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

When I announced in 2018 that I would no longer teach my courses, you inundated me with emails to please, please, please keep offering The Lotus and The Lily.

And I promised I would always offer this intensive. Because it's so powerful to take the time to look back at what really happened in the year drawing to a close.

And then, as we approach Solstice, turn our eyes to the future and create a mystical mandala infused with our commitment to live in service, love, and joy in the year to come.

Without fail, a year later, we are stunned by how the mandala we made with our hands, the mandala we thought we understood, has been singing a song all her own, delivering insights, surprises, and synchronicities throughout the year, guiding us gently but firmly into an expansive version of who we’re here to be.

But how does it work?

I’ve now made 11 mandalas. But I'm still learning how magical they are.

In the first few years, I tried to control or predict or at least declare what I wanted to happen in the coming year by drawing and naming my requests on the periphery of the mandala.

But when that year ended, and I stepped into the looking back process that is essential to The Lotus and the Lily, I was always surprised—happily surprised—by what really came to pass. And it was always so much bigger and better than anything I thought I wanted.

Even so, I confess, it wasn’t till 2015 that I finally stopped putting anything I wanted on my mandala.

That was the year “Beloved Vibration of Sophia!” arrived and with Her arrival, my entire world upended itself. As the linear constrictions of patriarchy receded, it no longer made any sense to set goals and work to achieve them.

I had become aware of my true nature—your true nature. Despite what religion wants us to believe, we are not flawed human creatures striving to earn some kind of divine redemption; we are living vessels of the Sacred Feminine.

We were not tossed out of the Garden of Eden. We ARE the Garden of Eden.

Since Sophia’s arrival, my mandalas got simpler and simpler. And yet, more and more magic happened. I trusted this process completely, but at the same time, I have to say, I didn’t really understand it.

Until this year.

I got my first big taste of just how magical the mandala is as I finished making my 2021 mandala on January 1.

Since 2018, I’ve made mandalas on inexpensive 12 x 12 stretched canvases. I bought a set of colored paint pens that first year, but found that I just liked tracing a circle in gold paint and drawing a simple image in the center, and writing the name of the year—all in gold paint. That’s it.

And, I must say, the last 4 simple gold circle mandalas have been magical. WILDLY magical.

On January 1 of this year, I made my usual gold circle, traced my hand in the middle as my yes to being called to be a “mystic witch,” and named the mandala The Return of the Witches.

At the time I didn’t know what that meant, but that’s what I heard at the center of a finger labyrinth walk to hear a whisper of the year to come so that’s what I called 2021. If you’ve been reading these Notes from the Field you know that that name turned out to be the wildest and most magnificent event I’d ever created.

After I finished making my 2021 mandala, I placed it next to the previous three 12 x 12 canvases with their simple gold circles. And for some reason, I said the names of those four years out loud.

Do you hear the story they’re trying to tell?

2018       Sophia’s Voice
2019       Original Prayer
2020       Make Love Visible
2021       The Return of the Witches

As I looked at those four mandalas in a row, and said their names aloud, and considered what actually happened in those four years, I burst out laughing.

The mandalas predicted it all. I was the last to know.

Here’s what happened:

2018—awakened to the joy of being a prayer artist
2019—re-defined prayer altogether to restore it to its original power
2020—received the seed of mystic witch, the antidote to patriarchy that makes suffering visible
2021—committed to serving the voices of 3,000 years of women condemned as witches

Say the mandalas aloud.
My Goddess, they’re a sentence!
They’re a song singing me into being.

Sophia’s Voice in Original Prayer Makes Love Visible for The Return of the Witches

But it was only this month, reading When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, that I saw HOW the mandalas work.

And it’s far far more magical than I realized.

It all happened because Emma Kupu Mitchell, who has been studying astrology for several years, asked if she could teach us a bit about the MC in our natal chart as a guide to help us look back at all that has happened these last few tumultuous years and get a taste of the year to come.

Emma always brings us something special for The Lotus and The Lily. Last year she taught us how to walk a finger labyrinth as a tool to look back at what really happened in 2020. And then, because we loved that experience so much, on the week we look forward, she led us on a second finger labyrinth walk to hear a whisper of 2021.

Because Emma is such a superb barometer of the next thing that wants to be included in Lotus and Lily, I asked her if she had anything special planned for this year.

