146 Ariella Daly === Monica: Welcome to the Revelation Project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the chance of unworthiness and to guide women to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed gets healed. Hello everyone and welcome to another. Of the Revelation Project podcast, how is the honey bee connected to the feminine? And how does following the bees through ancient myth support dismantling patriarchy? Well, we're about to find out because my next guest is Ariella Daley, who is a dream weaver and a bee tender. She's devoted to the be in both the physical world. And the spirit world, and she synthesizes natural beekeeping, shamanism, dream work, and earth activism through writing workshops and teaching. Her work combines firsthand knowledge of the honeybee species with an intimate understanding of European be shamanism. She's known for helping people connect to the wild and sacred through relationship with bees nature, the sacred feminine, and the inherent intuition of the body. We are in dire need of remembering our own sense of belonging and relationship to the more than human world. And we're looking for how to heal, reconnect, and remember. It is possible that other species, ancestors and myths are seeking us as much as we are seeking. And people are often drawn to her because they're interested in bees and perhaps have a spiritual calling, or perhaps they want to keep bees in a more natural way. So I. Specifically wanted to bring Ariella onto this call today in our conversation. I'm looking forward to in so many ways because I've heard her speak before and she kind of is a dream weaver. Like you'll notice that when she speaks. She's, you know, weaving this tapestry of mythology and story and current events with her, work with the bees, and she's really what I consider a bridge into tapping. More deeply into the mystery. That's kind of always right here, you know, but we, we've forgotten how to read the signs and see the symbols and follow that mysterious, generative, feminine energy that is always an invitation to reveal more. So I'm super excited for this conversation. Please join me in welcoming Ariella. Hi, Ariella. Ariella: Hi, Monica. Thank you so much for such a beautiful introduction. I'm really pleased to be here. Honored. Monica: Well, it's such a profoundly beautiful conversation. I always say AA, that we all contain this medicine inside of ourselves and part of that medicine. Is our own story. And part of that medicine is the conversation that we are then weaving into the world and holding as medicine for the world. And I just, this conversation is near and dear to my heart because I think in so many ways we have been hypnotized, or what I call entranced into. Kind of a disempowering story about what it means to be humans in the modern world. And I think that part of that awakening process is being exposed to conversations that disrupt that trance and bring us back into remembrance and into wholeness. And the bees, I think, and especially honey bees have always held a special. Medicine for all people. For all beings. And I really am curious and also excited to have this conversation with you because it weaves into so much of the feminine, you know, and the very potent medicine that is the feminine. And so I would love to just start with opening up our conversation by hearing more of. How your love of bees and the feminine, like where that thread started for you. Ariella: Yes. It's, I really agree with you that, that, you know, remembering, remembering our, our inherent belonging. To the Earth. And one of the things that always I always encounter, especially with people who are feeling really, really, um, tender about things like climate change and ecological, you know, disaster and that sort of thing, is this, this sense that we're the poison and we're the problem and we, we can't heal if we see ourselves that way. Monica: Mm-hmm. we really do. Ariella: Need to remember that we are also the medicine and we are also the stewards. Uh, as far as my story, you know, finding bees was very circuitous. A lot of people, whether they're your good old tiny bin beekeeping for generations in the conventional style or coming to it from a spiritual perspective, a lot of people are going to say to you, ask them about the bees. They're gonna say, Well, the bees found me , and in many ways this is also true for me. . I grew up with a very rich and deep fascination with myth, story and culture, and that led me down the road of pursuing a degree in anthropology and really, really wanting to travel. My parents met traveling overseas as teachers, and I was raised on stories. My father was an incredible storyteller, and so I had this innate sort. Fascination with stories and what was underneath them and the the people behind the stories. Naturally, the story of the bees came to me through myth and through folklore and through a shamonic tradition. So I was in the midst of having sort of just broken my heart open with. Coming home from a five month wilderness experience, uh, coming and going with a group of friends from the wilderness we were living, you know, going from spot to spot and living for two or three weeks out in the wilderness. I was very raw. I was very open. And at the same time, I went through a, a, a heartbreak, you know, with a, with a love. And in that heartbreak, in the, in the process of that heartbreak, he gifted me a book. And the book was about a shamonic tradition connected to. Women and bees that reaches all the way back to ancient Greece and it, it just claimed me, this book, and I've said this before, reading this book, which is Simon Buxton's book, The Shamonic way of the B was like that scene in the never ending story where Sebastian is reading the book and. In Fantasia, their childlike empress is calling back saying, Sebastian, say my name. Say my name. . And I, I had that moment more than once in the book where I literally took the book and chucked it across the room. Like Uhuh, No, no, no, no. Too, too