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Preface

Circles of stones, haunting, healing, powerful … from the ancient circles, the Ring of Brogar in the Orkneys, the Rollright Stones, Stonehenge … to the dozens, perhaps hundreds of circles in Scandinavia and the northern isles …

Circles of smooth stones on a table top … dream images of stones in a circle … primordial places of devotion, the sacred grotto … attending the Goddess. For modern woman, the circle of stones as the place of centered stillness … listening to what is within, her work of individuation as her woman’s ego separates from the values around her and finds a ground, through its roots in the Archetypal Feminine, in the sacred Self within.

This writing rests on the image of a circle of stones. Not contiguous, the spaces in between trust the feeling and intuition of the reader to bridge the gaps. The themes—not linear, but circular, like the feminine process of consciousness in either man or woman come round again and again, impressing meaning through nuance, soft change of colouration, shift of light and shadow, repeating, chorus-like, perhaps comfortingly, lulling, soothing, deepening the imprint through subtle change of cadence, rubato.

The underlying theme … of woman’s birth from woman … identification with the Feminine … separation, as the animus, her masculine side, exerts its pull … her eventual return to feminine ground … to come to her own unique consciousness of the Archetypal Feminine … to let the strong, wise, and deep Feminine manifest in her life … now, not in unconscious identification, but through her own individual, subjective being and efforts.

This is not meant as a primer to instruct in the feminine individuation process, but an intimate testament for a woman to hold in her hand as she finds her own way how, into, and through.

How might your life have been different if there had been a place for you, a place for you to go to be with your mother, with your sisters and the aunts, with your grandmothers, and the great- and great-great-grandmothers, a place of women to go, to be, to return to, as woman?

How might your life be different?