How to Hold a Circle
A practical companion to The Guardians of the Womb.
What a Circle Is
A circle is not a meeting. A meeting is a place where minds gather to exchange information. A circle is a vessel — a living chalice, a temporary womb conjured between the bodies present, in which something can be born.
The Guardian does not run the circle. She holds it. She is the rim of the chalice. The women inside are the wine.
We are walking with the power of One, Two, and Three. We are a living embodiment of that which we are holding. We come into wholeness, union, and love. We lay down the shadows of the Crone to harness her power, to become a vessel for the wisdom to stream through the channel we are tuning into.
The Guardian's Posture
You are not the teacher.
You are not the leader.
You are not the healer.
You are not the therapist.
You are not the friend.
You are the one who has agreed, for the duration of this circle, to be the awareness in which it all arises — the witness. You hold the principle of Mentalism in the room: consciousness is the ground.
The Seven Keys
Each Hermetic principle is also a key for holding circle. Carry them as a quiet inner curriculum.
1. Mentalism — Hold the field with awareness
The circle is consciousness shared. What you place your attention on grows. What you withdraw your attention from softens. You are not directing; you are attending. Where your awareness rests, the circle rests.
2. Correspondence — What arises in one is in all
When one woman speaks her grief, she is also speaking the unspoken grief of every woman in the circle. Trust the resonance. The medicine is already moving in all of them through the one who is speaking.
3. Vibration — Set the tone with your own state
The circle entrains to the holder. If you are scattered, the circle scatters. If you are anxious, the circle becomes anxious. If you are in your own heart-womb axis, the circle finds it too. The most important practice before circle is not the preparation of words. It is the settling of your own frequency, the opening to stillness, the quieting of the mind so the voice of the heart can speak.
4. Polarity — Hold both sides without collapsing into one
There will be tears and there will be laughter. There will be the one who shares too much and the one who shares too little. There will be light and shadow in the same breath. Do not try to flatten the polarity into harmony. Let the two poles breathe. Spanda — the third — arises only when both are honoured.
5. Rhythm — Trust the arc
Every circle has its tides. The opening, the beginning (gathering, settling, consecrating, calling in). The deepening, the middle (the work, the voices, the stories, the medicine). The integration (the slowing, the witnessing, the weaving). The closing (the sealing, the gratitude, the release). Do not rush an opening. Do not skip a closing. The rhythm is what makes the medicine land.
6. Cause and Effect — Every word you speak plants a samskara
What you say in the held space goes deep. A throwaway comment from the holder lands in the body of the listener as a teaching. So speak less than you think you need to. Silence is not absence. Silence is space.
7. Gender — Receive and direct, both
The Guardian's hold is both feminine and masculine. The feminine: receive what arises without filtering. The masculine: hold the container, protect the chalice, name when it is time to begin, name when it is time to close, redirect if the field is being drained. Both within you, working as one.
Opening the Circle
The opening is not a formality. It is the moment a room becomes a temple — the breath in which scattered women become a single body of presence. Do not rush this. Everything that happens in the circle depends on how cleanly you cross this threshold. You are harnessing through the Crone and co-creating with the divine through the Goddess, the energy you are calling in.
The Guardian's Preparation — twenty minutes before
- Cleanse the space.
- Set the altar. Work with the element and the archetype of the temple gateway you are guiding the energy towards. Work with the Cross and the gateways as they have been presented in Womb of the Heart. Make it beautiful. Beauty is itself a prayer.
- Work with your womb bowl, and with nature if it inspires you. Observe the voice of the Goddess and how she is speaking in the hours leading up to the circle. Every thought, every emotion, every sensation becomes a living collective prayer. You become a vessel of prayer.
When the Women Arrive
Wait only two minutes past the hour if some are late.
Press record.
Give a brief overview of the 1.5 hours you will spend together — how the circle will flow.
Consecration and Calling In
Speak briefly, from the heart, not the script.
Consecration is an act of awareness, an act of love in dedication and surrender to the divine. In time, this becomes a living pulse that moves your life. It is the recognition of the sacred, the remembering of the sacred, the making sacred of whatever it is we are doing. This is one of the most important principles guiding this work.
Even when the sharing is mundane or inflated, we are holding sacred space, and in that holding, you are no longer the one who is holding. There is a deep honouring and bowing to the Great Mother, and to all she is revealing in the mirror, through the embodied ankh we are using.
