The Old Mermaids Mystery School

By Kim Antieau

Are you feeling overloaded? Surrounded by chaos? Or maybe you're no longer sure what your purpose is. Perhaps you've never known. In a world of noise and chaos, The Old Mermaids Mystery School offers simple steps to connect with Nature, our true selves, and each other. In Mystery Schools from ancient times, the Mysteries were based on ideas that were hidden in plain sight. So it is with The Old Mermaids Mystery School. When the Old Mermaids walked out of the Old Sea and into the New Desert, changing their fin-ware into skin-ware, they brought with them not only their beautiful magical selves but entire skill sets which enabled them to thrive in their new and changing world. Now their unique, practical, mystical, and poetic ways of being in and connecting with the world are here in The Old Mermaids Mystery School, a 13-Mystery self-directed program to help you explore ways to swim, walk, and dance with beauty, joy, and authenticity through all the days and nights of your life. Each Mystery in The Old Mermaids Mystery School features the wisdom of one of the Old Mermaids. You won't find any dogma, religion, or exams here. Instead, revel in each of the 13 Mysteries, revealed to you over time, taking you from Sister Sheila Na Giggles's practical steps on being in the here and now to Sister Faye Mermaid's "The rest is mystery." The Old Mermaids offer you peace and sanctuary and a chance to thrive no matter where you find yourself in your life's journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Green Snake Publishing
• Release date: Jul 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393416227

Kim Antieau

Kim Antieau is the author of Mercy, Unbound. She lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest.

Book preview

The Old Mermaids Mystery School

The Old Mermaids Mystery School

Kim Antieau

Green Snake Publishing

Also by Kim Antieau

Old Mermaids Books

The Blue Tail

Church of the Old Mermaids

The First Book of Old Mermaids Tales

The Fish Wife

An Old Mermaid Journal

The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights

The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights: A Year and a Day Journal

The Old Mermaids Oracle

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Other Novels

Broken Moon

Butch

Coyote Cowgirl

Deathmark

The Desert Siren

Her Frozen Wild

The Gaia Websters

Jewelweed Station

The Jigsaw Woman

Killing Beauty

Mercy, Unbound

The Monster’s Daughter

Queendom: Feast of the Saints

The Rift

Ruby’s Imagine

Swans in Winter

Whackadoodle Times

Whackadoodle Times Two

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Other Non-Fiction

Answering the Creative Call

Certified: Learning to Repair Myself and the World in the Emerald City

Counting on Wildflowers: An Entanglement

MommaEarth Goddess Runes

The Salmon Mysteries: a Reimagining of the Eleusinian Mysteries

Under the Tucson Moon

Contents

Introduction

1. Mystery One: Be Here Now

Tale: Sister Sheila Na Giggles Mermaid and the Rocky Path

Recipe: Songbird Soup/Tea/Morning Porridge

Practice

2. Mystery Two: Be Full of Yourself

Recipe: Full Moon Libation

Menu for the Tea Shell: Summer Sunrise Tea

Tale: Sister DeeDee Lightful Mermaid Sees the Lightful

Practice

3. Mystery Three: Embrace the Wild

Tale: Sister Bea Wilder Mermaid Understands

Recipe: Sunshine

Wisdom: Ability to Respond

Practice

4. Mystery Four: Live Your Siren Song

Recipe: Singing Up the Sun

Tale: Sister Lyra Musica Mermaid and the Seeker

Practice

5. Mystery Five: Cultivate Joy

Tale: Sister Laughs a Lot Mermaid and Jack

Recipe: Make a Goddess

Recipe: Old Mermaids Treasure Box

Practice

6. Mystery Six: Be At Home in the World

Menu for the Tea Shell

Tale: Sister Ursula Divine Mermaid and Kadar’s Shed

Practice

7. Mystery Seven: Encourage Your Creative Process

Tale: Sister Bridget Mermaid and the Blessing Time

Wisdom: Old Mermaid Blessing

Practice: Make Yourself into an Old Mermaid

Practice

8. Mystery Eight: Make Magic

Tale: Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid and the Sous Chef

Recipe: The Magic of Blueberry Omelets

Practice

9. Mystery Nine: Be Wise

Tale: Sister Sophia Mermaid and Victoria

Practice: Calling In Wisdom

10. Mystery Ten: Love

Tale: Sister Magdelene Mermaid and the Young Woman

Practice

11. Mystery Eleven: Flow

Tale: Grand Mother Yemaya Mermaid and the Old Sea

Practice: Visiting Your Old Mermaids Sanctuary

12. Mystery Twelve: Honor the Ancestors

Tale: Mother Star Stupendous Mermaid and the Night Sky

Practice: Gifted Ceremony

Practice

13. Mystery Thirteen: Accept Mystery

Tale: Sister Faye Mermaid and the Mysteries

The Many Ways of the Old Mermaids

Practice: A Gifted Ceremony for Someone Else

Practice

About the Author

The Thirteen Suggestions

The Thirteen Mysteries

The Old Mermaids Mystery School

by Kim Antieau

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Copyright © 2020 by Kim Antieau

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ISBN: 978-1-949644-51-7

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All rights reserved.

