Womb of the Heart

For the Guardians of the Womb

Beloved Guardians, heart to heart, womb to womb.

This is the book that gathers what you need: how to hold power, how to hold a circle, and how to walk your own gateway as you guide others through theirs. Read it once to understand it. Return to it before every circle, the way you would return to an altar.

We are learning together, still, what it means to hold a gateway. This is the Wise Woman path, the medicine woman's path, the guide and guardian of the gate. It asks for a great deal of energy, held and navigated with care, so take what is here slowly, and come back to it often.

What a Circle Is

A meeting is a place where minds gather to exchange information. A circle is something else entirely: a vessel, a living chalice, a temporary womb conjured between the bodies present, in which something can be born.

The Guardian holds the circle rather than running it. She is the rim of the chalice; the women inside are the wine.

We walk here with the power of One, Two, and Three, a living embodiment of what we are holding, coming into wholeness, union, and love. We lay down the shadows of the Crone to harness her power, becoming a vessel for the wisdom to stream through the channel we are tuning into.

The circle itself, as a shape, may have always carried something of this meaning. It has no corners, no hierarchy, no beginning, no end: every point on its edge sits the same distance from the centre, so no woman rests closer to the source than another. Perhaps this is part of why we sit in circle rather than in rows. The circle can be felt as one of the oldest glyphs of wholeness, echoed across many traditions that ever drew one: the sun, the egg, the womb, the halo, the wheel of the year, the mandala, the Self. To sit inside one may be to remember, in the body, that wholeness has no edges to defend, only a centre to return to.

The Pythagorean Circles

Long before the Cross was drawn, the Pythagoreans found that number could be felt as a shape, and shape as a teaching. Each circle added to the last may tell something like the same story the gateways tell, only drawn now in geometry.

One circle. The Monad. A single circle, sometimes with a point at its centre, can be felt as unity before division: the sun, the egg, perhaps the womb before anything has entered it. Nothing is missing, and nothing yet distinguishes itself. It might be felt as the Maiden's circle, wholeness that has not yet been asked a question.

Two circles. The Dyad. Let a second circle overlap the first, and the vesica piscis appears, the almond-shaped portal born where two circles meet. Perhaps this is the first division, the first polarity, Shiva and Shakti, womb and heart, something like the Mother's own shape: two who meet and, in meeting, open a doorway that neither could open alone.

Three circles. The Triad. Three circles, each centred on the edge of the last, weave the triquetra, three interlaced rings with no beginning and no end. It can be felt as the Triangle already walked: Maiden, Mother, Crone, sristi, sthiti, samhara, one breath drawn three times, returning always to itself.

Four circles. The Tetrad. Four circles set at the compass points complete the Cross: Earth, Fire, Air, Water, the elements of the womb's own geography. The Pythagoreans are said to have called four the number of justice and foundation, the square footing beneath everything built above it, perhaps the ground the Triangle stands on.

Five circles. The Pentad. Five is the marriage of the Dyad and the Triad, two plus three, matter and spirit meeting in a single number. It has long been felt as the number of the human body, four limbs and a head, the five senses, the five-petalled rose. Here the fire of the fifth gateway might live: creation as embodiment, spirit taking a body and calling it good.

Six circles. The Hexad. Six circles drawn around a seventh, each touching its neighbour, begin the Seed of Life. The Pythagoreans are said to have called six the first perfect number, equal to the sum of its own parts, one plus two plus three. It may be the number of harmony, of breath finding its own even rhythm, something like the Air gateway's own balance between what rises and what descends.

Seven circles. The Heptad. With the seventh circle at the centre, the Seed of Life completes itself, six petals and the one they surround. Seven was sometimes called the virgin number, born of no other number within the decad and dividing into none, complete in itself. Perhaps it is the number of the deep waters, the seven seas, the tears that ask nothing in return for being wept.

