Michela Chiarelli - I am
This is the story of one of the last Priestesses of matrilineal descent from South Italy… where the ancient tradition of the Mysteries of the Goddess still secretly survives in the land, in the rivers, in the sea, in the forests, in the caves, and in the hearts of the few.
In this life I’ve been blessed to become a student of Michela Chiarelli, and I’ve been granted the permission to make her story, and that of her tradition, be known to the world outside the confines of Italy.
This is a first conversation and the information you will find below is rich and going a bit everywhere, so is life. So is she. There is a thread for you to see.
I want to start with a very simple question - Ah first let me make a premise, because you haven’t written books in English, my audience most likely doesn’t know who you are - so, who are you?
Michela Chiarelli (breaking into a long loud laugh): I am a very normal person, who does all the normal things other women do: I wash, I iron, I clean, I cook, I hoe the soil, I plant flowers. So I’m a normal person… with some characteristics given also by the environment I grew up in: my family has passed down for generations what can be called as “traditional medicine” or “folk medicine”. My nonna, who had 11 children and 19 grandchildren, had the chance to bump into me when I was 3 years old and she noticed I had some traits that were different from other children or other people she’d met up until then in her lineage. She started to teach me a few things, thus I am also that which I’ve learned.
Some academics define it as shamanism, others don’t recognise it as shamanism.
Nonetheless, I am a woman who knows I think all of it - because at my age I’ve met a whole set of people and women who were the custodians of herbal knowledge, physical rehabilitation or vibrational osteopathy knowledge, and all the rest including knowledge of the elements, so throughout the years I’ve lived a number of initiations that allow me to be in contact with that which is the “Ancient Tradition”.
Some academics in Cambridge have also spoken about me, possibly defining it as “Italian shamanism” but the Italian readers, the anthropologists, think that a real shamanism couldn’t have possibly developed in South Italy due to the presence of the church.
Therefore, who am I? A woman who certainly knows the ancient techniques of the energetic restoration of the body, mind, heart, and soul. And tries to realign, with those that are the strategies or techniques that’ve been transmitted to me, the wellbeing in the individual. So in all this, Michela is a bit artist, Michela is she who makes talismans, is she who cooks, is she who hoes for 6 hours a day when necessary; I am a mother, I also adopted 4 cats - now 3 because the oldest left us a few months ago - I’m also a wife, and hopefully a good friend.
Let’s say I’m a being in becoming, who tries to do her best in every moment of her existence.
This multidimensionality that you manifest, has been inspirational for me. Because you were the first woman I’ve met who showed me you can be and you can do many many things… even when they don’t make sense together. Moreover, although you are known, you are not famous and I used to have difficulty imagining how so much extraordinary-ness can live unnoticed by the world of men.
From this point of view, what I can say to simplify your understanding is that I was born in a condition of poverty - I say this in total respect of the people who are truly poor in this world, but being a little girl who grew up in the 80s in South Italy, I grew up with my nonna without running water or electricity or any imaginable comfort. At the time, for real, people were still moving by donkey. So when I was growing up, my plays consisted in the development of the sensibility.
In the first and second book that I wrote, it’s truly my life that I recount… I tell how I was raised and how much time I spent blindfolded, how I learned to discern the colors by simply feeling them, or the crystals or for that matter the world around me. Then when I came of age, I also went to school. It was normal for me to play in search of crystals buried in the earth, differentiate the amethyst from the rose quartz, and at the same time study geography, mathematics and all what the school demanded, and simultaneously develop the art. I mean I didn’t even have colour pencils, I was lucky to have one pencil and I learned to draw by observing the world. Walking long hours with my nonna in the woods, I learned to sit, to observe and to draw, because there wasn’t another way to stop that moment for us. There was only the drawing, we didn’t have cameras.
The talent was developed because, in my opinion, I lacked many things and so my time was filled with learning to gather herbs, then dry them, crush them and make ointments - instead of games, clothes and shoes, or cartoons because I had no electricity. That is how my nonna lived 43 years ago - I’m 46 at the time of this interview - when I started to live with her she was the only reference point of an entire population, thus everyday there was a super long line of people in front of her house: for anything such as a sprained ankle, colics, inguinal hernia, or women who had to give birth. I was raised in this way and I learned to live with her, all the while going to school and becoming passionate about biology, sciences and anatomy. Later, those scientific studies allowed me to understand what my nonna was doing, how it was possible to put in place a limb by developing the sensibility. She would make me “play” at finding a single hair under a pile of 59 sheets of paper - I got to that number when she was very old, meaning it was a gradual process. I learned to feel with my hands so precisely to trace exactly the way she had put her one hair under those sheets of paper. I mean 59 sheets of paper is a great personal record!!
I believe a woman can do many things if she manages to fathom and to grow in a certain way. I met women who lived isolated on top of a mountain or in the middle of the forest, and who’d welcome you with a ‘lupara’, a sawn off-shotgun, because they were used to having to do with people and at times animals too that invaded their territory trying to ravage their orchards or steal and kill the animals they’d raised with so much love.
