Temple of Eilish - A Holistic Day Spa in Geelong, Australia

Services: Celebrant

When life has presented you with a reason to celebrate, I can help tailor a unique and perfect occasion.

I am an authorised Civil Celebrant (number A6762) and have a commitment to providing a professional service that is personal and sensitive to the occasion. I am a warm and engaging person and genuinely enjoy my role as a celebrant. I am a wordsmith as well having been a journalist and an editor when I started out in life and use my writing skills to create stunningly moving ceremonies that will capture the memories of a lifetime. As a priestess I can also add spiritual elements to the ceremony respecting cultural traditions of all belief systems. I also conduct alternative lifestyle ceremonies and have no problem incorporating non-traditional elements within a ceremony.

My role

As well as assisting you in planning your ceremony, I will supply and lodge all of the legal documents required for the occasion. You can plan the occasion in a relaxed environment with me at my Temple, or at a location suitable to you, where we will be able to discuss all your ceremony requirements and you can view the various certificate and ceremony ideas.

You will be able to consult me at any time by telephone, email or in person, in fact, when we get the ball rolling, I encourage unlimited contact with me, so you feel like you've got control every step of the ceremony design process with drafts emailed back and forth until we're all happy with the choice of vows, choreography, readings, music and traditions celebrated.

Location

I am based in Geelong and can conduct ceremonies in all areas of Victoria, including Melbourne, Ballarat, Bendigo, Daylesford, Macedon Ranges, Dandenongs, Mornington Peninsula, and the Bellarine Peninsula and can even do interstate weddings pending travel surcharges.

Weddings

I have a focus on tailoring your celebration exactly to your personal wishes. I can offer a vast array of ideas to assist you in creating a wonderful ceremony. I have the knowledge and experience to ensure that this most important of days lives on in your memories as a perfect start to a perfect life together.

With a depth of experience in writing as a former journalist and editor, I can help you script a unique and memorable ceremony, with music, poetry, words and symbols to reflect exactly how you feel. I will help to produce a ceremony that is memorable, personal and totally crafted for you, limited only by your imagination. I also include the complimentary use of my new Ashton PA system for the day, which comes complete with stand, and has a built-in tape deck, CD player, comes with microphones, the whole sound system for your ceremony when voice projection just won't be enough.

I will ‘copyright’ the ceremony so that it remains yours alone. You will receive it as a personalised copy of your Wedding Ceremony, printed on your choice of quality paper, which will be given to you on your wedding day as a very special and treasured memento.

While helping you to craft a beautiful ceremony, I will also take care of all the paperwork and legal requirements and mail it all off to Births Deaths and Marriages via Registered Post. I can accomplish all of the logistics for you, while you allow yourselves some space to focus on your dreams.

Bridal Showers

Now available, these parties for women will be based on the ancient middle eastern practise of henna night (from where our modern Hen’s Night originated!) It is exquisite celebration of womanhood for women who want to access the ancient wisdom associated with this rite of passage & experience one of the most intimate, sensual, entertaining, empowering & unforgettable events of their life in the company of their closest female friends & family members.

You can make a day of it, a night of it, or pamper yourselves before a night on the town! I can include guest speakers, henna artists, middle eastern style belly dancers to instruct the bride to be on the ancient arts of seductive dance, modern style female strippers to teach the arts of strip tease, I can tailor the party to suit your individual needs. I can also pamper the bride to be and her guests with footsoaks, scrubs, massages, healings, readings, make-overs, the services are only limited by your imagination. Contact me for more information so we can design it perfectly, just for her.

Namings

A specially crafted celebration of a baby or child. Together we can create and uniquely script a welcome to the world for your child. In the presence of those who matter most, let me speak the sentiments that will guide and comfort, cherish and enfold. This is a wonderful afternoon event that touches the heart of the child's true community, by welcoming the arrival of your child into a celebration of the cultural traditions that reflect your personal beliefs, style & sense of humour. Guaranteed to create long lasting memories! Contact me to help plan a beautifully meaningful and celebratory occasion.

