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It is Samhain here in Australia. I have been thinking of Darryl constantly over the past forty eight hours in the hope that I might get a sign, some small reassurance that he has found the light and is flying free. Now you have to understand that although ravens are often nearby they rarely come in to my yard. So when I heard the call, knew it was close by, I looked up through my kitchen window and saw the most beautiful Raven perched, in the rain, on my Silver Birch. I rushed for my camera and caught the moment.

Suddenly a feeling of calm spread throughout me. My beloved has let me know he is free and safe.

As autumn wraps her cloak around Melbourne and Carnforth’s garden
Samhain approaches
and I stop to reflect and meditate

Samhain, better known as Halloween, the Celtic Festival of the Dead is celebrated at the end of October in the northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere we honour the Spirit of Place by celebrating this festival the end of April when we are at the mid point between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice.

Samhain is the eighth and final sabbat in the Great Wheel of the Year and marks the time when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest. It is a time of endings, releasing and letting go in preparation for the new life and new potentials that await birthing with the Sun at the Solstice. It is also the time to honour the dead and that which has died in our life. Samhain calls us to release the dead wood of the last cycle so we do not carry it into the new cycle that will begin in several weeks when the Sun is reborn from the darkness at the Winter Solstice on June 21.

A Samhaine Supper

Traditionally a midnight supper was held at Samhain to honour the dead. A place was set at the table for the souls of the dead and lights were left burning in the windows to guide the souls of those who had died in the last year in their journey to the Otherworld, found in the Aurora Borealis, home of the Great Goddess Arianrhod. The veil between the worlds was envisaged by the Celts as a turning silver wheel and Arianrhod was the keeper of this wheel. It was said she wove the fates of humanity as she wove her magical threads. At Samhain the veil opens and Arianrhod calls home the spirits of those who have died in the last year so they can await rebirth when the time is opportune.

You may conduct your own special supper with a place set for loved ones who are no longer with you. At some point in the meal everyone present will speak the names of loved ones who have died and share any memories that come to mind. Or you may choose to have a few minutes silence to each remember those who have moved beyond the veil into the realm of Arianrhod. Light a candle for each loved one that has passed away. If you are comfortable you could

• Encourage recently departed loved ones to move forward into the light and release the ties that may keep them earth bound.
• Open to memories and messages that may come through from beyond the veil. Samhain is a time for medium-ship and you may find a loved one communicates with you via your intuition or your dreams around this time.

from Astrology Newsletter by Christine Rothwell

Sibyl Riversleigh has great respect for the suffragettes and the rights that they won. But she does want to remind everyone of that wonderful Cyndi Lauper song - ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’. Follow the bouncing ball and sing along.

I come home in the morning light,
My mother says “When you gonna live your life right?”
Oh,mother,dear,
We’re not the fortunate ones,
And girls,
They wanna have fu-un.
Oh,girls,
Just wanna have fun.

The phone rings in the middle of the night,
My father yells “What you gonna do with your life?”
Oh,daddy,dear,
You know you’re still number one,
But girls,
They wanna have fu-un,
Oh,girls,just wanna have
That’s all they really want…..
Some fun….

When the working day is done,
Oh,girls,
They wanna have fu-un,
Oh,girls,
Just wanna have fun….

Girls,
They want,
Wanna have fun.
Girls,
Wanna have

Some boys take a beautiful girl,
And hide her away from the rest of the world.
I wanna be the one to walk in the sun.
Oh,girls,
They wanna have fu-un.
Oh,girls,
Just wanna have
That’s all they really want…..
Some fun….

When the working day is done,
Oh,girls,
They wanna have fu-un.
Oh,girls,
Just wanna have fun…

Girls,
They want,
Wanna have fun.
Girls,
Wanna have.

They just wanna,
They just wanna…..
They just wanna,
(Oh….)
They just wanna…..
(Girls just wanna have fun…)
Oh…

Girls just wanna have fu-un…
They just wanna,
They just wanna….
They just wanna,
They just wanna….
(Oh…)
They just wanna…
(They just wanna have fun…)
Girls just wanna have fu-un…

When the workin’,
When the working day is done.
Oh,when the working day is done,
Oh,girls…
Girls,
Just wanna have fu-un…

They just wanna,
They just wanna….
They just wanna,
They just wanna have fun…

Girls just wanna have fu-un..
They just wanna,
They just wanna….
They just wanna,
They just wanna….
(Have fun..)