much, too close, too eerie. Mm. And the book was about, These women, and I mean, it's written from Simon's perspective as a male participating in this tradition, but it's about a women's tradition that is still being taught in England, but it's a shamonic, or, gyno centric shamonic pathway or folk pathway connected to bees and connected to, uh, you could say Celtic Britain, Lithuania, and eventually, Ancient Greece where there were be priestesses, be women named Melissa, which means honeybee. Monica: Mm. Ariella: I went ahead and went to England to study this tradition or to take a workshop. Learning about these beome. Thinking in many ways that I was going sort of with that folk lo anthropologist, and she just got completely dismantled and this spirit longing was fully awakened and this homecoming happened at the same time. Bees moved into a wall, the wall behind my bed. Of course they did. So of course I came home and there were honey bees. I know. I didn't even care that much about honey in my, like I was not a bee person, are you could've never told me, Honey, when you grow up, you're gonna be all about bugs. No way. No way. But they were there living wild. And my, you know, now that, that it's years later, I, I really think it. Incredibly beautiful that it was the wild bees that came first. Mm. I did become a beekeeper a year later, and the bees helped me through one of the hardest experiences in my life and as a woman, so they really, really saved me in a lot of ways. Which is its own story. Monica: Yeah. Can you say more about that? Ariella: Sure. Yeah. I was informed by spirit that I would become pregnant by February and I was trying not to become pregnant, so I did what I could to avoid that, but not everything I could because I did become pregnant February 2nd, right after am. And which is a Celtic holiday celebrating Bridget, uh, and, and pregnancy. Literally, you know, the pregnant eews, bringing forward the milk. That's what BOL is referring to in Ireland and. . I was so thrilled. This spirit was so close. She had been with me for a decade. I'd been asking her to wait and wait and wait, but she came knocking so loudly. Monica: Mm-hmm. Ariella: and I just gave her the tiniest bit of a yes and she just popped right in. It was sort of like a maybe, I guess, maybe and in she came and I was the happiest. I had been in, I, I couldn't remember. I just, everything was right. This was the following year after being introduced to this gyno centric tradition, which was truly wombi womb honoring. Earth as womb the bees as being connected to that woic, regenerative quality, the regenerative stories of the goddess that we find with the pre patriarchal stories of Artemis, of Demeter, of Raya. If we go back to ancient Greece and of course other cultures, even Bridget, this. Self-renewing quality. So I, I had all of this ripe, fertile goddess energy coercing through me, this deep creative connection to the womb. And I got pregnant and three months in went, wow. I was pregnant. I started building my first beehive. I actually physically got in there and worked with a saw. I painted it, I prepped it. It was such a beautiful experience. And then at 11 weeks I was meditating with her, the child, and I asked, Who are you? Who are you really? Monica: Mm-hmm. Ariella: And it was almost like another voice came in. It was so loud. It was like a crash of thunder in my mind. And the word was, Oracle and in that moment my wo cramped and I went downstairs and I had started to bleed. And what followed after that was a hospitalization because it was the type of miscarriage where my body wouldn't release. And I think part of that was because it was so insurmountable to me that I could be losing this child that I'd been waiting a decade for. And it was a surgical exp I had to have a surgery. While I was in surgery with the anesthesia, the going under, I, um, I had a vision and I was taken to a cave where I was giving birth in a cave. I was in somewhere in Greece and these women were doing a very particular kind of walk through the cave crushing aromatic herbs. And it was such a complete vision that I un I, I knew that it was a, it was a past life. I was seen a different, Years later, I found out that there were birthing caves and that they, you know, all of the things that happened in the vision were, were things that happened in ancient Greece, these nymph caves, birthing caves. But at that time, I was just in complete utter grief and the thing that anchored me in the months that followed. And the sort of disembodied state that I was in for many, many months afterwards, this sort of continual, it's like my body stopped bleeding, but I didn't, and I was just losing the thread, losing life, forcey. It was just draining out of me. And the only thing that anchored me, Was catching a bee swarm for the first time, couple weeks later or less, and becoming a mother to the bees. Mm. I prayed to that child. I said, Please let me be a mother. Please bring me something to help me. Mother. And a swarm of bees landed in an apple tree in the form of a literal heart. Oh my goodness. And I was able to catch them. Monica: Tell me, when you say catching a be swarm, I make up about that, that that's like to catch a swarm is a term. So for our listeners, what does that mean? Ariella: Mm-hmm. , Well, first and foremost, honey bees. When we think of the word swarm, we often think of like, Oh my God, Be is out to get me. Ah, swarming is actually a regenerative. A reproductive moment, it's, it's the birth of a colony. So when you have a mother colony with the bees and the queen, that's an inside a hive. That's the body, the entire super organism. All of these daughters, cuz bees are mostly female. So all of these daughters and sisters and their mother, and when they feel ripe, when they feel full, when they feel optimistic, when the spring has come, when there's nectar and flowers blooming and they feel. Okay, we can expand. We can expand, we can open up our heart, we can build that