Tuesday 12 March 2013

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This is a very quick blog. I have copied here, a blog I wrote a few days ago on another blog of mine. I am writing this blog today because it has shouted all day to be written and I have ignored it diligently in order to do studying. However, my studying achieved very little and deadlines are hammering on the door, but I cannot ignore the need to write my blog any longer! I am studying for a degree at the moment and am in my first year and it is the hardest thing I have ever done and I don’t mean the work. Yes the work is demanding and most days that I am not at uni, I am studying and I have to fight to keep some semblance of a life outside of my degree. I actually resent it at times. I feel that if I had demands on me, that meant that I could not spend so many hours in study, I probably would do just as well. I might even be more organised; well, as organised as an artist can be! I am not suggesting all artists are disorganised, many of us are not, we simply do not fit other people’s idea of organised! I digress. It is odd, to find myself in this position. I have always tended to buck the system in one way or another and hate to be pinned down. I have to fight to stop the studying from entirely absorbing my life into it. Instead, I often have to wrench myself free from it and go to the woods for that much needed respite and reconnection, or to do that ritual or meditation or paint a picture.




In many ways, this degree is the hardest thing I have ever committed to, not just because of the wealth of work involved but because sometimes I feel so removed from the real reason I am doing this degree, that it almost feels like a distant dream. It is not dissimilar to when you go on a journey, (as in shamanic), and you come back and write down the magnificent inspirations or wisdom or beings you spoke with or the instructions for something you have requested, but the next day or maybe even later in the same day, your head kicks in. Rational thought wants to have its say and rubbish all of what you just experienced and make it out to be a dream. “After all, its not the real world is it?” That phrase is a little like university is for me. Often, what I am taught runs counter to my belief system and is so far from spiritual that I find it painful. Whilst I pour over endless articles and research papers, most of which take the herbs that are precious to me and split them into endless constituents and submit them to test after to test to satisfy the hungry wheel of patriarchy and its keen and seamless scientific order. Of course there is nothing wrong with science, we have gained much from it but in other ways we have lost a huge amount. Malidoma Some, in his book, Of Water and the Spirit, talks about the white man’s world and the fact that the rational mind blocks the ability to see beyond what is immediately visible. This is particularly true of science. In western herbal medicine, the fact that herbs work in complex ways and the sum of their constituents is what helps maintain a sort of balance, can only be attested to by case study research. However, this is not sufficient, instead the eternal male in science, regardless of whether she or he is a scientist, does not want to know this; refuses to hear this and seeks instead to find that one constituent that can be further potentiated and changed beyond recognition and then deemed either totally unsafe for humanity or safe within certain boundaries. (Best to have someone professional monitoring this, not some wise woman from the village!) The public are then informed that their very lives could be endangered by this or that herb. What they don’t say, is the whole truth. Only a tiny morsel, under the guise of protecting the public, which in fact, is about the pharmaceuticals and the power play of big business and little boys who want to part of the big boys club.

Most adverse effects from herbs are from over the counter herbal products, many of which contain “extracts” of certain herbs, very often, further potentiated with a dose of whatever constituent is deemed by scientists, to be the one responsible for helping treat a specific symptom. Sound like conventional medicine to you? However, the public don’t know this and like sheep, follow the word of the big boys.

On another note, this model of herbal medicine is treated like mainstream medicine and does not even consider the thousands of years of experience in traditional usuage of certain herbs. This kind of experience is unscientific and is unwanted, because it doesn’t line the pockets of the wealthy.

These are the ethics that I struggle with. I am pulled into this science based research by the demands of those, who, with vested interests in power and control, wish to ensure that herbalists are “safe practitioners.” There are a whole host of issues of safety in mainstream medicine that we will just sweep under the carpet for the moment.

Some lectures I come out of feeling utterly drained by the content, the pushing for scientific recognition, the pushing for regulation, for respectability, for professionalism. We want to run as far as we can from traditional, to divorce from any whisper of traditional, afterall, it is argued, we don’t have a tradition do we? What is the fear? The witch in the corner? Women make things messy don’t they? Herbs doing unexpected things and not being predictable are like female messy things aren’t they? The witch in the corner offers up a little cackle, just a little one and goes back to her weaving. Or is it weaving? What are those herbs she is mixing, better stop her before she harms someone! Ah, you can kill me, I will come back; you can harm me, I will come back, you can drown me, slaughter me, abuse me and burn me at the stake, I will rise again and again. We are many and we are free, in a way that you will never understand.





It struck me the other day, after a particularly disappointing lecture, that we need more real women. Not women being men, women being women. Women using their creativity to come up with new frameworks and models that care and strengthen and nurture life. We are sadly taught that our feminity is weak and somehow secondary to males. I am not talking silly, barbieness. That is not feminine. I am talking about strong and capable women, women who can truly multitask and are solution focused, women who are capable of being mechanics and scientists and intellects and mothers and nurses and doctors and barristers and judges, artists and singers and still be female. Another words, not trying to cut themselves off from their feminity and carrying on in heartless and harmful ways. I often wonder at how spectacular the world would be if every woman took up her rightful place in it, (I do not mean a place of submission), without fear and without the need for acting, but freely and truly being herself.


