Hello everyone,

it's been a while since I last posted our news on here - the main reason being that I was rather pre-occupied with preparations for our Samhain Sacred Drama and Temple of Transformation, which happened on 11th November in Trinity Hall. A Samhain Dark Moon in Scorpio (deep dark transformational energy!) didn't help and brought up a lot challenges. For those of you who were not present at 'The Descent of Inanna' - it was a wonderful, magical and powerful night. In the end, about 16 fantastic people were involved in the production, adding their talents and skills ranging from performing to drumming, making music, set design, and so on. People travelled from as far afield as West Wales, London and Glastonbury to participate and watch. It was magical to see the many months of preparation and hard work fall into place on the night, with dance, meditation, drama, and ceremony all woven together to create a beautiful web.

For me, holding the energy of Inanna in the drama, it was a very challenging and transformational process. Being stripped of the seven 'me', the sacred objects of power, at the gates of the Underworld, was hard and painful - and once again I felt so clearly that in order to gain the wisdom and the shining jewels of the underworld, we have to let go, despite our fear, and descend. 'And as grape juice turns to sweet potent wine, so the powers returned drunk with spirit, greater and purer than before.' It's hard to trust in that process sometimes, but there can be no light without darkness, and vice versa, and the light always follows the darkness, if we embrace and surrender to both aspects fully. As Jacqui put it, the Underworld, our subconscious, really is just separated by a thin veil from our mundane reality.

Our next Sacred Drama performance will take place in June 2007, in line with the Leamington Peace Festival, and focus on the water aspect of Leamington Spa, and the Goddess of the Waters. As well as a Sacred Drama, we are organising a Holy Wells Procession & Well Dressing which will mark all of the original springs and wells in Leamington. This will be a multi-faith event with bands, poets and musicians, aiming to promote tolerance and peace between the different faiths - celebrating our commonalities rather than the differences. It's also a way of addressing and maybe healing of the (not only physical) division between North and South Leamington, separated by water. As usual, we will keep you informed about these projects, and if you would like to get involved, please get in touch!

Warwickshire Spiritual Network has been active as usual, and in October we had Harpal Heer talking about the ancient system of Kundalini Yoga, and lead a short set for us. Kundalini Yoga, taught for thousands of years and brought to the west by Yogi Bhajan, is a brilliant system with many sets for self-awareness, healing and raising energy and consciousness. For more information, please see http://www.3ho.org/

Our November meeting was mainly spent discussing the future of the Network. As you may know by now, Seventh Wave Wellbeing is sadly closing its doors next week, and we will have to find a new meeting place for January. We discussed various options and we'll post our new venue on this page as soon as we have decided on one.

For the December meeting, which will coincide with the Winter Solstice on 21st December, we have planned a special daytime outing to Prinknash Abbey to look at the Roman mosaic of Orpheus (yet another descent story!), a walk, lunch, and solstice stories, led by Pauline Warn. If you are interested in coming along, please contact us and we will give you the details.

There will be more outings and events coming up next year, as the format of the WSN might change slightly. We have discussed visiting different places of worship and asking different faith leaders to come and talk about their faiths, which links in nicely with the Warwick District Faiths Forum. Talking about the latter, the Faiths Calendar 2007 should be for sale in mid-December.

See you next month, and happy Samhain to you all.