I lived very special experiences, and many people question that I have been called - by others - the last Italian shaman of hereditary tradition. It’s true I carry a tradition of 7 generations, that are documented, of people who practiced folk medicine: herbalists, midwives, people who knew how to do many things. I am the last because I’ve been taken to the woods. The initiations have been, ‘I take a little 9 year old girl, I tie her, I blindfold her and I abandon her in the woods, until she finds the way to solve the hardships of the moment: by opening your mind and entering in total connection with Mother Nature, who will show you the way to get out of the woods, what you can nurture yourself with, and introduces you to the kingdoms/a people that live in other vibrations.’ - something that today is unthinkable of!
I swear to you, I joke about it because it’s normal to joke about it, after 7 days of fasting in the middle of nature, I assure you that the body purifies itself and the mind realigns with that which are your natural predispositions, the sense of smell refines, the hearing refines, etc. The senses including the sixth sense, the sense that could be defined as sensibility or intuition, open so much that for real you cross the threshold. Someone may say, it’s true chemically and physiologically you are so under stress that after so many days without any food that no doubt you gonna see fairies, yes it’s true. I can say that folly does get to you, especially as a child looking for places of safety but… to continue seeing the fairies after - I thank God - having a home, having all that you need, having studied at the university, having won scholarships, having run projects of incredible genetic and scientific research…
And the fairy is always there LOL
Eh yep. There’s many different types of fairies. I think in some videos of me teaching my students you can see some points of light flying around, and that is extraordinary. However, let me repeat this, all of this can say a lot about me and at the same time it can discredit me from multiple points of view. Again the Italian anthropologists say an Italian shamanism doesn’t exist, maybe folk medicine but… the church had prohibited any ancient practice because it deemed them bearers of disgrace and evil.
Generally speaking, the whole affair is complicated, if we then go on observing the population that I have lived in, the women I’ve met used to make rituals for the blessing of the fields before sowing the wheat. As you once participated, you know, they used to create a ‘pupo’, a doll-like figure with the leaves of the corn or the wheat ears, and they rubbed it through their hands whilst dancing and singing around the fields. Then before going to sow they donated bread puppet to the earth, in dialect this later became an Easter practice but in the South of Italy it’s called U Cuzzul - because it’s really the child, the rebirth of the earth before the sowing had all these rituals. At the same time, you discover that the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception was established - with all the love I feel for Mary, she is for me and for all humanity in the collective consciousness a great teacher. The human being had to create the dogma of the Immaculate Conception because it needed to explain to the population - who was still worshiping the ancient practices of the Goddess Cerere, of the Goddess Demetra (the name depends on the tradition from which you look at this) - why Jesus, son of God, was born from a normal woman… she couldn’t have been a normal woman, she too was born without sin, this way she could with time divert the attention from the Ancient Goddesses or the Ancient Goddess onto Mother Mary.
This fact is today contested by a person, who as well cites me in his articles, that the Madonna is not the Ancient Goddess.
Anyway, I do my best at all times. I did not forget anything of what I was taught. For example, today we see forms of shamanism that use the drum, well it’s not the drum that makes a shaman’s song, it’s the shaman who makes the song. The drum has a peculiar symbolism, but any instrument can be shamanic, even the interphone if rung with a specific awareness.
In regard to this let me share a story. When I began to take care of my land, I was so tired in the evening that I said to my garden, ‘See you tomorrow morning’ - you know I have this habit of saying hi to the place wherever I enter, whether my home or the woods. The following morning, I woke up at 4’30AM but was so tired I decided to stay a little longer in bed. You remember that my doorbell doesn’t work, it hasn’t worked for years after the electricians cut some cables we never bothered to fix but we bought a sort of replacement that worked with batteries and used radio waves to ring another device that was indoor, however it picked up weird sounds and sometimes we’d hear strange voices so basically I removed the batteries from both devices, outside and inside. That morning at 5AM the doorbell rang, like to say ‘Hey get up! There’s work to do’. That evening I said to my garden, ‘Please, I’m a bit tired, tomorrow morning I will get up a little bit later but do not worry.’ The next morning, at 5’30AM, so “a little later”, the doorbell rang, like ‘before the sun’s up you need to have the hoe in your hands’. One can say this happened just in my head but I swear, you met my husband, who you know being someone overly normal, he woke up and was like, ‘what in the world is this?’ ‘The doorbell,’ I say. At which point he asks me, ‘but didn’t we take out the batteries?’... ‘Eh’.
Somehow the Nature Beings, who take care of my garden alongside me, wanted me to go downstairs to work and so they rang the doorbell. I mean… when you come across these experiences, it’s like when you meet your Animal Totem in nature - I always say you can’t meet it in a room, some people who practice shamanism gather in a room, sit in a circle, play the drum and imagine to walk in the mountains and imagine the animal, meaning they project their consciousness…
For goodness sake, the tigers, lions, eagles are overly exploited as Totems nowadays lol there is never someone who gets the vision of an ant!