To consecrate, we centre in the heart. We feel the aliveness, the spanda, the qualities associated with the gifts of the gateway: trust, innocence, home, joy. And we offer all of it to the heart, to the very essence of our being, to the Supreme and Absolute.
This is essential. We always begin in dedication to the absolute, the supreme reality, the Spiritual Heart. From there, we call in the Great Mother through an evocation in connection with the temple gateway we are paying homage to.
- The Divine Mother
- The lineage — the women who walked before us, whose bones we stand on.
- The four directions, the four elements — not until the last gateway. We are working realm by realm.
- The unborn — the daughters who will come after, in whose name we are also doing this work.
So you can see the progression of the opening: from the Absolute, to the Divine Mother (Shiva and Shakti, womb and heart), to the gateway, to the lineage, to the unborn.
Feel the stillness. Then open the eyes, and take a moment before beginning.
Setting the Field
Two things to name. First, the boundary:
"What is shared in this circle stays in this circle. What is felt is felt for all of us. What arises tonight is allowed."
Then, the way we hold our voice within it:
"It is no longer about 'I'. Now, our sharings become a prayer. If we feel pain, transformation, lack, or joy, we are learning the voice of the Goddess through the gateways. We are no longer sharing to be seen. If we need to be seen, we acknowledge it and ask permission to reveal. We are harnessing our voice, and the energy and all that we share is becoming a prayer and an observation."
For example, the personal sharing:
"I am so scared of dying. I don't know how to let go."
becomes, when transformed into prayer:
"Beloved Divine Mother, Divine, Sacred Holy Womb, I call to you. May the fear of death that lives in me be held in you. May the letting go come gently, in your time, not mine. In you I trust... And so it is."
Notice the shape: invocation, offering, surrender, trust, and seal. The seal may be "And so it is" or "May it be so", whichever rises in you. Once the body knows the shape, any feeling can pass through it. The same form holds the full polarity, dark to light:
For lack:
"Beloved Divine Mother, Sacred Holy Womb, I call to you. May the longing that aches in me be received in you. May the emptiness become a chalice for what is coming. In you I trust... May it be so."
For transformation:
"Beloved Divine Mother, Sacred Holy Womb, I call to you. May the change that is moving through me be welcomed in you. May I trust the unknown more than the known. In you I trust... May it be so."
For joy:
"Beloved Divine Mother, Sacred Holy Womb, I call to you. May the joy that has risen in me become a praise that returns to you. May my body know it is safe to feel this much aliveness. In you I trust... And so it is."
The same truth. The same trembling, or the same delight. But now spoken into the field rather than held inside it. Lifted up, offered, returned to the One.
The Womb Bowl
The womb bowl is a consecrated vessel kept on the altar as the visible body of the inner womb. It is the cosmic egg made physical. The cup, the chalice, the grail — the same vessel, held now in your hand, on your altar.
Each circle, the bowl is prepared and offered. Earth for the Earth gateway. Water for the Water gateway. A flower, a stone, a feather, whatever the moment is asking. The bowl receives. The women, in turn, are received by it.
The bowl is not a symbol of the womb. It is the womb, met in another form. What you place in it, you are placing in the field of the inner womb. What you offer to it, you are offering to the Mother who lives in your body. We are praying with the utmost purity of intention. NEVER add to it blood, or anything that is personal to you.
To hold and use the womb bowl in circle is a practice of deep prayer and blessing.
When Something Arises
A few of the moments that will come:
- A long silence. Do not fill it. The deepest medicine often arrives in the silence the holder did not interrupt.
- A woman in tears. Do not rush to comfort. Witness. Breathe with her. Offer presence, not rescue. Tears are not a problem to be solved.
- Conflict between two. Stay in the centre. Do not take a side. Reflect what you hear from both. Polarity is a teacher. (This can happen silently, through judgment or the inner critic, the grand projection.)
- A woman who speaks too much. Receive what is true in what she says. When she pauses, gently name the rhythm by reminding the space of the time. You may say something like, "we are gently raising the awareness of the time."
- A woman who will not speak. Do not require her to. Silence is a kind of speaking. Trust that her listening is its own work. We are a living embodiment of the cosmic mother, the holy womb, and every aspect of the mandala is expressing. Sometimes silence is the ancestor who was told that a woman's voice is not to be spoken aloud.
