http://Fireandearthceremonies.com/

Fire and Earth Ceremonies, Tallebudgera Valley (2025)

24/09/2021

My beloved Toby, a dark anniversary, yet your luminosity still sparks within my heart. ✨ I wish I could will you here to walk beside me through the coming times; but for now I remember the joy, the laughter, the tenderness, and you at my side. My dearly loved brother, adored and loved, and missed. 💫💖✨

08/07/2021

I acknowledge the Kombumerri clan of the Yugambeh language group as the traditional custodians of the land on which I live and their connections to land, sea and community. The Yugambeh region includes families that identify as Kombumerri, Mununjali, Wangerriburra and others. I pay respect to their Elders past, present and emerging, I extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

Art: .ra__

05/06/2021

Enough said

09/05/2021

💖 For my beautiful mother. 💖What a life as mother and daughter we have shared. Together we have journeyed through seemingly endless grief and loss, and celebrated life and love with abandon, yet it is the quiet moments shared with our heads thrown back cackling in the levity, silliness and understanding, or just side by side talking as time slips away unnoticed. 💖 Our time shared is immeasurably treasured and beyond value; you have been my lighthouse, my confidant, my guide, and my dearest friend. 💖
You are sung, celebrated, known, seen and loved and loved and loved.
💫Happy Mother’s Day. 💫

25/01/2021

Always was, always will be.

23/10/2020

This service is run by 2 amazing women who provide clothing, furniture and other items to Foster Carers for children in out of home care from premmie babies to 18 year olds. Carers can directly contact the service 24/7 which is especially wonderful for those who take emergency placements.

They are currently funded by donations and the founders themselves who are in the process of applying for a grant to expand their service. By liking and sharing their page it will help get the word out so they can demonstrate the need for such a service in their grant application.

These services support the most vulnerable members of our community, child in out of home care. Please take a few minutes to give them a like and share.

💖✨💖

04/10/2020

Amidst the chaos, beauty is found in the still moments.

03/06/2020

Posted • Uncertainty is not an excuse for complacency. It’s not enough to be “not racist”. Be actively anti-racist. Read. Educate. Protest. Donate money. Donate time.
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We posted a black square, great. Now let’s get to work. Suggestions in previous post.
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Image:

30/04/2020

A blessed Samhain eve to all.
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With this turn of the wheel the veil between this world and the next - the seen and the unseen, the living and the dead - thins and we take time to remember and honour those who walk with us in spirit.
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At Samhain the cool breath of the Crone, the dark Goddess- - can be felt as we move toward Winter. It is the end of the harvest, everything retreats lying dormant and at rest in the dark. We slow down to prepare for the coming cold as internally we turn toward the shadow side of our nature. 🌚
At Samhain our intuition and our psychic abilities are magnified so it is a good time to utilise this energy as we feel appropriate for our own lives.

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Ordinarily I feel a pull to consider each turn of the wheel and how that energy is reflected in our ordinary lives; how we modern ‘witches’ can embrace the call of these ancient Sabbats and bring them into our everyday lives.
However, today I felt depleted. I am a person who absolutely needs alone time, and with little to none of this lately I can feel the ripple effect throughout my psyche. The lack of personal time and space has left me feeling frayed at the edges as supporting 2 small people through the demands of online learning is exhausting and relentless, especially with none of the usual ‘escapes’ available. **kcovid.
So this afternoon I went outside next to the creek and unrolled my yoga mat hoping to unwind my body and my mind.
I breathed in...the ground beneath me was lumpy, poinky and uneven, and then the chickens decided that I needed all of them to congregate next to me and mewl and poo and cluck and scratch, right next to me.
I inhaled...the neighbours were taking their horses out for a walk which set all 3 of our dogs off on a swearing rant at full volume (they hate the horses, I’m sure they’re swearing at them).
I exhaled as our other neighbour arrived home on his slasher and trundled down the broken concrete culvet that runs over the creek to the back properties. Rattle, clunk, rattle, clunk...

I felt like giving up, rolling up my mat and harrumphing off inside.

🌚continued in comments 🌚

20/03/2020

Love and blessings on this Mabon, the Autumn equinox.🍂

Amidst all the chaos and uncertainty the world is changing; surely once we move through this current transition we too will be changed.

I hold tight to hope for the world needs time to heal.