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No part of this book may be reproduced

without written permission of the author.

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Cover Painting by Rachel Slick.

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Thanks to Nancy Milosevic.

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http://www.kimantieau.com

www.kimantieau.smugmug.com

www.patreon.com/kimandmario

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Published by Green Snake Publishing.

www.greensnakepublishing.com

To all the Old Mermaids Novices

Introduction

The Old Mermaids Mystery School

Welcome to The Old Mermaids Mystery School.

One winter at a writing retreat in the Sonoran Desert, the Old Mermaids came up out of a nearby wash and began telling me the stories that became my popular novel Church of the Old Mermaids.

At least that’s how I remember it. I always saw the Old Mermaids as mythic goddess-like beings and ordinary women trying to thrive in an environment that was barely survivable. They became more than characters in a novel to me and to others. Each one is iconic and down to Earth. Each one struggles yet stays true to herself and her community.

I have an affinity for the old mystery schools where they examined the ordinary and demonstrated the power, beauty, and sacredness in the so-called trivial. I’ve always wanted to be a part of a mystery school. One week while staying in a house at the end of a canyon in Abiquiu, NM, where a wild bear was wandering the area and keeping us indoors, The Old Mermaids Mystery School just spilled out of me. I wrote it, I asked people if they would be interested in taking a 13-month course, and it came into being in 2018.

This book is the good-parts version of that original online school. It is now a self-directed course that you can do in 13 months, 13 weeks, or in whatever time you choose, in whatever order you want. You will find no dogma here. This is your Mystery School. Enjoy it. Make it your own.

Please read Church of the Old Mermaids before you begin the school. It will introduce you to all the Old Ems and make the Mystery School a richer experience for you.

In this book, you will find suggestions to journal, record your dreams, draw, and answer questions throughout. I suggest you get a notebook for this journaling and drawing. Express yourself! (The print version of this book, available at online and brick and mortar bookstores has blank and lined pages throughout for your thoughts and images.)

Love and blessed sea,

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Kim Antieau

One

Mystery One: Be Here Now

The great mystery schools taught their initiates, pupils, or novices about the daily mysteries surrounding us. If only we could see, hear, feel, and taste what was in front of us, beside us, all around us, life would be beautiful, profound, and liberating. If we could do this, time would stand still. All would be available to us. That was what they taught.

Is this possible?

For the Old Mermaids it was, and it can be for us, too. The first step and the first mystery is:

Be here now.

Yes, we’ve all heard this again and again. Be present. Don’t pay attention to the past or the future (except to learn from one and make sure you have a plan to pay your bills in the other). How does one be present, and for Pete’s sake, why would one want to be present all the time, especially if one’s present is miserable?

When I was in my twenties, newly married, and living in Ann Arbor, I read a book about Zen. When one is washing the dishes, the author wrote, one should pay attention to washing the dishes and nothing else. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to pay attention to doing the dishes!

I tried it anyway. When I did the dishes, I paid attention to doing the dishes. Time slowed. I became extremely aware. I was so aware of the feeling of the dishcloth and the water on my skin that it was uncomfortable at first. It felt as though something was wrong. This was only because I hadn’t really paid attention since I was a child.

I knew right then that being here now meant my life would be more sensual, fuller, and appear to last longer. Of course, I was not able to be here now all the time—I doubt anyone can. When I am able to accomplish this, it makes all the difference in the world.

What’s all this time traveling about? Sister Sheila Na Giggles Mermaid has said to more than one visitor to the Old Mermaids Sanctuary. Yesterday be gone and tomorrow never comes. Be here now.

Sister Sheila Na Giggles Mermaid understood this, as did all the Old Mermaids. She is related to the great Sheela na Gig of Ireland. (There are many spellings of her name.) Icons of Sheela na Gig are often on churches. She’s shown as a naked old woman, grinning, holding open her vagina. Patricia Monaghan says her name has been translated as hag, holy lady, and a vulgar word for female genitalia.