They just wanna,
(Girls wanna have fun)
They just wanna….
Oh,girls…
(Wanna have fun….)
Girls just wanna have fu-un.

When the workin’,
When the working day is done.
Oh,when the working day is done,
Oh,girls,
Girls just wanna have fu-un.

They just wanna,
They just wanna….
(Oh,girls…)
They just wanna,
(Have fun….)
Oh,girls..
Girls just wanna have fu-un

They just wanna,
They just wanna…
When the working day is done…
(fades)

The maternal Bubushka’s, who have turned nesting in to an art form, have unceremoniously confronted Enchanteur and demanded to know where her compassion has gone. ‘It is not three months’ says the stern firebrand leading the troops. And if the gritty look of determination on the faces of the other’s is any indication, le Enchanteur is not going to get a hearing about procrastination, avoidance or distractions.

Enchanteur is trying to establish
Which of these
lovelies
who disguise cast members
that help comprise
Heather Blakey
is the sniper
who has her good friend
lying
procrastinating

Enchanteur is on the warpath!
which of these
lovelies
sidetracks and distracts Heather
stops her from being at
Enchanteur’s beck and call?

with love from his friend
Sibyl Riversleigh

Warning: Some readers may be disturbed by some of the images in this news report. Don’t ever tell this tale to your kids.

Breaking News: Little Red Riding Hood Crime Revealed
Reporter: Heather Blakey

The thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger looked like a large, long dog, with stripes, a heavy stiff tail and a big head. Its scientific name, Thylacinus cynocephalus, means pouched dog with a wolf’s head. Fully grown it measured about 180 cm (6 ft) from nose to tail tip, stood about 58 cm (2 ft) high at the shoulder and weighed up to 30 kg. The short, soft fur was brown except for 13 - 20 dark brown-black stripes that extended from the base of the tail to almost the shoulders. The stiff tail became thicker towards the base and appeared to merge with the body.

Tasmanian Tigers were said to be usually mute, but when anxious or excited made a series of husky, coughing barks. When hunting, they gave a distinctive terrier-like, double yap, repeated every few seconds.

The tiger was shy and secretive and always avoided contact with humans. Despite its common name, ‘tiger’ it had a quiet, nervous temperament compared to its little cousin, the Tasmanian devil. Captured animals generally gave up without a struggle, and many died suddenly, apparently from shock. When hunting, the tiger relied on a good sense of smell, and stamina. It was said to pursue its prey relentlessly, until the prey was exhausted. The tiger was rarely seen to move fast, but when it did it appeared awkward. It trotted stiffly, and when pursued, broke into a kind of shambling canter.

Since 1936, no conclusive evidence of a tiger has been found. However, the incidence of reported tiger sightings has continued. There have been hundreds of sightings since 1936, many of which may have been clear cases of misidentification.

During the nineteen eighties Parks and Wildlife Officer, Richard Malrooney, was said to have undertaken an extensive but unsuccessful search to confirm a 1982 sighting reported near the Arthur River in the State’s northwest.

Now twenty three years later startling information has emerged which has shocked Tasmanian residents and left a cloud, darker than the crimes committed against the native aboriginal population and the wretched inhabitants of the Port Arthur Penal Colony. It appears that Parks and Wildlife were compelled to suppress Richard Malrooney’s startling report that rare DNA, extracted from skeletal remains was found in bottled jars of ethanol on the dusty shelf of a house in a remote part of Northern Tasmania. Only last year more Frankenstein style remains were found there. Amongst these was a well-preserved, one hundred and thirty six year old Tasmanian tiger pup.

It has now emerged that a young girl and her grandmother conspired to undertake horrific experiments on these innocent creatures in a cottage in the wilds of Tasmania during the late eighteen nineties and the first part of the nineteenth century. It appears that they relentlessly pursued the Tasmanian tiger, trapped them and committed heinous crimes against them. They covered their actions by spreading the story that these carnivorous animals were a threat to both humans and livestock. Bounties were put on the head of tigers and hundreds of the animals were trapped, snared, shot and poisoned near their property. No one had guessed that these well respected women kept a terrible secret.

They were sadists.