- Projection onto you. If a woman places onto you the role of mother, saviour, judge, receive it without taking it.
- Energy that drains the field. This is when the masculine hold matters. Name the boundary kindly and clearly. The vessel must be protected for everyone. This takes a deep wisdom to pick up.
- Something that overwhelms you. Breathe. Return to your own seat. You do not need to know what to do. You only need to be present. The field itself will move what needs to move. Here, we need to humble ourselves to see where the separation still lies in our own psyche, where the pain still holds in the mirror. You are as much a part of the circle as everyone else. It is so important when working with energy to clear and cleanse. Work with the womb bowl, shower, wash your hair. If you have a connection with a herb or resin that cleanses, you may use that.
Closing the Circle
The closing is as sacred as the opening. Without it, the vessel is left open and the women carry the field into the world unsealed. Do not skip it, even if time is running short. Cut something else. Never the closing.
The Releasing (if needed)
Invite each woman, in silence, to give back what is not hers to carry:
- to the earth — the heaviness, the inherited grief, the weight of others' stories
- to the water — the tears that need to keep moving, the feelings that have been felt
- to the fire — what is ready to be transformed, what needs to be burned away
- to the air — the breath that no longer serves, the words spoken that need to be released
Three slow exhales. Each one a letting go.
Gratitude
Speak briefly, from the heart:
- to the Mother for holding us
- to each woman present
- to the unseen that held what we cannot see
- to the medicine itself, which moved through us tonight whether we know what it did or not
Sealing
Each woman places one hand on her heart and one on her womb. Three slow breaths. The Guardian sounds:
"The circle is closed in the seen world. The circle continues in the unseen. What we have witnessed here, we carry into our living. What we have released, we leave here. So it is. Jai Ma."
You may affirm: we close, close, close.
Extinguishing the Flame
Bow to the candle. Cup the hand around the flame. Press it out — do not blow it out. To press the flame is to thank it. Blowing scatters the prayer.
After
Sit a moment after they leave. Do not rush into the next thing. Let the room settle. Drink water. Eat something grounding. The Guardian's body has held a great deal. Let it return to itself before you re-enter the world. You may need some time.
The Inner Practice Before the Circle
Twenty minutes, alone, before the women arrive:
- Sit. Let the body settle.
- Listen for the Soham — so on the inhale, hum on the exhale.
- Let the four functions of mind soften: manas (gathering), chitta (storehouse), buddhi (discerning), ahamkara (I-maker). You are none of them.
- Bring to mind each woman who will be present. See her face. Bless her.
- Place one hand on your heart and one on your womb. Feel the axis between them light up.
- Whisper, or silently sound, the vow.
The Prayer
A prayer is what allows the circle to remember it is not alone. The Guardian may speak it aloud at the threshold of the opening, or invite each woman to whisper it into her own heart. It is not a formula. It is a remembering.
The prayer woven into the lineage of this work is The Vow of the Womb Priestess:
I give myself to the Great Remembering
I serve only Love and our evolution in Love
I vow to anchor the true Divine Feminine on Earth
I vow to anchor the true Divine Feminine in my Womb
I vow to leave no shadow unloved, no wound without balm
I walk the Path of Love, I commit to our Return to Innocence
I strip away all my armour and leave my heart undefended
I embrace all my feelings; nothing is forbidden or left out
My strength is my surrender to the Divine Feminine
I honour my pristine sexuality as a Gift of Life, wild and free
I long to merge with the Ecstatic Innocence of Love in All
Sacred Relationship is my sacrament, the Womb my temple
I vow to return my Womb to her Immaculate Sensuality
To embody the sacred powers of Conscious Conception
My life is part of a greater tapestry, I offer all to this weaving
Holding the 42 corners of the Pure Land from whence we came
Beloved Divine Mother, bear witness to my vow.
— S. Bertrand
A Quiet Reminder
You will fail. You will speak when you should have stayed silent. You will rush a closing. You will miss a woman who was about to break open. You will hold too tightly and you will hold too loosely. None of this disqualifies you, because neither the success nor the failure is you, or belongs to you.
"She holds power as a vessel, not as a possession."
Beloved Divine Mother, hold us as we hold them.
Jai Ma.