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The Queen's Chronicles
January 2018
In This Issue
Blue Moon Blessings
Dancing in the Moonlight
Singing the Blues
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MAMA DONNA

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Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman, award-winning author, popular speaker and workshop leader whose joyful celebrations of celestial events have introduced ancient traditional rituals and contemporary ceremonies to millions of people in more than 100 cities since 1972. She has published four books and currently writes for the Huffington Post, Beliefnet and UPI (United Press International) Religion and Spirituality Forum, and serves as ritual consultant for television and films. Mama Donna, as she is affectionately called, maintains a ceremonial center, spirit shop, ritual practice and consultancy in Exotic Brooklyn, NY where she offers intuitive tarot readings and spiritual counseling and works with individuals, groups, institutions, municipalities and corporations to create meaningful ceremonies for every imaginable occasion.
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The transition from Maiden and Mother to Queen and Empress can be a difficult one, fraught with hard lessons and lots of loss. It takes great determination and courage to confront and embrace the changes brought about by the midlife passage.
 
It can be really helpful during this confusing time to have the inspiration, advice and encouragement of a counselor/coach/mentor - someone who has been there and done that and is ready to help you do the same.
 
Queen Mama Donna offers upbeat, practical and ceremonial guidance for individual women and groups who want to enjoy the fruits of an enriching, influential, purposeful, passionate, and powerful maturity.
 
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Difficult times have helped me  
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how infinitely rich and beautiful life is  
in every way, and that so many things
that one goes worrying about are of  
no importance whatsoever.
 
ALWAYS IN SEASON
Back Issues Sale!


Always in Season 
Living in Sync with the Cycles

A Quarterly Journal by Mama Donna Henes, Urban Shaman

1999 - 2006  

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A fresh highlight
of the independent
and alternative media."
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Recent Articles about QMD 
 



Recent Articles by QMD 


Recent Radio Interviews 

 

For Women Over 40
 

Film
    
Television  
        
 
 
Mama Donna's 2014 Egguinox Celebration
Mama Donna's 2014 Egguinox Celebration
 
Yes We Did! Brooklyn Museum Presentation
Yes We Did! Brooklyn Museum Presentation
 
Mama Donna Blesses the Pepsico White Night Event
Mama Donna Blesses the Pepsico White Night Event


 
It is my hope that as more and more women rise to reign
in the fullest potential 
of our supremacy,
we will harness our purpose,
passion, and power
and direct it toward

creating a more balanced
and peaceful world. 
This is the legacy of Her majesty.
- QMD 

Turn Your  
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Blue Moon Blessings!
Crow Flag  
  Hail Queens! 
 
   
 
 
        
  The moon appeared in all her fullness
and so the women stood around the altar
             - Sappho of Lesbos
                                     
When the moon is full, the seas rise up to reach it, sending wild waves of enthusiastic welcome. Oysters spread their shells wide to receive it. Wolves howl at it. Ears pricked, eyes glued adoringly on the object of their attention, head thrown back in ecstasy, they sit up very straight like any good dog and sing to it. And, women, with their womb waters stirred like the tides, worship it.
 
The moon, almost always associated with women, is widely considered to be our special domain. This is due to the clear co-incidence of the periodic cycle of the moon and the monthly hormonal cycle of women. Undeniably, they are all but identical. A most natural female affinity is thus firmly established. A common connection bound in blood.                 
                                            
The moon is at the very heart of the universal matriarchal mysteries. I can imagine our earliest foremothers marking each month's menses carefully on tablets of bone, keeping track by means of these periodic tables. Certainly they couldn't help but notice that the moon was always in the same phase, the same place in the sky, each time they bled. Sister Moon obviously shared the same rhythm. A symphony of fertility composed in thirteen movements, its score, humanity's first calendar.
 
A 30,000 year-old piece of bone found in the Dordogne region of France is inscribed with a series of notches made by different instruments over time. These notations are thought to indicate the lunar cycle. Two similar bones, both about 8,500 years old, were also unearthed - one in equatorial Africa and one in Czechoslovakia. The Ishango bone from Africa can be read as a basic lunar calendar. It plots the pattern of time that transpires between the first sighting of the new crescent moon and the night when the moon is fullest.
 
