In the beginning was the word...
The birthright of all humans is co-creation with the divine forces that dance this material world into creation.
Unfortunately, in the civilized world, we've lost our link to invisible intelligences that link our bodies and voices to the Dreamtime where our powers of manifestation are most potent.
Our disconnection from our creative powers causes us immense lonliness, damaged our health, and keeps us from performing our most vital role--
maintaining the natural the rhythms our spiritual eco-systems.
The plants, stones, animals, and elementals around you are waiting to sing through you...
...waiting for you to channel the sounds that must to be uttered, whisper the secrets that must be told, and tell the stories that need to be lived.
As humans we were gifted an incredibly precious gift in the use of symbolic thought which first granted us the creative powers of magic…a gift that is one and the same with the use of The Word.
It's our duty to learn to use our words well...
...and fortunately for us there is a long lineage of great poet-magicians who left us rituals, games, and sacred texts that ensure each words that pours forth from us is a channeled message and harmonizing force of creation.
But the most powerful tool that we have in our creation comes to use every night...
...as we dream.
I'd like to welcome you to join a dedicated community of poets, dreamers, mages, and mystics who are dedicated to empowering and honing their use of The Word and their skill in the Dreamtime.
I'd like to welcome you to join this community not to work, but to play with words, delight in your dreams, and feel comfort and joy in connecting to your invisible eco-system of spirits.
I'd like to welcome you to feel in your body the value your creative works have on the plants, animals, elemenals, and fey that surround you.
That's exactly what I'm offering to you in Sibyl's Cave.
Sibyl's Cave is perfect for you if...
Meet Your Guide: Crystal Woodling
I have been entranced by the word and its effects on the material world from my earliest moments of conscious thought. I started studying anthropology and natural history in elementary school and composing songs and stories almost as soon as I could speak.
My first poetry mentor, was a master occultist who taught me to write and perform in the tradition of the great poet-shamans of old: Taliesin, Enheduanna, Byron, Dickinson, Yeats, and H.D.
My poetry has been published in dozens of literary journals and my theatrical work has been performed on stages around the globe. While serving as lecturer in creative writing at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, I co-founded and received an A. W. Mellon Grant for Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Arts Journal with Rima Rantisi. RR still serves as a cornerstone of Lebanon’s arts and literature scene today.
In 2013, I left academia to become the wandering bard I always dreamt of being. I walked alone from West Virginia to South Dakota writing poetry for diverse and universally kind folk that I met along the way and penning new tales of the land that I walked. This journey led me to the Ihanktonwan Nakota Reservation where I was deeply humbled by the vast knowledge and wisdom held in that land and by the stewards of that land. My dreams started taking a very different shape after this journey, as I learned that the power behind words is much more mysterious and vast than I'd previously believed
I've spent the past ten years training to be able to hold that power and discovering how to grant that capacity to others.
What I discovered
So many people feel as if they are at capacity energetically in our modern world.
Many of the people that I met as I walked became dear friends. I interviewed them about their hopes, their dreams, their greatest trials, their value...and perhaps most importantly their vision of heaven.
They were from all different walks of life: sustanence hunters and fisherman, school teachers and farmers, philanthropists and retired professors, drag queens and country preachers.
Yet, their vision of heaven was always the same...and it was always seemingly far too out of reach--shared songs, stories, and dances. Heaven was a community of creation...the weaving of words and rhythms.
I came to realize a number of essential points that are sadly lacking in our education as modern day humans that keep us so far from the paradise of joyful creation that we long to visit after we've left our bodies.
Writing is actually fun. Who would have thought it? Without Crystal's inspiration I would still dread every time that I have to write an email. Now that I know the power our words have on our reality, I treat every email like an opportunity to play with my world.
Tariq L.
I originally took Creative Writing for an easy A to boost my GPA. But Crystal helped me to feel how much value poetry has in our lives. Writing is now what keeps me alive.
Samia S.
Crystal is an exquisite, magical, laser-like guide. It’s rare to find someone so present, caring, attuned, curious, sensitive, and empathic. She truly has genius multi-dimensional skills to support you through a deep learning process of reclaiming your power.
Jennifer Piercy
CEO at Sacred Sleep Yoga
I never thought of myself as a poet, until I took a workshop with Crystal. She made it seems like the most natural language in the world. We wrote with the rhythms of nature and the images that we stored in our bodies. The words just poured forth effortlessly. When we finished I knew there was no turning back. I was a writer.
Dillon P
Everything you'll be given in The Sybil's Cave:
LIVE monthly Writing Games & Rituals
LIVE monthly Dreamwork Circle to help incubate creation process and deepen your ability to communicate with the muses
LIVE monthly special topics workshops to develop new writing skills and deepen your knowledge of the works of the great poet-magicians of old
A robust and growing catalogue of literary discussions and writing games & rituals to watch at your leisure
Regular feedback and support for your process of crafting from Crystal and your peers
Investment: $44 per month
includes enrollment in The School of Heaven and Earth
Or $24 per month for people who are already members of SHE
LIVE Bi-Weekly Writing Games & Rituals and Masterclasses
These 90-minute session will be held every other Monday at 7pm ET. They will include a ritual opening and closing of our container for safety and connection with our guides, embodiment practices to get the intelligence of our bodies online, and space for spirit and the will of the group to guide our course.
These sessions will alternate between creation sessions and craft development.
In our creation sessions, we will work through a whole host of writing games & prompts for the production of rough drafts of communually and individually created poetry, stories, songs, and theatrical peices.
In our Masterclasses we alternate between literary discussions of the works of the poet-magians of old and classes on The Tools of Poetry, such as Form, Image, Rhythm, Sound, & Structure.
LIVE Monthly Dreamwork Circles
The Dreamwork Circle is a ritually-held container for watering the seeds of our dream world so they blossom into positive mind-set changes, creative genius, inspiration, physical healing, and drive in our waking worlds.
We will water these dream seeds through active imagination/journeywork, ritual writing practices, guided dream-sharing and reflection, deep study of symbol and meaning-making across cultures, meditations with stones and herbal allies, breathwork, and embodiment practices.
Regular Feedback and Support from Myself and Your Peers
Both in our live monthly workshops and the online community there will be plenty of opportunity for you to have your creative output received by both myself as well as your peers. Feedback, when desired, will be generously given.
There is a story of a girl who was locked in a cave with no food, light, or comfort but her own mind.
When she was set free, she saw that the world outside...
...was exactly the same as the same one that she lived in within her mind. She could not be convinced that she was not god—but in time she learned to keep that bit to herself.
We are all that girl by measures and degrees—stirred up by chaos and the dreams of others that we have mistaken for our own.
That girl became the first sibyl…the oracles of old who penned prophecies on oak leaves and left them at the doors of their caves to float in the wind or be plucked up by seekers.
We are her daughters and sons that she dreamed of within the darkness. ...and we live in a time that needs many more sibyls scrying for a still point from which we can rewrite the mythos of this world.
Will you take up the task?
Will you become the prophet your land so dearly longs for?
Will speak with the voice of god and take your place at the temple stage donning the mask of Dionysus?