She said, oh yes, the MC. What, you might ask, is the MC? Here’s how Emma described it for our landing page:

"The MC is an important aspect in your natal chart—the Mid Heaven. Your MC is like a personal antenna or communication channel between your individual life and the unfolding cosmic story. It is your innate wisdom and deep inner knowing. It holds the key to your sense of security and truth. There could be no more important time to learn about your MC and what it means, because each one of us will need to hold on to what we know is true throughout 2022 and beyond, as our world continues to unravel and rebuild around whole new ways of living in community with one another and with the Earth.

With that in the back of my mind, I began reading When We Cease to Understand the World two weeks ago and stumbled upon this description of Alexander Grothendieck’s “radical question to unearth the structures underlying all mathematical objects.”

Grothendieck was searching for the unification of all mathematics.

Now, I know next to nothing about math, aside from being interested in numerology. And yet, as I read, I could feel something—something—drawing me deeper and deeper into this great mathematician’s mind.

There was some kind of key to unlocking the vice grip of patriarchal waiting for me in this book. I didn’t know what it was but I kept reading.

Here are a few thrilling ideas I underlined:

“Grothendieck’s solutions seemed to reveal themselves of their own free will.”

Well, that seemed like my mandalas, they surely reveal themselves in their own time and of their own free will.

“All he cared about was the relationship between [mathematical objects.]

The word “relationship” grabbed me because it’s a wild mystical definition of prayer. When you pray you are in a relationship with prayer itself. Prayer is alive and in relationship with you and everyone who has ever prayed.

“Whoever writes x²x y² = 1 is describing a perfect circle. Every possible solution to this basic equation represents a circle drawn on a plane.”

I sat up. Wait! All mandalas are a circle drawn on a plane. And your natal chart is a circle drawn on a plane.

“…but if one considers not only real numbers and the Cartesian plane, but also the bizarre spaces of complex numbers, there appears a series of circles of various sizes that move as if they were living creatures.”

Eureka! With that sentence (never mind that I haven’t a clue about the Cartesian plane or complex numbers), I could SEE my mandala as a sphere vibrating in space around my natal chart which is the story of my soul vibrating in space. And beyond that, I could see all of us vibrating inside the sphere of the solar system, which is vibrating inside the sphere of the universes. And everything—everything—is vibrating inside Her.

Everything is a sphere.
Everything is alive and moving.
Everything is in relationship to everything else.

And what’s the cord of that relationship? What connects everything from your smallest prayer to vast universe?

Your MC, the mother cord running right through your natal chart!

I drew my little schemata of all these vibrating spheres connected by the MC and zoomed Emma. She listened and watched and when I looked up, her mouth was agape. Like me, she could barely talk.

I gave my little schemata a name, which will be the name of my 2022 mandala and the heartbeat of everything I create next year. I’ll share the name in The Lotus and The Lily intensive when we get to the part about making our 2022 mandalas.

And yes, if you're wondering, this 5th mandala is the next phrase in the sentence that is singing me into being. Talk about magic.

Here’s one more quote that I feel wraps it all up:

“Grothendieck did not impose his will on things, preferring to let them grow and develop by themselves. The results had an organic beauty, as though each idea had budded and borne fruit following its own vital impulse.”

• Thank you, Alexander Grothendieck.
• Thank you, Benjamin Labatut for writing this magical book. And Sophie Strand for recommending it.
• Thank you, Emma Kupu Mitchell for listening to the call of the MC.
• And thank you to my mandalas who truly are singing me into being.

I do hope you will join me and Emma and a global community in this year’s The Lotus and The Lily and discover just how magical your own mandala for 2022 will be.

Join The Lotus and the Lily

We gather on 5 Mondays at 7-9:15pm Eastern starting November 15.

For our UK/Europe members, there is a Watch Party on Thursdays at 7pm UK/8pm Europe.

There is also a special Hana I Ka Pono event on Saturday, Dec 4 at 2pm.

And a Mandala celebration on Sunday, January 9 at 2pm Eastern.

Be sure to look at all the rich new bonus videos and PDF Handbooks. It's all waiting for you on the resource page when you register.

The Lotus and The Lily 2021-2022

to hearing the song your soul is singing and sending out into the universe

Janet

PS: The Lotus and the Lily will NOT be available on demand. So do please register now even if you will be watching the recordings later.