What I want to know is, just whose lunar cycle are we talking about? Whose period? The moon's or the astronomer's own? Period comes from the Greek for "going round"
laussel
or "cycle,"defined as, "a round of time or series of years marked by the recurrence of astronomical coincidences (e.g. the changes of the moon falling on the same days of the solar year) and used as a unit of chronology."
                 
A woman's monthly blood is called, die mond, "the moon," by German peasants. In French, it is le moment de la lune. Native American peoples commonly refer to menstruation g women as being on their "moontime." The English word, menstruation, means "moon change" and comes from the same Indo-European root as "moon," "month" and "measure." The Gaelic term for menstruation and calendar are the same.
 
One complete moon cycle - new, full, new - was the obvious measure of one month. Starkly silver as it is against the celestial abyss, the moon is the only luminary in the sky whose change of position produces a shape-shift visible to the naked eye. This makes it imminently easy to observe and chart. People have lived solely by lunar time for most of our conscious existence.
 
A lunar calendar which provides a general sense of passing time is completely adequate for the needs of those who wander, gathering and hunting provisions as they go. But those who stay in one place and raise their food become much more directly dependent upon the sun. It's annual cycles determine the time to plant, tend and harvest their crops. With the development of sedentary agriculture came the need for a sun-based calendar.
 
The solar calendar has undergone many refinements over the past few thousand years, one of which was the invention of the month as an arithmetic division of the year. The months as they have become delineated have lost their intrinsic correlation with the real lunar phases. Calendar months of 30 and 31 days are longer than the actual period between one full moon and the next which is 29.53 days.
 
Consequently, the surplus hours and days of each month, each year, accumulate until eventually there is an "extra" full moon in one month. When a month is graced with two full moons, the second one is called a blue moon. You know, the once in a blue moon blue moon.
 
January 2018 is a blue moon month. January 1 was the Full Wolf Moon and the blue moon is January 31, the Full Cold Moon, in the naming tradition of the Iroquois. The cycle of the month with two full moons, the year with thirteen moons, is 2.72 years making it a rare and special, if not unusual or unexpected occasion. 2018 is extra extra  special, because there are two blue moons this year. March 1 is the Full Worm Moon and March 31 is the Full Sap Moon. 
 
Although blue moons do not cast a blue shadow, their very existence is a message out of the blue, as it were. A radio signal from the Great Goddess of Outer Space to us, Her very naughtiest, sometimes least sentient children. If, on the night of a cerulean moon, we close our eyes and sit very still, we will be able to hear Lady Luna sing the blues.
 
 
And, sister, mother, lover, friend that She is, Her pain is our pain. In losing our connection to the moon and Her cycles, we have lost track of our own. Like a cart with only three wheels, we are off balance, spinning out of control. We no longer see ourselves as participants in the universal plan, which leaves us feeling disempowered, disconnected, disconcerted, dismayed and disheartened. Stripped spiritually naked and scared to death.
 
Let us seize this year's two once-in-a-blue-moon-opportunities to tranceform our sadness into strength. Picture a perfect blue rite of passage into the power of positive change. A true-blue ceremony in the spirit of universal beneficence:
 
Let us strike a blue mood: Blue lights, blue pine incense, blueberry drinks. Dressed in our best blues, bluebells in our hair, let us pray for possibility, for a new perspective. Let us light bright blue candles to illuminate the perfect part for us to play in the exciting new woman rising epic epoch to come. Let us anoint each other with blue blessings, and pledge our affinity as co-creators of the working blueprint plan for a new paradigm for this beautiful blue planet that we call home.
 
 
Blue blessings of balance and better days to come.
 
signature  



When we think of blues music, we envision a weathered old black man in overalls hunched over his guitar in some southern rural state. Not!
 
The first blues stars were women.
 
A woman, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, was the first person to perform the blues on stage as popular entertainment in about 1902, hence her moniker "Mother of the Blues." Rainey had heard a woman singing about the man she'd lost, learned the song, and began using it as her closing number, calling it "the blues."
 
