds allowed me to create a relevant and potent backdrop of images to help me focus my intentions for financial flow, heightening my altar’s potency.

Beside the candle, I have this little arrangement. The angel was made by my daughter in pottery class, and she reminds me that I don’t have to struggle through times of financial difficulty alone. That I can pass my problems onto the angels and that they’ll support me and provide me with what I need. In front of her is a beautiful angel aura quartz (my favourite crystal!), which similarly reminds me of that angelic connection.

And they both sit on top of a little box where I keep my spare change. I’m reminded here of the fairy story of the magic porridge pot. Do you know it?

There once was a mother and daughter who lived in hard times. One day, when the cupboard was completely bare and their pockets utterly empty, the little girl left home and went out into the forest to seek sustenance. There she met an old woman offered her a gift. The good witch, for witch she was, gave the little girl a porridge pot that she said would magically produce porridge – as much porridge as she could possibly want. All she had to do was say the magic words ‘Cook, pot. Cook!’ and the pot would fill with porridge. And when the pot was full, she had to say ‘Stop, pot. Stop!’ and the flow would cease until they called upon it next mealtime.

The little girl took the pot home and both mother and daughter began to grow nourished with its seemingly endless supply of porridge. But one day, while the girl was out, the mother tried to use it by herself. ‘Cook, pot. Cook!’ And the pot began to fill. When it was near the top, she called ‘Enough, pot. Enough!’ And then, ‘Halt, pot. Halt!’ But the porridge kept coming, until porridge flowed out of the house, along the street and filled the whole village. 

The little girl came home to find porridge everywhere and instantly surmised that her mother had forgotten the magic words. ‘Stop, pot. Stop!’ And the flow stopped. But by then, all the villagers had more than enough food to last them until their collective fortunes improved.

I like to think of my little box as representative of the magic porridge pot, and that the small change will multiply into pounds!

In front of the box is a beautiful necklace that my lovely friend Julie Gibbons gave me on my 33rd birthday. It’s a soul mantra necklace made by the gorgeous Liz Lamoreux, and inside the locket, it say’s HOME.

For me, strong financial flow allows me to feel secure and safe – it assures me that there is a cosmic safety net just waiting for me should I ever need it. Having this soul mantra on my altar gives me that sense of stability and security that financial flow brings. And then, on days when I’m feeling like I need a bit of a boost in this area, I wear it around my neck, close to my heart. I feel that its presence on the altar has charged it, so it makes it doubly comforting and empowering.

And that’s my financial flow altar.

Interested in creating your own? Well, I created this wee product ages ago, and I’ve just been waiting for the right time to share it with you. It feels like this is the right time!

It’s called On Starting An Altar Practice, and it’s a short guide to creating altars as part of a full moon practice – not specific altars, like I’ve detailed here, but more generally, so that you can take the advice & tips etc. and apply them in whichever way works for you. It also contains a wee bonus of an altar tour video where I share my main altar, as well as giving you a look at how my financial flow altar used to look before its recent freshening up.

To receive this gift, just click on this link to download: Altar Practice

I would love to hear about how you increase the financial flow in your life. Do you have spiritual practices or rituals that you use to attract abundance? What does your financial flow altar look like? Do tell!!

The darkness is profound. So rich that it feels like cool velvet pressed gently against our skin. Someone stumbles over a stone lying in the grass, and muffled laughter breaks out. I turn slightly towards my right and capture his hand in mine. He squeezes my fingers, and I imagine him smiling at me, even although I cannot see his lips.

I feel him tug lightly at my arm, and I realize that he has stopped. I turn to face him, and I strain to see his profile darkly silhouetted against the night. ‘Here,’ he says, and I nod, even though I know he cannot see me. But we both know that the place where we will light our lantern has been chosen.

Crouching low, the grass tickling our ankles, we hold between us the lantern that we bought earlier. I can hear the sound of his cheap plastic lighter as he tries to ignite the wick. After a couple of attempts, a small flame sits atop the lime green plastic lighter, and the lower half of his face is illuminated. He is smiling, just as I imagined.

My own smile broadens as he passes the light from the lighter to the lantern, and a beautiful, orange glow envelopes us both. We can feel the air beginning to warm the palms of our hands placed against the thin paper, and soon we can feel the light pressure of the lantern’s desire to touch the sky.

Looking into one another’s eyes, he nods, almost imperceptibly, and then we take our hands away. The lantern hovers for a moment, poised in the gap between me and my love, and then it slowly begins to rise. The inky blackness is now punctuated by a diffuse light that travels across its deep shadows.

He catches hold of my waist and pulls me close as we watch our lantern join hundreds of others all across this New Year’s night.

On the 23rd of January, millions of people began their celebrations for the Chinese New Year, a date which alters each year according to the Gregorian calendar, as it is determined by the Chinese calendar which is lunisolar (a combination of lunar and solar dating system). From the new moon, the festivities will continue, culminating in the Lantern Festival, held on the first full moon of the New Year (7th Feb).

The lanterns are said to guide wayward spirits home, or to celebrate the coming of the sun, or to commemorate narratives of survival against a coming threat. In Singapore & Malaysia it is also a festival which celebrates romantic love, and it was this interpretation that I wanted to draw upon, the Lantern Moon arriving just a week before the western celebration of St. Valentine’s Day.

You may wish to use this cycle to explore your beliefs around romantic love and your concept of romance. It might be a good time for you to develop some romance rituals, such as the one described in this interpretation. Or, indeed, it may be an opportunity to romance yourself: buy yourself flowers, treat yourself to a bubble bath, and maybe a movie or two.

Start the year surrounded in the loving light of the Lantern Moon…

To receive a moon guide in your inbox on each new moon of 2012, which includes an introduction to the cycle, 4 interpretations (like the one above) and 20 journal prompts, sign up to Bloom by Moon 2012.

Beautiful writing is writing which strives towards an intrinsic truth which is, in one instant, both surprising and familiar. Which delights and enlightens. The kind of writing which responds to some kind of heartbeat – a rhythm which punctuates the passage of daily life, both apart from and a part of the everyday. A parallel life lived through words that exist as tangible objects – beautiful curios that entice and invite.

Beautiful writing transcends the everyday into the realm of the sacred. Don’t waste a word for every word is special and resonant – profound in its pronunciation. Each word a stained glass window, colouring the sunlight and illuminating the dust motes that dance in the hushed space where no-one dares speak above a stage whisper. Awed, we gaze at these words made manifest as coloured light and feel blessed – blessed that we were there to witness the miracle of illumination. How lucky. How… blessed.

With arms outstretched, we crane our necks heavenward to a vaulted ceiling constructed by sentences, and we slowly spin; our world revolving on its axis. And we just keep staring, our words, out wishes, our wonder, washing through us. Then we know that things will never be the same. Not really. For we have stretched forth our fingertips and touched the place where language and meaning meet.

The gulls are circling, swooping, calling. They are spiralling upon the updrafts of air that are whipped up by the wind bouncing off the white crested tips of waves. These gulls dance with the light. They play with the rays of the sun. This one lifting a wing that turns its plumage pink. This one facing the sun, transforming into a silhouette sliver.

These gulls spend their days outside, open to the elements, the bands of weather that sweep in from the west and break, like the tides, upon the far shore. These gulls are special. Special because they know that the meaning of life is to live it one day at a time. To take each moment as it comes. To embrace whatever is brought their way.

And to be grateful, to play, to fly.