Holiday Art Bazaar
November 13, 2011
In addition to astrology and fiber art, I also make goodies with yarn.
Here in Austin,
The Dragonfly Gallery, at
4007 Marathon Drive, is hosting its second annual
Holiday OLE Bazaar on
Dec 2, 9:30 am – 6:30 pm.
A large variety of artists and craftspersons will have material you can purchase for Christmas gifts–or just for YOU. And what’s best, EVERYTHING is $99 or less!
I will have handcrafted baby sweaters, baby blankets, scarves and shawls for sale, and welcome you to come see my stuff and all the other wonderful creations!
YOU ARE INVITED
February 26, 2011
To a Modest Gallery Opening Reception
March 3, 2011; 6-8 pm at the Unitarian Church Gallery; 4700 Grover Avenue; Austin, TX
Featuring Thirty Five Miniature Tapestries by Anne Beversdorf (including five brand-new ones).
Please come to this modest reception, bring your friends, nibble and drink, and enjoy the first opportunity anywhere to see ALL my unsold works in one place!
These tapestries, are made of silk and metallic thread and embellished with beads, faceted gemstones, and freshwater pearls. They depict sacred images adapted from medieval imagery and other sources from Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. Each image is smaller than a piece of typing paper and takes an average of 400 hours to make, with over 500 stitches per square inch.
Tibetan Healing Method
November 14, 2010
In a mountain pasture high in Tibet, children are playing some sort of running game on the field, their parents going about their business along the sides of the field. I’m hovering above with some Tibetan monk teachers who were teaching me healing. And making me practice. And what they taught simply can’t be described or translated accurately to words, but I’ll try.
Introducing Evelyn
November 6, 2010
4. Evelyn Talmadge: Austin-Based Healer
This is a blatant and free advertisement for my friend and healer, Evelyn Talmadge.
Evelyn has been an amazing catalyst for me. This has been one of those “growth years”… and Austin-based Evelyn Talmadge has turned chaos into new patterns for me. She has a process and a name for what she does, but as far as I’m concerned, her skill is in asking the right questions. Her questions have turned up issues I wasn’t even conscious of, and her process transforms them.
Here are two examples.
1. Evelyn’s questioning made me aware that I was afraid of people in some deep way–that my behaviors were based on a fear that I would be “discovered” for something which would place me in danger, and that I had to trust myself only, and couldn’t trust others to help me. As she probed for when I began feeling like this (pre-verbal stories about my infancy even showed this trait) I suddenly had a FLASH vision. I saw myself as a slave girl in ancient Rome who was doing Everything Possible to get free. This probably included blackmail, kidnapping, and other actions that could get me killed. I finally did get free, living a long and comfortable life in the country–but in that entire lifetime I was always afraid of meeting someone who would recognize me, and always kept my story hidden, in case I’d be captured and killed. After this vision, my experience of others has changed. The San Diego trip felt like a love-fest–I was able to receive the love freely given to me rather than fearing and not trusting it. This shift is holding, too.
2. More recently, a sense of “emptiness” was traced to my Dad’s feeling that he got the short end of the fairness stick in his own childhood. This made him feel empty and unrecognized. Even though I had a blessed childhood, I was carrying my Dad’s issue. Feeling unrecognized (this was also probably related to hiding, as in the previous issue!), I tried to fill the emptiness with unnecessary snacking, worries, and even by picking up his asthma. Immediately after this session I was able to Choose whether to snack late at night (and said No several nights in a row), and am sensing a shift in my sense of fulfillment.
The bottom line is, I’m recommending Evelyn to anyone with issues, large and/or small. She has a way of shifting you into a new experience which immediately feels more natural and less stressful. You can contact Evelyn Talmadge HERE. Her Facebook page is HERE and her web page is HERE.
Beversdorf Briefing Sept/Oct
September 7, 2010
Towards 2012
July 28, 2010
Changing the Hearth
Here’s what I’ve been thinking: The powerful planets lining up in repeated collision patterns this summer are important, I know, because they are all crossing “Zero Cardinal” in the tropical zodiac: The World Point. But of course, I’m also a Vedic astrologer, using the sidereal zodiac. In that system, these planets are playing around 23 degrees of mutable signs. So why do we consider these important degrees?
Wheels within Wheels
Because…. These are the cornerstones of the earth in time. The planets of this summer are crossing and recrossing the solstice and equinox points: The four corners of the year. The foundation stones of Earth. Solstices and equinoxes link our planet to the sun and moon and solar system. They measure our earthly calendar, orienting us in both time and space. THESE are the points that are being rocked this year.
The planets involved in this pattern (Pluto, Uranus, Saturn and sometimes the faster planets) were tangled up with each other in the mid 1960′s as well. Certainly those were years of tumult, change, and new ideas entering the zeitgeist. But at that time none of these big planets were crossing the Solstice/Equinox points–what I’ll be calling the “cornerstones” here.
