I’m a great believer in starting anything new with a settling into the NOW. How am I feeling right now, this moment, what thoughts are arising, what do I observe within and around me?

As I write, it’s the 31st January and tonight in the UK, if the sky stays clear, we are due to see the Super Blood Blue Moon Eclipse – well… the super and the blue part anyway. I’m always interested to see what the ancient divination systems say about such uncommon events and a few things are striking me in a powerful way.

To sum up, this is a time when old issues from 2017 can be released. For many of us, we have moved our lives into new directions in a process beginning last August, the time of the last total eclipse. Starting from tonight, when the moon enters Leo, we are all entering a phase when our fiery, leadership qualities come to the fore. This will allow us to finally take charge of our own lives as we clear out the old, and let the past go. But this process needs to start within us, and may will feel the need to retreat for a while to allow this process to unfold. Things that we need to let go of will first of all rise within us ready to be seen. And just as a lion relies on her pack, so you too may feel a strong pull towards tribe and group holding. We are all going to emerge from this process in July or August with raised consciousness and renewed confidence to step up and live our truths as who we really are.

And so it seems fitting that I am called to visit Crete again this June.

In September of 1988 I was persuaded by a friend to travel to the Greek island of Crete. I was reluctant at the time, swayed as I was by visions of drunken red-bodied sun-burnt Northern Europeans lazing on the beach and drinking all night. I know, it sounds judgemental but that’s how I was feeling about going to what I  thought was a holiday resort. But my friend (pre-internet days!) showed me pictures in a book, of bright white churches, lush gorges filled with wild flowers, snow-capped mountains and remote turquoise bays and I agreed – how could I not, lured by the promise of such beauty?

We arrived in the early hours of the morning, before dawn, and the tour bus drove us to our budget (but as a result relatively isolated) apartment in what was then the small fishing village of Sissi. We were the only ones left on the bus as we pulled into the village square next to the harbour, and carried our cases into the hot night. We slept soundly, covered in only single white bed sheets.

In the morning, I stepped outside and was greeted by heat and undiluted intense colour. As my body expanded and relaxed, my senses seemed to wake as from a longer sleep. Never had I seen dust so red, walls so white, a pure blue unclouded sky and spread out before me – a turquoise ocean. Later when we took a walk by the shore, a kingfisher sat on a rock the sunlight revealing its vivid plumage to me, and an old woman in black worked a field which sloped down to the sea. Peace entered my soul, memories (the nature of which were to be gradually revealed to me) reinvigorated my very cells and I fell in love with this land.

We did do some lying on the beach, and some swimming, but other days we travelled. We visited the ancient Minoan site at Knossos, lingered in the museum of antiquities in Heraklion where we saw pottery painted with spirals, dolphins, octopus, leaves and shells – lovingly glued together again as if new.  Statues and frescoes of bull leapers, dancing women and bare-breasted snake wielding priestesses.  Delicately worked gold jewellery, strings of amber beads and the obscure symbolism of the clay ‘Phaestos disc’ which could be the earliest example of writing dating from between 1850 B.C. and 1600 B.C. We rode on the back of donkeys up to a deep cave in the mountains where we were told the baby Zeus had been hidden. Something was calling to me, stirring in me. And to this day I continue to be stirred and called to be in Crete, to bathe in its waters, learn the art of deep devotion in the baked ruins of my ancient sisters’ temples, tiny shrines and springs in the mountains. Everywhere the mountains, covered in herbs, everywhere the sea, and music and dancing as often as possible. To move to the wild lyra in hypnotic circle dance is my heart’s greatest delight.

And so it seems fitting that this June, at the time of the New Moon in Gemini, I am called to bring all of me together, like the fragments of artisan pottery that lay buried and undiscovered in the Cretan soil until the early twentieth century  – my little house in Crete, my poetry, my teaching, my love for the island, my loved ones and new friends and my priestess energy. And so I am called to gather together 8 women in retreat – to create poetry, to dance and dream the collective new reality into being through each of us. Self- love, passion abundance and peace within us, a world of love, passion, abundance and peace around us – all coming into being. How wonderful it will be to go back invigorated and charmed back into our lives to flow with ease and wonderment and help more do the same.