She may have been used to ward off evil, for good luck, for healing, as a warning of the power of the female. It’s difficult to figure out what ancient female symbols meant in their time because they are most often interpreted first through the male lens and then through the lens of the Christian Church. As far as we know, the first archaeologists were men. They would find male icons and call them gods, but they labeled female statues as fertility figures.

Many scholars now call Sheela na Gig a goddess, probably related to the Cailleach, the dark hag goddess of winter. She may represent sovereignty and a connection to the land. In any case, she certainly appears to represent life (through the vulva) and death (her often skeletal appearance).

Sheela na Gig may be related to Baubo, too, although not much scholarly evidence links them. In any case, Sister Sheila Na Giggles Mermaid is related to both goddesses. Baubo is the Greek goddess of belly laughter. She is often depicted as a vulva on two legs. She is the one who lifted her skirt to the mourning Demeter, causing the goddess to laugh, which lifted her grief over the loss of her daughter. (Coyote is a stand-in for Baubo in my book The Salmon Mysteries.) Some scholars link Baubo with Hecate.

All three of these goddesses—Sheela na Gig, Baubo, and Hecate—are goddesses of the people, of the Trivia. These goddesses represent or stand watch over the mysteries of life and death. Sister Sheila Na Giggles Mermaid also understands these trivial mysteries. She urges us to get the starfish outta our eyes, to remove those rose-colored glasses, and see life as it truly is. We can do this sustainably by becoming grounded and staying grounded in the here and now. It is then that we can learn from the past without being stuck in it, and we can plan for the future without fearing it.

We all have times in our lives when it is difficult to be present: when we are in pain, sick, or grieving. It is absolutely natural and healthy to be able to disassociate or go away during some of those times. However, we want to be able to consciously make those decisions to go away, not do so out of habit or rote. The more we practice being here now, the more likely we’ll be able to face the truth of the world and our lives and make decisions about how we want to live.

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How can you be here now? How do you feel about being still? Do you meditate? How about a walking meditation?

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What are your feelings about Sheela na Gig and Baubo? Draw them and see how that feels.

Tale: Sister Sheila Na Giggles Mermaid and the Rocky Path

And then . . . the Old Sea dried up, and the Old Mermaids were tossed ashore onto the New Desert. They shook off seaweed, shook off the last drops of the Old Sea, hid treasures here and there along the banks, and whispered sweet nothings into conch shells that now littered the arroyo and looked like otherwordly creatures waiting for the command to come alive again and share their wisdom, beauty, and treasures.

The Old Mermaids grieved, some of them wailed, and some of them curled up on the sandy bottom of the wash like pill bugs awaiting a new and safer world. But one by one and then together, they eventually left the edge of what had been and what was now. They met their neighbors. They communed with the elements, with the Elementals, with the coyotes, jackrabbits, saguaro, and palo verde. They listened to the whispers of . . . everything.

Eventually they dug their fingers into the earth, added water and straw, and built the Old Mermaids Sanctuary. Where all were welcome. The New Desert had become home.

All the Old Mermaids had their place on the Old Mermaids Sanctuary. Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid was especially good at cooking—which was something since they never cooked anything in the Old Sea, except perhaps ideas. Sisters Faye and Bridget Mermaids were particularly skilled at figuring out the right songs to sing, the correct words for the enchantments, and the ingredients needed for this or that malady at this time of the year and phase of the moon. Sister Magdelene Mermaid was good at love. Grand Mother Yemaya Mermaid understood the mysteries, all of the mysteries, better than almost anyone or anything.

Sister Sheila Na Giggles Mermaid’s sea chanties were quite colorful, and she could fix almost anything while telling a good joke. Sister Sheila Na Giggles Mermaid was mostly known for her frankness. Her honesty could make a person cringe, but she liked to say, Get the starfish outta your eyes! Face reality and move on, she’d say. Things will turn out one way or another.

Sister Sheila Na Giggles Mermaid adjusted to life in the New Desert quicker than any of the Old Mermaids. Naturally, the area folks respected her—and kept her at a distance. Most humans do not care to hear the truth about the world or themselves, at least not as a steady diet.

But then there was Mary Connell. She lived on the other side of the ridge, near where Granita Wash crosses Coyote Arroyo. Over time, the community had become concerned about Mary. The Healer and Sisters Bridget and Faye Mermaids had all visited her several times to treat her injuries. Rocks kept falling down on the path she took