I always say this, ‘never an ant’. There is not one who says, ‘I met the ant’. Everyone has the eagle, the lion, the puma, the elephant, etc. Oh blessed sky, ok the subconscious certainly benefits from this, for every animal brings along some information at the level of the collective consciousness . But these informations result from the fact that maybe we have technically evolved from primitive man, but when we started to observe the world and we needed to feed ourselves, the animal was for us a source of divinity. It’s not by chance, if you take a look at the apotropaic Egyptian deities: half man half bird, half man half lion, half man half cat, half man half crocodile. Those are deities that make you understand how the observations of the living being inhabiting this plane was a way for us to get closer to the Divine. To worship the hippopotamus had a purpose obviously. What was the purpose? To pray that Mr. Hippopotamus wouldn’t come to flip your little boat full of wheat, while you’re out in the river. Likewise the Cobra Goddess, let’s think about it: why did the Egyptians worship the cobra? Because it was the only being that could protect the seeds and wheat fields, due to the fact that they ate rodents. So the Goddess Cobra, a great symbol of elevation, meant ‘I protect what I produce’. Renenutet became the Cobra Goddess, for one thing you’d pray that as you were collecting the wheat the cobra wouldn’t bite you and simultaneously you’d thank it for protecting your harvest.
Objectively speaking, the animal carries a rich symbolism so when one enters a room and goes on a quest to meet his Animal Guide with the help of the drum or mind-altering substances … I don’t know how to explain it, it’s really not the same thing as going on a quest in nature. Or, as it happened to me, being escorted by my nonna to a certain point, then taken in charge by a woman who didn’t speak to me one word for over 7 days of non-stop walking… she took me to a place that was between Abruzzo, Molise and the Marche - from Calabria! - she started a ritual fire, blind folded me and tied my hands and feet and left me to myself. I pooped on myself. I peed on myself. I got my period. I was blocked in the same position for days.
And you are the first person with whom I publicly share these details because only my closest girlfriends know everything about this experience.
I’ve been really put in a state where all my senses and all escape possibilities were removed from me. Any possibility to defend myself was gone. I was dehumanized, in my reactions. When I managed to release myself from rubbing the rope, I still carry the marks on my wrists, and I removed the blindfold… everything was different. Everything acquired a different light. Internally, at the human level, there was nothing left Tanya. Frost, cold. The beast without reasoning. I began to search around for some water to quench my thirst and to wash my intimate area, and to search for something to eat. For real I had to survive in the nothingness. It is there and then that the marvellous being that I define as my Animal Guide, and who saved my life, appeared. It transformed my existence. And I assure you it’s absolutely different from being able to imagine it. A bit like you when you first fed a raven, it’s true the ravens are a little more used to humans but still the experience that you made when you stretched out your hand towards that animal, you experienced a fusion and a sharing that went beyond the mere assumptions. In a conceptual shamanism, nowadays called core shamanism, the experiences are for sure useful - I don’t wanna contest them - but for sure very different. The western that we are, needs certain experiences, though if you take a modern westerner, you bring him to a forest and leave him there, he may report you for abuse. Understand? Hence you get him to do the experience either through psychotropic substances or through imagination while comfortably sitting on a soft cushion in a warm room listening to the drum.
Furthermore, I would like to approach another subject with you: priesthood. I’ve asked this question before to someone else, but I’d love to bring to your attention the fact that nowadays there’s a boom (a trend, really) of priestesses - the majority of which are self proclaimed, and online. I have a very “severe” eye regarding this because to me it’s not at all something to take lightly, or just because I have an interest and am sensible enough to channel that I can say I’m a Priestess. I want your view on this because, well, your family has passed down the Priesthood from many many generations, you are one by bloodline not just by choice.
This is a very important thing to say. Fundamentally, we need to make a discernment: nowadays some courses are being sold to allow you to become a priestess of some sort. But generally speaking, Priesthood is service. It’s to be in service to the population of the place where you live or of the whole world. Truth be told, even though I’m not very “social” and I live quite isolated, the entire world passed through my house: from Miami to Madrid. Somehow some people are attracted to my figure/role.
Specifically, Priesthood carries a secret… I mean, it’s not really a secret, try to understand it with me…
Like a mystery…?
Yes, mystery. A technique is passed to you, that could be for example the ‘Blessing of the Womb’. The Blessing of the Womb, according to the Ancient Tradition I’ve lived, is passed on by women who have already had children and that know a series of things. Simultaneously, in the moment that you receive the Priesthood, so the technique of the Blessing of the Womb or the Blessing of the Menstrual Blood, you become of service to the social group. Thus, the moment there will be the first Blessing of the Womb to be done to a woman of the group you will be the one pouring the water for the initial purification. The moment you receive the Priesthood, you practice it but … it’s not a practice that you can buy, or pay, or quantify in money. It doesn’t exist that a person receives money for such a sacred gesture, do you understand?
In fact, I remember when you passed the ‘signatura’ to a small group of students a few years back. You told us it’s not something we can get paid for.
Yes exactly and that is a Priesthood. Nowadays the ‘signatura’ is almost entirely catholicized, meaning that the initial technique is the same but the practice itself, the prayer became catholic.
The ‘signatura’ that you passed to us is with the ‘filo’, the yarn.