Little Red Riding Hood, as the young woman was known throughout the small town of Keltro, was in the habit of going to work with her grandmother each weekend. She always wore a red cape and spent time in what was then known as the Asbestos Range National Park.

Narawntapu National Park, as it is now called, stretches from the low coastal ranges to the long Bass Strait beaches, and includes an historic farm, a complex of inlets, small islands, headlands, wetlands, dunes and lagoons, all with an amazing variety of plants and animals.

Red Riding Hood and her grandmother were well respected in the small community of Keltro. The Westwards had farmed the region for years. Red Riding Hood’s grandmother had come to Tasmania in 1835 on the Resource with other free settlers from England. Lucinda Westward had a Licence in Midwifery and was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. From about 1815 the colony began to grow rapidly as free settlers arrived and lands were opened up for farming. Lucinda Westward was the eldest daughter of Isaiah Spencer Westward an English farmer who claimed land in the Keltro region.

The beautiful, incredibly talented Westward became a prominent colonial medical “specialist”, a surgeon. In the early days, she was mainly called upon to restore or amputate damaged limbs. Great advances in anatomical knowledge during the early colonial period, derived from the dissection of human bodies, greatly increased the range of feasible operations. After the advent of anaesthetics and later of disinfectants in the middle of the nineteenth century she is said to have ventured into the abdominal cavity, the neck, and the chest. These operations were mainly performed under chloroform.

Westward had some experience in obstetrics and gynaecology and in latter years strayed into the doubtful provenances of mesmerism and electrotherapy. She was highly successful and became very wealthy. Upon her retirement she chose to become reclusive and live in the cottage, adjacent to the Asbestos Ranges and despite the humble appearance of her home lived in luxury. What no one knew was that although she maintained the appearance of a congenial, aging doctor, Lucinda Westward was dabbling in evil arts and she had found creatures to experiment upon. Isaiah Westward had always complained that a wolf like creature was eating his stock and Lucinda decided to take her revenge and experiment on this ancient species.

To capture these shy and secretive creatures, which generally avoided any human contact, Lucinda sent her granddaughter into the park with her basket to play among the butterflies and flowers that littered them. The girl had a special skill. She was able to communicate with all creatures and she enchanted even the hesitant Tasmanian tiger. When Red Riding took off her hooded red cape to reveal terrible bruises and scars the tiger went willingly to Grandmother’s house to protect her from the torture so cruelly inflicted upon her. Once there the beast was locked in a barren steel cage and subjected to unspeakable torture.

Malrooney, now retired, told reporters that the ghastly scene of mangled bodies parts in bottles found at the long abandoned Westward property left him permanently traumatised. He reported that these animals were routinely cut open, subjected to surgical operations, poisoned and forced to live in dark, barren steel cages for years. Many were left to suffer and die in these cages without any pain relief.

Today the Narawntapu National Park is a place of peace. However, many visitors to the park have reported sighting creatures that look like Tasmanian Tigers and have said that they have smelled their distinctive odour and heard husky coughing barks late at night. If you are out walking this park late at night you might hear the spine chilling, high pitched screeches of a Tasmanian Devil or smell the distinctive odour of the Tasmanian Tiger. If you do, get away from there as fast as you can - you are in grave danger. The legacy of Lucinda Westward and her granddaughter lives on in the forest where followers, generations removed, continue the practice of evil she began so long ago. Watch your step carefully! The ghostly spirits of tortured creatures regularly avenge the dead.

“What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit to their cruelty.” Leo Tolstoy

Metaphor Seeds Imagination

From the formless void
Motes, particles, miniscule molecules of matter
Slowly began to stir
Drawn by an invisible procreative,
Primordial force
They gravitated
Clinging together tenaciously
Swelling into a giant cluster
A sensual shape with
Dark raven wings

Inflaming, arousing desire, Raven
Spread her wings
Dancing, gyrating provocatively
Upon Wind’s fingertips
Wind and raven’s coming together
Borne of frenzied passion
Was a union, an act of love?
From which was birthed
An exquisite silver, moon egg
Swollen with life.

Curled within the silver womb
Amid deep silence
Lay the Goddess of Love,
Goddess of erotic love, fertility
Wrapped in the very wings
Upon which would ride, ravenous
Procreative inspiration
The all powerful
Creative energy
That fuels the universe

Heather Blakey

image courtesy of Susan Seddon-Boulet Trustees.