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For many this is a devastating time bringing isolation, fear, anxiety, and loss of life and income. Yet just as the wheel of life turns in the natural world so too does the wheel of human life. We are inextricably tied to the planet and her cycles - we depend upon her for our survival yet we have taken so much and given so little in return - and we are also inextricably tied to each other, we need each other. We must change and our hand is now being forced.

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So we sit quietly and we wait...

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So many of us are limiting our interactions through distancing and isolation for the greater good, and in doing so we gather together in our consciousness. We are all in this together: we are coming together by separating; what a wonderful irony.

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Mabon heralds the coming of winter: as our days draw in, darkness and cooler weather naturally call us indoors and within ourselves. One of our most valuable resources is time, and the world has insisted that we go within, literally into our homes, and perhaps this time without the usual distractions will raise an opportunity to find ways to connect, really connect, to what we would like to change and to have gratitude for what we do have. As Mabon is also the 2nd harvest, let’s use this time to consider what are we harvesting.

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Let it be kindness. Let it be patience. Let it be compassion. Let it be understanding. Let it be a desire to find new ways to express ourselves in a new and deeply changed world.

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Change is challenging and confronting and uncomfortable, and it will be easy to press the default on our lives once this has passed, but do we really want to?

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What if this is a wonderful opportunity? Perhaps we will emerge into the new normal with greater wisdom, greater compassion, true gratitude, and a renewed awareness of how vital kindness in our contact with each other is to our wellbeing.

Perhaps as more connected, and wiser people, we will use the fire in our bellies to raise our voices and demand those in power lead change, positive change. It’s time for the old world order to give way, it’s time for a softening, for grace, for understanding.

We must surely take this as a shake from the Goddess that we can no longer continue down the path we are walking. We must stop, take time to consider what is truly important and move forward into an unknown future that is bursting with possibility and potential.

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This Mabon how will you harvest your inner possibility? How will you express this potential in the world? If you could recreate your life what would it look like? What would you be harvesting? Let’s make this potential magnificent for all beings with whom we share this beautiful world.

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I am deeply hopeful.

Imagine the celebrations.

Let’s harvest our hopeful potential and spread kindness amidst the uncertainty.

Always Love.

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08/03/2020

Oh, how I love women. Women have been the cornerstone of my life, the consistent beating heart next to mine, the lighthouse in the dark and the softest place to land. Today on International Women’s Day I sing our song: an ancient song woven of love and desire, of pain and grief, of death and creation, born of blood and bone.
The world needs healing, nurturing, understanding, and loving strength and it is women who will change the world for the better. We wake from the patriarchal slumber that had reduced our magnificent bodies and our worth to sexualised imagery, leaching our power from us as our blood spilt to the ground - our precious blood, of which too much has been unwillingly shed. Too much cruelty and pain has been overlooked by those in power who swore to protect us and our rights, and now in this moment in time we stand shoulder to shoulder, awake, staring it down, raising our fists to the sky in a battle cry born of blood and tears and love and exhaustion and pain. To borrow Greta’s words: ‘How dare you’! How dare you not change our laws so that those who continue to hunt and kill us can freely walk the street; how dare you visit and protect and hide those who perpetrate horrendous acts of sexual violence against our children; how dare you idly sit by as we die in our homes and the streets; how dare you continue to spend money with companies and media that openly hates us. Rage! Let us gather our rage and use it to perpetrate change. We fight for autonomy over our own bodies, for our place in the workforce, to be paid fairly, for equality and equity within the home, for a shared mental load... we are strong and we must be heard, our cries must be answered.
Women are the great creators, within our bones is magic and power and wonder; we are the original Goddess in all her incarnations, and we shall gather our scattered power and use our rage and our love to perpetrate change. We hold up the world and I am honoured to be singing a song of women today. We are music and poetry, the muse and the fire, the fury and the coming death, and the creators of life. We are the portal to the world.

🌛more in comments🌜

01/02/2020

🌾Lammas blessings! 🌾Traditionally today and tomorrow is a festival of the first grain harvest: the first of 3 harvest festivals in the At Lammas people gathered the grain and baked bread in celebration, sharing it with those around them, honouring the natural cycles of reaping what you sow. Lammas is a time of generosity, of light, and of gratitude; but also time to prepare for change as the wheel turns away from the height of Summer toward , the autumn equinox.