The power of the yarn is what gave to the woman and the human being, an extraordinary evolutionary power. Consider this, we need to go back to the beginning of time to understand this thing, we got to a point where we were observing nature and understood that to be able to eat we had to kill. To cover ourselves we had to kill too because we had to get the animal’s skin. The ability to create yarn without having to kill, has greatly elevated the vibration of the human being. The sheep produces a lot of yarn so it needs to be mowed in Summer. So you learned to make a wool thread, you freed yourself from the constraint of survival through the death of another animal, creature.
The yarn became the first manifestation of the evolution of being. The woman learned to weave, and some techniques of seership or clairvoyance have been tied to the ability to twist the yarn, to make the thread, and to pass the thread on the spinning wheel. It’s not by chance that the Wheel of Time is manifested as an immense spinning wheel, where the Deities that know the power of weaving go on to unite at the level of the collective consciousness, of deep meaning and convey information. Again not by chance, there are stories of Athena, Aracne, and whose was the most beautiful web… the myths tell us how the human being learned to weave. We learned from the creatures around us, certainly by taking the wool. The wool contains lanolin. Lanolin has a great healing power, the warmed sheep’s skin put in a certain way on the chest in contact with our skin takes away bronchitis, pneumonia etc. It’s true we have antibiotics nowadays, thank God, but antibiotics also come a long way throughout history. The Ancient Egyptians considered stale bread an antibiotic, because mold had those characteristics until in the 1800 there were some variations and some scholars learned to synthesize to remove toxic spores.
History tells us of individuals who tried to free themselves from the sacrificial offerings. I saw in Sicily, in the Agrigento area, in the Temple of Jupiter a panel which still shows stains of blood: 450 ox were sacrificed to Jupiter every day. One may wonder, what did they do with all those animals killed? Something that is reported in history books, the animals killed for sacrificial purposes were then given to feed the population. The blood to the Gods, then the meat cleansed of the blood went to the people. The Priest or Priestess in charge of the killing ritual, through prayers and gifts gave thanks to the Gods, and gave meaning to its deed. The cleansed meat was given to the people, so you were in a way the medium thanks to which the population was fed. There have been moments and kingdoms when at the social level nothing lacked, everyone’s mouths were fed, everyone had the possibility to live with dignity, thanks to the ritualistic part.
If we go to see how many Priestesses there are nowadays, from one point of view I am grateful because it means that the modern woman is looking for a way to evolve, to transform, to take back the contact with that which is being woman, being a feminine-being. So there are a series of things I am grateful for. Objectively there’s an attempt to return to the old traditions, which unfortunately I consider trivial/poor because you cannot in any way think of yourself as a Priestess after a course of 6 months or a year and a half. There are also those who self-proclaim themselves a Priestess, but it’s very different from a tradition that is passed on. In the most natural way you are being passed a technique, you are given a system of healing, a method so that you can be of help.
For example, yesterday was Ostara or Ēostre’s day, we called her in a different way because it was the return of Flora, the return of the Ancient Goddess, the liberation of Persephone from hell and so as soon as she put her foot on earth all flourished again. So we have this peculiar symbolism, what I’ve got to see were 10s and 10s of altars created from people in virtue of this. The same people who then speak bad about others, write awful reviews, feel in power to be able to express a judgment on someone else’s work - and here I want to speak of myself because I’ve been attacked by Priests and Priestesses, and a dear friend told me it may well be because I always said ‘I learned from____, I had my nonna, etc...’ but perhaps had I just spoke of witchcraft out of thin air like many, I wouldn’t be so badly spoken of.
Of course, or maybe if only you’d just said you got your knowledge by channeling some unknown spirits…
I remember… At the time you weren’t part of the great group, but at the time I remember that I was told that an illness would come and spread all over the world and for which there wouldn’t be a cure. And I was requested to pass the ‘signature’ so that the people would be able to ‘segnarsi’, that is a very very very sacred ritual gesture, so that they would have a way to remove off themself these vibrations - because yes there are “disease-entities”, just like there are “disease-vibrations”. In the past, I don’t know if you’ve ever observed a Buddhist temple there’s rows of prayers that are scrolled… those are to purify oneself. The sound they produce is to purify oneself. We didn’t have big bells because we were simple people, poor people, so we beat the drums or we beat the wooden sticks against the barrels used to collect rainwater. There were a series of rituals but the sound, the singing itself became later a way to elevate our vibrations, and get rid of low manifestations.
