The Goddess Association in Australia (G.A.I.A.) is delighted to announce the first annual Community Open Day, leading in to the 2008 Australian Goddess Conference.

Men and women are invited to come and enjoy educational talks and inspiring musical offerings relating to Goddess, her history and spirituality. There will also be market stalls with an amazing array of Goddess related products available.

Additionally, a community ritual will be held in the evening that will delight your heart and deepen your connection to our community, to yourself, and to our sacred earth.

Date: Friday 10th October 2008.

Venue: Albert Waterways, Broadbeach

The day programme will run from 10am – 4pm: $10 entry.

The evening community ritual will run from 6pm – 9pm: $5 entry.

(Note: for three day conference participants, this open day entry fee is included in the ticket price)

The programme will be rich, varied and interesting, with acclaimed speakers and teachers presenting throughout the day. Please see below for a taste of who we will be privileged to hear:

Bilawara Lee

Bilawara whose name means Black Cockatoo, is a senior woman and Grandmother from the Larrakia Nation of Darwin Northern Territory. She is a Cross Cultural Awareness trainer, Conflict Resolution Mediator and Authorised Marriage Celebrant. Bilawara has over 57 year’s experience working, living and being part of a vibrant Aboriginal family and community. She is acknowledged and respected as a community communicator and teacher of the ancient wisdoms of Larrakia Aboriginal spirituality and healing.

Presentation

Bilawara will share with you words of wisdom on how to live your life with mind, body, spirit and soul. Through the information received from her Ancestral Spirits - Bilawara will pass on to you the knowledge that can help you in today’s rapidly changing times.

Lucy Cavendish

Lucy Cavendish is a woman living in Sydney, Australia, with her pixie-like daughter and the spirit of her beautiful dog… She works magic every single day of her life, embracing it as a creed for personal fulfilment and happiness, and as a belief system that sees us as part of nature, and thus gives us all the motivation to respect and revere and delight in our unique experience here on Planet Earth.

Lucy is the author of The Oracle Tarot, Magical Spell Cards and White Magic, all of which are published internationally by Hay House. Her most recent works include The Oracle of the Dragonfae, and As Above, So Below, a meditational CD… She created Witchcraft magazine way back in 1992, and edited it for five years,  is a feature writer for Spellcraft magazine, Spheres, and has appeared in anthologies like Disinformation's Pop Goes The Witch! She is a classic book witch and adores writing and reading and creating powerful, life-changing and enchanted workshop experiences.

Glenys Livingstone

Glenys has done the hard stuff in relationships – with partners and with children, knows what loss is, and what it is to be lost and shattered – how a woman can lose herself. She has known what it is to come back to wholeness, to re-story herself, when supplied with a good mirror – with better images and stories. After many eye-opening experiences in her life, she has been blessed – blissed! - for the last eight years to have lived in relationship with her beloved Taffy Seaborne whom she recognizes as a Son of the Mother, her Welsh Moon Prince. Glenys regards herself as a passionate feminist – as she has for over three decades, but one who has deepened in her understanding of the cosmic Beauty that she is. She has learned much in relationship with Taffy about how it is possible to integrate love of self, other and all-that-is in everyday action, and about  being both Gift and Receiver  at the same time. Glenys has completed post-graduate studies that included many and varied personal development pathways and application. She has facilitated many transformative group processes, been a radio presenter, and taught University courses as well as small groups.

Taffy Seaborne

Taffy (Robert) Seaborne is a Welshman who after "groping" his way through school and a 5 year engineering apprenticeship sailed the high seas before wisely emigrating to Australia in 1967 at the ripe old age of 23.

Taffy's life long learning made what was for him a radical change in direction during an eight year period (1990-98) of living and working with the Anangu traditional owners of Uluru. In his position as Manager of this World Heritage property Taffy participated in the successful re-nomination of Uluru as a World Heritage Area on the basis of its cultural values. In Taffy's own words - "on reflection, my time at Uluru turned out to be my desert pilgrimage, an experience that profoundly changed my mind".