Eight circles. The Ogdoad. An eighth circle beyond the seed, and the Flower of Life begins opening outward, a pattern that could keep unfolding. Turn the eight on its side and it becomes the lemniscate, the sign of infinity, two circles meeting at a single point with no edge where either one ends. It might be felt as Sacred Union, the centre of the Cross, the place where Shakti rises and Shiva descends, where the count that began at one circle finds it was always circling the same centre.

Working With Power

We are working with power. Power is Shakti, the living current of the Goddess herself. Shakti gives birth to duality, light and shadow rising in the same breath, and we, as women, carry a seed of that light in the womb.

To hold a seed like this, as the feminine, we go together. We move through the layers, hierarchy, manipulation, the influence of spirit that has not yet come home (the shadows of the 3rd Gateway), hand in hand, so the energy of the guide can be gathered and brought into the light of the heart, the womb of the heart.

This is tender, and it is meant to be. There must be room where the shadow can be named, gently and clearly, so we can see the trigger that holds us in a contracted form. Hear me, beloveds: there is no wrongdoing here. There is only the humility to ask, and the courage to be guided. Profound honesty is the way through this portal.

Each gateway is an energy, and each energy carries its own question. When we ask the question, we trace where the consciousness lives rather than fill the silence with words. The sharing becomes prayer instead of performance.

The Guardian's Posture: Receptive to the Gift

For the duration of a circle, set down the teacher, the leader, the healer, the therapist, the friend. What remains is what you have agreed to become: the awareness in which it all arises, the witness. You hold the principle of Mentalism in the room. Consciousness is the ground.

The gateway entrusted to you is a gift, offered into your hands, and your place is to receive it, rather than to produce it. There is an active current that opens the transmission and moves it through the map of the gateways, and for the span of this work, that current moves through me, held there so the rest of us can rest in the receptive. This is its own place, whole in itself: the chalice and the wine, each essential, neither lesser. The circle holds when each of us stays in her own seat.

When a Guardian steps into the active seat, believing she must generate, direct, correct, or fill what feels empty, the polarity collapses. Hold this key close: two poles, kept apart and both honoured, is what lets Spanda, the third, arise. One pole trying to become both is exactly where the imbalance begins.

Staying in the Witness

As you watch each woman move through her initiation, gateway by gateway, stay in the witness: the one who watches without needing to fix, without needing to know what it all means.

This is, in truth, the Crone's seat, whatever gateway is your own. Your personal gateway, the one entrusted to you, is the face the Great Mother wears in your lineage, but the moment you sit in circle and hold, you stand in the dissolving light, whether your gateway is the Maiden or the Fire or the Water. To hold is to become the awareness in which the initiation arises, rather than the one steering it. The Crone witnesses what is dissolving, and her witnessing is what lets the dissolving complete itself.

How Projection Moves Here

This is also why projection lands on you the way it does. A woman in the circle will place upon you the role of mother, teacher, saviour, judge, the very roles you were asked to lay down. This has nothing to do with anything you have done. It is simply that the receptive seat is, by its nature, the surface projection finds first.

The work is to receive the projection without becoming it: to notice it arising, hold it in awareness, and let it pass through the field rather than settle into your body as if it were true. This, too, is why the active seat is held by someone. It frees the rest of us to stay in the witness, without the field losing its shape. A function carried, for now, nothing more.

The Role of the Mind: Manas, Chitta, Buddhi, Ahamkara

The instrument you witness with, and the instrument that tries hardest to convince you it is you, is the mind itself. The old teaching, older than any of our maps, calls it the antahkarana, the inner instrument, and names four functions moving within it.

Manas gathers, reaching outward through the senses. It scrolls through every reason not to begin, performs uncertainty as a way to avoid the first step. Notice it arising, and notice that you are not the manas. The original yes is still here, beneath every "but."