A woman, Mamie Smith, was first to make a commercial blues recording, "Crazy Blues," in 1920. The record was a phenomenal success by the standards of the day. It sold 75,000 copies in the first month, and this was at a time when much of the U.S. population, and an even higher percentage of the African-American population, didn't own a record player.
 
Mamie Smith became known as "America's First Lady of the Blues," and her success opened the floodgates for numerous blueswomen - Ida Cox, Sippie Wallace, Victoria Spivey, Lucille Bogan, Ethel Waters, and Alberta Hunter are some of the most famous - who dominated the recorded blues market, bringing the blues to a national audience. 
 
A woman, Tennessee-born Bessie Smith was the most popular of the classic blues singers. Smith, who was not related to Mamie Smith, was known as the "Empress of the Blues." Her large, raw, emotional voice, her "T'ain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do" attitude, and her 160 recorded songs made her the highest-paid black artist of the 1920s.
  
Of course, it was women who first sang the blues. The blues belong to women! These women were brave enough to bare their pain in public. They wrote and sang from a female perspective about sex, infidelity, money, and drink. They lamented their problems with a palpable hurt. A bleeding heart.
 
The craze for female blues singers peaked in the mid 1920s, and then came the Depression. The record business crumbled, labels not wanting to invest in a "race" audience, as the African-American fans were poorer than ever. Times were hard all around. Mamie Smith, died penniless in 1946. Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey would themselves be dead by 1940.
 
The original female blues stars of the '20s didn't always disappear entirely. Alberta Hunter, for instance, became more popular after the 1920s, and made an unexpectedly successful comeback as a senior citizen in the 1970s and 1980s, after about 25 years of retirement.
 
Alberta played at a club in Greenwich Village and I got to see her live a couple of times. She was in her eighties and was most definitely and undeniably the hottest mama in the room. Her energy was like electric honey - thick, slow, sexy, sad, seductive, and oh, so exciting. The excruciating sweetness of sorrow. I fell head over heels in love with her. In love with love. In love with life. In love with age. 
  alberta hunter
Yes, women sure do know how to sing the blues!
 
I'm n ot living the blues;
I'm just singing for the women who think they can't speak out. Can't a man alive mistreat me, 'cause I know who I am.
- Alberta Hunter 
 

The Queen's Correspondence

correspondence


Thanks so much for taking the time to respond to The Queen's Chronicles. Please keep your comments coming. And do feel free to make suggestions about content you would like to see. Or anything else, for that matter. It is a joy to connect with you.
 
 

Letters In Response to the DECEMBER 2017 Issue:
 
I always feel BETTER when I read your chronicles! I love your attitude: you NEVER give up, and you inspire us all to keep on truckin'. I know I've found a kindred spirit when she says, "keep on keeping on." We are children of the 1960s! "Never give up" is the credo of a 97-year old friend, a woman who survived the Holocaust. I'm a 73-year old feminist who LOVES speaking up. Thank you for reminding us our of God-given right and our social responsibility. I wanted you to know how much you're appreciated!
- Anne, AZ
 
Even though we have not yet had the pleasure of meeting face-to-face, I most definitely feel a very strong energetic connection with you, and can't wait to meet you. It most definitely has to do with you living your life as a "keeper of the light" - holding a lantern to help "show the way."  In one of your hands, the lantern, and in the other, your heart, which connects so deeply to the rhythms and vibrations of this precious earth and our place in the universe. I admire greatly that you have found a way to "live the life that love breathes", and offer so many human beings the invitation and opportunity to connect with their truest selves.  May all the blessings of being a human being fi nd their way to your doorstep in this New Year, and forevermore. 
- Gerry, VT
 
Donna Mama, your ability to journalisticly tell the truth with detail and exactness is always a refreshing read. Appreciation and applause. U do good!
- Linda, NY
 
Please keep your letters coming. And do feel free to make suggestions about content you would like to see. Or anything else, for that matter. 
Please send your responses to [email protected]

Your letters will be printed in the next Queen's Chronicles.
Kudos to the Queens!

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We extend hearty congratulations to our multi-talented circle of Sister Queens for their impressive accomplishments and successes.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
     
Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.
- Gail Sheehy
 
Allesandra Belloni, NJ; Split Britches,, NY; Linda Montano, NY; Barbara Rosenthal, NY; Carolee Schneemann, NY;
on their performances and/or performances of their work.