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The holidays have been celebrated and the new year has begun. We return to work and school, and the routines for the year ahead are put into action as our new plans start to unfold. However, to create new plans we need to take stock of where we are in our life.
Lammas asks us to stop, take a breath, acknowledge and examine what we have created; to celebrate our successes, to learn from and let go of our failures, and to give thanks for the bounty of our own unique personal harvest. In doing so we are able to see our direction more clearly, perhaps to pick a new path; to let go of the old and move toward our new horizons with renewed purpose and creativity.

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Sometimes our harvest is not easy to see, especially for so many people currently experiencing loss and devastation. Perhaps what you hoped for has not come to fruition and all your efforts in sowing and manifesting have yielded empty hands. Lammas reminds us of the importance of community, of sharing, of kindness, of love. We are all human and we need each other.

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Everyday magic exists all around us as we forgive, we laugh, we cry, we commune, we gather together - these are acts of love. If we look to those around us, those who love us, who walk with us in life, then perhaps our greatest harvest is our kindness to each other. We are all individuals, we are all magnificent, and we are all capable of great kindness and terrible cruelty. It is a choice we have as conscious beings to be kind to all the beings we share our planet with.

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It’s that simple and that difficult.

✨ more in comments ✨

24/12/2019

☀️A bright and beautiful Litha, the Summer Solstice, a celebration of the Sun in its peak and Mother Nature at the height of her abundance. ✨

The wheel turns to the longest day of the year as we gather together celebrating all that has brought light and abundance to our lives. For each of us light means something different, perhaps it’s the light of understanding and wisdom; or a sense of lightness of being; or the divine light that exists within us; or the residue of starlight that still vibrates in our bones; or simply finding light within darkness. However we choose to perceive light, Litha is the time to throw our heads back, open our arms and celebrate. It’s a time of abundance and fellowship, of the peaking of our self-expression, thus allowing ourselves to express our light in whatever way is authentic to us.

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For me, this Solstice weekend has been all about friendship, beginning by spending quality time with one of my dearest friends . As the day stretched out our children played happily while she and I read cards, and talked, and laughed and wept, revealing new pathways through our changing lives. This woman is magnificent and I am honoured to share a friendship with her. The following day, we spent time with new, but much treasured friends who are the embodiment of generosity and abundance As the longest day of the year turned to night we all sat laughing and laughing, sharing a love of music and the stories that connect us - and waaaaay too much red wine. The next day our beloved friends invited us for a Litha/Yule celebration evening of home cooked food under the starlight and their lovingly constructed pentagram arbour. We sat under the stars, sharing mulled wine, delicious food, connecting again with friends from the previous night, and feeling honoured to be part of this beautiful community.

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It has been a lush abundant and joyful weekend, filled with light and friends and laughter and music and wine and food, open hearts and minds and a true celebration of friendship and how our connection to others is vital to our wellbeing.

💖see comments💖

15/11/2019

✨Jess and David reaffirmed their vows 10 years to the day with a handfasting for which their gorgeous sons did the binding, it was a beautiful and intimate moment that o ha d the privilege to share.✨

I have such huge cringe factor about self promotion ( ) but f**k it! I’m damn good at capturing a unique perspective of a couple’s relationship and relating that within a ceremony. 2020 is filling up, so if you want a fun, meaningful and ‘out of the box’ ceremony hit me up!

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This is the testimonial they wrote:

‘We can’t thank Rachel enough for the beautiful ceremony that she created for our vow renewal. It was everything we could have hoped for and more. We decided to renew our vows on our 10 year wedding anniversary to include our children who were not yet born into the world for our original wedding day. Rachel worked with us to create something that was so meaningful to us all. The ceremony was so spiritual and incorporated our love and respect for each other as well as nature and the universe. We loved the hand-fasting ritual that Rachel included to signify the bond that my husband and I share that has now been strengthened further by our children. They have unified us as a family and we loved celebrating this on the day. We loved Rachel’s suggestion for honouring loved ones that have passed and we threw flowers into the ocean to remember their beautiful souls. Rachel exudes a radiant, calm and caring energy and nothing was ever too much trouble. I look forward to contacting Rachel again in 10 years’ time to renew our vows in the same place once again. Thank you, Rachel. You are one in a million!’
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#2020

31/10/2019

🔥Bright, juicy and wild love to all on this Beltane, the festival of fire and love celebrating the marriage of the horned God and the fertile Goddess and harnessing the creative, fertile energy this union manifests. This turn of the wheel awakens the creative energy within us as the masculine and feminine aspects of our lives, inner and outer, are in harmony and in flow. This is the energy of manifestation, the creative force bringing our desires to the world. Beltane is a perfect time to harness it, to bring our dreams and visions into reality. It is a time to use our own unique magic to invoke our desires - remembering, of course, to harm none.

