Venice Awaits: Anchoring the Church of the Living Goddess

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Venice awakens the Living Goddess

VENUS RISING

Church of the Living Goddess

A Living Tarot Pilgrimage through Venice

Venice preserves, across its churches, paintings, civic monuments, waterways and ancient traditions, an extraordinary constellation of feminine archetypes.

Mary appears not only as Virgin, but as Queen, Mother and protector of the city.

Justice appears as a woman, elevated over the political life of the Republic.

Venus inhabits a city renowned for beauty, sensuality, art, perfume and desire.

The Sibyls carry the memory of an older female prophetic tradition into the Christian world.

The sacred vessel appears again and again — chalice, grail, perfume bottle, apothecary vessel, alchemical container.

And everywhere there is water. 

The lagoon. The tides. The canals. The sea.

Venice itself exists between worlds: neither entirely land nor sea, East nor West, sacred nor sensual. It is a threshold city. This is why we will approach Venice as a Living Tarot.

Rather than studying Tarot around a table, we will walk its archetypes through the city, finding each card reflected in actual places, histories, artworks and sacred traditions.

II · LA PAPESSA — MARY MAGDALENE

The hidden feminine lineage.

We follow the Magdalene through Venice as teacher, initiate and bearer of sacred knowledge — exploring the feminine spiritual authority that has so often survived beneath the surface of official history.

III · THE EMPRESS — MOTHER MARY

The Great Mother.

Throughout Venice we encounter the Madonna as Mother, Queen, protectress and celestial feminine presence. Here we explore maternity as the power to hold, nourish, protect and bring worlds into being.

VI · THE LOVERS — APHRODITE / VENUS

The mysteries of love, beauty and desire.

Venus Rising is an invitation to restore beauty to its sacred place. Aphrodite opens the mysteries of attraction, pleasure, sensuality, relationship, creative life-force and the intelligence of desire.

VIII . JUSTICE — VENICE

The sovereign feminine.

Venice herself gives us Justice: the female personification of law, balance and right order appearing within the imagery of the Republic.

Here the Goddess moves beyond Mother and Lover and becomes sovereign — asking not simply who holds power, but what power serves.

XIV · TEMPERANCE — THE GRAIL & SACRED SCENT

The alchemical vessel. Temperance pours from one vessel into another.

For us, she becomes the keeper of the Grail mysteries: perfume, anointing, sacred oils, healing waters and the ancient art of transformation through the vessel. The vessel becomes the body. What we pour into it matters.

XVII · THE STAR — THE MERMAID

The celestial woman of the waters. The Star stands between heaven and water, pouring her waters beneath the stars.

In Venice she becomes the Mermaid — the feminine being who belongs to two worlds. She carries the mysteries of the lagoon, healing waters, beauty, freedom and the meeting of the celestial and aquatic realms. The stars above are reflected in the waters below.

XVIII · THE MOON — THE SIBYL

The Oracle. The Sibyl sees by another light.

The Moon takes us into prophecy, intuition, dream, signs, altered perception and the mysterious intelligence that reveals itself when ordinary sight is no longer enough. This is Venice after dark: reflected moonlight, labyrinthine streets, water, silence and oracle.

XXI · THE WORLD — CHURCH OF THE LIVING GODDESS

The completion of the pilgrimage. At the end, the fragments are brought together.

Magdalene. Mary. Venus. Justice. The Grail. The Mermaid. The Sibyl.

Together they reveal a larger feminine cosmology - the Church of the Living Goddess. Its sanctuary is the world. Its holy water is the lagoon.

Its scriptures are carried in image, myth, body, beauty, scent and memory.

And its final altar is the woman herself.

Perhaps Venice is the perfect place for this work precisely because the Goddess survived in fragments — in Madonnas and mermaids, Sibyls and sovereign women, vessels and stars, paintings and perfumes, stone and water. Our pilgrimage gathers the fragments. This is the deeper meaning of The World.

What was separated becomes whole. What was hidden becomes visible. What was remembered as myth becomes something we can once again live.

The Church of the Living Goddess return to the earth when we bring the sacred feminine back together.

A MESSAGE FROM THE ALCHEMIST

THE ORDER OF THE ROSE A Return of the Venus Mysteries

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Reflections on Lionsgate

We are integrating the potent energies of the recent Lion’s Gate portal, after receiving its messages of power, sovereignty and heart-centred expansion. During the 8:8 weekend, I held a Lionsgate ceremony for a wider group online as well as a deeper dive into the significance of the Lion for my membership circle.

Many lion tribes from the stars came forward to share their messages and blessings, and we gained a deeper insight into the star Sirius, who is embodied as the Goddess Sothis - Mother of Star Knowledge and the Mystery Schools of Sirius. We learned more about what this year's Lionsgate brings us, as well as receiving a message from the Sphinx, the great Lion Guardian of Egypt. We were also connected to the Winged Lion of Venice and the Merlion of Singapore, as feline totems anchoring the Lionsgate light. The portal has now opened the next wave of light incoming for the earth, as the roar of the celestial lion continues to echo.

So... What did it awaken in you?

What can no longer be carried into the life that is waiting for you?

What will you ask the universe to bring into your life in a tangible way?

This year feels particularly significant because we are standing at the opening of a new cycle for the Earth — one that many spiritual traditions and prophecies have imagined as an age of awakening, illumination and greater consciousness.

Perhaps this is what the long years of purification have been preparing us for. We have been shown, individually and collectively, where our systems have failed us. We have witnessed what happens when power becomes disconnected from wisdom, when leadership becomes separated from the heart, and when human beings forget their relationship with one another, with the Earth and with the sacred.

