The Path of Pollen-Workshops and Trainings

The Path of Pollen is a vibrant and vital gynocentric shamanic tradition that works with the honeybee and the hive as its central motif and living glyph. Due to itgynocentricity, all the teaching events offered are taught for women, by women. These courses are progressive, and those women wishing to undertake the year-long training Arte Triptych Melissae must first complete The Way of the Melissae workshop. Those women considering The Pollen Method training must first have successfully completed the Arte Triptych Melissae training. In 2012 a new Path of Pollen retreat is being offered, namely Melissae Lyceum Lectorum. A further advanced course - The Trembling Veil & The Roar of the Roses - can be attended by any woman who has completed any single Path of Pollen workshop or training. 

Kate is also an initiate of the Path of Pollen shamanic tradition and one
of a small handful of individuals authorized to teach seminars and trainings
for women on behalf of the Path of Pollen. In that capacity she co-teaches The Way of the Melissae seminar, the year-long training Arte Triptych Melissae ,The Trembling Veil & The Roar of the Roses and Melissae Lyceum Lectorum with The Sacred Trust, a UK-based educational organization. All of these courses are led by Kate and the Educational Director of The Sacred Trust, Naomi Lewis.

The Way of the Melissae

The Way of the Melissae is a well-trodden path for distaff members of the European shamanic tradition known as The Path of Pollen. This workshop offers a rare opportunity to work directly with women from The Path of Pollen who will be sharing teachings that have traditionally been passed down ‘from mouth to ear’. Central to the tradition is the magical formula known as Six-Hex-Sex which is embodied and expressed by the Melissae in her role as Priestess and as Pythoness – a specific oracular mode of magnetic trance – and training in the veiled ways of the Priestess and Pythoness will be emphasised during this teaching event.

The Melissae utilise little-known arcane methodologies to move into limenal zones, in-between places of ‘neither-niether’ – where the three-fold structure of sisterhood ‘cells’ can be encountered and its denizens met, namely the Sisterhood of the Spinners, the Sisterhood of the Wise Maidens and the Sisterhood of the Fey. Each of these sisterhoods holds a particular body of teaching, orientated towards encouraging the student to become both the flower, the flow-er and the pollinator of honeyed wisdoms. Participants will also be introduced to the apis-codex, being a guide to living the fullest of lives in accordance with the Path of Pollen.

See What's On UK for more information and dates.

Painting: Maggie Taylor

Arte Triptich Melissae - A Training for Women

Arte Triptych Melissae is a private, three-part training for women in the ways of the distaff members of The Path of Pollen, the Melissae. The Melissae draw their inspiration from a different spring than most: it is an arcane discipline, a vein, an underground working - difficult to trace but easy to recognise once encountered. The training itself is imparted in three folds, each educating the participant in the ways and wiles of one of the three sisterhoods associated with the Pollen Way. Here, specific meditations and ceremonial practices that revolve around the Lemniscatic Volatus, the Dance of Infinite Flight, are imparted and utilised to move between worlds and step outside and beyond the circles of time. Student will be stretched so that they might reach through the surface of the tradition, accessing practical applications of the work to be applied to themselves and others. Within these practices and accompanying ceremonial work and ritual action, a path is laid leading to physical and metaphysical health and simultaneously a pilgrimage is made towards a vital and radiant life and the tableaux of honey and sting.

See What's On UK for more information and dates.

The Trembling Veil & The Roar of the Roses

"There is a pythoness in every one of us, and a Delphic cavern, 
namely our imagination, into which we must retire if we 
are to accomplish anything of worth." JFC FULLER

Within the Path of Pollen the expression ‘The Trembling Veil’ refers not only to the diaphanous liminal divide that exists between the physical and non-physical supernal worlds, but also to the metaphysical or spiritual hymen that dwells within all women, irregardless of their sexual standing, be they maiden or menarche, crone or scarlet woman. Comprehending and engaging with a living knowledge of this interior veil allows any woman to step into the status of virgin (‘innocent one’) repeatedly. Journeying into this visceral knowing is initiated by undertaking an especial ceremony of womb sanctification and sacred reclamation of the distaff Cavern of Creation; which - once embraced and completed — brings about a ‘roar’ from the attendant interior stars or roses, as they are referred to in this context.

Each woman attending will engage with the central ceremony of womb empowerment, purification & blessing, together with other practices from the Path of Pollen that have not been previously shared outside the tradition, all of which will be woven together lemniscatically as we continue to traverse this funambulatory path.

See What's On UK for more information and dates.

Painting: Elizabeth Williams

Melissae Lyceum Lectorum

A Ten-day Immersion Training Retreat for Women

This ten day training retreat is designed to allow participants to experience an in-depth immersion into the distaff line of the Path of Pollen over an extended period of days and nights. Unlike other Path of Pollen workshops and trainings, it offers the opportunity for participants to live, move and have their beings in a similar fashion to the classical model and manner of the Melissae when residing together as a ‘cell’.

On this immersion training, there will be three cells of six women, each being looked over and guided by an initiate of the Path of Pollen. Each day will carry a precise ritual order to it, weaving together three aspects or ‘rays’ that hold particular import within the bee tradition namely: Love, Power and Wisdom. Each day will commence with prayer, followed at midday and evening when certain salutations to the hidden teachers are offered. Each of the ten days will also have as part of its focus one of the Ten Nektars of the Flow-er, moving up to and beyond what flows on from the Tenth Nektar, being the abditory teachings regarding immaculate conception or parthenogenesis.

The work will include healing practices, working with the hives, labiomancy and lampadomancy as well as initiatory work using the oniricell, being a hexagonal structure used for merging and dreaming work. This immersion retreat calls for a high level of commitment, and we therefore call only to those women who consider themselves ready for the metamorphosis that will carry them ever deeper into a life lived passing back and forth through the golden and honeyed veils.

See What's On UK for more information and dates.
Enquires should be directed to Naomi Lewis at The Sacred Trust.

"The Way of the Melissae workshop and the training Arte Triptych Melissae have introduced me to spiritual practices that are staggering in their beauty, power and scope... We have been held, and deftly led through these exquisite teachings by two beautiful and loving women - Kate Shela and Naomi Lewis - whose ability to teach a diverse group of individuals never fails to inspire us all. I can barely measure, much less describe, the value I place on this experience, which I know will continue to unfold throughout my life" Dr Patricia Coates, Microbiologist

Recommended Books

Simon Buxton, The Shamanic Way of the Bee (Destiny Books, 2004)
Melissographia, Amy Shelton