The Business of Being Divine

Well it has been a while, hasn't it?

I've been wanting to come and post a bloglette but have unfortunately been buried under a pile of little Goodie Bags waiting to be filled with their magical spoils. I have spent the last 4 nights, printing off tiny spell scrolls, rolling up tiny spell scrolls, tying up tiny spell scrolls and putting tiny spell scrolls into appropriate coloured bags. I have also been up until 1am for the last two nights filling small sparkly bags with appropriately coloured candles, a stick of incense, a money off Tarot voucher card and my gorgeous business card. Then I spent a night filling small roller ball bottles with almond oil and a blend of aphrodisiac essential oils and making myself feel a tiny bit sick in the process. I guess you can have too much of a good thing. It did make me dream about sex a lot though so it must work! We have Purple bags for Success, White bags for either Peace or Soul-Purpose, Gold bags for Creativity, Pink bags for Love and Red bags for Passion. This blur of activity is just part of the work that goes into producing one of our gorgeous events and these bags in particular are given away for free at our hen nights. We also have pretty boxes filled with White Tigress Love Potion Number 3 - a potent blend of tantric massage oil guaranteed to bring out the Tigress in you! So that's tonights entertainment sorted then. (Making up the bottles and boxes - not so much trying out the wares unfortunately!). I must be ovulating or something... all this skirting around sex and sensuality. Still this is the business of The Divine Feminine and it's what keeps me up at night.

Moving swiftly on.

In recent weeks I have been busy with matters more spiritual. Namely the making of my beaters. Yes, many moons ago I made a lovely drum. In fact, many moons ago Lausy and I made our beautiful drums together - from the same Red Deer. It was my birthday gift to her and a wonderful day for both of us. Making a drum is an interesting experience for two vegetarians (well I was then!). Handling the wet slippery skin of a deceased majestic beastie is quite, well, disgusting actually. And yet not - if that makes any sense to you. We were asked to choose our skins intuitively. That meant closing our eyes, having a wet skin put on the table in front of us and running our hands all over it before deciding if this was 'our skin' or not. I remember touching the first skin and shaking my head. Something about it felt like a 'no' to me. I then touched a second skin and nodded vigorously. This skin felt right under my hands and I wanted to keep touching it. When Laura and I opened our eyes our drum teacher told us that we had both refused the others skin! We then spent the afternoon stretching and strapping on our skin to our drum hoop. It was a complicated and tricky business but very satisfying to watch our spirit drums take shape. We were both so thrilled with our finished drums that we rushed out and put them on a shelf for 2 years.

Kitty's Drum - *note the two dark striped markings that looks like a bird in flight in the centre. My drum maker suggested it looked like an Eagle.

I have increasingly been using my drum in ritual but before that it sat forlornly on a shelf thrumming with a longing to be beaten. To sound out the hearts call to Spirit. Anyway, in honour of my drum and in order that its sacred voice might be heard and as I had never gotten around to making a beater (we ran out of time on the day!), two weeks ago I booked myself onto a drum making course with a friend and asked to make two beaters. I don't know why two. I just wanted two. The reasons will become clearer in time. Maybe I is greedy.

It was great fun. The lovely Judy O'Donnell (who is a goddess of all trades but is fantastically good at making drums) brought out her specially chosen branches, her sheepskin pieces and her lovely suede coloured beater heads. I chose a green head for my 'day' beater and a purple one for my 'night' beater. Once we had chosen our bits 'n' pieces she then produced a veritable witches cauldron of animal, mineral, arachnid and bird bits for us to include. On the day in question the drum makers and I had been asked to draw a medicine card for our drum. There were two Whales, one Bird and I drew Spider for my beaters! So right off the bat I was given a spider carcass to put in. Pause for cackling.


As I had decided to make a night and day beater, I separated my 'bits' into two piles. After much eyebrow raising at the contents of her special basket, my beaters were filled with the following:

Night Beater:
Moth (wing - intuition, psychic perception, knowledge of other world), Bat (bones - Rebirth), Spider (whole), Snake (skin - transmutation, sexual energy, women's wisdom), Horse (hair - power) and Cat (fur - integrity/embracing the unknown)

Day Beater:
Horse (hair), Possum (fur - invisibility, ability to avoid danger), Buffalo (fur - abundance), Snake (skin), Echidna (spine - playfulness, trust), Bee (legs) and Moth (wing)

Both beaters also contained sand from a Tibetan Mandala, Vibhuti (Vibhuti is the sacred ash used in religious worship in Hinduism) from both Amma - the Hugging Mother and the lovely Sai Babba, sage, sweetgrass and cedar to honour our native brothers and sisters, and a pinch of red ochre to honour the Red Centre of this land. We then beaded our beaters and added feathers.

The birds that chose me were Raven, Tawny Frogmouth and Magpie for the night beater,

and Duck, Hawk and Galagh for the day beater.

Both beaters also have a separate strand of Ostrich feathers to honour the spirits of this land.

The story of Ostrich is that it voluntarily gave up its power of flight in order to walk the earth here. That makes it's medicine very special for our earth walk.

So - after all that activity, I ended up with two very special beaters for my beautiful drum and here they are united at last.


I am intending to attend some Full Moon Drumming in Dromana with Judy and her friends next month, so I'll be sure to take some photo's and report back with any interesting experiences.

Well, I'd best get my ever spreading ass back to the business of being Divine - I have bottles of potion to make and boxes to fill before I sleep. Ho Hum.