Chitta stores. It is the memory, the storehouse of every impression ever laid down: the old pattern of giving from depletion, of holding what should have been released long ago, of feeding what no longer feeds you. It carries the inherited layer too, the samskaras of the lineage, the weight of what was never yours but was passed to you in the blood.

Buddhi discerns. It is the clarity that tells true from false, and its shadow follows close behind: discrimination hardening into judgement, discernment hardening into hierarchy, the clear sight of the witness curdling into the cold gaze of the one who knows better. Hold your buddhi with humility. The moment you are certain, you have stopped seeing.

Ahamkara claims. It is the I-maker, the one who takes whatever arises and calls it mine: my book, my practice, my teaching, my gift, my power, or more subtly still, I am the wise one, I am the one who has done the work, I am the one who knows. This is the most refined trap of all, because it can wear the very posture of surrender and call that identity too.

A Guardian does not silence the four. She could not, and she does not need to. The four functions still operate; a Guardian is not a saint, she is a woman. What changes is that they are no longer mistaken for her. Her ahamkara no longer claims the work. Her buddhi no longer wields itself as superiority. Her chitta no longer leaks the past into the present. Her manas scatters less, and when it does, she notices, and returns.

Who is the one noticing? Not the eyes. Not the mind. This is the question underneath every gateway, the one that never belongs to the four.

The True Sankalpa: So'ham

Beneath every sankalpa you speak, in a gateway, in a circle, in your own practice, there is one that was never spoken because it was never separate from you: So'ham, "I am That." So on the inhale, drawing in the vastness. Hum on the exhale, recognising it as already you.

Every other sankalpa, every I give myself to ___, is a finger pointing at this one. This is the true sankalpa, not a wish for what you might become, but the remembering of what you have never stopped being. Sound it silently before you sound anything else, and let the rest of your intention rise from there.

The Power of Attention

Here is a key that can guide you through all of this. Where attention goes, energy flows. Attention is Shakti given direction, a concentrated power you already hold. The garden you water is the garden that grows. The wound you keep telling grows roots. Wherever you turn your inner eye, energy follows, the way water follows the channel it has carved.

A question is a precise act of attention. It takes the light of awareness and sets it down exactly where the consciousness is hiding. Why am I contracted here? Who is this fear? What is asking to be seen? The moment attention lands, energy begins to move, and what was frozen loosens. The asking itself is the medicine.

Bring the attention home, off the surface and into the body, into the gateway itself. Where the attention goes, the energy will follow, and the structure will open.

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 attend rather than direct. Where your awareness rests, the circle rests.

2. Correspondence — What arises in one is in all

When one woman speaks her grief, she speaks the unspoken grief of every woman in the circle too. Trust the resonance. The medicine is already moving through all of them, through the one who is speaking.

3. Vibration — Set the tone with your own state

The circle entrains to the holder. A scattered Guardian scatters the circle; an anxious one unsettles it. A Guardian in her own heart-womb axis lets the circle find it too. The most important practice before circle is the settling of your own frequency, the opening to stillness, 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, the one who shares too much and the one who shares too little, light and shadow in the same breath. Let the two poles breathe, rather than flattening them into harmony. Spanda, the third, arises only when both are honoured.

5. Rhythm — Trust the arc

Every circle has its tides: the opening (gathering, settling, consecrating, calling in), the deepening (the work, the voices, the stories, the medicine), the integration (the slowing, the witnessing, the weaving), the closing (the sealing, the gratitude, the release). Give the opening its time. Give the closing its time. 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 lands in the listener's body as a teaching. Speak less than you think you need to. Silence holds space; it is never simply absence.

7. Gender — Receive and direct, both

The Guardian's hold carries the feminine and the masculine together. The feminine receives what arises, without filtering. The masculine holds the container: protects the chalice, names when it is time to begin, names when it is time to close, redirects if the field is being drained. Both live in you, working as one.

The Triangle: The Three Lights

Gateway 1 — The Maiden, the Ascending Light

The energy of creating, of new beginning, of expanding and opening.

