The Mother at Lammas

As the Wheel turns and we are approaching the Festival of the Autumn Equinox, where we celebrate Banbha, the Mother of Earth, who is Hertha/Nerthus in Germany, and the Harvest Mother Tanfana, I realise I am somehow still waiting for the Lammas energy to arrive. It feels like we've gone straight from Domnu into Banbha. I was planning to paint the Great Mother Goddess in her season, when the days would be hot and golden, when the sunlight would seem endless and I'd go cycling through Her crop fields, watching Her golden hair spread over the land in the summer.
Instead ist's been cold and rainy and gray and dark.
So it is time to find the Mother not outside, but within. What a joy, since I am pregnant with my first child. At my beautiful Blessing Way ceremony in Avalon, facilitated by my friend, the wonderful Katinka Soetens, the women looked at me and they SAW the Goddess. What a humbling experience. I am now in my 18th week, can't yet feel my baby moving, but am showing very much. I love it. I can't wait to be a mother. I am so looking forward to having my baby. At the same time this seems to be a time of facing the fact that I will eventually have to let my own mother go, and that this is killing me. I want to be a mother, that doesn't mean I don't need to be my mother's daughter anymore. I need my own mum. I am very much walking a path of light and darkness at the same time right now. I can't do much except for sitting with what is and letting my baby and my mum know how much I love them. Maybe the Equinox will help me accept and find balance.
I am still planning to paint the Great Mother Goddess. And as my baby grows and as I change and experience the Mother Goddess on a whole new level the idea I have of this painting will change until I will eventually paint it.

The central altar at my Blessing Way Ceremony.

The ceremony was incredibly beautiful. It gave me so much strength and when the women sang a beautiful song by Sally Pullinger for me, I felt transformation happen.