wombic quality. Even some biologists refer to the beehive as more woic than like an an, uh, more woic and mammalian than anything else. So there's this wombic expansion, and then they all decide at once it's time to split, to self create, to recreate. And they build cells on their wax, on their honeycomb to raise daughter Queens, young virgin Queens. And right before those young daughter, Queens Hatch, the mother who spent all this time, you know, laying eggs and creating these daughters, these bees, the mother, and about three quarters, two thirds to three quarters of the bees and the hive. Swirl out in this massive cloud of bees leaving behind young bees nurse bees to raise the young, to help the young queens hatch, and one of those queens will become the mother of that new colony. Meanwhile, that other colony is going to swirl into the sky and they're going to all a light on a branch of a tree or some other, you know, post of offense gathering together, holding onto each other in this sort of re embodying state. As they seek out as sisters within that swarm, seek out a home and a beekeeper can come to that swarm, that moment of orgasmic birth, and very gently gather those bees literally, you know, for experienced beekeepers, you can scoop them by the handfuls into a box or into a hive. These are at their most docile when they're newly formed in that state, that state of birth. Obviously, please don't go and do that on your own , you know, don't just stick your hand into a swarm. We are experienced as speak keepers and we learn how to be with them, but it's a truly altering state. If you go into a swarm or near a swarm, you are immediately taken to an altered state. Monica: Wow. Ariella: So that's how I got my bees Monica: Yeah. And there's so much coming up for me, just as I'm kind of imagining where you were. In your need, You know, as you were kind of saying, you know, this. Just really longing for something to nurture in that moment and just all of the synchronicity that plays out, not only from the the wild bees showing up in the wall behind your bed or behind your room, and then. The way in which it's like even that rupture or that miscarriage became a bridge into nosis or a knowing of a past life experience that it was all happening for you. You know? And I'm like, I'm, I never, it never gets old, like hearing women's personal story of being. Ecstatically met by the feminine. I'll say that. Mm. Because there's all of these different ways in which we can be ecstatically met by the feminine. But what I find is a theme over and over and over again is some kind of rupture, some kind of dissent, some kind of like a, a dark night, or. A schism, a place that is like that brokenheartedness that you had talked about earlier. Those become truly the places where the light gets in. But there is a darkness first, you know, And I just find that so fascinating. Ariella: I have to agree. , it's the, you know, the rupture, the, the dissent. We have it in so many myths. Corey and pers, Seny and Anna. This, it's the, it's this required dissent into. The womb tomb. Monica: Yes. Into the womb, tomb, \ Ariella: into the earth. Now the kts built their . Yeah. The ancient kts built their, their long borrows, their tombs in the earth because the earth was both the place of the ancestors and death and birth. And I think that this is, this real dissent into the, the dark night of the soul is not something cultivated or facilitated. We don't have someone holding our hands through it. We have to go seek that out. Many people go through it and don't even know what it is, what they're going through, you know? And then we call it depression. I mean, you know, I've, I've been there and that, that's real. We have a name for it, We have a medical term for it. But from a shamonic perspective, that's a very potent and ripe place. For the transmutation. That's right. And I think we're there right now. Collectively we're in it, right? Monica: Yes. . Yes, we are. Yeah. And another, another word just to name it for our listeners is an initiation, you know, And yeah, these initiations, you know, if we're lucky, I can say that sometimes, because it's in the same vein. I say, don't forget to laugh. You know, These experiences come and shake us and take. Way out of our comfort zone, and often it's a very disorienting, messy process. Just like birth, it's a. It can feel primal. And also, I love that you said it's a requirement like that. There's this, I think that's why we call it a right , a right of passage You know that there's a forging that happens in the passing through, in the bridging over into a different state of being, and you can't unring that bell. And it's only when you get there that you realize what a gift you've been given. Ariella: Oh, it's so true, so true that that, that threshold. Moment. I like to say the bees saved me, but it, it's not like it happened all at once. It was a period of time and I, I remember, so I went back to England. I actually went back and studied for over a decade next, so many flights over to England, you know, with some time off here and there. But I kept going back and I was still in it. It took years for me to come out of that dark night of the soul. And I think that that's something that we forget, you know, when we go through an initiation, when we're in the dark night of the soul, I remember. One of my teachers pulling me aside and naming it, she said, You are in the dark night of the soul and you don't get to know when you're gonna come out of it, but we get to know that you will. And we can tell you that. And that's so imperative because what happens when we're in it, and there are many other times when we can come to this threshold location, but the threshold location is a time of mutability and liminality. So we have a saying in the Li cm or the path of Pollen that the Melissa, the Be woman, because the Melissa is both an ancient priestess and an a current type of person who is, you know, shamanically working in these ways. So the