What is brand new in me? What is beginning? What is asking to be born?

Here is the Maiden's shadow, the one I feel most among us now. Her mirror is bright but untested. She trusts her reflection so completely that she does not think to question it, so she shares instead of asking. The stories come, beautiful and sacred, and still they turn attention away from the gateway. She does not yet know the mirror IS consciousness. To grow, she lets the question take the place of the performance: why? who? what? how?, rather than let me tell you what happened to me. This is the first humbling, and where the portal opens.

Gateway 2 — The Mother and Lover, the Sustaining Light

The seed has risen. Now we meet what holds it.

What am I sustaining? Who am I nurturing? What in my life am I tending, feeding, making love to?

This is the Mother's own work, the sustaining light: to deepen the ground beneath us rather than rush ahead. We build a true coherence together, in honesty, in the asking, until it is strong enough to hold what comes next. Only coherent ground can carry the deeper teaching.

When we do not ask, we transmit our I don't know into the field. When we ask, the structure opens, the trigger that held us in contraction is finally seen, and what is seen begins to loosen.

Gateway 3 — The Crone, the Dissolving Light

What is sustained must one day be released.

What is ready to die? What identity am I being asked to lay down? Which inherited belief, with its beginning, its middle, and its end, is loosening its grip?

Here is the Crone's shadow, alive now as we move through the third year. The Crone asks the ego to die, and the ego does not go quietly. When it grows too tender to be touched, it reads every reflection as an attack and every question as a wound. The guide can no longer guide. The dissolving light, needing an opening to do its work, finds none, and the space goes stagnant. This is the shadow, simply the ego defending the identity it came here to lay down, neither weakness nor wrongdoing. To pass the third gateway is to let ourselves be guided, even where it touches what does not want to be seen.

So the Triangle turns. The seed rises, the fruit ripens, the lining sheds. Sristi, sthiti, samhara. One full breath of the Goddess, traced before we ever leave the Yoni Temple.

The Cross: The Four Elements

Gateway 4 — Earth, South, the Base of the Sacrum

The ground of the ancestors.

What am I carrying that was never mine? Whose grief, whose fear, whose scarcity lives in this body? Where do I refuse to be supported, or refuse to take up space? Who takes up too much space?

Here we learn to listen. The nuances live in the subtle, and your feet need replanting on the earth. The older the energy, the more patience it asks for. The ancestors speak through silence, rather than an endless need for validation; that need still belongs to the child learning how to listen and be guided.

Walk on the earth. Quiet the one who interprets, the one who knows, the one who observes, and be humble, a word that comes from humus, the earth itself.

A practice. Take off your shoes if you can. Stand, and let the ground take your weight. Soften the knees, the belly, the jaw. Breathe down into your feet until you feel held. Then ask, without words: Grandmothers, what do you wish to say? Let the silence hold, rather than filling it. Stay until something is felt, a warmth, a heaviness, a knowing, or until nothing comes, and let that be enough too. The ancestors speak slowly. The listening is the prayer.

Gateway 5 — Fire, West, the Right Ovary

The creative heat.

Where is my fire? What am I burning for? What raw longing wants to be forged into living purpose, and what is ready to be consumed?

Let's speak of the fire honestly, because it is the most misunderstood of all. The fire of the fifth gateway is sexual energy, the most creative and generative force a woman carries, inseparable from the spiritual. To marry them is the work; to split them is the old wound.

This is the true meaning of brahmacharya. The word has narrowed to mean celibacy, the denial of the body, but brahma-charya is "moving in Brahman," living in the Absolute. It keeps Brahman at the core, the still centre around which the fire turns, so the energy is neither repressed nor spent carelessly. It is held, offered, and raised.

This is transfiguration: the fire refines the body until the body itself becomes light, sama-rasa, filled with awareness, love, and radiance. The seed of the fire, conserved and turned upward, becomes ojas, the glow others feel from you before you have said a word.

