Woven Stones
Each stone is chosen with care and intuitively wrapped with a weaving pattern to work with its individual form and character. My process is deeply meditative and i take my time to connect with each stone as a living part of nature. Holding a stone serves as a grounding energy that allows us to feel the security and nurturing influence of mother earth. Holding a stone is is also an invitation to pause and rekindle remembrance of a different pace of being, far away from the breathtaking pace many of us are struggling to keep up with within the industrial growth society. When we sit with stone we draw alongside a sense of calmness where we can remember our true inheritance, in rhythm with a softer way of being.
It is my hope that those who come into relationship with the stones I work with feel an invitation to inquiry, to observe, touch, feel and sense the texture, curvature, temperature and lifeforce of the stones in all their beauty, to participate and feel “in relationship with” the natural world. By engaging our senses, we actively participate in observing beauty and learn to attend to what we notice. Through participating we find ourselves “in relationship with” the living world, inviting curiosity to our belonging within the web of all life.
Reverence For Stone
In many cultures the stone is still revered as a symbol of calmness, holding many teachings from our Earth Mother, it’s simply that in the race of modernity many cultures forgot this.
“The Earth is the most ancient mother. She is the endless source and the inescapable destiny. Everything issues from her, ferries it’s life upon her for a while, and finally sinks back into her.”
John O’Donohue, from his book - The Four Elements
In the Celtic Isles we can look at our ancient sacred sites, standing rocks, dolmens and long barrows and so on where stone was used to identify energetic epicentres where our ancestors held ceremonies and buried their dead. These standing stones were used as antennas to these places connecting the land and the cosmos, pointing to the sun and the stars. We can see this idea was taken and is how the dead are now marked and given reverence in our graveyards and so on. All over the world we can learn of stories and ways that stone was and still is held deeply sacred in our collective becoming.
“An elder once told me that every time the ancestors chose to settle in a certain area, they first sought a standing rock to serve as the centre, or else they placed one. Anchored in the land, this rock informed powers of nature that humans were settling in that territory to take their nourishment from it, and to, in return, serve as antennas that connect the land with the stars. Later for fear of their power catholics ordered removal of many standing rocks”
Arkan Lushwala, from his book Deer & Thunder
Many sacred stone sites have been renamed, destroyed or barricaded throughout history as part of the larger subjegation and genocide of those who held the earth sacred all over the world, including Europe. There is a beautiful stone doleman I often visit near my home in Wiltshire, England that is called “The Devil’s Den” on the internet, let's just assume this was part of the larger accusation and oppression of earth worship as satanic in the history of the Celtic Isles. In Arkan Lushwala’s book Deer and Thunder he also explains that many of the Andean and Mayan sacred stones were destroyed, stolen and shut off by the European invasion of indigneous lands in order to sever the resilience, connection and wisdom of the people to continue their sacred practices. It’s interesting to note that it is likely that it is those same people who had their own rituals and connections taken from them that continued to perpetuate this cycle on foreign land.