The Mayans describe the end of a world age as a “changing of the hearth”. Suddenly I’m seeing that they are speaking quite literally. The cornerstones of our understanding of time and space are very much our spiritual “hearth”. And the summer of 2010 is the peak point of applying metaphorical planetary sledge-hammers to the cornerstones.
To put this into an even larger perspective, let’s look at some more issues of the Mayan system. Their calendar was based on the cycle of Venus. (Venus has an interesting geometrical cycle, by the way. It’s path through the solar system creates a perfect 5-pointed star.) A notable part of the Venus cycle is its periodic “occultation”. Basically you can think of this as a Venusian/Sun eclipse pattern. It takes 184 years, and the cycle ends with two “eclipses” within 8 years of each other. The most recent one was in 2008, and the next is 2012.
Something else happened in 2008. This was the year that Pluto crossed the cornerstone point, went backwards over that point again, and then moved forward over the same point again. If you visualize the cornerstones as the edges of a giant concrete slab, Pluto spent months sitting on this slab with a metaphorical jackhammer, then rested, then went back for more, then rested, then went back for more. This was the beginning of the pattern of 2010, where many other planets started ganging up on the other corners. This was the beginning of tearing down the old hearth in order to install a new one.
There’s another interesting piece to the dynamic of these years. All of the planets (except the Sun and Moon) have periods of retrograde motion as seen from the earth. At various times, if you’re a sky-watcher, you’ll see them move backwards, against the normal rotation of the stars and planets in the sky. When measured across the 30-degrees of each sign, there isn’t a
Time Travels…
June 1, 2010
First Experience….
It was the early 1980′s when I first started reading about past lives and recovering memories of them. These were pretty traumatic years in my life. My dad died in early 1981 and my marriage was a mess. In 1984 my husband gave me an ultimatum: Move out and give him space to get his head together, or he’d simply file for divorce and force the issue. I was addicted to this patently dysfunctional relationship, and I was still fighting to keep it, so I moved into an apartment complex close to my work.
One evening, lying in bed in the early evening in abject misery, I asked to see a lifetime that would shed light on the relationship between me and my husband. I had been lying there, quietly pondering the state of my life at that time. I wasn’t meditating, and can’t explain how I was simply “dropped into” a very clear vision. Oddly, the images that came did not directly answer my question at all. They simply showed me a different time, place, and life experience. If I were to relate it to my current life, it seemed specifically to address my relationship with my second sister. Sarah was born when I was a physically mature 11-year-old (so I pretended she was “MY” baby), and she died of an accidental drowning when I was 13, shattering my life and that of my family, and turning my faith in the goodness of life upside down. This has been the defining “issue” in my life.
So here’s what I saw. At first, I saw myself from outside, like watching a movie. Then the perspective shifted and I was inside my body, experiencing the scene from the first person, including the surprising sensory experience of smelling the environment.
First, I saw myself, heavily pregnant, getting ready to cross a narrow street. I was dressed in “plain” clothing: homespun material in a dull grey-brown, with a white cap tightly covering my hair and a white apron, worn high over the great mound of my belly. My clothing was not the popular style, but was a proud signature of my religious beliefs. Unfortunately, I was pregnant without a husband.
I looked across the narrow street. This was a proud city–no dirt pathways here. It had cobblestone streets and impressive (to me, though to my modern mind they looked primitive), two-story, graystone buildings on each side. The streets were no more than 10-12 feet wide, and while there were curbs on each side, there weren’t exactly sidewalks. The curb was no more than a narrow step off the streetlevel: barely enough room for walkers to get out of the path of oncoming carriages. There was a shop sign I could see clearly, although it conveyed its message wordlessly. A bright red painting of a tomato on a brown wooden sign announced exotic foodstuffs.
I was visiting this small city from a countryside home. I’d ridden in on a rough wagon with someone–my mother?–driving it, and this shopping expedition was meant to be swift and practical. Right now I was on my own, my attention directed to a shop across the street where I meant to finish my business. As I crossed the street a great noise and clamour precipitated the “story” that would unfold before my consciousness. Faster than I could think, a carraige with four horses raced through the street at a madly reckless speed. In shock and fear I ran the last few steps to reach the curb and get out of the way, but my skirts were caught by the horses hooves and I was pulled under the carraige.
Now my center of awareness shifted. I was inside my body, looking up. I could smell the pungent and rotting combination of horse dung, night-soil, and rotting vegetation in the street around me. I could see the chartreuse green satin breeches of a “fancy” man and sensed that he was trying to get the gathering crowd to step back to give me air. Then I lost consciousness.