The famous tarantella, in the South of Italy, do you know about it?... So, the people in the South had to harvest the wheat and when the weather was so hot and the people worked long hours, biologically the body emptied itself of all the electrolytes. Emptied of its nutritional properties, the body went into a sort of physical felling. This physical felling was interpreted in the following way: back then there was a type of spider whose bite caused similar symptoms, so the people believed that if after having worked in the fields they felt tired, sluggish and, what we call today, depressed … The ‘tarantolati’ were called. Who were they? Simply put, musicians. At which point a dance was started, with a tail of colorful straps. Fundamentally, they would cover with a white sheet the body of the ill person lying on the floor and on top they’d put those colorful straps. The moment the black strap was placed on the body, the person would start having jerky movements - yes sometimes it was fictitious, but sometimes it was real answers to the rhythm of the music played. The people who played the music for that situation, hence were the healers, would play for days until they brought the ill one to get up and dance. No matter how tired he felt he had to dance for days, after which the ‘illness of the tarantola’ would’ve passed. Now, since I’m curious like a monkey, and I’ve seen these women… In certain times in Puglia there still are such women ‘the tarantolate’ who can enter places like the church and for real move in ways that make your skin crawl, like there’s an animal attitude to them. So, curious as I am, I went on to study the hormones, the neural tube, the brain stem and I really understood how in the same way as one goes for a jog producing endorphins, dance created the same effect. Endorphins realign the hypothalamus-tyroid-gonads axis thus if you moved a little more you’d be in a position of being free from those symptoms. So the ancient ceremony of the ‘tarantolata’ became a healing method, obviously physiologically and biologically explained by the proper production of endorphins in the body. The intense heat paired with intense physical activity puts the body in the condition of interrupting its normal functions due to loss of all its electrolytes. Then through dance and movement the body would begin to produce endorphins, which are natural substances that our body uses to heal and automatically the situation resolved itself.
Generally I am grateful for the movement toward the return of the Ancient Goddess, on the other hand I’m a little worried about the little concrete teachings that have been passed on. You meet your animal in nature and you must survive the encounter. Only then it will become your Animal Totem. It is not possible to find the animal in a room by simply imagining the encounter. At a symbolic level no one ever encounters an ant because an ant works all day, works for others, at the end of the season the majority of ants die, but nevermind because they’ve accumulated enough food so that the colony can survive and the queen can lay eggs.
Some time ago I was invited to Citizen in Milan to do an evening, I proposed an evening of “Shamanic Harp” and they immediately told me off saying the harp is not a shamanic instrument, well of course it’s not, but I could rhythmically beat on the table and that would do because it’s the shaman who makes an instrument a “shamanic” one. The thing is that most people have pre-concepts regarding shamanism, what it is, and especially how it looks. The man who wanted to organize this asked me to make an evening of travel into the worlds above and below in search of the animal and see if my animal really appears. I said no problem but come to my studio and be my guests, allow me to take you on a real walk in the woods… but not equipped with deodorants, nice shoes, insect repellent, sunscreen, hat etc. come travel with me the way I travel, come with a bottle of water and a blanket. Come with me into the woods. Not the trail. The forest is not a beaten path ready for you to have the experience. Let’s have the experience of the forest, let’s survive the encounter with Mother Nature.
Goodness! I was freaking scared the first time I slept by myself in the woods in a tent!
I’m telling you Tanya, I had so many requests to take people to experience the woods… like this other wonderful man, to whom I said ok let’s do it… He then sent me an endless list of things to bring. Even cream for feet, but I mean why the fuck do you even go in the woods if you cover yourself so much with deodorants, creams, insect-repellents? You basically get there half poisoned.
Hold on, I have another method against the mosquitos! The last time I went to travel alone on the Sibillini Mountains I didn’t wash myself for a week and it was summer so after day 1 I was so sweaty and smelly no insect came close to me LOL
I know, I’ve been in awful situations as I told you before… I was literally like an animal, so much so none bothered me. So much so that when that female bear found me and got up on her feet, I was in such a state, so not human, that for real had she tried to come close to me I would’ve bit her. Understand? Because at that moment I encountered a being that instinctively got in a defensive position, and saw me completely unwilling to attack her or hurt her, thus she got back on all fours and started to walk. She pulled down the honeycombs from the trees so that I could eat some honey; she peeled barks to make me eat what she ate; she dug in the earth to feed me. When this being found me under the storm, the only thing I hoped for in that moment was it would kill me. Finally someone eats me and this story ends. Instead, it took me by the collar of my jeans jacket and pulled me a long while before hiding me under a big rock, to protect me from the rain. She took care of me in an extraordinary way. Now, I’ve had an unbelievable experience, I’ve stayed with her a long while and I cannot in any way think that to imagine encountering a bear is like meeting one in real life. Moreover, the moment the male bear arrived she pushed me away, she became violent. At the time I had no clue about this race - really I would’ve preferred an ant - but I later discovered that when the male wants to mate and notices the female has cubs, he will kill those cubs first. She wanted to protect me and so she pushed me away so violently so that I would leave. Again I felt abandoned and again I was without food or water. I was so used to being with her and sinking my hands in her fur… that it hurt so deeply when she pushed me away. Objectively speaking, I was a young girl and I was sad that even she sent me away, but at the same time she gave me the responsibility of my existence. I became even more aware of the fact that I am the sole person who can take care of myself. I felt the survival instinct run through my veins when, right after being pushed away, I found myself at the edge of a cliff. And I swear I told myself, I am going to jump and put an end to all this. My mind was telling my body to jump, meanwhile my body was descending the stoney ground like a mad woman. I used this survival instinct to go down and get to a place where there were a group of mountain huts used by the cowherds. In the middle of those four huts, there was a fire lit and I found the woman who had left me in the woods without saying a word to me. I insulted her shouting everything that came to my mind, imagine … I was a teenager. This woman opened her mouth to show me her tongue was chopped off. She was mute.