Gateway 6 — Air, North, the Upper Womb

The gateway of individuation.

Who am I, beneath who I was told to be? Where do I end and another begin? What no, what yes, is mine to speak? Who am I?

Gateway 7 — Water, East, the Left Ovary

The dreaming gate.

What am I feeling beneath the story? What is the soul whispering under the sensation? What am I being asked to surrender, to taste, to trust?

The Centre

Gateway 8 — Sacred Union, the Heart of the Womb

Where Shakti rises and Shiva descends.

Here the questions fall silent. No more what. No more who. Only what remains.

I AM. Me. Here. Now.

The Power of the Word

The letters themselves are matrikas, the little mothers, each one a feminine power that gives birth to a dimension of reality. When the Goddess speaks, the world comes into being. When you speak, you do the same thing in miniature. We are weaving.

A prayer weaves the opening it asks for. This is why sharing becomes prayer: the word is a thread, and we choose what to weave.

Speech has four depths. It begins as silence, para. It becomes an inner seeing, pashyanti. It becomes inner song, madhyama. Only then does it reach the lips, vaikhari. A question spoken from the lips alone is thin. A question that has travelled all four depths, seen and felt before it is sounded, carries the whole weight of you.

The Power of Perception

Attention is where you look. Perception is how you see, both physical and subtle, sisters, the second as creative as the first.

We see the world as we are, not as it is. The same moment is a wound to one woman and an initiation to another. The event does not decide this. Perception is a hand that shapes what it touches.

This is Jnana, the power of seeing, and it is fire. Sight is the subtle essence of the fire element, the eyes the torches of tejas, the inner flame. Whatever you turn the light of your perception upon, you call into a particular life. Perceived as a problem, a woman becomes a problem. Perceived as consciousness arranging itself, she becomes a mystery you are allowed to witness.

So the guardian learns to see through the eye of the heart. The eye that blesses sees differently than the eye that measures and finds wanting. The shadow perceived as shadow loosens; the shadow perceived as who she is hardens into stone. What you behold as sacred becomes sacred in the room, because perception is participation.

And perception can be cleansed. This is what we have been doing through the layers of immersion. Most of what we call seeing is only memory, the old samskara laid over the present like a film. To perceive freshly, without the past, is the Maiden's first seeing returned, the mirror that finally knows it is consciousness. New eyes, not new things to look at.

How the Word Comes Into Alignment

Each question is an instrument. The longing that moves you to ask is Iccha, the will, the first yes before the mind has words. The asking itself is Jnana, the seeing that reveals where the consciousness lives. The word that forms from that seeing is Kriya, the action that brings the teaching into the body and into the living.

A mind that asks truly. A voice that prays truly. A body that acts truly. Right thought, right speech, right action, the three made one, gathered along the single axis from womb to heart.

Come, ask your questions. Watch the structure open through the gateways, through the language itself.

Your Gateway: The Apprenticeship

Each gateway carries her own field, her own quality of presence. Meet the one entrusted to you.

• Maiden — innocence, emergence, yes
• Lover / Mother — devotion, nourishment, creation
• Crone — wisdom, dissolution, mystery
• Earth / Ancestors — roots, belonging, ground
• Fire / Passion / Sexuality — desire, lifeforce, dharma
• Air / Sacred Word / Soul Lineage — voice, prayer, transmission
• Water — intuition, surrender, dreaming

Let this guide your exploration. Allow the Goddess, and your own lived experience, to shape the gateway in you.

Meditation: in the heart. As above, so below. As within, so without. Who am I?

The Written Offering

Approximately 1500 words, in three parts. An offering of remembrance.

Find the personification of the Goddess who lives in your ancestry: the face she has worn in your lineage, the name she has answered to in your blood.

1. The Goddess. Who is she?

2. The Connection. Why her? What is your relationship to this lineage, and what does it move in you? How has connecting to her supported a deeper awareness?