Commitment ceremonies

These are often conducted for engaged couples as well as members of the gay, lesbian, transsexual and intersex communities and also a way of uniting those within polyamorous relationships. I write sensitive and thoughtful ceremonies which communicate the depth and strength of the commitment you feel. I can help you find the words, passages and symbols that capture your desire to proclaim and formalise your connection. Unfortunately, Australian law does not allow the legal marriage of homosexual couples and other non-traditional relationships but apart from the legal marriage certificate, there is no reason why a commitment ceremony of any sort between people that love each other can't be as special and as meaningful as that of the legalised marriages of heterosexual couples.

I will do my best to make this day as special as possible for you and I look forward to the day when Australia's laws concerning gay marriages are reformed.

Renewal of vows

When the passage of time may have dulled the memory of the vows you exchanged but has not dulled the feelings that gave rise to them… proclaim once again the depth of love and breadth of experience you share. Celebrate the victory of your marriage through all that life has delivered. Renew the commitment to a future that draws richly on your past. I can write a service to capture what has been uniquely yours and express what you desire and dream of for the years ahead. You may like to involve the children of your union, to celebrate the fruits of this marriage as they often love to get involved in such meaningful days. This is purely up to you and no two ceremonies are identical.

Funeral Memorials and Death Bed rituale

Today’s contemporary funeral traditions offer families in need many beautiful, dignified ways to honour the life of a loved one. I help families choose from many options to arrange a service that is both comforting and appropriate. Paying tribute to those whom we have loved and are no longer with us is an important way to bring families and friends together to remember and cherish those we have lost. In creating a memorial service, I incorporate symbols and prose which have meaning for all those who attend, provide opportunity for reflection and seek to honour those whom we wish to commemorate. I also honour their passing in a meaningful ceremony to mark their moment of passing and stay with the family until the spirit has left the body to aid in the transition process giving them more of a civil or pagan last rites service if required by family.

Pagan Ceremonies

I am also available as an ordained, initiated Priestess to conduct rituals and officiate ceremonies specifically for pagans and related spiritual communities. I see ritual is any physical act which helps us to integrate change into our lives.

MAIDEN

For young women, these are menarche ceremonies for maidens to celebrate their bodies now moving with the cycles of the moon. In ancient cultures, these beautiful events welcomed girls into their long forgotten birth rite - the lunar mysteries of womanhood. This culminates as a celebration & imparting of feminine wisdom that validates & empowers their feminine gifts & potential, aligns their cycles with the greater cosmos & gifts them with a network of feminine support of close women for the path ahead, whilst acknowledging that their childhood has passed & their maidenhood begun. They are loving, honoring and respectful and great rites of passage for any young goddess.

YOUNG GODS

For young men that are coming into manhood, I can also officiate ancient tribal ceremonies specifically designed to take the emerging man from the world of the mother and to let go of his childhood and embrace the world of men, in a meaningful rite of passage specifically designed for him. This may involve mask making, story telling, it can be timed to be performed on the same day as a teenage circumcision, or any other way the young man wishes to mark his passage into manhood. With young men, this can be when his voice breaks his 13th birthday or any other onset of puberty. I can also write these ceremonies and co-officiate them with the father, leading male role model or priest and do the preliminary honourings and thanksgivings to the boy's mother in a circle of women saying goodbye to their little boy before the men take him away for Secret Men's Business.

MOTHER

Known as the modern Baby Shower, I also am able to officiate ceremonies honouring the mother's journey ahead. Traditionally celebrated by various cultures during the 7th month of pregnancy, (when the unborn child can hear the outside world), these creative & nurturing afternoon ceremonies are a wonderful way to enjoy & honour the full blossoming of Motherhood with sacred teachings & beautiful customs which serve to welcome the spirit of each child prior to birth. We celebrate the gateway of life and mark this occasion with stories, gifts and other mother-honouring celebrations.

CRONE

Menopause is another sacred time for daughters of the Goddess and is often called Croning. In accordance with Native American Indian teachings we believe that a woman attains her power at moonpause (menopause) as this is when her physical body stops it's creative cycle to nurture life and when this creative force can be used to create other power within her life. It is therefore a significant time to acknowledge & honour this transition with a sacred ceremony that is personally co-created to positively commemorate this shift, enabling a woman to relinquish her role as the all-giving mother & surrender to the unknowable realm of Great Mystery to serve as a wise woman. Hecate is often the Goddess we call upon during this ceremony, but whichever Goddess calls to you is the one we shall invoke for the ceremony.