When my awareness returned, I was in what seemed like a hospital ward, under street level. There was a row of very narrow cots under a series of high windows through which you could see the feet of passersby on the pavement level above. The ward smelled much worse than the street. The street smell was alive, even though it smelled bad. The ward smelled of death: seriously rotting flesh, a sharp, throat-biting smell that could have been fresh blood, perhaps combined with some pungent chemical–lye perhaps? [The words "carbolic acid" came to my mind, though my subsequent research indicates this wasn't known til the mid 1800's and my imagery seemed much older. I'd guess the late 17th century.]
Then I could see someone carrying away my baby. She (I think it was a girl) was wrapped in a white cloth that trailed on the floor. (My modern mind thought it must have been a sheet, but years later I learned that in early enlightenment England, babies wore long white gowns that trailed on the floor. My vision wasn’t focused enough to be able to discern the difference.) I saw two women, also in “plain” clothes, who seemed to be related to me–mother and sister?–holding each other and weeping. I kept calling for someone to bring me my baby, but no one could hear me.
Then the ‘vision’ ended. I lay there astounded by the smells and the vivid realness of what I’d just experienced. Little did I know that this was only the first of my travels through time.
I googled images for 16th and 17th century villages. The scene I saw would be kind of a combination of these two images. The narrow street was similar to the French village picture, but the color of the stones is wrong and the street seems to be unpaved. The British picture shows a modern highway, but the buildings are more like what I was seeing.
- British 16th century buildings
The stones are not as dirty-gray as those in my vision.
- Provencal village, 17th century
This narrow sense of streets, with no curbs or sidewalks is similar to “my” village.
Beversdorf Briefings: all of ‘em
May 28, 2010
This link will take you to a page with all of the Beversdorf Briefings on one page. I can add to them as more are produced. Hopefully this will make it easier for you to find them.
Beversdorf Briefing, May June 2010
May 28, 2010
Pictures
May 12, 2010
Ok. I said I’m open to romance, would like to meet a wonderful man, and got feedback that I needed more pictures of me on my site. So I put some up….here, and got this response from one correspondent:
- “Wow. This aging thing may be the most universal of stories, but it is nonetheless shocking to witness. Transformation before our very eyes, but without our seeing it most of the time.”
Reminds me of the time my much much younger brother, on seeing pics of Mom when I was a kid, saying to her…
“Mom! You used to be a Beautiful Lady!”
Well! I guess “facts is facts”. Oh dear.
Baking a Cake?
May 2, 2010
Listening to Tom Kenyon’s Hathor-composed Heart attunement (from the future) and had a personal insight: Remembering the powerful effect of many processes in my life (Ishayas, Ormus came immediately to mind), and wondering why I don’t continue with them now, I realize that making a life is a bit like baking a cake. We add and mix ingredients at just the right time. Just because we particularly like the sugar/butter/chocolate mixture doesn’t mean we should keep adding more of it. The cake won’t work. Each step is appropriate for its time, and adds to the richness and perfection of the final form.
Reorganizing Podcasts
April 30, 2010
I’m working on the May 2010 newsletter, and realized that there were way too many Podcasts under the main menu bar. Here’s what I’ve done: I made 2 new pages: Anne’s Astro Lectures, and Anne’s Lectures (not astrology). These pages show up under PODCASTS (try it now if you want–you won’t leave this page if you just run the cursor over PODCASTS). When you click on either of these pages, you’ll find each individual lecture titled, and you can click the title to reach the full podcast and description. I hope this makes things simpler to navigate!
March 4th
March 4, 2010
Today is March 4th, or as my music teacher mother would say about today:
Class Recordings: Meeting the Archetypes
January 17, 2010
Recordings are now available for all the sessions in the class, Meeting the Archetype on the Road. If you are interested in listening to all of them, email me at anne@stariel.com with the word Archetype in the subject header. I’ll send you a bill via Paypal, which you can pay from your bank or with a credit card and I’ll send you the password and link that unlocks the downloads.
The cost for the whole series is $45.00. If you’d like to listen to a sample, check out the podcast called Knowing Pluto, in the drop-down list under Podcasts.
Here’s the link to the recordings
Jan-Feb Utube forecast
January 17, 2010
Here’s the forecast for Jan-Feb. It got posted after the earthquake in Haiti, which is not really a part of the astrological pattern described… we’d need to look at the chart for Haiti to see how Uranus and Mars got empowered in this picture. What I WILL say about the quake, is there is a lot of power manipulation behind the scene. The two that I can see peeking through are elevating the USAID into a major coordinator for disasters for one, and the second is what I perceive as unconscionable racism by Gates, who is delaying life-saving health for “security” concerns–fearing people who need food and water will cause riots when it appears, and allowing the situation to get much worse because of these xenophobic fears… a repeat of the Katrina upside-down priorities.