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At Beltane, the ancients would stay out all night in the woods reenacting the union of the God and Goddess by making love under the stars, jumping the bel fire to bring fertility to the land and to their unions, hanging ribbons in the trees as offerings and wishes. It was a sensual time of merriment, feasting and love. In the morning the community would gather around the Maypole and dance and feast and celebrate some more. In our modern world we rarely have such an opportunity for such communal revelry but that succulent, sensual energy still vibrates in our bones and the natural world around us.

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As Beltane focuses upon the manifest creative energy between masculine and feminine in union, it’s a good time to reflect upon what elements within the masculine and feminine sides within ourselves are out of union, and thus getting in the way of manifesting our dreams: Are you tremendous at creating and building a vision yet tremble and falter when it comes to putting a foundation to these dreams. How can you bring this into balance? Perhaps by taking the leap...There is no better time than Beltane to harness this energy. So, for today, choose one thing that you’ve wanted to manifest and really examine what is holding you back? Imposter syndrome? ‘I’m not good enough’? Fear of what others will think/say/do? Needing perfection? Procrastination? Whatever it is, take it and throw it into the fire (real or imagined)...

🔥see comments for more 🔥

24/09/2019

It has been 20 years since I last heard your voice, the last words, ‘I love you, Sis.’ I have carried tenderly in my heart like a broken wing. For all these years you have floated through all my best and worst times, always held in reverence and remembered and honoured and missed, so missed. Life has moved forward and I have grown, and changed and aged. I have taught your niece and nephew your songs and stories, and we speak your name often, you are a part of our life, of my life and I mourn you, what could have been. Music was always our language, and Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen will always, always carry the weight of my heart, and articulate the sense of loss and the memories of our childhood, and these words of Nick Cave’s are better than mine...✨
For Toby, who was here, who was deeply loved, and is missed and missed and missed…until my last breath leaves me.💖

21/09/2019

🐣Blessed Ostara, the Spring equinox, and my favourite time of year! Such a joyful, fertile and juicy turn of the wheel. Everything is literally springing to life, the flowers are blooming, the Earth has warmed bringing the promise of new beginnings and with it the energies of creative growth, expansion, hope, awakening, and fertility. You may notice within yourself a sense of waking up, of ideas flowing more freely and the motivation to put them into action, perhaps a lifting of the spirits and a renewed sense of hope and excitement for what lies ahead, or simply a sense of feeling a little lighter, more free and less cloudy in the mind.🐇

Ostara, is a true celebration of life and of new beginnings, and of the fecundity and resilience of Mother Earth. So how can we best honour her? For sure, we can reduce plastic use, do some research on the products we buy , choose -free products, reduce or eliminate animal products from our diet, reuse and recycle what we already have, all these things help, yet we are continually being told we are on a collision course toward climate disaster and it can seem that these little things are pointless when everything is so bleak and overwhelming. In the human world around us we are witnessing the rise of fascist right wing politics, the erosion of basic human rights as women fight for the right to govern their own bodies; a terrifying increase in domestic violence and violence against women in general; cruel draconian laws persecuting those seeking asylum rather than offering refuge, support and kindness; children in despair being held in detention... Absolutely, it is overwhelming, and at times I am terrified for the future that awaits my children, however, the energy of Ostara is about hope and renewal. Nature renews, light and dark are held in perfect balance and the world turns, the sun rises and falls and the world turns, the sap rises and the Earth warms and the wheel turns and turns and turns…. 🌏

We must not give up in despair, we must embrace the belief that we can help turn things around, that the small changes we make matter; with each person making an ethical, environmentally conscious choice we are supporting change moving with hope toward renewal. We need only look to the ever renewing cycle of nature to know that even in the bleakest, coldest of winters the seeds of spring lie in wait for the return of the sun when once again beauty carpets the Earth.💐

