We are Family…

If, like me, you’re of a certain age and enjoy a bit of disco music, I hope you’re singing the headline* right now. 

The next line of that song also links to the theme of this article – ‘I got all my sisters [and brothers]+ with me’. 

What do these 1970s disco references have to do with Cerridwen? What do they have to do with crystals, about which I’ve been tasked to write for this season’s newsletter? 

Both the concept and the reality of family can be challenging and indeed painful for many of us, for a myriad of reasons. If we are able, we seek the mutually loving and fruitful connections in other places. The Cerridwen Kin, or Crew, is one such place where this can be found. 

Of course, like any family or group, it does not promise perfection, nor constant bliss, nor complete agreement in all things. Just as much as it can be loving and joyful and tender, it can also be messy, it can be sore, it can be challenging, it can be angry, it can be sad, and everything in between, in a wonderful, wild, raging, spinning shape-shifting chase. What else would we expect from a Goddess to whom so many turn because of her incredible understanding of the need for both dark and light, and her personal experience of our human frailties, our mistakes, our anger, our sorrow, but at the heart of it all, our love?  

I’ve struggled with some family issues over the past couple of months. Some of that relates to an ongoing shadow of ‘not good enough’ – a shadow with which Cerridwen and I have wrestled ever since I started this training, and no doubt in lifetimes before that. In that most recent struggle, being part of Her Kin, Her Crew, has been an incredible comfort. She has also shown me a new crystal ally, and a new animal energy, to work with – being very clear that while in some ways these new energies are to help me personally, they are also to share with others. They are to be shared because – we are family. 

As is so often the case with Cerridwen, these first nudges came in the early hours of the morning, where it’s neither dark nor light, but somehow both. Some heartbreakingly beautiful dreams of orcas – those wonderful singing creatures of the deep, who physically embody the beauty of the deepest, blackest darkness sitting right alongside brilliant, shining, light white.  Who are expert in building community, in connecting, in communicating. Who have much to teach us if we listen not just to their song but to their spirit, their energy, their way of living and being.

 

An Orca altar stone painted for me by a friend and now occupying a prime spot on my Cerridwen Kin main altar. 

Orca social structures are complex and beautiful, interwoven groups that circle out and out and out to encompass whole communities, starting off with small ‘pods’ and moving up to larger ‘clans’. Together they make up an incredible network of nuclear and extended families of hundreds of orcas.  Their community values are the same ones that we strive for in the Cerridwen Kin – co-operation, coordination, communication, trust, acceptance. And – for me the most wonderful connection to our Cerridwen Kin – orca communities are mother-led, maternal groups. As females grow older in particular, there is increasing reliance on their wisdom and experience by both the younger females and males who are starting their own families as part of the community. 

I found the energy of orcas wonderful and comforting, and I could see the similarities with, and crucially for, our Cerridwen Kin. Our Sacred Listening partnerships, the small groups that work together to bring to life different offerings, our Spiral groups, our Sisters and Brothers, our Priests and Priestesses of Cerridwen, our Adoratrix, all circling together around the Dark Mother energy of Cerridwen who weaves community around us in the steam-spirals rising from Her cauldron.

Now – I am particularly fond of crystals. Something I really love about Cerridwen, in Her loving mother-energy, is that She guides me to find new crystals to work with, new magic to discover in these precious pieces of the earth. It should not have come as any surprise to me at all when, a few days after those beautiful orca-dreams, a new stone nudged its way into my consciousness, carrying with it that unmistakable, insistent, late-night-early-morning gut-instinct feel of Cerridwen. ‘Work with this. Heal with this. Share its energy.’

Orca agate is the stone she shared with me. I have seen pieces of this incredible crystal before and they were unaffordable. Of course, when I said that to Her in the small dark hours, She said, “and what of it? Have I ever let you down before?”

Sure enough, in short order the piece shown in the photographs became available from an ethical seller and at a particularly affordable price. I have been building community with it ever since; each time I work with it, it reveals something new from its depths, new clarity, new beauty. It has never looked the same to me twice, it shifts and changes like Cerridwen’s sacred creatures leaping across all of the elements in their magical chase. 

A close-up of this mysterious new companion. 

Like community, connection, communication, it blossoms with attention. It has flaws and cracks (and it interests me that on this stone, the flaws and cracks are in its light portion, while its dark areas are smooth and mysterious). I am reminded of how a core element of our learning journey with Cerridwen is about the value of the darkness as well as the light, and the need to be comfortable with both, in balance, rather than sinking too deeply into one or the other to the exclusion of everything else. 

The spiralling ‘flaw’ on the stone’s light side 

This gorgeous stone is now a very frequent companion. You can be fairly certain that if I am sacred listening, or on any kind of Cerridwen-related Zoom call, that the orca agate is nestling in my hand or in my lap. Like the beautiful creatures for which it is named (due of course to its beautiful combination of dark and light tones) it whispers to me of connection and community, of the ability to come together in balance despite being different or opposite to others.

Like the Cerridwen Kin, agates are found virtually everywhere, in almost every country of the world, each beautifully different but retaining that wonderful and unmistakable agate-ness at their core. Unique and connected. 

Footnotes: 

*For the younger reader: check out ‘We Are Family’ by Sister Sledge – sing, dance, and enjoy!

+I’ve added a word to the song, because we have brothers in the Cerridwen Crew too! 

Aileen initiated as a Priestess of Cerridwen in October 2022, by the shores of Lake Bala. She lives on the wild west coast of Argyll in Scotland. You can find her on Instagram at @crone_in_training