HANDFASTING & HANDPARTINGS

As with the civil wedding ceremonies I am also able to conduct meaningful handfastings for pagan couples in three different levels of spiritual homage, depending on the audience being invited to witness the ceremony. The handfastings can be legalised under the Australian Marriage Act or they can be formal ceremonies honouring the commitment of the couple but without the legals, the choice is up to you. These vary from the fairytale style ceremony with a light reference to the ancient traditions such as broom jumping and fasting of the hands with ribbon, to the formal full blown pagan handfasting for pagan congregations invoking deity with no explanation to the non-pagan members of the crowd.

When the couple no longer wishes to live together in a handfasted union, I am also able to conduct meaningful, sensitive handpartings which are often for the benefit of the couple but also to the children of the union. Ritual is an empowering tool to call upon when we wish to release the energy of a past situation or loved one so we are truly free to embrace new opportunities & act effectively in each present moment. These highly individualized ceremonies are simple & yet deeply profound & emotionally healing. Such ceremonies allow one to begin the next chapter of our lives by honouring our journey thus far and looking forward to the gifts that life has to offer ahead of us.

CUTTING THE TIES THAT BIND

Sometimes life holds us back from grabbing life by the horns and going for it. It may be the past haunting us, old promises that we made to past loves that still have emotional threads attached to them, for whatever reason, we are the sum total of our life experiences for better or worse. Aside from our current incarnations, there are also past-life vows that we took that can give us hang-ups, such as vows of poverty and chastity that we took as nuns, monks and priests to our gods, leading to hang ups about money and sex, love even parenthood in this life. Don't underestimate the power of past life vows - especially if we made them to our gods or soulmates, these are like marks on our souls and although we may even have forgotten them thanks to drinking deeply from the waters of Amnesia before embarking on this current life journey, it can explain why a lot of us self sabotage our happiness unconsciously and stop ourselves from enjoying what we can from life. Sometimes we need to cut these ties that bind us or hold us back from experiencing life completely renewed and refreshed, ready to wipe the slate clean again. I've done some very powerful and personal "cutting ties that bind" ceremonies - a perfect prelude for couples that want to start their lives fresh and new free from ties to past loves, guilt from past choices, past life vows to spouses and their gods and the changes I've seen with working with them towards their own wedding day post-cutting ceremony have been profound! It is even great as part of a handparting or divorce ceremony - to formally cut ties: emotional, mental, spiritual etc from holding both partners back from journeying ahead to wherever their lives take them next. I can tailor a ceremony of this nature to suit your individual needs and like the rest of my work, each ceremony is unique and tailored to suit your intentions for such a cathartic experience.

ABORTION, MISCARRIAGE AND STILLBIRTH CEREMONIES

For whatever reason, two souls that journeyed together briefly have decided that it was only going to be a short journey, yet life is precious and sacred no matter how short the journey was and for that reason some people may wish to honour that brief journey spent together. Whether it was the baby's choice to exit or the parent's choice not to have the child this time around, emotional bonds may have been created between two or more souls that can have a profound affect on the parties involved. In a sensitive tribute to the brave little spiritual warrior and the parents involved, I can design a beautiful ceremony honouring the passage of life so that both parents and little soul can depart without guilt, with sensitivity, dignity and honour in an unforgettably beautiful tribute to this very special time in your life. It can be as private or as public as you would like. How you would like to honour this experience is totally up to you and I'm here for you anytime if you need to process this in your own way in your own time. Some parents even decide that now is not the right time to go through with a pregnancy and terminate, we can always send the soul on it's way and invite it back for another oppportunity with the same parents if it is within the plans of that little angel to try and come through again on this earth plane or whether it only wanted to spend some time in a human womb for that particular experience.

SEASONS AND SABBATS

I am available to officiate ceremonies as a Priestess, marking passing of the season as the Wheel of the Year turns such as Beltaine, Samhain, Winter and Summer Solstice, Autumn and Spring Equinoxes to name a few of our events on the pagan wheel of the year, as well as the full moons and dark moons, and other important days on the pagan calendar.