It is impossible to sit in nature and not be in awe at the resilience, beauty and flow of the planet upon which we live. As I write this in the garden a duck family is happily gathering food in the creek with their ducklings, the chooks are noisily discussing the best spot for a dust bath and worm feast, bees hum as they gather pollen in the blue billygoat w**d, a little garden spider has fluttered down on the breeze landing on my keyboard, one of the ducks has come to sit right by my feet, and more water birds are gathering food honking happily. The sounds of nature fill the air, bird song travels far and wide, there’s a wallaby pottering around in the paddock over the road, butterflies bumble past singing nonsense songs ( the last unicorn), the heady scent of jasmine floats in the warm air, and my beloved Luna has come to hang with me. 🌻🐾

Nature is my church and that which I worship, I adore the turns and cycles of the year and feel most in flow when outside quietly pottering around with the animals and critters and plants. I can palpably feel the the promise held within the Ostara new beginnings, the joyful letting go of the deadwood that has been holding me back and celebrating what is fertile and flourishing in my life. It is time to humbly give thanks for the bounty that Earth and life has provided. 💖

For all who worship nature, and those who may have lost their way in the quagmire of doom and despair, embrace this Ostara with a hopeful heart and weave a spell that kindness and compassion, awareness, strength and integrity will guide us toward a renewed, protected Earth. As the wheel turns so do we, toward a hopeful future.

Brightest Blessings

01/08/2019

Blessed Imbolc. At Imbolc, we emerge blinking into the light waiting for our vision to adapt, as what lies ahead of us is yet to be revealed. This welcome turn of the wheel floats between the Winter Solstice (Yule) and the Spring Equinox (Ostara), it’s a time of new beginnings as the spells whispered in the dark, cooler months begin to take shape, we move away from the examination of our shadow self as our hopes and plans for the future await us. Imbolc is time to activate new energy,it’s a time of germination, all that is potent is rising within us and reflected in the natural world as the Earth warms and slowly awakens. We have spent valuable time in inner reflection and now it’s time to take ownership of the wisdom gained, our intuition is strengthened and using it as a guide we take the leap forward into the next turn of the wheel in our life.

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Imbolc is the Goddess Brigid’s day, a Goddess of fire and inspiration, she was greatly beloved and honoured with lighting of candles upon altars and the honouring of feminine energies. It is a time of light, fire and hope, and a celebration of life-force. Today is a good day to explore the life-force within each of us: what propels us through life, from what do we derive joy, what sparks our desire, what does your own unique life-force propel you toward? For me, today is quiet and beautiful, I sit here with the sound of my animals snoring, with a fire at my back keeping me warm and a sense of hope and positivity about the future germinating within my heart. I await with anticipation and a hopeful heart for positive change, for new beginnings to bring new purpose and new energy.

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Here is a lovely yet simple family Imbolc ritual: with the lights out, anoint a family candle, giving thanks to Mother Earth, and from that one flame each light a candle of your own speaking your hopes aloud to each other thus working your personal spell into to the flame imbuing your candle with this wish.
For those who may be alone, simply light a candle for yourself and affirm all that is positive and potent within you. These simple everyday magic rituals, bring the sacred to the ordinary connecting us to our own personal power, our life force.

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As each candle is lit, light fills the room and we are reminded how our own unique light helps bring greater light to others, to help guide others on their own pathway. We each honour and respect each individual’s wish/spell as unique and sacred, as a symbol of diversity and how all the varied pathways, beliefs, and choices all contribute to the light of the whole, how inclusivity is at the heart of kindness.

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At Imbolc, I embrace this change and the bringing of the light, I also honour and acknowledge the wisdom gathered in exploring the darkness - shedding more light into my own psyche allows more room for the light of understanding to filter further within, to gain more wisdom and use this as a torch to find my way out of darkness into light. I will always love and honour the darker aspects of life and of self, I am endlessly curious about the shadow and our desire to turn away from its well earned wisdom, but today, on this glorious Imbolc, the light is where I play. Balance is vital, and as we hover on the brink of change before the Earth bursts forth with her flowers and full Ostara expression of fecund beauty, I honour the precipice and await with a hopeful heart for change to come.

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Brightest Blessings on this beautiful Imbolc, may your new beginnings bring you joy, a renewal of hope and the courage to shine your wonderful unique light into the world.

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Fire and Earth Ceremonies