Melissa, the Beome, and they're also in spirit. They're the spirits. And behind this work, they are lovers of ality, they're lovers of threshold locations. . And part of the reason why is because when we are in a threshold location, and you just said this, reality becomes mutable. Monica: Mm-hmm. , Ariella: and therefore we can potentially dream the impossible into being. Fifth things change. Things solve things in ways that we couldn't with the old mind and the old self, and yet we haven't stepped into the new paradigm, the new self. And there's this possibility of, of touching the luminous and touching the infinite and rewriting the story. And I think that's really important on an individual and also a collective level. We work a lot in Bee Shamanism with this idea of the figure eight. Which is called the Leket, very alchemical work here, and you know that that time, that threshold time is an chemical time. It is, as you said, being forged in the fire. The figure eight is how the bees actually communicate. They both fly in that shape near the hive, and they physically dance on the honeycomb or on the comb, which is the living tissue, the living structure. They live upon those hexagonal combs. They dance in the figure eight, moving in a figure eight to communicate abundance, to communicate flat, where the flowers are to communicate to their sisters, the nectar source, the nourishment, and so we work with that symbol, that symbol of infinity, that the bees inherently. Move with in their bodies as a way to travel the roads of infinity and the roads of polarity. So our ability to be, you know, moving through the extremes of darkness and light of seriousness and levity, as you said, bringing in the humor of male, female, masculine, feminine. But what's important is that place in between. That spot in between where both are true, where both are occurring, where neither nor both, and this, this, not this threshold location. And I would invite us all to recognize those times in our lives where we've been at those threshold moments, that place where things get a little bit foggy and misty, and yet something else is bubbling beneath the surface. And then to consider that perhaps these years, this decade, this century is epoch. I don't know how long it's going to last, but that we are in one of those times. That got really turned off a notch by the pandemic . Monica: Oh my gosh. I'm over here with this smug look on my face because I'm like, I told you so. I told you she's magical. I told you she, you know, you're just such a beautiful storyteller and I, I just wanna reflect that back to you because there's this way that like when you speak, you just take me to. You know, a place where my imagination is so activated. So there's some medicine there in your voice for sure. That really is. Now I know, you know, it's mercurial. Uh, just such a. Like, Well, it's like you said, you know, it's touching into that infinite place, but holding also that threshold between those two worlds and making it much more available to those who are listening, for me at least, becomes this very palpable place. And I also wanna point to, for my listeners, that one of the things that Ariella is talking about as well is kind of what we have. Spoken of as this place between stories that Charles Eisenstein talks about, which is this invitation to dream a new dream, to recognize this threshold between the old and the new as a bridge that we all get to be a part of, to stand on with curiosity and courage. And also to feel empowered. I think that we all, for me, you know, the Revelation project is about revealing these thresholds. They're about revealing this integrative process between the masculine and the feminine, revealing what's been hidden from us. And the revelation project for each and every person is its own journey. And so, you know, as we continue this conversation, I just want you to step into it, you know, as the listener and understand that you are a valuable, valid, and important critical. In fact, part of the new story that we're creating and. It's a, it's a bit of a poke here and daring you to dream a new dream for yourself and for the future. Because I think oftentimes these dark nights, what they provide for us is the contrast that we need to get more deeply in touch with what we're really longing for and what we're truly desiring. And that creates its own energetic, that then begins to create a field of possibility and. Ariella: That longing, you know, permission, permission to have that soulful longing. And the inherent, I would say, like threaded into that longing is this whisper. Sometimes it's a very loud symphonic cacophony of Eros. That arrows isn't just about sexuality, that Eros is about. This love affair. We all wanna fall more deeply in love, not just with people, but with belonging with the earth, With the movement of the tides, with the moon, with the seasons, with the food that nourishes us. This ability to be in kinship is tied to the flow of love and the flow of aeros, and this is the supernatural relationship that bees show us the love affair between the be and the flower invitation to be in your longing and be with that because that is a road that is a guide for you. Yeah, Monica: and that might be a great segue into. Maybe delving a little bit more deeply into why bees, like tell us more Ariella about bees as it relates to the feminine women, the womb. Like tell us more. Ariella: Absolutely. There's so many different directions. I could take this, the answer to this question, but let's go back to. Ancient Greece. Let's go back to the ancient mind and. Those pe, the the people, you know, we can't just think of it as a culture, but the actual people who are relating to a landscape, and this is not just true of ancient Greece, but we're using this as an example. The earth itself, gay or Gaia, and Gaia was a goddess, was a primordial energy. There was of course the Olympian gods, or there is that we all know about pantheon of the gods, but before them