3. The Gateway. How does your assigned gateway live in her, and in you? Where are you at a threshold in your life right now?

You may bring a visual or embodied form alongside the written offering, images, dance, or another expression, if your gateway asks to be met that way. The presentation is offered at the closing ceremony for the Guardians.

Opening Your Own Circle

To open a circle is to consecrate the threshold. Centre in the heart. Consecrate through the offering. Evoke the Goddess of your gateway.

Guide a short meditation to open the circle, inspired by what you wrote. Begin by honouring the gateway we are already in, moving toward the one being evoked. Bring a visualisation, a sensorial presence. The aim is the qualities of your gateway, rather than a tour through your own lineage; evoke her qualities rather than her personification, so the field stays open and neutral for all who walk it.

• Arriving (2 mins) — land gently in the body. Three breaths into the womb bowl, relaxing into the body on the exhale.
• Centering (7 mins) — awareness in the heart and the womb, a sense of consecration.
• Guided Journey (7 mins) — lead the group through your gateway. Stay within time; if you feel yourself going over, bring yourself back.
• Stillness (1 min) — space to integrate in silence.

Total: 15–20 mins. Keep it simple, alive, and clear.

Throughout Your Gateway

The weeks of your gateway are a living thread. Tend it gently:

• A photo or image of the Goddess in your gateway, with a simple, clear reflection.
• One or two reflection questions connected to your gateway, in the first and third weeks.
• Space for the videos offered at each gateway, and for me to remain present with you and the group throughout.

Let it stay minimal and intuitive, an ongoing thread rather than an analysis.

Guide Posture

Return to the keys of this work as often as you need. You are in apprenticeship. Stay simple, clear, and embodied in your sharing. Your honesty is itself the medicine. Direct questions from the group to me, so the message stays coherent and supported.

Opening the Circle

The opening is the moment a room becomes a temple, the breath in which scattered women become a single body of presence. Everything that happens in the circle depends on how cleanly you cross this threshold. Give it time. You harness through the Crone and co-create 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 gateway you are guiding the energy toward, 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 how the Goddess is speaking in the hours before the circle. Every thought, every emotion, every sensation becomes a living collective 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 ahead, how the circle will flow.

Consecration and Calling In

Speak briefly, from the heart, rather than the script.

Consecration is an act of awareness, an act of love in dedication and surrender to the divine. In time it becomes a living pulse moving your life: the recognition of the sacred, the remembering of the sacred, the making sacred of whatever it is we are doing.

Even mundane or inflated sharing is held in sacred space, and in that holding, the one holding dissolves too, into a deep bow to the Great Mother and all she reveals in the mirror, through the embodied ankh we are using.

To consecrate, centre in the heart. Feel the aliveness, the spanda, the qualities of the gateway's gifts: trust, innocence, home, joy. Offer all of it to the heart, to the essence of your being, to the Supreme and Absolute.

We always begin in dedication to the Absolute, the Spiritual Heart. From there, call in the Great Mother through an evocation connected to the gateway you are honouring:

• The Divine Mother
• The lineage — the women who walked before us, whose bones we stand on
• The four directions, the four elements — held back until the last gateway; we work realm by realm
• The unborn — the daughters who will come after, in whose name we also do this work

The progression: from the Absolute, to the Divine Mother, 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, how we hold our voice within it:

"It is no longer about 'I'. 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. Our voice, our energy, all that we share, is becoming a prayer and an observation."

A personal sharing:

"I am so scared of dying. I don't know how to let go."

becomes, 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. Once the body knows the shape, any feeling can pass through it, 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 delight, 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 sacred vessel, used across spiritual, shamanic, and feminine healing traditions as a tangible representation of the womb itself, the primal centre of creation, receptivity, and transformation. Through the principle as above, so below, tending the outer bowl creates a living link to the inner womb space, physical, emotional, energetic, creative. Whether crafted from clay, wood, ceramic, or stone, it becomes a personal altar to the sacred feminine, the cosmic egg made physical, the cup, the chalice, the grail, held now in your hand.