Ilona Granet,, NY; Karen Guancione, NJ; Guerrilla Girls, NY; Tan Kellner, NY; Beverly Naidus, WA; Sheila Pepe,NY; Christy Rupp, NY; Barbara T. Smith, CA; Robin Tewes, NY;  
on the exhibitions of their artwork.
 
Rabbi Rayzel Raphael, PA, Angels for Dreamtime (Children's Book);  
on their new publications.
    BRAVA!
 
Please send your good news, achievements, accomplishments, successes and celebrations so that our international circle of sovereign sisters can send you blessings and accolades.

And we are glad to so. It is a joy and a privilege to share in the fortune of another woman. I recently heard Oprah say the saddest thing ever - "The hardest thing about being successful is having someone to be glad for you."

It takes a centered and confident Queen to break that pattern. There are 60 million thrones out there. One for each of us. There is plenty of purpose, passion and power for us all. May we use it well! 
 
Circle of Concern

Helping Hands Circle


Please Offer Your Purest Thoughts, Your Heart-Felt Prayers, Your Great Good Feelings, And Your Very Best Blessings For Healing and Peace of Mind To:
 
 
 
 
 
A drianne, NY; Alison, TN; Amy, NY; Babs, NY; Barbara, NJ; Bebee, DE; Berenice, NY; Bettye, NY Betty, AL; Chrissie, NY; Christine, NY; Dana, FL; Dawn, CA; Diane, NY; Dolly, NY; Dominique, NM; Dorothy, CA; Elfie, NY; Gail, WA; Jo, AZ; Gerry, VT; Joan, ME; Joan, NY; Judi, FL; Judith, NY; Karen, NJ; Kathleen, PA; Kathrine, Denmark; Kaylin, MD; Diane, Scotland; Kazuko, NY; Kim, NY; Kimi, NJ; Laura, NY; Laurie, OH; Laurie, MN; Linda, FL; Linda, SC; Lisa, NJ; Lorie, KY; Lydia, CO; Lisa, PA; Lucia, TX; Margi, NY; Mari, VA; Margi, NY; Marna, NY; Marsha, NY; Mary, MD; Mary, NY; Mary, OH; Mary, CO; Nancy, NY; Nancy, NC; Nona, LA; Pat, MA; Patsy, NY; Paula, NT; Pearl, NY; Reynolds, NY; Roberta, NY; Sally, NY;Sandy, CA; Sharon, NY; Shelley, NY; Sheriden, MA; Shirley, IN; Sherli, CA; Sid, PA; Sue, CA; Susan, NC; Susan, NY; Terese, NY; Terri, FL; Urvashi, NY; Vicki, MN; Weslea, ME;
and Yvette, NY;
who are in the process of healing themselves from illness, accident, injury, or surgery. 

Amy, NY; D. Barbara, NY; Beverly, NY; Carol, NY; Diana, FL; Donna, NY;Gaetana, NY; Joanne, NY; Kimberly, NY; Kyia, MN; Linda, NY; Linda, NY; Maureen, NY; Meryl, NY; Beedee, NY; Patricia, Australia; Regi, CA;Sheryll, CA;Susan, NY; and Svetlana, NY; 
who would benefit greatly from some spiritual support.
 
Erica, New Zealand; Erica, CT; Gaetana, NY; Gail, NY; Holly, NY;Janet, CT; Kat, NY; Kate, NY; Kathrine, Denmark; Lois, NY; Marya, NY; Nancy, NC; and Roslyn, NJ; RUTH, CA
the caregivers who are in weary need of care themselves.

May Their Spirits Rest in Peace    
Ursula K. Le Guin, OR
Edith Isaac Rose, NY

Live your life from your heart. Share from your heart.  
And your story will touch and heal people's souls.
~ Melody Beattie
    
Please send your requests for physical and spiritual healing and positive energy so that the powerful women of The Queen's Court might send their prayers and blessings to you in your time of need.

~ ROYAL RESOURCES FOR QUEENLY WOMEN ~


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Book Corner

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The Queen Returns to Beliefnet!

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