there were older gods and one of the older gods who then got incorporated into the Olympian gods and, and that narrative was Gaia was this earth, and earth was mother. We hear about that in so many cultures. Earth was something that humans could relate to because out of the earth came primorial waters. Life out of the earth also came the bees. Bees in their natural habitat, especially in a place like Greece, Greece, and Crete, which was the home of the Manno culture, which was actually where we first see the signs of the bee, um, what we might call the bee culture. Crete and Manowin culture really influence classical Greek culture. So if we look at that landscape, let's just take it straight to the earth itself. That landscape is riddled with caves. It's a Mediterranean landscape, so it's warmer lit. Lots of caves and lots of beautiful old, old trees. Where do bees live when they're not in hives? In human hives, they live in tree hollows and they live in caves. So out of the cave and out of the dark hollows, out of the body of the mother. Came life out of the body of the mother came bees. And the bees every year showed up in the spring. So they showed up when the world became fertile again when Perstephanie returned to her mother when we had the return of spring and life and fertility and abundance. They came back when the pledes started to rise on the, you know, on the horizon in the spring. These stars, these bees, which people often thought came from the stars themselves, descended from the stars and emerged from the womb, from the earth itself. The earth became a way for humans to relate to what happens, this great mystery of life. So the womb, the woman, you know, what we see is this, this ripening or this fullness showing up in the female body, and then the primorial waters break. Those inner waters break. And with that gushing forth of water comes new life. In places in Greece where there were this, when there was this combination of water, Like springs and caves, which were of course the, like that woic that entrance too. The, The life place of life. This is where you would find bees. This is also where you would find the culture of the nymphs, the divinities that were both woman and nature divinity, local to place. These divinities that were bee nymphs, Melissa, and then eventually also the priestesses that were connected to the oracular work of listening to the Earth. So bees are actually find them in connection to the nymphs all over Greece. They were considered to be the first nymbhs who came down to Earth, who arrived on Earth, who then. Resided in these cavelike places where literal bees would come from. In fact, if we go over and we look at one of the places where bees are strongly associated, which is the oracle of Delphy, Delphy, or Delphi, depending on how you pronounce it, who's a place in the mountainous region in the wilds? By the way, most IR centers in the ancient world were often in threshold or liminal locations out in the wild. So out in the wilds, away from major cities, it got built up and became a major sanctuary city site. But prior to that, it was this wild location where Melissa, where the B, the woman known as the paia or the the Delphic bee, would offer prophecy. Receiving that prophecy first and foremost, from the earth itself. From the mouth of the earth. There was said to be a cravas or a a deep, dark woic chamber that the priestess would descend into, and she would inhale the fumes of the earth, possibly gases, and breathe up from the earth itself. Sometimes it was said that she was breathing up Python, the energy of Python or the breath of Python. Who was in the older stories? The first daughter of the Earth. So the first Oracle in Greece was considered Gaia the Earth. The second oracle was the serpent. Python or the Dragones, and she gave prophecy to these women. So think about this connection between the earth and this rising of energy, which, you know, we often hear about the serpentine energy rising and, and the kundalini aspect. So it's, it's right here as well, rising up, filling the womb, and then being uttered and spoken through the delphic bee. As prophecy said that it was prophecy, the whole world could hear. And even within that, she would sometimes speak in Hexa, a sided verse, all inspired by the bees. And furthermore, there was a bee cave just up the way, the cave of the bee nymphs, um, at Delphy. So there's all these connections between. Deep wombic resonance. This place of knowing in Be Shamanism, we talk about the womb is the first brain. It's this bringing our energy down into the library of the womb, the creative vessel of the womb, not just for children are making children. It's this or, or life. It's, it's a creative center. And it's a healing center. And from this place, Tru Nosis or knowing can arise, in fact, written over the temple of Delphy was the phrase, Know th self. This is what we've been talking about. You know, Nosis know th self. So that would be one way that the bees are connected to the feminine as well as many other goddesses. Demeter and Corey were both connected to the bees. There's a, there's a lot of. A lot of connection throughout the Monica: ancient world. I love all of that history. Mythology hears history. And how does following the bees through some of these ancient myths, support the dismantling? Of patriarchy. Ariella: Well, first and foremost, , what a topic, right? I always like to state that the dismantling of patriarchy is a dismantling of a system that we have all agreed upon. Even. Even though it was forced on us, it's still all agreed upon it. It's alive and well within each of us. So it's not just about men. We are all suffering from an out of balance. the this patriarchal system. And if we go back and look at what was pre patriarchal, it's really easy to wanna flip it to matriarchal cultures where there was like women ruled and now, now we're in the patriarchal where men ruled. And that is not how I understand patriarchy. I think a better term when we look