In the beginning the world was a great shapeless mass.

First there was nothing, just wind and the dark abyss. In the immense clefts of nothing, the deeper Abyss, Raven formed and with her dark raven wings, she flew to wind’s arms and their passion, this procreative force, became known as Chaos.

Raven gave birth to wind’s egg. From this egg rose the Goddess of Love, the one who arouses desire and fuels creation. This Goddess who represent the spirit of love,fertility and creation, was the oldest and at the same time the youngest of the Goddesses. It was the Goddess, the matchmaker, who agitated(libido) and paired heaven and earth, ocean and and the land. Before Her no immortal beings existed. From the Goddess of Love came libido which in turn birthed the immortals who sprang to life on the wings of ravenous love.

It is the Goddess of Love, the procreative principle(libido) that permits the work of creation to continue. The ability to bring something new into existence is fundamental to the creative process. Reference is often made to somebody’s ‘fertile mind’, or to an inhibition of this creativity as ‘creative sterility’.

Many successfully creative people use procreative metaphors in saying something about their experience because, as artist’s know too well, when a person’s performance, work output or art doesn’t have soul it lacks passion or libido. Without passion or libido, without the inevitable tension of opposites, the artist lies, wretched, impotent, sterile.

by Heather Blakey

Darryl and I often said that our life, over the past seventeen years, had taken on the quality of being on a roller coaster. There were so many adjustments we made, changes that were necessary as we faced one crisis after another. Our trip to Europe in 2001 was the ultimate roller coaster ride. We hired a car and 45,000 kilometres and six months later arrived back in Paris. We never had one forward booking because we said that if we did not know where we were going we could not get lost.

During those last days in Paris we caught the train and visited Paris Disneyland. Over the years I had steadfastly refused to go on roller coasters and I can have panic attacks if I am so much as ten feet above the ground. I recall crying because I did not want to ride the cable car up to the famous Ice Caves in Austria but Darryl coaxed me and I am so glad that I saw that wonder of the world.

So it took Darryl totally by surprise when, like a crazed woman, I insisted we go on all the rides at Disneyworld. I was not overly impressed with the place and it was simply a matter of extracting value for money.

The ride was spectacular to say the least. Happily we were in the dark but the camera caught it all, captured so perfectly our life, our roller coaster ride.

Needless to say this photograph took pride of place on the alter in the room on the day of Darryl’s funeral.

Heather Blakey

It is strangely quiet
Here in the shadows
A solitary figure
Now
watching
observing
wondering
Who to be
by what name?

Heather Blakey February 2007

From The Wintered Womb

Underneath the thrice ploughed, fertile, fallow field
Impregnated within a wintered, woven, womb
Of richly composted humus
I lay seeking sustenance, nourishment from
The oxygen filled wintered mist that
Drizzles, seeping, replenishing the amniotic fluids
That trickles through the membranous umbilical cord
Fertilizing, greening,
Ensuring a bountiful spring harvest.

Heather Blakey
image from Van Gogh

.

Jungle fever
Dulls the brain
Weakened by exhaustion
I lie, wracked
Pale, emaciated
Red blood cells infected
By the protozoans of
dappled winged parasites.

Blood-letting
Medieval catch all mercury
swallowed
Leeching, purging
The horrid malevolent spirit remains
Resistant
against
The blood-sucking parasite

Dressed in Cinchona’s laurel like leaves
Wearing a crimson gown
The fairest of Peruvian hand maidens
Harvests the Jesuit bark
Methodically grinding seeds
Into a bitter, colourless, amorphous powder
Amounting to the weight
Of two small silver coins

The fine bitter tasting
Popish powder
A powerful antipyretic
Given as a beverage
Mixed with lemon and lime
Soothes the blood-sucking parasite
And words flow
seamlessly

In Melbourne as in Lima

Heather Blakey

The Bluestockings, a pejorative name for an informal woman’s literary “club” that flourished in the second half of eighteenth century London, was named after Benjamin Stillingfleet’s blue worsted stockings: he was too poor to afford the customary black silk stocking suitable for evening wear. Run by educated, intellectual, conservative women who tried to raise the moral, intellectual, and cultural standards of their time, this group of friends took turns hosting evening’s entertainment where the literary figures of London took the spotlight. Women were often the majority of the guests, and the subject of the evening was often a learned women from the past or the present. Eventually similar ladies’ groups who patterned themselves after the Bluestockings sprung up all over London then all over England.

