Quiz: Your Goddess Personality

I wanted to share with my blog readers a fun quiz that I created that will help you find the goddess that most resonates with your personality. This quiz is designed to help you find your inner goddess self. It consists of eight questions aimed at telling you which goddess is your kindred spirit.

To access the quiz please click here. Have fun and please feel free to leave your results in the comments!



Your Goddess Personality Quiz and all images are copyright 2015 of Love of the Goddess

Color Me Fall! Tips for Coloring the Fall Goddess Mandala

What springs to mind when you think of Fall? Cool weather, light breezes, hot cocoa and the warm colors Fall brings. The colors you see in the leaves when they change like deep reds, warm oranges and yellows and soft browns. These are the traditional colors of the Fall season and this is what I decided to use to color my mandala with. You can of course choose whatever colors resonate with you.

In this mandala there is a Fall goddess in the center with a Fall leaf on her belly. She is surrounded by Fall leaves, pumpkins, acorns and other geometric shapes.It's best to start coloring in the objects around the goddess first. This way you can choose the best color for her to stand out the most. It might be better to choose a lighter color for the goddess since she is in the center and your eye is immediately drawn to her. So you want her to stand out. Color her in light and then use darker colors around her. This will make her color really pop.

Ready to start coloring? Grab your colored pencils, your cup of hot cocoa, get in your comfy spot and get your color on! Try to envision how you want your goddess mandala to look before you start adding color. Ask yourself some questions like: What feelings or mood to you want to portray? Do you want to frame and hang this on a wall in your home? If so what are the colors in that room? What does Fall mean to you? Answering all these questions first will give you a better idea of what colors to choose.

You can use colored pencils or markers or even pastels to color these in. I personally like to use prismacolor colored pencils and the pencils I used were: spanish orange, goldenrod, sienna brown, dark brown, crimson red, tuscan red, poppy red, orange and canary yellow. One technique that I like to use  is to color in an area with a lighter color and then go around the border with a darker color. For example using poppy red to color in a fall leaf and then using crimson red to color in the border of the leaf and then blending those two colors together.

So play with your colors and throw around some ideas in your head. You will find a style and a way that works best for you. Please feel free to post pictures of your mandalas when you've added color. I would love to see how everyone's turned out and all the different colors that resonate with each of us! To get the Fall goddess mandala please go to my etsy shop so you can download, print and start coloring.

Happy coloring!

How to Engage your Creative Inner Goddess While Reducing Stress

I wanted to give something to my fellow goddess followers that would enable them to be creative and would also help with stress reduction and mindfulness. Something that would help to engage the creative self and also to help forget the worries of the day. So I decided to create some goddess centered mandalas that can be downloaded, printed and colored all from within the comfort of your own home. Creating mandalas, drawing and coloring are all proven stress reducing activities.
 
Imagine coming home from a long day at the office, changing into some comfy clothes, pouring yourself a glass of Cabernet, grabbing your colored pencils and your mandala and getting cozy in your favorite spot. You start to rummage through your bag of colored pencils hearing the sound of the pencils clanking together, while looking for your favorite colors. As you start to color in your mandala, a feeling of calm comes over you and you realize that you've relaxed and stopped stressing about the day. You allow your mind to focus in on one thing and loose yourself in the colors.

The colors you choose also have some meaning as well. Bright colors like reds, oranges and yellows are very energizing and great to use if you're feeling depressed. Blues and greens are soothing and calming and great to use if you're feeling anxious or agitated. Shades of purples and violets will totally relax your mind and body. Listen to your intuitive voice when choosing your colors. She will guide you in the right direction.
 
Coloring mandalas are fun and they're pretty! Especially when they are filled with color. You can even frame your mandalas and change out the picture with the season or with your mood. Another positive aspect of coloring in mandalas is that it engages your intuitive voice and helps you to listen to and trust it better.
 
All of these mandalas were hand drawn by me and lots of love and creative energy went into making each one. I currently have a few mandalas in my etsy shop and plan to keep adding over the next few weeks. Next to add is a Yule goddess mandala! If you would like to start coloring go to Goddess Mandala on Etsy to download and print. Please feel free to post pictures of your mandalas once you have them colored. I would love to see how great they turned out! Have any suggestions for my next goddess mandalas? Please leave me a comment telling me what you'd like to see.
Happy coloring!

My Illustrations in Sage Woman Magazine

I did some illustrations for an article in Sage Woman magazine which will be appearing in the Fall issue, Serenity. It comes out this month and hopefully will be in stores by the end of the month. I'm so excited to have been a part of this opportunity! This issue of Sage Woman has articles written by people who share their experiences of how serenity found them. The article with my illustrations is titled "Our Mother is Both a Person and a Place". It's a lovely and comforting article about the authors children and her journey to becoming a mother.

In the article, the author relates motherhood to nature and animals. So I thought it fitting to center my main illustration (featured above) around a figure of an earth goddess. She is the tree with roots that reach deep into the earth and she is also the leaves on branches that

reach high into the heavens. She is
surrounded by a beautiful garden and has an owl perched on one of her branches. The author talks about how with her first child, she would dream of owls. So I decided to make the owl a focus in my illustrations as well hence the second smaller illustration of a snow owl.