at what came before is gyno centric. The anthropologist and archeologist Maria, Go BTUs was spoke of cultures this way. She's an incredible resource for old Europe goddess culture and this, this gyno centric meant women's woman centric or earth honoring or of the womb. It was this way of honoring the feminine as a source of life. Again, we come back to the bees as, as a representative of the source of life of bringing flour to fruit. It didn't mean at the detriment or exclusion of the masculine. It just meant that there was this earth honoring feminine quality. And I think when we look back at some of the old myths, we actually start to see. Where the split happened, where this patriarchal shift happened, and sometimes by looking back at the myths, we actually start to see a way forward because we start to see these big cycles of time. So an example would be, and I'm gonna use both the bees and the myth to, to talk about how this might be relevant today. When we look at the, the myth of Demeter and Coray. So Demeter was a pre. patriarchal goddess. She existed before the Olympian. God. and she was the goddess of the grain and the harvest. She was an agr goddess and her, one of her titles was The Bee. Her priestesses were the Melissas, specifically at Iuss, where the Elian Mysteries took place, which celebrated the mystery of life and death and the return of Corey as pers seny to her mother. So that's jumping ahead. Let's go back to the story. So the story we all know is, Demeter has a daughter named kore, which just means maiden or has a few means, but Maiden is one of them and kore is with her. Nymphs kore is also known as Meli Do, uh, Meli Toes, which is met honey like, and she's with her maintenance picking flowers in this abundant, nectar filled meadow. And these maidens are other nims. So again, we have this connection between the divinity that is both feminine and nature, and a crack opens in the earth. Hades or Pluto comes out and abducts her, which is a very sort of nice way of saying he rapes her. That's the story of the rape. Brain brought into the earth, taken down into the underworld. So Haiti is the ruler of the underworld, and here we have the transformation, the underworld journey of Kore as the maiden becoming sovereign, becoming unto herself a queen and her own right as per Seny, Queen of the dead. Per seny then eventually returns to Demeter. But Demeter in the meantime is in this time of grief, incredible grief. So much so that the land stops fruiting and flower. And then we have winter, We have our first long winter. It's lasting many, many months, many years. And this reunion when Ely finally returns, is part of what celebrated at the, or what was celebrated at the Lian Mystery. So that's the. That story is not my point. I believe that that story is actually a story that marks, that tells us of when the split started to happen in mythic form, when this takeover happened, where there was no longer an honoring of the feminine process. Of the goddess rebirthing herself. There are older myths and, and, and people who believe that what was actually happening in that moment before we had the story of Hades and Pluto was that per Seny was preparing to rebirth herself, just as the bees do, to regenerate herself through weaving, through collecting the flowers. She was in the process of weaving, which is. Symbolically, the process of creating life to weave is to create life. We see that, of course, with the weaving of the Fs. So she's in a process of weaving and she notices, and one of the stories with her mother is they travel. She notices that there's these lost souls and these lost souls don't know where to go. They've passed on, but they don't know where to go, and she has deep and incredible compassion for them. As they wander the earth, and she says to her mother, What are they doing? And she says, Well, they just can't find their way into the underworld, to the place of the ancestors, to the place of rebirth and regeneration and coray as she's preparing to become, to birth herself new, to become the next incarnation of herself voluntarily chooses to. Descend to the underworld to become the guide, to become the midwife who receives the souls of the dead in the underworld. And this is a ti. This becomes her initiation. So she becomes perception. She becomes the queen of this underworld through this midwifery, which is a very different story. I want us to take us now to the bees. The bees in the winter. What happens? What happens when Demeter comes, when Demeter in her grief, because she was still in grief that her daughter left her. What happens when you go into this winter time? Well, the bees, we talked about expansion and swarming. Well, they also contract. And all of these sisters that have been gathering nectar and pollen to support this one super organism, they start to die. Many of them give up, give their lives away, they die, and only a small group of sisters are left. And these sisters have the ability to outlast the winter. They're, they're made of different stuff, and they're going to keep the mother warm through the long, dark winter. They're going to tend to the mother. And in that pollen and in that honey that's been collected are the old stories of spring and summer are the stories of the flowers are the stories of abundance. When the mother is ready, when the bees are ready to return, when Corey is ready to return from the underworld. As pers seny, the mother starts to lay eggs and these bees, these young bees that hatch. They will never have seen the flowers, but they will taste the stories in the honey. They will taste the stories in the pollen, which is the food the young bees eat. They eat pollen and they eat honey. And through this scent. Through this, yes. Scent, magic, and alchemy. That is honey, an alchemy that is the bee bread, which is pollen and transformed through fermentation. They will learn the histories of the land. They will learn the stories of their people. They will learn even though the generations