Another time, when I was in Scotland to celebrate a union, I was pregnant with my second child. I was going through a difficult time with the publisher at the time and I decided to go in the woods to be by myself, because every time I need support I go to Mother Nature. So off I went to the Scottish forest. Scotland is amazing! Their weather changes from moment to moment, when I got there it was kinda cold, I sat on a log and wept. I prayed for information and then I entered my inner world, but was brought back to this reality by some noise. When I opened my eyes, not only had it snowed but also I found myself surrounded by 9 wolves. It was such a beautiful experience! In these sorts of situations my first reaction is not fear but immense wonder. One of the wolves came close to me and smelled my belly, then snapped his jaw and the whole group left. I was not in danger, I’m more afraid to go to Porta Palazzo. Those animals… have instincts, they could feel I was in awe. When I got back to the hotel, the concierge worryingly told it’s very dangerous to walk around because there’s wolves, so I told him I’d met them and he replied I should call my child Ian which means ‘gift from heaven’. The most astonishing part of this story is when Ian was 3 and a half years old, he asked me if I remembered the black wolf without one eye. I have never spoken about it. He had the awareness of the leader of the group that came close to me, it was indeed a black wolf with a wounded eye.
Circling back to the modern Priestesses, I hope they have enough awareness and a good heart, but the ease with which they call themselves shamans and priestesses is a little shocking. However I realise that it’s “better than nothing”.
Ok so, how does one become a Priestess today?
Typically there’s courses where one teaches and transmits things such as the elements, how to open and close a circle. Now, I don’t know how priesthoods are passed in modern times. I don’t even know if it gets passed. It’s not clear to me the dynamic that’s used. Some follow the paths and courses of famous women, who use this knowledge to make business. The more students you have the greater the business.
With me it’s very different. It’s most likely that a student of mine helps me hoe the land, learns to gather the herbs and to dry them, learns to make medicine…
Or clean your home ;)
Yes, to help me in my daily life. I had the fortune to have great students, women ready to really exchange the time. I teach you but I teach you while I cook, while I iron, while I clean. A few were even admitted to participate in specific ceremonies of energetic realignment, with the permission of the people for whom they were hosted. Generally, how does it work today? I don’t know. Today, they may sell you a course and give you an eagle feather at the end, then they sell you the drum, then they sell you the peyote and ayahuasca… and you think you are doing shamanism, when in reality in the ancient civilizations and tribes, only the shaman can do the travel. Only the shaman can get the directions, the wise of the tribe plays that role.
It’s crazy! It is in fact only recently that I learned that ordinary people shouldn’t be taking the ayahuasca, if they have a problem they should go to the shaman and then the shaman would take the medicine, travel and report the messages to the person. Ordinary people are not equipped nor trained to open such doors of perception.
Of course, the Ayahuasca is a very sacred plant. We had the rye, ‘segale cornuta’, which developed a mold and those who came in contact with it had blunders. Or like the stimulation with the Delphic tripod, a sort of stool onto which the pythoness sat, coals were lit and wet with some substances that allowed the heat to rise and with the stimulation of the vagina - which by the way was burned - these women received visions. How can all this be simplified? I don’t know but the only one who can travel, who must, is the shaman.
Nowadays we have hypno-regressions, and constellations… we do a lot of things we have absolutely no idea of, and no idea of the real effects of. Just like those who offer akashic records’ readings. The Akasha, conceptually, is the archive of all the life that happened on this plane and in other worlds. And it’s an immense archive. It is impossible to open it for one individual only, it’s truly impossible. What can happen is that the person with its intuition and logic can get to give you a reading of your subconscious. And sometimes it channels his own subconscious. When I wrote articles about this to explain, I found my inbox full of complaints and criticism from all those who do constellations and read the akashic records. Basically I was ruining their marketing. Regarding the constellations, since the time this started maybe 10 years ago, I received over 11 people who remained hooked on the people they interpreted and developed the same illness. I’m talking about very serious illnesses. The guide of the family constellations, a very famous man in Italy, did not understand that he didn’t close in the right way the channeling or the circle or the constellation. He blamed the participant: this is your karma, you deal with it. Folly! To me this is folly because if you do these things, you must of course know to open the door but then you must know how to close it too. You cannot leave a person who manifests multiple sclerosis, who manifests ALS, and tell them it’s your karma! When it was you who led this rascal to interpret the role of the sick person within a family. For those who don’t know, in the constellations you get picked to play a role based on likeness or symbolism but there are people who were left hooked to those roles! People who manifested incurable illnesses. I find this absurd. I’m probably the only voice out of the chorus because everyone seems to be adoring these kinds of practices, when in reality they are very dangerous. Because they are a rewrite of the ancient shamanic circles in which, not the people, but the shaman/the leader/the elderly entered in different roles and manifested what was right or not to do. It was the shaman who knew how to open and how to close. Now anyone who participates in the constellations becomes an actor in this world, it’s very insane, it doesn’t do good. Nonetheless I realise that it simplifies life, it makes you feel on a shamanic path so you feel more evolved, you feel in the yoga, you feel in union, you know you are doing something, you fill your weekend - cuz everyone does these things on weekends. You basically take home the feeling of “feeling like a shaman”, then you take your drum and according to you you are practicing shamanism. We know very well a great deal of truly disturbed people who sell themselves as shamans.