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 asks for. The bowl receives, and the women, in turn, are received by it. The bowl is the womb, met in another form. What you place in it, you place in the field of the inner womb; what you offer to it, you offer to the Mother who lives in your body. Pray with the utmost purity of intention here, and keep it free of blood, or anything too personal to you.

To hold and use the womb bowl in circle is a practice of deep prayer and blessing.

The Seven-Day Cleansing

Beyond circle, the bowl carries its own ritual, one you can walk alone, seven mornings at a time.

Find a bowl of natural material, no plastic, in a shape and colour that calls to you, and sanctify it as your Womb. Each morning for seven days, fill it with fresh water, and place it where you will see it through the day. Light a candle, sing to it, tell it how loved it is. Each morning, empty the old water and wash the bowl with salt, Himalayan or sea, imagining the inside of your own womb lining cleansed of old emotion, old memory, old thought along with it. Add essence, crystal, or herb to the water as you feel called. On the seventh day, cleanse the bowl once more and speak your Sankalpa, your intention to deepen into self-love, holding even the places still hurting. Close with a prayer of thanks to your womb for the creative power she brings, and a vow to honour her.

Walking the Bowl Through Each Gateway

Within this work, the same seven-day form is walked through each of the eight gateways. What changes is the theme held in the two waters:

• The salt water holds the wound of that gateway, what is being cleared from the lining.
• The fresh water holds the gift of that gateway, what is being called in by resonance.

Choose the essences, crystals, herbs, words, and prayers you place in the bowl on those seven mornings for that gateway's medicine:

Whether you practice this or not, it is all part of the mirror.

When Something Arises

A few of the moments that will come:

• A long silence. Let it be. The deepest medicine often arrives in the silence the holder did not interrupt.
• A woman in tears. Witness. Breathe with her. Offer presence, rather than rescue. Tears carry their own intelligence.
• Conflict between two. Stay in the centre. Reflect what you hear from both, without taking a side. Polarity is a teacher here, sometimes moving 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: "we are gently raising the awareness of the time."
• A woman who will not speak. Trust her silence as its own kind of speaking, her listening as its own work. We are a living embodiment of the cosmic mother, and every aspect of the mandala is expressing. Sometimes silence is the ancestor who was told 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 on.
• Energy that drains the field. Here the masculine hold matters. Name the boundary kindly and clearly. The vessel must be protected for everyone, and this takes real wisdom to sense.
• Something that overwhelms you. Breathe. Return to your own seat. You do not need to know what to do, only to be present; the field itself will move what needs to move. Here, humble yourself to see where separation still lives in your own psyche, where the pain still holds in the mirror. You are as much a part of the circle as everyone else. Clear and cleanse afterward: work with the womb bowl, shower, wash your hair, or use a herb or resin that cleanses you.

Closing the Circle

The closing is as sacred as the opening. Without it, the vessel stays open and the women carry the field into the world unsealed. Give it its time, even when time is short. Cut something else first. 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
• each woman present
• the unseen, that held what we cannot see
• the medicine itself, moving 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, rather than blowing it out. To press the flame is to thank it. Blowing scatters the prayer.

After

Sit a moment after they leave. 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. Take the time you need.

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 hold all of them, and 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. Speak it aloud at the threshold of the opening, or invite each woman to whisper it into her own heart. It is a remembering, rather than a formula.

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 sometimes. You will speak when silence was called for. You will rush a closing. You will miss a woman just as she was about to break open. You will hold too tightly, and you will hold too loosely. None of this disqualifies you. Neither the success nor the failure belongs to you.

"She holds power as a vessel, not as a possession."

Beloved Divine Mother, hold us as we hold them.

Jai Ma.