of bees that collected that honey and pollen have passed, and when the spring arrives, when they mature and they're able to reunion with the sun, reunion with the land, come back to the land. These bees will be able to recognize the abundance of the flowers through having tasted the stories. And I, I know it's just a metaphor, but imagine for just for a moment, what if these old stories. What if these fragments are that nectar, that pollen, that honey that's been passed down to support us in this time of the long dark night of the soul, of this great forgetting so that us as daughters and sons can remember, can taste and. Perhaps even passion to the next generation. Cuz who knows if we're gonna see that new time in our lifetime, if we're gonna see that reimagined earth in our lifetime, that we get to be part of the stories that get passed on and the reweaving of the stories so that something else can happen. A new era can Dawn, I don't wanna just sound new age, but I do believe that we have to invent a different way to be, and it's not even inventing, it's a remembering that's a coming back to these old ways of being with the. And being in a relationship and saying hello to the tree right outside your door. So that's one way. It's just reweaving of these old myths and, and they become incredibly relevant to today, to now the bees can teach us things about how to be in the world. Monica: So beautiful and so. Potent. You know, I, I just really It's like, hello, This is, it feels so. It's one of those like stories and mythologies and realities mm-hmm. that are all weaved together. Just create this tapestry of deep revelation and understanding about the connections, the interconnectedness of all of these things, and why. They're so important and symbolically go back to that never ending story. Hmm. But also how the nothing was sweeping and, and Right. Overcoming everything that mattered. That was important that the naming it, it was by calling back into being. It was by daring to believe, like Sebastian, in that case, daring to believe his voice mattered. Absolutely. That is what created a new reality and stopped the nothing. And so again, we see. Some of these, what seem like surface level stories, having so much richness and depth and their nourishment for the soul and the spirit that's going through the dark night, that's being consumed by the Ariella: nothing. Yeah, and we know the nothing, we feel it, you know, I think every one of us hears that. Oh yeah. The nothing that sort of, I think there's a difference between the void. As like a, a rich place of creative energy and the nothing that is like, the feeling of that, being like consuming our culture and consuming the earth is, you know, this onslaught Well, Monica: I would call the nothing, the superficial Exactly call the nothing, the soulless, I would call the nothing you know when you've lost your spirit. I would call the nothing, The loss of imagination and really the loss of love. Ariella: Yeah, exactly. And it is, it's not just through naming, but it's his imagination. He imagines foundation and it comes back and I, I think that's, it's so vital to lean into our imagination, which is why myths can be so helpful. Stories can be so helpful. Our, our imagining and our curiosity is such a tool. I mean, it is the tool of the shaman that becomes one of the places that allows us to journey and allows us to see beyond and see other possibilities. And we all, we all have these very rich imaginations that, that you were born with and they, they. Get, uh, tamped down or cut off the roots. But we can find that again, that imaginative energy. We need it. We need it. Monica: And you know, I know that you and I kind of share this thread of, you know, Waldorf education in our lives with our children, and I think one of the most important tenants for me, and values that became so important to me cuz I was somebody that grew up in a Catholic school system and, but like a lot of public schools as well, you know, that. Very linear way of kind of going about our lives that, that kind of invalidates imagination At such a early age, atrophies are muscle. And you know, as adults, what I encounter over and over again in my work with women is this atrophy imagination. And I've really recognized it as, one of the most important areas of work to reactivate because it's through the imagination that we remember our playful selves, that with imagination comes color and levity and potential and possibility and enchantment and. It's such a beautiful way. In fact, I think one of the most potent ways to disrupt the trance. Yeah. And to bring new ways of being into our everyday life that. Shift and change everything. Ariella: I couldn't agree more. Uh, you know, in a lot of my classes that is, we're focusing on cultivating the imagination. It's actually a really big part of be shamanism as it's taught today or as it was taught To me, it's vital. And I think one of the places that we collectively find the imaginative is, is in stories, but sometimes we get distracted by the screen, you know, so, So it's the. Having that share, that sharing of stories. Going back to those childhood stories that really got you and, and in playing with them, Play, play, play, play, play is so vital. And we all know this. When you're, when you've got a problem and you're just sitting there, your computer screen or you've got your notebook out and you're just like, Oh, can figure this out. I gotta figure this out. I gotta figure this out. You are not gonna figure it out in that state of mind we are. We just don't. We don't. It comes in these aha moments. It comes when we. Take that drive out to the sea and just be with the ocean. Or when we're having a, you know, a coffee with a friend and laughing about something completely unrelated and then there it is. There's that idea, Or through dreams even. So how many ideas come through dreams for, for people who are able to remember their dreams? It's just isn't linear . So we're it, we're up against