It was Taffy's personal experience while deepening into the phenomenon of indigenous Australian sacred sites that provided the foundation and inspiration that led him to study Social Ecology at the University of Western Sydney (Hawkesbury) and into a relationship with his beloved Glenys Livingstone. “It was the way Glenys received me that enabled me to make some very difficult life changing decisions and to look deeper into the indigenous principle expressed in Pitjantjatjara language as Ngapartji-Ngapartji.” Together Taffy & Glenys now hold sacred space at their home in the Blue Mountains of NSW for celebrating the seasonal wheel of the year in the spirit of what they call “toGaianess”. Taffy has an on-line blog at http://pagaian.org/forum/viewforum.php?id=9

Presentation Title - Ngapartji-Ngapartji: the Magic of ToGaianess

Ngapartji-Ngapartji is an Australian Aboriginal expression that has commonly been translated as “taking turns at being given to”, but this is a very poor sense of it: it is more like not knowing when one is giving or receiving. It is a Reciprocity – an exchange or flow like the peaking of a breath, a communion. It is embedded in an indigenous knowing that what we do to other we do to self, and that each self has complete integrity. This is the “grease” – grace and ease – of relationship. ToGaianess is a togetherness that includes a deep awareness of who we really are - a clear seeing of each other as Gaian treasures, sacred entities … seeing the  gold in each other and thus – by this vision - continually drawing that forth. ToGaianess is the capacity to receive each other as Gift, and it is not separate from how we receive ourselves and all-that-is. Glenys and Taffy will speak of their understanding and experience of the magic of Ngapartji-Ngapartji in creating a ToGaianess.

Patricia Rose

Goddess spirituality is not a text-based tradition, except insofar as it reads the "book of nature". I, however, am strongly word-focused. As a child I found enjoyment and information in books. Today I seek writings which speak of Goddess, of earth and nature, of that which is sacred. I haunt bookshops and online booksellers, I devour catalogues and reading lists, endlessly searching for wisdom and inspiration.

Thus, it is not surprising that my journey to Goddess led me to books and thence to formal study. From a Bachelor of Divinity, to a Masters' degree on elderly women's spirituality, to a Doctorate in literature and Goddess spirituality, words have provided insights and tools for exploring and expressing my relationship to Goddess.

Today I live my commitment to Goddess at Wildwood, my sacred place, where I watch the platypuses, koalas and possums as each, in its unique way, lives out - wordlessly - the story of Goddess. Here I read and I write: about Goddess, for Goddess, with Goddess.

A Perfect Paradox: Goddess as Nature; Nature as Goddess

This presentation will explore the mystery and the magic of Goddess/Nature. Using words and images – intriguing, engaging and entertaining – it will move from theory to experience to ethic, in a fluid and integrated look at the dual concepts of Nature as the primary revelation of Goddess, and of Goddess as the unifying principle of Nature. What does it mean? How do we live in right relationships with Goddess/Nature? This session will suggest some possibilities for consideration.

Jane Hardwicke Collings 

Jane Hardwicke Collings is an independent midwife who has been attending homebirths for the past 24 years. She is herself a homebirth mother, grandmother and a teacher of the Women's Mysteries. She has written 2 books and today will present some information from her forth coming book "Birthing With The Goddess".

FRIDAY NIGHT COMMUNITY RITUAL

Glenys lives in the Blue Mountains, Australia – the land of her birth - where she and her partner Taffy Seaborne hold sacred space for the celebration of EarthGaia’s Seasonal Moments with a small open community. She has been facilitating Seasonal rituals according to her place on the Planet for two decades, and before that had a history of innovative practice in church liturgy. She understands the ritual celebrations of Earth’s holy-days as a method of deep at-onement with the Mother’s awesome Creativity – spinning one’s personal stories and the collective stories into Hers, entrusting one’s self to Her long track record of transformation. Glenys was taught ritual practice by Starhawk in 1980, and continued to be inspired by her, and also learned liturgy from the Jesuits at that time. The work of Dr. Jean Houston has been a major influence. Goddess/Gaian spirituality has been Glenys' path since 1979. She is the author of PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Her website is http://pagaian.org, where her book is live, and where there are articles, news and a forum.

Presentation Title – Celebrating EarthGaia’s Everyday Awesome Party of Transformation.

Everyday we participate in the sacred journey of Earth around Sun.  This is our everyday sacred site – our everyday pilgrimage, and has been so for all who have gone before us. All have made this annual journey. We may enter consciously into this real time and space, remembering who we really are and whence we come. We may allow Space for the desire that we may feel for and with Her, to be drawn forth: so that we may act more truly. The table is set, and burgeons with nourishment – Her party awaits! All that is required is the clearing of learned cataracts from our eyes, receiving Her everyday magic graciously. We may receive EarthGaia’s Presence and be the Present all at once. We will open to the deep truth of communion with self, other and all-that-is, and bring forth the Joy of this knowledge.