There is a poem by WB Yeats which speaks of a dreamer wishing he had the heaven’s embroidered cloths, inwrought with golden and silver light, so that he could lay them beneath his beloved’s feet. This is my wish in this book, to show the heaven’s embroidered cloths and share the wonder of creation with you. But rather than lie the cloths beneath your feet, place your finger on the silken thread of nature to follow the path and discover the way.
I used to work and fly on Concorde. We flew to the edge of space. The sky above us was pitch black and we could see the curvature of the earth. We used to chase eclipses, following the shadow of the moon as it travelled across the planet. We saw two sunsets in one day. Exciting, inspiring miracles of nature.
When covid hit and the whole world turned upside down, I had to isolate on my own. I would see people pass by from my window, but they were sightless and soundless to me, with no humanity. So, I would go into my garden and thankfully greet the life that welcomed me there. I have always loved the natural world, but it was then that nature taught me how to truly see and notice the everyday happenings through the seasons, that were just as important as chasing moon shadows. I had my memories of the high life, but found that the slow life, although very much smaller in scale in my garden, was just as exciting and inspiring. I realised I could still see moon shadows from ground level and that the life in the garden gave me healing and solace and companionship. And it gave me joy.
It was this realisation that was the inspiration for my book. I wanted to honour and to bear witness and to share the gifts that creation has so wonderfully given to us, and my way to do this was through the means of this book. I felt very strongly that I wanted to be able to share this magic, in all its forms, with people who could not access nature easily for themselves. To take nature to them, if they could not go to it, because for me it was an act of thanksgiving to be able to do so.
I am a great believer in hands on healing and became a reiki practitioner many years ago, but I also believe you can heal through placing intention into actual physical work done by the hands which is equally potent.
Hand embroidery is a way of record keeping and journaling and the intention of the moment can be placed by the hands into the work in a very powerful way, healing the mind and the imagination and therefore also the body. Hand embroidery also allows you, through stitch and texture, shape and structure, to reveal the heart of the work, be it animal, vegetable or mineral, making it come alive to show itself in all its beauty and energy as an offering to you.
The tiniest moth or velvety bat, the exquisite bird and butterfly, the great soaring stalks of cow parsley, the lowly but enduring dandelion, seeds blowing in the wind, magical and mysterious mushrooms with fabulous fungi and the unfurling fronds of ferns; all of these lend themselves willingly to be translated into rich dimensional embroidery to share their life force. And all these things are part of the world full of intriguing secrets, minute detail and the sumptuous colours and textures of nature which encompass the shooting stars above us to the dew on spiders’ webs below.
I wanted to also share some of the many beautiful words written about nature in poetry and include the herbal information that so many plants possess. Healing being found everywhere. I chose the facts and fables and magical images that I did, because every night when I went to sleep and dreamt, the information and direction the book should take came through clearly and I followed where I was led.
I believe the information was partially ancestral knowledge. As a form of ancient medicine work I was told to place crystals into the work, choosing the appropriate healing energies of the crystals to suit each particular subject, transferring their healing in this way and honouring the ancestors in doing so. But the information I received was also from my own guides and teachers, and there was no doubting what they wished.
I was told by people that the book was a foolish idea. That if someone could not find nature easily for themselves, then how would they possibly find my book either. But I believed that my soul purpose was being made clear and I should describe our world in all its glory in the very best way I could for people to share. The word given to me to describe the gifts of creation around us was ‘hale’, meaning good health in both body and mind, with nature being the wellspring. So, despite the doubters I hope that the book will work its own magic in reaching out to both those with the wish to find it, who will then discover the beauty of the embroidered threads of heaven for themselves and to those who already know the path. It comes with love.
Article by Julia van den Bosch
Article published in More to Life – Edition 67