these problems of our time. There's, that are so personal and so massive, such, such wide scale. Overwhelming problems to solve, and we get so serious about it because it's heartbreaking and it's overwhelming. We atrophy and we go into a state of apathy. If you, if you wanna read about that, Look at World is Lover World itself. Joanna Macy's work about that apathy and like, I can't even look at it, It's too much. I'm just gonna scroll through reels and, and and whatnot on social media. I think another door, another way in. Beyond, You know, the things that I often teach was like nature connection or working with bees. Is, is that levity, Is that play? I'll Monica: never forget a revelation that I had once that, that occurred to me as such, like a, you know, I could have had a V8 kind of thing. Like, how did I miss this? You know, it's like when people say, lighten up, there's a reason we want to be light. You know, it's actually the density, it's the, the apathy or the despair that all of that dense energy kind of keeps us. Well, it keeps us in this very linear, very, this reality, like surface level reality where kind of the lighter we get, the more kind of that heaviness lifts and the veil kind of becomes thinner and the closer we are kind of to the magic and the mystery. And that also comes with. Those states of wonder when we go to the ocean, like you said, or we're finding ourselves just enraptured with the magic of nature, and it's just all of that, all of those states of being are these incredible portals into more deeply kind. Understanding that there's so much more to be revealed. Ariella: Mm-hmm. Monica: And that we are the ultimate storytellers. And so what's the story we're telling? , you know, what's the story we're telling in our density and whose stories are we consuming that are creating the density? Because oftentimes that superficial screen is the place of compare and despair and so many other things. So there's a way I think that like everything, our yellow, there's a balance and too much of anything becomes kind of a, a tipping point into probably, Another not so nutritive place, but it's, it's just, again, that awareness and that remembering. And for me it's actually like the body always holds that wisdom for me. It's like if I've stopped breathing or I'm tense, or I'm noticing how I'm just. Feeling heavy. Those are all signals and signs to me that it's, you know, that there's actually some, usually some feminine to bring. Ariella: Mm-hmm. Monica: which I consider play, which I consider storytelling, which I consider imagination and nature and. Ariella: Yeah. All these other ways of knowing, you know, we, we value one way of knowing . I Monica: love that you said that. So, yeah, so I as a kind of, I know we're right about at time and I'm just like, wow, it's, the time is passed by so, so quickly. And it always does when I'm in Enchantment and so I'm so enchanted by you. I'm so in love with what you bring to your. To your commitments, you know, to your conversations, to your work in the world. I'm so appreciative of everything you've shared with us today, so thank you. Ariella: Oh, thank you. It's, it's a really nourishing conversation for me to have with you as well, so I'm, My cup is filled. Thank you. Monica: Yeah, and I would love for you to tell our listeners if you'd like, anything that you've got going on, different ways that they can work with you, anything like that, cuz I'm sure they'll want to learn more. And I'm gonna of course include many links in the show notes, but I'd love it if you have something you wanna invite them. Ariella: Hmm, Sure. I think the most exciting thing on the horizon is, uh, my two 2023 women's virtual beekeeping apprenticeship and beekeeping's like a, a sneaky word there. It's, it's be tending, it's connecting with the bees, it's connecting with the divine feminine. It's connecting with as many of the teachings from be shamanism working with the body. So, Embodiment work, breath work, movement work, et cetera, et cetera. So it's 10 months and uh, it will be starting in January and the registration, uh, will be open by the time this, this airs. So that's a fun thing. And then you can check out some of my dream classes. It's another really wonderful way into the imagination. Those are ongoing. There we go. I love that. Monica: I'm gonna check 'em out for myself. Yay. All right. Well, and aa, are you, do you also offer one-on-one? I'm just curious, do you do anything like that or do you do consulting? Ariella: Uh, the, the best thing, if you wanna do one-on-one with me, because I do sometimes do mentorship, but it's, it's always full , is to work with me in one of my irre dream work sessions. and very quickly what that means is that you're with me for an hour. Uh, you bring a dream and I do something called wombic Dream mirroring in an IRA state. So again, we go back to Delphy and the connection between Oracle work and the beginning of my story Oracle, The process of losing that daughter sent me back to England and I study to become what I am now, which is not just trained in shamanic healing through the B shamanism, but deeply trained in what we call seniorship or irra. Which is emptying out, dropping into the womb, becoming the woic mirror, and mirroring back your dream in a, in a nourishing, nutritive way that becomes a road to follow or a map to follow for your own. Own deeper understanding of your soul, yourself, your direction, et cetera, et cetera. So those are, those are one of the best ways to work with me one on one. Monica: Amazing. Well, thank you for bringing that to it as well. I love knowing that. And for our listeners, I'll be sure to put all of these, um, incredible resources and links in the show notes. And I hope you enjoyed this conversation today as much as I've enjoyed bringing it to you. And until next time, more to be revealed. We hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list, or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always, more to be revealed.