I loved working with Anne of Sage Woman magazine and I decided to work with her again for the Winter issue. The articles and illustrations in Sage Woman have always inspired me and left me feeling warm and fuzzy inside. I feel blessed to have my work showcased in this beautiful magazine. Anne was nice enough to give me a review of my work and here's what she said: "Tara Reynolds is a consummate professional: her illustration work is evocative, crisp, and detailed, but never overwrought or fussy. Her artwork beckons the reader into discovering the story for themselves. She's also a dream to work with! - Anne Newkirk Niven, editor & publisher, Sage Woman Magazine"

I hope you will grab a copy of this lovely magazine once it appears in the stores! Thanks to Anne for the wonderful opportunity.

On Struggling Times and Staying Positive

At some point in our lives we all will experience struggles and some form of suffering. Being a spiritual person myself and being active in the spiritual community I hear the same things over and over again. “Envision abundance” “Stay positive” “The law of attraction”. Apparently if you do all these things then your struggles will get easier and go away. But this is not true and to tell someone who is in the middle of a life struggle to simply “envision abundance” is to belittle their struggle. While I do believe that we should have hope that “better is on it's way” you should not expect yourself to surrender to this way of thinking while you're in the midst of suffering.

To tell someone that all they need to do is envision abundance is to demean and make light of their situation whatever that may be. I see it all the time. Just because we are spiritual does not mean that we won't suffer or that we should not feel our suffering. Life is good and bad, positive and negative, black and white and gray. It is not all rainbows and unicorns and glitter. It is not all fluffy bunnies and positive thinking and happy go lucky mindsets. Sometimes bad things happen. Life happens. And we should be made to feel that it's ok to experience our struggles and to experience the feelings and pain that comes with our suffering. To tell someone that they should not feel the pain of their suffering is to tell that person that the way they are dealing with their own struggles is wrong. And you're giving that person false hope. That all they need to do it is envision abundance and abundance will flow to them.

It seems that our world nowadays doesn't want to feel the “bad” only the “good”. But life is not all good. And if we keep teaching people not to feel the bad then we will never be prepared for when it inevitably happens because it always does. Yes, if you want to think positively it does help with your mindset. But it won't necessarily help with your actual real-life situation. Sometimes things happen in life which are out of our control. This is real life. We do not live in a fairy-tale world with only love and light. There is real suffering in our world and to ignore it and tell people to think positively is just wrong. It's one thing to give words of encouragement or to try and give someone hope. But it's quite another to tell that person that basically they shouldn't be feeling the way they do because if they just envisioned abundance they wouldn't be dealing with what they're dealing with now.

We are allowed to be upset if we are struggling. We are allowed to cry and feel like giving up when life is being particularly harsh for us. To allow ourselves to feel all of our feelings is to grow and learn and mature. To suppress those feelings is not healthy and it doesn’t make them go away. Of course we all love the good times in our lives and we don't like to bad times. But life is comprised of both regardless of how positive you are or how much mediation and yoga you do or how much abundance you envision.  Life doesn't care how many affirmations you say a day. Life is meant to be lived and experienced and feelings are meant to be felt. We need to allow ourselves to feel and experience the bad as well as the good. Yes the bad will eventually leave and the good will enter. It is about getting through the bad the best you can so that when the good does come, you can appreciate it more. And you will be stronger because of it. Being strong is not envisioning abundance. It is making it through a tough situation and coming out the other side all the wiser. And many times wisdom comes from lessons learned. And many times learning lessons is no walk in the park.

Feel all of your feelings and don't feel bad for it. You are not weak because you are struggling. You are not weak because you may not think positively during tough times. You are not weak because you allow yourself to feel the bad. You are strong and you're doing the best you can with what you've got. Know that you are not alone and try to comfort yourself the best way you know how. To all of those who are in the middle of struggles or suffering, I empathize with you. Your struggles are real. Don't ever let any fluffy bunny or sparkly, positive affirmation guru take that away from you.

Goddess Connections is Finally Here!

My book Goddess Connections, Goddess Rituals for the Modern Priestess, is finally here! I'm so excited to share this with all of you. This book has been in the works for sometime now and I'm so happy that it's finally come to fruition! Writing a book is no easy feat and after having written a book myself I now understand what other authors go through. It is a labor of love and blood, sweat and tears! And I'm so happy with the finished product.

Goddess Connections is an illustrated book of goddess myths and rituals for the modern priestess. Nine goddesses from around the world grace the pages of this book complete with illustrations, meditations and rituals for each one. The goddesses within this book are Isis, Hathor, Aphrodite, Hekate, Artemis, Freyja, The Morrigan, Brigid and Yemaya. This book is for beginners on the goddess path but anyone at any point on their path will also gain wisdom from this book.

Some of you may have read my Goddess Connections ebooks which were about six of the goddess in this book. This book is an upgraded and improved version of those ebooks with three new goddesses, more info, illustrations by me, rituals and meditations. What you will get from this book is a better understanding of how to connect with a goddesses energy which you can then implement in your own rituals later on. I help to break down the details of how to perform ritual and how to understand your goddess and her message for you.

I remember myself when I was just starting out on the goddess path and it was a little overwhelming for me. There are so many goddesses and so much info to take in and I didn't know where to start. Now that I've been a priestess for some years, I wanted to help others to achieve the same thing in a easier to understand  format. My mission with this book is to do just that. And there are illustrations for each goddess to help you get a better understanding of what she represents. I do want to stress that this book's purpose is to help you connect with goddess energy and not so much to be used for information or research of each goddesses myth and history. There is background and mythological information for each one but this book is more focused on the meditations and rituals.

The book comes in paperback and a kindle version as well. You can find it on Amazon: Goddess Connections. Please feel free to comment on your own experiences with the rituals in this book and on your path of the priestess. I want to hear from you! Thank you so much to all my friends and followers who helped to make this book a reality!