THIRTEEN MOONS FESTIVAL
September 2008
Created and hosted by Carolyn Hillyer

During the autumn equinox, three hundred women from places as distant as Russia & New Zealand and as near as Postbridge village, gathered amid the wild hills and silver mists of Dartmoor to celebrate the Festival of Thirteen Moons.

This event was born from the creative visions, hard work, enthusiasm, skills, wisdom, prayers, laughter, tears & magic of many sisters. As we prepared the meadows and decorated the woods at Lower Merripit Farm, we enjoyed one of the first warm and dry weeks of the summer! So we began our journey around a circle of moons…

We travelled inside the blood of copper and along the nameless wild edges of the sacred land. We remembered our ancient women with bone and mended our magic with healers’ hands. We made shrines to earth and light and water and death and crows. We created wonderful works with silver and clay and leather and wool and withy and wood. We dreamed the quiet moon of salmon and danced the bright moon of leaping hares. We found new rhythms in our drums and new songs within our bellies until the night was seized and women grew wild. We lit fierce warrior fires and left our tears on dying earth and cooling ashes. We celebrated ice and looms and scars and honey. We tended the hearth and walked across the granite of the ancient morning. We were visited by bees in the hive of our café and we washed in cold waters while being serenaded with show tunes. We drank spicy brews from steaming cauldrons. We rested and played and shared. Finally we honoured our journey with the moon of many sisters and left the land through a doorway of flame. At last, when our journey was complete, we collapsed with tea and cake…

Thirteen Moons supported Amnesty International in their campaign against violence towards women ~ we raised £700 in donations.

Thank you to all the woman and girls who made this festival happen.