Therefore, to go back to your question: who are you? Who am I. Boh. Maybe someone cautious. A person who would be mindful, in the face of certain requests that I get from individuals with psychiatric problems like ‘I need to make a shamanic session because if I do it they will remove from me this that and that’. I say, ‘before doing any shamanic practice, which I openly don’t recommend, you need to see a doctor.’ The troubles that one may experience after a session done by an incompetent are absolutely dangerous. Hence it’s something to be done cautiously.
So in the year I wrote books to let know that some things were not lost, like for example the opening of the formula is crescente-piena-calante-nera (literally the 4 phases of the moon) and another author and researcher, taking from the Sardinian tradition, noticed that the old woman that was making a ‘signatura’ was tracing “C”s. Well it wasn’t the C letter, it was the moons. Besides myself and him, the rest use catholic formulas of Saint Benedict and the tracing of the cross to do the ‘signatura’. For sure it’s not the ancient ‘signature’.
One of the books that you wrote and that I finished reading recently, called Il Risveglio del Sacro Femminile Creatore, The Awakening of the Sacred Feminine Creator… is packed with notions on biology, the DNA, scientific researches, and healing paths. Why? I mean, ok so let’s start with what is the Sacred Feminine? And why is this book so tangible, substantial, practical? Everything I have read thus far on the Sacred Feminine or the Divine Feminine, is a bunch of words which I don’t feel anchored in much at all.
Yes, they’re more conceptual.
Ok so we started in a world where there were books such as “Le brave ragazze non fanno carriera” (original title, Good girls don’t get the corner office) because if you’re not masculine enough, you don’t dress in a masculine way, as a woman you are not taken much seriously, thus you need to masculinise yourself in everything you are and do. And the women who managed to succeed as entrepreneurs had to become “half men” in ways of doing and decision-making. Thus the world divided itself in two ways: the woman either succeeded to have a career through sexual favors, or she succeeded through a total masculinization of herself.
This book that I wrote with Arianna Romano, another extraordinary woman, gave us the opportunity to put together all the knowledge that is behind the being. Sacredness cannot be distinct from biology. I mean, the being biologically chooses the body, chooses the combination of the DNA, chooses the information that it needs, and it requires certain experiences through which to evolve itself. The Divine Sacred Feminine is not only a feminine/woman-only condition, it’s something that also a male can develop because it’s about ‘accoglienza’ (a word that in Italian means welcoming, receiving, hosting, and the way I perceive is “to bring within”), kindness, education/manners, openness and love in all and for all.
I mean, a Divine Feminine that awakens … we must hope that it awakens also in the man, because the woman has already in herself the characteristics, perhaps not all women, I don’t wanna say we’re all peace & love. Foremost I want to say we are talking about a Sacred Being. A Sacred Being that is born from Life. Life creates itself, generates itself, and manifests itself biologically. Before anything else it’s biology. If I had to give you to do some breathing exercises in which I get you to inhale thinking of the tailbone, and exhale thinking of the fountain on top of the head, after a while you would feel a flow of energy, which is given to the fact that the intelligence of selective focus lead you to bring your attention up and down. Now, there’s those who speak of chakras, those who speak of a kundalini activation, it’s biology. Selective focus, Logic, Mind, Body, Breath, Spirit, Thought, and Will collaborate to create this flow.
Consider, too, that I don’t really love the term “feminine” , as you read in the book, it was coined during the time of the Santo Uffizio dell’Inquisizione that generated the term “feminino” as “colei che contiene meno”, translated as she who contains less. We use this term in an inappropriate way today, kind of like when I’m reproached I’ve got something against the witches. No, I don't have something against witches, I have something in regard to the meaning that a woman takes upon herself by defining herself a witch: a wicked being who has honored nature and the ancient forms of this world, and found herself upon an ancient knowledge that used to place the instinct of the deer in the center of a man’s body, becoming the mask of the God Cernunno, who got eventually demonized.
All this is a practical/tangible path. It must be a practical/tangible path, because we cannot still be talking about the distinction between uomo and uoma like it is written in the first sacred books of the Hebrew religious tradition. They created uomo and uoma because they are deemed to be different, ok from there comes the symbol of humanity … let’s learn together what is Sacred Humanity. The Sacred Union of the Intention of Thoughts, let’s stop defining the sensible man a sissy or homosexual. The man is sensible and can cry and can be sweet and welcoming like a woman. The path is not just for women, rather it’s a path of Sacredness. And the pragmatism that stands in the description of a genome, is what was revealed to me. Then with strong enthusiasm, that is part of who I am, I wanted to share it with people. I wrote one so that the Ancient Tradition wouldn’t be forgotten, two so that people understood how to enter into a relationship with the cosmos, three to make understand that everything that science, in time, has demonstrated regarding the observer, the Bell’s theorem, the uncertainty principle … All this science is part of the Being, it is part of our nature. Some call it magic, some call it will power, some call it manifestation, and others call it law of attraction. So why can’t some terms come back to its origin? Why do we keep on dividing and separating? We are still in separation: religion on one side, science on the other. It’s not true! The human being in itself, the manifestation of the fact that in this moment I am biologically producing hormones to blink, producing hormones to salivate, a hormone that allows my heart to beat, simultaneously I am producing interchanges in my corpus callosum that allow thoughts and reasoning while I speak, at the same time I am feeling emotions … all that is not divisible. All this is Sacred. All this is human. And it’s marvelous.