The old patriarchal age is ending. And what comes next asks something very different of us. It asks us to understand power differently.

Not power over, but power within.

Not domination, but sovereignty.

Not endless striving, but conscious creation.

Not leadership removed from the sacred, but leadership arising from a profound understanding of our interconnection with all life.

Despite the pain and hardship still visible across the Earth, something extraordinary is also occurring. Humanity is being confronted with the consequences of its choices with increasing clarity. The veils are becoming thinner. What was once hidden is becoming visible. What was once tolerated is being questioned. Patterns that may have continued unquestioned for generations are suddenly becoming impossible to ignore.

And this is happening within our personal lives as well. Many people are finding themselves face to face with the very patterns they thought they had already healed. Relationships. Family karma. Money. Identity. Purpose. Power. Worth. Belonging. The same doors seem to appear again and again. But perhaps they are not the same doors. Perhaps we are meeting them from another level of consciousness.

In the Buddhist traditions, samsara describes the great cycle of repetition — the wheel of conditioned existence in which we continue to encounter the consequences of attachment, ignorance and karma. There are moments when a soul becomes ready to step outside a particular wheel. I believe we are living through one of those moments now. For many, this may be a lifetime of profound liberation: a breaking of karmic encumbrances, ancestral patterns and repeating cycles that may have shaped the soul's experience for far longer than the conscious mind can understand.

Liberation, however, does not always arrive looking like freedom. Sometimes it arrives as disruption. Something ends. Someone leaves. A structure collapses. An identity no longer fits. A path that once seemed certain disappears. In the middle of that experience, it can feel as though life is being taken away from us.

Yet sometimes the breaking is the liberation.

The chains do not always fall silently.

If you are undergoing struggles or challenges that seem never-ending, perhaps there is another question to ask beyond When will this be over?

Such as:

What is this experience asking me to see?

What pattern is revealing itself?

What am I finally ready to stop repeating?

What freedom is trying to emerge through this?

A shift in perspective can transform an ordeal into a soul gift — not because suffering should be romanticised, but because consciousness allows us to discover meaning, choice and possibility even within the most difficult passages of our lives. And this brings us to one of the greatest teachings of the Lion’s Gate.

We are none of us living merely ordinary mortal lives. There is another dimension to existence moving within and around the visible one. A greater Divine Life. We glimpse it through synchronicities, dreams, encounters, repeating symbols, sudden knowing, extraordinary timing and the mysterious patterns that weave themselves through our lives. Most of the time we see only the individual threads. Occasionally, the veil parts and we glimpse the tapestry.

Then something changes. The events of our lives no longer appear entirely random. The people we meet become part of the teaching. The places that call us become part of the map. The endings become thresholds. The delays become redirections. The questions themselves become initiations. We begin to perceive what mystics throughout history have tried to describe: that there is the life we think we are living, and there is the greater Life moving through us.

When we step beyond the veil of the purely personal story, we begin to see the Dance. And once the Dance is perceived, life becomes infinitely more mysterious. When you know yourself as Soul — when you begin to recognise the workings of your Higher Self — your relationship with existence changes.

You are no longer simply asking life: Why is this happening to me?

You begin asking: What is Life showing me?

And eventually, perhaps: What is Life becoming through me?

This is where the ordinary life begins to become the sacred life. The Divine is no longer somewhere distant, waiting to be reached through perfect circumstances or some future enlightenment. It is here. Speaking through the life you already have.

Through beauty. Through synchronicity. Through the body. Through the people you love. Through the places that call you. Through the doors that open and the doors that mysteriously refuse to open. Through the very experiences you once believed were interruptions to your spiritual path.

They were the path. Perhaps this is the deeper invitation of this Lion’s Gate. Not simply to manifest another version of the life we already know. But to step outside the old wheel altogether.

To choose differently. To lead differently. To love differently. To create differently. To become sovereign enough to recognise which stories have completed their purpose and courageous enough to release them.

The new age we speak about will not simply descend upon the Earth. It will be lived into existence through us. Through millions of human choices. Through new forms of leadership, relationship, creativity and consciousness. Through each person who remembers that they are more than the circumstances of their life. And through every soul courageous enough to step beyond the veil and discover the Great Reality that has been waiting there all along.

And there is one extraordinary celestial event still to come. Only four days after the Lion’s Gate, on 12 August, a total solar eclipse takes place in Leo. The symbolism could hardly be more powerful.

First, the Lion roars. Then the Sun disappears. Leo is the sign of the Sun — associated with sovereignty, identity, creative power, courage and the heart. Yet immediately after this great solar gateway, the solar light itself is eclipsed. In the ancient world, an eclipse was never a casual event. The sudden disappearance of the Sun could signify the interruption of an established order: the death or destabilisation of kingship, the ending of a reign, the suspension of ordinary power.

Read symbolically, this eclipse asks a profound question: What happens when the old Sun can no longer lead us? The structures by which we have orientated ourselves are changing. Old forms of authority are losing their hold. Identities that once gave us certainty may no longer contain who we are becoming. And for a brief moment, the throne is empty. This is the deeper mystery of the eclipse.

Darkness does not destroy the Sun but is the pause before it returns. An eclipse is therefore a moment outside the ordinary order in which something can be reset. Perhaps this is the initiation of this particular passage: the old Sun is eclipsed so that another source of authority can be discovered.

Not power over others.

Not another king upon another throne.

But the sovereign heart.

The inner Sun.

The Divine encountered directly within the human being.

A new leadership that comes from Love.

The Lion has roared.

Now we live what we have heard.

Love, Yvette