Friends, soul writers, mystics, and lovers of prayer,

In last Sunday’s Week 1 Notes from the Field for 2022, we began a 52-week-long walk to learn to listen to love. (If you want to hear Hyldemoer and me read it to you, click on the YouTube here.)

At the bottom of last Sunday’s Note, I mentioned that the first intensive for 2022 is Free Your Voice and said I would open it for registration to my whole subscriber today, January 9, but first I needed to invite the members of The Return of the Witches pilgrimage and The Lotus and the Lily.

Every January, I offer first dibbies to the members of The Lotus and the Lily as it is ending. But this year, I also needed to invite the members of The Return of the Witches pilgrimage last summer, because they gave birth to Free Your Voice.

Eighty-five of you were in the pilgrimage and might remember the moment Free Your Voice was born. But many of you found me after the pilgrimage ended or weren’t in the pilgrimage, so I want to tell you this wild miraculous story.

And invite you to hear the words of the young woman whose brave voice birthed the intensive.

The 13 gatherings for the 13 witches were all ceremonial space without any talking or chat. Week after week we stepped into the time and place where a woman was labeled a witch, and with the ears of our hearts listened as each woman told her story and asked us to bear witness and speak for her.

• We began on the first Saturday in June stepping back to 900 BCE to bear witness to the almost unbearable story of Queen Jezebel, the last polytheistic queen of Israel, who was thrown to wild dogs by religious fanatics. We met Queen Jezebel through the voice of Alison Charron who is herself a descendant of a witch murdered in Salem.If you wish to know who Jezebel really was and the world of tolerance and diversity she tried to create with her Hebrew husband, you might want to read Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible’s Harlot Queen by Lesley Hazleton.
• On the 2nd Saturday, we got to dance at Mary Magdalene and Yeshua’s sensuous wedding through the voice of Sophie Strand whose radical new take on The Magdalene will be published in 2023.
• The following week, we crossed the channel to witness Queen Boudica come perilously close to driving Imperial Rome off her island. And experience Boudica crying at the top of her lungs: Truth Against the World!
• As June ended, we traveled to France to meet Dame Guirade, a wise, holy, and generous Cathar. Thanks to her champion, Veronique Flayol, we prayed in Guirade’s native Occitan and were blessed to hear Guirade's final prayer to God.

After four intense pilgrim stops, we gathered to talk about our experiences. I hadn’t originally planned this, but Joan of Arc had awakened me in the night with instructions to host three conversations on the last Sunday of each month of the pilgrimage. It was clear that there was to be no agenda, no teaching, just an open forum to speak and listen. So I had no idea what would happen.

Little did I know that in that first conversation, the sacred thread of 2022 would make itself known.

Toward the end of our first conversation, a young woman and mother shared how Queen Jezebel’s story had awakened in her a deep previous lifetime memory of being strangled by a husband she loved, a husband who was caught up in the witch hunt frenzy.

That, by itself, would be stunning enough. But she went on to share the deep impact of that memory.

With tears, she said she realized she still holds that strangling feeling in this lifetime, only this time, she’s silencing herself. Even though she has a lovely life, wonderful children and a loving husband.

This beautiful woman articulated perfectly the witch wound. We all carry this self-silencing aftereffect of generations of being silenced. It’s epigenetic. It’s ancestral. It’s real.

As the young woman finished speaking, Cameron Altaras mentioned that her sister, Sharla Nafziger, is a classical singer and voice coach, and has developed a radically different teaching method that frees the natural voice. The old patriarchal teaching methods actually harm the voice.

As Cameron spoke, my whole body shook. That is always my intuition speaking loudly to me.

• it was clear I had to create a prayer intensive to Free Our Voices
• and Cameron and her sister were to co-teach it
• and Kahu Lahela had to bring us Hana I Ka Pono to literally remove the epigenetic residues of being silenced.

So, Cameron and Sharla and Lahela and I started working on Free Your Voice.

Free Your Voice opens on Tuesday January 25 at 7pm eastern and continues for 4 teaching sessions on Tuesdays. We also have a Saturday 2pm eastern gathering for Hana I Ka Pono with Kahu Lahela and a closing celebration of our newly freed voices on Saturday Feb 19 also at 2pm eastern.

Note: There will also be a UK/EU watch party for the four teaching sessions on Thursdays at 7p UK/8p EU.

All events are recorded and available on a password-protected resource page along with a host of bonus videos and PDF handbooks.

As I promised in last Sunday’s Note, I invited my fellow pilgrims first.

And something astonishing happened.

The young woman who birthed this event responded with an email that reduced me to tears. Her words reminded me of just how holy and healing these intensives are.

With permission, here is Aubrey’s note:

Dearest Janet,

My heart is so full of love right now. I am so grateful for that moment in June, for you, for Queen Jezebel, and since then I have shared the story with my husband. Actually lots of stories about my/our past lives together.

We have come a LOOOOOONG way since last summer and freeing my voice was a huge part of it.

I am standing in my sovereignty, taking leaps of faith, and in love with us again. To change the course of patterns, we celebrated our 20th anniversary with our kids and parents in October. It was magical, and in those moments, we forgave and re-birthed our new marriage.

Freeing my voice, helped my daughter to be open to freeing hers as well; she definitely has had witch past lives and has been silenced too. I learned that tone and the choice of words, coupled with intention and will can break patterns, protect against dark entities, clear space, and open the connection to our heart space.

So thank you sister for opening a sacred space for others to heal. I am forever grateful. Much aloha to you,

Aubrey

Today, it’s your turn to make the choice to Free Your Voice.

In this year in which we learn to listen to love, perhaps the first and most important way to love ourselves is to begin to speak our truth.

• Please watch the video Cameron and I made about Free Your Voice. You’ll be floored by Cameron’s personal experience of freeing her voice.
• Then scroll down and read about the four voices we are going to free: physical, truth, ancestral, and creative.
• And note the four prayers we'll learn.
• Check out Cameron and Sharla's bios.
• Enjoy this incredible teabag painting by Lori Sweet created years ago. It's called "The Vibration of Prayer." It's a perfect image of grace flowing through a voice freed by love.

Then, make the decision to join us and feel Queen Jezebel smiling.

Here's the link:

Free Your Voice

It's going to be a wild 2022.

It just is. And all our voices are going to be needed to speak truth into a world that doesn’t want to hear it.

But we are not afraid, right. As Joan of Arc taught us in the pilgrimage: Je n’ai pas peur. (I am not afraid. I was born for this.)

You were born for this, too. You were born to speak truth. And together, in sacred community, you can.

to freeing our voices and learning how to speak with the tone and truth of love 

Janet

PS: I am now reading these Notes from the Field on YouTube. It's great fun because I get to speak directly to you and show you whatever I'm talking about. Oh, and you get to meet Hyldemoer. I think she thinks it's her channel. (Maybe it is.)

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