A lot nowadays stays on the conceptual plane because people want things and results quickly. And you go home after a quick experience - after having imagined your Animal Guide, learned to open a circle, placing a crystal and a candle - you really have the feeling of being part of a different world, and to be a creative part, to be in the manifestation. A manifestation that is, however, misinterpreted as personal power, because there are people who believe they can change the course of events… well if only one of those would take on himself the responsibility to say, ‘let’s pray for the world’. If only one would use their manifesting powers to manifest peace. I mean every country in the world is at war, we now only talk about one war but there’s over 15 conflicts in the world that nobody talks about.
So, the reason why many are mostly conceptual… perhaps because they really haven’t found another way to experience a whole sacredness, or at least a more complete one. The world today is very conceptual. If you ask someone who they are, they tell you what they do.
Who am I? Who are we? Where are we going? Hopefully toward the better. Hopefully we understand how to better ourselves moment to moment, otherwise existence has no sense.
What is a genius? How do you define a genius?
Are we talking about this dimension? Or…?
Ok so the Arabic Djinns in reality - God please forgive me and Djinns please forgive me for what I’m about to say - are amenable forces. Forces that, if you respect specific rules and repeat certain surahs of the Quran for a number of times, you can capture, subjugate and make him do whatever you like. So poor creatures the Djinn of the Arabic Tradition, I hope they can free themselves as much as possible from this enslavement because they’re slaves of human will. Similarly in our mythological tradition, there is the Golem: creatures generate and created from being to perform one function only.
Anyway, that is Djinn.
What is a genius to me? A genius is a mix between intuition and logic. It’s like a force that makes you simultaneously use your cerebral characteristics, because the logic whether you like it or not is a cerebral characteristic, and your intuition, which is a kind of spark that goes to nurture the logic and creates genius. This is a characteristic that every living being with a thinking brain can develop.
If we go beyond and want to look at this from the Spiritual world, genius is like an opportunity. Let’s go to the collective consciousness, as it is extraordinary, there we find Einstein’s experience, Bell’s experience, etc. everything is there like opportunities. Say you human being need to understand how to make a fire, if you concentrate a moment - today it’s very trendy to say ‘downloading’ - you may download Einstein’s experience, then may link to Joule’s theorem that says friction causes electricity, which generates sparks… and you make a fire. Wow! Coincidentally we are all connected, the uncertainty principle proves that if you want to see the photon you see the photon, if you want to see the luminous particle you will see the luminous particle. The genius may be this spark that helps you to put everything together and in the end with the use of logic you understand certain things.
Do you want to speak about the world of faeries? The world of faeries is extraordinary, and I would talk about a muse rather than genius because muse belongs to that world albeit mythologically. The muse is she who contains the characteristics of music, art, poetry, all that creates beauty through the human being. The ‘inspiring muse’. From a mythological perspective, a genius is a muse that knows everything that she needs to know about music, as if she herself was music. She may bring it to you, she may come close to you, she may give you all her knowledge, and you can take that little bit that is yours, what you can comprehend in that moment.
This concept of “download” is interesting I find, like a blessing we are granted coming from above, rather perhaps closer to the truth which is of “uploading” information from below, from within really, to bring up to our minds.
Anyway, so you say genius is both an inner predisposition and an outer quality, meaning there are beings who can enter our field and inspire us in our creations. Some people say genius is within only, others say genius is not something we possess.
You need to comprehend that, you breathe by bringing air from the outside inside then throwing it out as carbon dioxide. The air is inside but also outside. It is part of you. Certainly there are people who are geniuses, because they have a sagacious/clever mind thus creates and generates extraordinary things in many different fields: be it in the arts, sciences or whatever. Certainly, genius is both things for me. To have a genius mind you need to have an adequate cerebral system, that allows you to think and not in the way many think they do because today there’s people who define themselves as philosophers and philosophies the things that Plato, Socrates etc. wrote. That is repetition, you are not the philosopher. You can study philosophy but to define yourself as one would mean you know how to think. That is not what happens the majority of time to the human being because the human being tends to choose the easiest pathway.
Perhaps when people say it’s within and all you need to do is “take it out”, they conceptualise what I define logic. Or what I define mnemonic capability or linking capability.
Possibly it’s a more attractive way to define what I define logic. If you have the ability to think and develop it, then sooner or later you will get a spark of genius and manage to adjust something others would throw away, for example.
Another example, your way of thinking is genius. To notice that in a book such as the aforementioned there is much more pragmatism, represents a new way of seeing the world. To some people it’s enough to speak about the Divine Feminine by thinking of a womb, of a maternity, by thinking of the woman… to me a Divine Feminine means for real a return to the respect, the love, the sharing, the non-violence, to the union also from the male side.
The genius, probably, observing what were your observations, comes from the inside? Yeees, but I call it logic; it comes from the outside? Yeees, I call it inspiration.
Michela’s website here.