These upper-middle class women scorned female “accomplishments,” card playing, and frivolous behavior, preferring instead a life of moral and intellectual rigor and philanthropic activities. These women did not pen great tracts railing about the failings of men. They did claim the right to act in the semi-public sphere and they urged women to become involved in philanthropic activities which benefited other women. Following their own advice, they created a number of philanthropic institutions whose aim was to help women, often poor widowed women with children, become economically self-sufficient. source

Before Darryl took sick again, eighteen months ago, I hosted a Salon in my home on the last Sunday of each month. It was a wonderful gathering of like minded women. Everyone bought a plate of food to share and apart from some shared projects that I led we shared our creative endeavours. The diversity was just wonderful and each of us were infused for the next month. I have so many happy memories of those Sundays and plan to establish another monthly gathering in a month or so. I feel compelled to bring life in to this house and this feels like the right way to do it.

Bella Mama, the Lemurian Rose, sings for me, to Darryl.
She is wearing Lapis Lazuli 

Have I told you lately that I love you?
Have I told you there’s no one else above you?
Fill my heart with gladness, take away all my sadness,
Ease my troubles, that’s what you do.

For the morning sun in all it’s glory,
Meets the day with hope and comfort too,
You fill my life with laughter, somehow you make it better,
Ease my troubles, that’s what you do.

There’s a love less defined,
And its yours and its mine,
Like the sun.
And at the end of the day,
We should give thanks and pray,
To the one, to the one.

Have I told you lately that I love you?
Have I told you there’s no one else above you?
Fill my heart with gladness, take away all my sadness,
Ease my troubles, that’s what you do.
There’s a love less defined,
And its yours and its mine,
Like the sun.
And at the end of the day,
We should give thanks and pray,
To the one, to the one.

Have I told you lately that I love you?
Have I told you there’s no one else above you?
Fill my heart with gladness, take away all my sadness,
Ease my troubles, that’s what you do.

Take away all my sadness, fill my life with gladness,
Ease my troubles, that’s what you do.

Take away all my sadness, fill my life with gladness,
Ease my troubles, that’s what you do.

The Carousel of Life by Heather Blakey

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there’s the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

he undiscover’d country from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action

by William Shakespeare

Sibyl is perched, cat like, on the mantle of the mauve room with Silky the elf from the Faraway Tree. They are waiting to see who will come to the first of Sibyl’s official Salon’s at the Tavern.

Both laughed joyfully, dismissing any mistrust, when they saw that a Clown had already arrived and was performing.

Bring a friend and enjoy the good company, excellent food and light entertainment.

Everyone who knows Sibyl well knows that her dance to free the creative spirit is an annual ritual. Each New Year’s Eve she dances in the tavern and releases a black bird from the golden cage. It was never the dancing that shocked old Riversleigh, it was the sense that his daughter could not be contained within the cage of conservatism that he had planned for her. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter and who knows who really sired her. Village rumour spoke of Lavengro’s uncle having spent an inordinate amount of time with Cecily Riversleigh. And given that Sibyl had so little in common with old Riversleigh it is just possible that he was not her father after all.

Each year, for as long as anyone can remember, Sibyl Riversleigh has seen in the New Year at the Tavern di Muse. It has always been the haunt of intinerant arts people. Her father disapproved of the company she kept, the clothes she wore, the drinks she drank.

Sibyl is mellowing now and is going through a more conservative phase - or so she would have some believe. Those who know her well know that she will break out and pull one of her infamous table top dances. Neither her father or Charles approved of those either and one year they had a gang forcibly remove her from the Tavern and lock her in the tower at Riversleigh.

Yolanda Williams is an acclaimed soloist, a true Diva who sings like the proverbial nightingale. She will serenade guests at the opening of the Tavern di Muse - a highlight on the City of Ladies Event Calendar.

Ramona Beyer is a classical harpist who is rehearsing in her rooms in the City of Ladies. She is hoping to perform at the opening night at the Tavern di Muse, a Tavern purported to be visited by all the Lemurian luminaries. Some say that Ramona is the finest in the land but Lady Emrys would almost certainly be her match.