The Future creates the past?
December 20, 2009
Well, more like the future crystalizes the past via the moment of the present. Wow. Check out this fabulous physics article at Technology Review
As an astrologer, I sometimes tell people our future is pulling us toward it. This is a different tweak on the idea, which combines the concept of multiple future possibilities which “condense” into actuality. (Which is why astrologers see possibilities, strong possibilities, or weak possibilities, and can characterize the energy footprint of those possibilities, but the details are being created by the sequence of NOWs between the present and the future event.)
Anne
Video: Beversdorf Briefing
December 1, 2009
Less than 10 minutes to look ahead at trends for late Nov-December and early January.
New IONS Podcast
November 28, 2009
Look under the PODCAST heading on the menu bar for the entire series of IONS lectures for 09. The podcasts for Mark Sebasta’s Shamanism and Shapeshifting into a New Era is up, as well as October’s Mary Mansfield, Bridging Science and Spirit.
Podcast: Knowing Pluto
November 1, 2009
This is the 5th lecture in the class series on “Meeting the Archetype on the Road”. It is about Pluto, which is a major player in the archetypal energy soup we are swimming in between 2008 and 2012 and beyond. If you would like the recordings for the rest of the class series, please contact me directly at anne@stariel.com . The series will be available shortly on these pages.
November Energies
November 1, 2009
I’ve been asked to say a few words about the astro-energy we’re traveling thru this month. Here’s what I can say… First, I’m not comfortable making specific world-oriented “predictions”. A great “mundane” (meaning “about the world”) astrologer, Judy Johns assidiously collected birth data of all country leaders, of countries, watched CNN non-stop for defining events, and was really quite good at making specific predictions. Asking me for world predictions is kinda like asking a psychiatrist to do brain surgery… they both have MDs and deal with the brain but….
That said, what I CAN do is describe the aroma of the energy soup we’re all traveling through, and I can tell you, there’s a lot of jalapeno in this soup! Thursday, the 29th, Saturn entered tropical Libra, creating an even more tense pattern with Pluto.
Saturn is the “fear things won’t be the way I think they SHOULD be” planet, and Pluto is the energy of “fear of loss of control.” Additionally, each of these planets ramps up fears in general, so there is an increased generalized tension having to do with fears that the world is running out of control in a way you don’t personally like. Since this is a very strong energy pattern, and it WILL be impacting many people, we are likely to see public acting out of this fear pattern. Sometimes this can take the form of outside agencies promising that taking certain socially disruptive (or even violent) action will help restore the status quo. The problem is, this is inchoate energy. There is no single focus of discontent. There is simply a large number of people who are strongly unhappy about their own idiosyncratic issue. We’ve seen this lack of focus in the “Tea Party” movement, where largish numbers of people gather to protest… well, to protest almost as many things as there are people standing there.
This Saturn/Pluto/fear energy pattern doesn’t affect everyone directly, but each of us will be standing in the general energy “soup” and watching others react as this energy pattern gets stronger and stronger through the month of November.
If these energies do happen to affect you personally, you will be aware that things in your own life are moving in a direction you believe is WRONG, and as much as you may try to control the situation, you can’t. Pluto’s purpose here is to get you out of the rut that has so completely stunted your vision that you literally can’t see beyond it. If you are in one of these crisis-like situations my advice, going against every grain of passion in you, is not to fight the situation. Winning will cost you more than surrender. And surrender will lead you to your own personal Elysian Fields once you leave the rut that’s binding you.
After writing this to the group who requested it, someone wrote me privately asking when the Elysian Fields come, how we get there, and how we recognize them. First, the “Elysian Fields” as a metaphor is a bit hyperbolic. Generally what I hear is “That was the most difficult thing I’ve ever lived through, but I have to say I’m not sorry it happened. As a result, I got shifted into a whole different place in life that I could never have imagined before all that, and which is a much better, happier, and more authentic place for me.” (The “Elysian Fields” doesn’t mean “happily ever after”.)
The metaphorical Elysian Fields comes after the surrender. We’re dealing with situations that are literally beyond both our control and our understanding. One effect is to push us into an area where our horizons are expanded, and we can see new possibilities. The path to the Elysian Fields is deliberately and (with Saturn’s help) with discipline, to recognize when we’re in the obsessed fighting state and do anything possible to find one activity that brings joy. Maybe it’s walking by the creek. Maybe it’s staring at the moon or dancing with friends. It’s not about something that gives you escape, or that your automatic pilot thinks is joyful (like ice cream or just another mystery novel, or even an expensive cup of coffee). The key is the experience of joy, not the “rule” that something ought to bring it.
So if you’re in the depths of a personal Pluto-Saturn crisis, drop the struggle, surrender the battle, and make your spiritual path the immediate, present-tense experience of joy.