Holding the Center: A Pilgrimage of Sovereignty and Sacred Union

Pilgrimage is a word that hardly captures the transformative power or nuance of an intentional journey to places of Myth, Legend, and Soul. These are the journeys we undertake to spiral deeper into ourselves as we pay homage to the land and fill our souls at the well of sacred memory. They are journeys within journeys, where the veils between inner and outer worlds blur and time expands and contracts in the same moment.

My pilgrimage journey this year unfolded first in Wales, where together with my soul-sister Donna Gerrard, we led a group of women on an encounter with the Goddess through the wild Welsh landscapes and ancient stories of sovereignty and sacred union. Making our way through Bath and Avebury, the journey culminated in the Glastonbury Goddess Conference. All throughout, we interacted with ancestral myths of women’s power, of land as beloved, and of the sacred bonds between body, spirit, and earth.

We also dove deeply—to awaken currents of personal identification with sovereignty and sacred union as themes within our characters and souls. I’ve learned over decades of pilgrimage journeys that an opportunity to cross a deep line in yourself will invariably present itself, and the Shadow will often meet us at the gate. Shadow Work teaches of the Threshold Guardians—beings, incidents, concepts, or patterns that can rise up to challenge our forward momentum. Shadow encounters can throw us off our centers as our emotional bodies react, trauma responses rise, and old protections flare. So it is a tender time; we must trust the urge of the soul, trust the process, and know that we are held and resourced in the cauldron of transformation.

There is an opportunity to integrate and heal something deep within as we journey with guides and allies into the realms of symbol and meaning, story and soul. To journey to the heart of myth is to walk a primordial path that our ancestors knew well, because engaging in myth was like group therapy to them. Identification with the rise and fall of the Goddess through stories of agony, redemption and exaltation reminds us that whatever we are going through, we are not alone on our heroic journey. We are resourced by the stories, reassured of the process that will no doubt break some part of us open, yet fill our cups with healing and inspiration in the end.

From there, we traveled east to Bath, sacred to Sulis Minerva, Romano-British Goddess of Healing, and on to Avebury, where the vast stone circle and the chambered tomb of West Kennet Longbarrow reminded us that we are never far from our ancestors, nor from the cycles of life, death, and renewal.

In the Longbarrow, we were met by a Priestess who had already lit candles in the crevices of the deep womb-tomb. We fell into reverent recognition, singing and drumming together until the walls themselves seemed to hum. Held in the deep-earth mineral embrace of that ancient place, I asked my soul to speak its piece. I threw a veil over my rational monkey mind and invited my heart to unburden itself in its own language.

A current of release coursed through me as a lifelong shadow-pattern began to wither and disintegrate; the same shadow-pattern that had erupted on the eve of this journey. Images rose and fell—scenes of being over-punished, silenced, shamed—they all crumbled to dust at my feet. I relinquished the weight of it among those stones where I could sense both the weight and wonder of those who came before, in a long lineage of seekers and devotees who came to honor the mysteries.

The culmination of my journey was the 2025 Glastonbury Goddess Conference, where I was honored to serve as the Directional Priestess of the Center.

For me, it was both deeply personal and profoundly communal. To hold the Center meant first to hold my own center—to be rooted in my body, to breathe into my presence, to stand in grounded awareness even as dynamic energies swirled around me. It meant embodying presence so that others could find it too.

As Priestess of the Center, I guided people back into themselves through somatic movement and journeywork—inviting people into their sacred body-vessels so they could feel the steadiness of the earth beneath them, and discover the powers of alignment and sacred connection.

Holding the Center was also about flowing with the team—stepping in and out of roles, weaving with other priestesses and helpers, supporting the container of the Conference as it shifted from ritual to celebration to service. It became a living lesson in sovereignty and union: knowing my own strength while merging with the collective rhythm.

The Vesica Piscis was the core symbol of the Conference, and it became a living guide for me throughout the week. To stand in its center was to inhabit a place of dynamic equilibrium—a space where polarities meet in communion and complementarity. In that threshold, I found myself continually called to balance the facets of my being: the active and the receptive, the light that shines outward and the shadow longing for tenderness, the directive power that organizes and the embodied wisdom that listens and feels.

Again and again, I returned to the truth that the Center is sovereign space: the place where love first anchors within. Without that rootedness in self-love, our gestures of care for the world lose their ground. But when love of self is strong, it radiates outward with steadiness, creating a field in which others, too, can find balance.

This pilgrimage—across Welsh mountains, ancient baths, Neolithic stones, and the sacred heart of Glastonbury Avalon—reminded me that to hold the Center is to stand in the Vesica of wholeness, where love of self roots all other loves. In daring to hold our Center in the dance with Shadow, we awaken a field where others remember their own wholeness, beauty, and belonging.