Mariska Assink

...Continuation of biography...

...A few years ago, I was at the CastleFest festival, as I am every year. There, I participated in a number of workshops and rituals by Emelie Te Kanawa.

I enrolled in her 'Path of the Priestess' course. This was what I had been searching for for years! Training to become a Priestess of Avalon!

It would be going too far to detail here everything you learn and experience in it. But I think you can imagine that for me it was a dream come true that the final part and the initiation took place in... Glastonbury!

From visual arts to belly dance

Let's go back quite a way in time... My aptitude for creativity and yearning for freedom have always played a major role in my study and career choices. I studied at the Art Academy for four years. Nature was my greatest source of inspiration. But I also enjoyed designing costumes. My own frustrations were that I never did justice to nature by trying to paint it, and that I did not consider painting a good medium to express my inner world. Ultimately, I decided to heed my deepest wish, and that was to become a dancer.

From a fairytale of 1001 Nights to a Yoga & Pilates studio. The dance style that captured my imagination the most was Oriental dance (popularly known as 'belly dance'). In addition to this dance form, I also studied Indian Temple Dance (Bharata Natyam).

For 30 years, I performed and taught. Together with other teachers, I founded the dance school 'Verdiepingscursus Orientaals Dans', and together we taught dancers for 16 years who wanted to practice Oriental dance as a performing art.

The crowning achievement of my dance career was a performance titled 'Goddesses', in which the Goddess within every woman took center stage. I created this together with three other Oriental dancers. This was also the first collaboration between Penny Porter and me. She wrote beautiful poems that supported the story and enriched the entire performance.

During my dance career, Loretta Simon Helms trained me to become a Pilates instructor. Loretta also served as dance coach for this dance performance 'Godinnen'. I have now been teaching Pilates myself for 12 years at multiple yoga / Pilates schools.

Living History My interest in history and my nostalgic longing for “the good old days,” or what I imagined them to be, inspired me to learn certain skills, including wool spinning and dyeing. Later, I joined a foundation that brought history to life. We performed in castles, the historical park Archeon, and other special places. In self-made medieval costumes, we demonstrated various crafts and cooked over a wood fire.

A modern Hagedessa / witch

My interest in natural medicine, herbalism, nutrition, Earth magic, Tarot, the cycles of the Sun and the Moon, astrology, power places in nature, ancient sanctuaries, symbolism, rituals, ancient religions and philosophies, and Celtic festivals led me to seek information about women who embodied much of this skill, gifts, and knowledge...

I have read and studied a great deal, a very great deal, about witches, lizards, wise women, or whatever they have been called throughout history. These women functioned not only as healers, but also as counselors or even as oracles.

Bark soap and walnut hair dye

The women described above practiced herbalism. That is one of the reasons why it interests me as well. I enjoy making soap molds in the shape of, for example, bark, pine cones, and shells, and a whole range of skin and hair care products made from natural ingredients.

Sybilings Synthesis The beauty of the Sybilings events is that everything I described above comes together in them. And that I can further develop all of this together with my soul sister Penny and share it with you! The location also fits perfectly into this picture: my floating fantasy castle, houseboat Zena.

Penny Porter

...biography continued..

Lila Lace mood board. PJP-Design.

Naturally, during my early career, I enjoyed the fruits of success: the money, the glamour of international travel, expanding my horizons, a sense of personal achievement, and proving who I was in the world. Yet, as the years progressed all these glittering pluses began to loose their shine. Leaving instead, only an increasingly pressurised lifestyle of high stress, continual deadlines, soulless airports and impersonal hotels, and limited time / connectivity with family & friends, or the freedom to be creative. I found myself feeling trapped in an exhausting repetitive life-wheel that was spinning out of control, and was negatively affecting the quality of my life & my health. Somehow, I felt displaced, and disconnected from a deeper sense of self, and removed from all that I valued. I needed to find my way back home.

"Night Mind" (The earth which filled her mouth is vanishing from her). PJP Design.

In 2007 I made the decision to opt-out. There followed some difficult years, years without income, or vocational identity. This was a time spent doing much soul-searching. I re-focussed on grounding, and “knowing self” better... My focus went inwards: mind, body & soul: Reading, writing, poetry, intuitive painting, esoteric tarot courses, depth-psychology (Jung), delving into myths & symbols, practicing dream-analysis, making soul-boards, designing Mandalas, studying the natural laws. Along with simply enjoying gardening / healthy cooking, and a daily practice of ‘Contrology” (pilates) / body-work. I re-connected back to myself, by honouring a life that truly resonated with me.

Tension of Opposites. Wax & Ink. PJP-Design.

“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.” - TS Eliot, Four Quartets.

So, now, in the second phase of my life, I re-apply all that was innate and true to me as a child, all that was emerging within my career days. Today I playfully weave these more evolved personal threads of self, into a life of my own making. A life that better aligns & flows naturally with who I am, and now ripples gently outwards into the local community.

I believe the threads (or fates) of life continually weave their own patterns; pattern-mapping towards an authentic personal blue-print.

“The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms” - Muriel Rukeyser... stories are literally yarns; the warp & weft threads, that as archetypal myths, weave back into our collective and personal DNA. As individuals we each have a unique story, an authentic singular thread / a personal myth to sew back into the collective tapestry of life. Authenticity of self, literally means being the ‘authority’ or ‘owner’ and ‘author’ of one’s own life.The Three Fates or Moirai : Clotho, Lachesis & Atropos.

Sybiling Synthesis - Today, with Mariska, I now create & facilitate meaningful calendar events; events that delve into the underlying essences of daily life; events that are in tune with the rhythms, cycles and elements of nature; tapping back into a rich collective ancestral heritage; events that are rooted in rites, rituals and celebration. The aim, with such events, is to enable participants to: pause & punctuate, to ground ¢tre, and to partake in a more reflective creative dialogue with themselves and their lives, finding a connection to their own personal inner thread; adding more meaning and magic into their daily lives.

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle” - Albert Einstein.

Lace & Mandalas - threads of Self.

Penny Porterpjpdesign@gmail.com

Penny making a summer mandala.