As a druid, some days are very hard and I long to spend time with the trees, herbs, flowers and all the wonders of Mother Earth. So I go to the woods and breath in the air. I listen to the birds and find joy in the new buds on the trees, confirming that life is happening and will go on beyond me and beyond science. The great Mother will bring about her will regardless and like all true women, will look at the greater picture and greater good for all concerned.






Thursday 23 August 2012

New Things Afoot

I am soon to be starting my Herbal Medicine Degree, which is absolutely brilliant, exciting and wow! I am also writing a book loosely based on some of my life called 'Black?' - well that is the working title. I am also in the middle of two short stories and hoping to start writing some articles as well.

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Acting and Singing

This link will help you find out a little more about me with regard to pFind Kaarina Vanderkamp on SkillPageserforming. I am currently rehearsing for Happy as a Sandbag and we go up on the 30th November, Network Theatre in London. Tickets available from www.networktheatre.org

Sunday 23 October 2011

The proposed plan to build houses on our beautiful green belt land

This is the comment I made on the Kent Messenger, I wanted to put it up on my blog as well for more people to see. The plan is to build seven hundred low income housing near Culverstone. So here it is:

I am very dismayed by these developments. Why can't Gravesham council leave what is working and good well alone? The schools are excellent here, the streets are safe, there is only a little speeding traffic and that tends to be from persons who are not local and are just using the Wrotham Road as a cut through from the M20 to the A2. The woods are safe for women and children to walk in, the roads are safe for women to walk alone down. We can see the stars at night because we have beautiful trees and fields and very few street lamps and in most places none at all. This area is a haven. If more housing is created in this area they will destroy beautiful areas of greenbelt land, surely this contravenes the 'supposed' green environmental policies?
Low income housing means what? For whom? At the very least more people means, and particularly a huge influx will destroy village life, destroy schools that are currently not overcrowded or full of problems (can you leave your childrens bikes outside the school fence in your towns? We can at the minute). It will also mean more traffic on the road, an increased risk of speading and therefore dangerous to children, walking pedestrians (of which there are many currently)and to our many wildlife inhabitants like foxes, squirrels, rabbits, badgers. The amount of roadkill will increase phenominally for animals. These are only some of the possible problems.
Why doesn't the council in its regeneration programme of Gravesend 'regenerate' all the old houses that are empty and boarded up and put well made houses to good use and leave our dwindling greenbelt alone.

Friday 21 October 2011

Tree Surveying in Trosley woods

Yesterday was able to spend an hour and half looking at trees in Trosley Country Park - I will say Trosley woods in most of my blogs from now on. Anyway, I couldn't find a couple of the trees that I had found on my walks with the dogs to no avail. They definitely move you know! Anyway, there was one that had been pollarded at waist height which I measured and another Hornbeam that had a second growing into the main trunk which looked interesting. Neither of them measured beyond the expected circumference which is disappointing but still interesting trees so I have photographed them as below.
Also there is a pond. It is not a naturally occuring pond. However, it has run dry recently which is apparently unusual. According to the lady telling me the story this is the first time it has been dry in the five years she has known about it. It is apparently known locally as the 'witches' pond; thankfully not as a place where countless wise women and old women and just women because they were women, were drowned in the puritanical, christian, patriarchal, mania that continued right up until the 1700's. I digress. The pond is apparently very good for scrying.

Here is a picture of the remains of an old Oak tree that sits on the edge of the pond. Sadly, there is no water in the pond just lots of logs. However, look at the second picture, it has been taken by me at an angle, do you think that could be a dragon? Or a horse? Maybe its just my eye?


I wonder if the pond drying is an omen? Could it be part of the woods response to the council's continued war against the trees. Every where I walk, they seem to have cut down more trees - as part of tree management - of course! Yesterday there were even men at work signs in the wood - what is going on?

I just love Trosley woods, what a fabulous place.





Thursday 20 October 2011

A Year in the life of me!

This may sound a very self absorbed title and I cannot promise to write as a diary every day but I want to monitor certain behaviours. So to give a bit of background: I am going back to work full time for the first time in five years and am more than a little nervous. Not about the work itself but because of all the other things I do, I don't quite know how I will juggle it all. Anyway, it is a must for my self esteem as well as my registration and money.


I have been writing and reading prolifically up until we moved and with all the stress and then the muddle I haven't done any. I have restarted acting in Happy as a Sandbag which is great. I haven't done any acting or performing of any kind since Christopher died. I have also just completed a archery course which I love. I haven't been able to go to the club yet because of rehearsals and I really miss it. I hope to get to the club next Tuesday. I also go to circle for mediumship but again I haven't been able to go for several weeks. I am also a tree surveyor only recently and I am a druid with an insatiable thirst for more and more information about brythonic languages, mythology, saxon and celtic history and much more. I also do, as a druid, shamanic work, herbal preparations and I grow and harvest my herbs, as well as doing healing. I also have an allotment which I also love. I miss doing creative stuff and I need to finish sorting out my study so that I can paint and write again. I also want to use my singing voice more. Sound manic? Thats without all the usual demands of life including dogs, cats and the house etc. My poor long suffering partner must despair of me! Anyway, I will be monitoring how I manage my time with it all. One great thing is that I don't watch television except neighbours so I probably have more hours in the evening than others. I hope this will not read too boringly when I get going!