A magical novel that will take you
into a journey through
the inscapes of your Dreams.
by
Maria Mar
poet, performer, visual artist and shaman
Bring magic back into your life,
Open your wings and fly,
Visit the place where magic meets reality.
Daughter of the Ancient Trees
Interactive Novel
Book 1
BEWOMANING
by Maria Mar
An alchemical journey to the place
within you
where magic meets reality.
Ana Danza is an orphan girl who becomes the apprentice to Forest Mother, the Keeper of the Dream Forest. As a unique, creative girl in the ordinary town of Reality, Ana Danza has been rejected and mocked all her life. Will the emotional wounds she has suffered destroy her future, and the Dream Forest with her? Or will she learn how to transform her pain into power, becoming the next Keeper of the Dream Forest?
Maria Mar, poet, performer, writer, visual artist and shaman has created a universe bursting with beauty and magic. In this universe the author has placed two characters: Ana Danza and Forest Mother. Ana embodies Maria's wounds at the beginning of her own training as a Woman of Power. Forest Mother embodies the knowledge and wisdom acquired during this training.
In Daughter of the Ancient Trees, Maria Mar takes you through a quest for the Female Face of Power within you. The Dream Forest is the inscape of a woman's personal dream. Guided by the voice of Forest Mother (played in the accompanying CD by Maria Mar), journey with Ana Danza, acquiring a wealth of knowledge that you can apply in your everyday life. As you follow the adventures, tests and challenges of this female heroine, become the protagonists of your own life!
This interactive novel is part of
Bewomaning
A creative quest for the Female Face of Power
Hear Maria Mar's voice in the role of the Forest Mother in the accompanying CD.
Quest in the upcoming interactive website to play and apply the novel's principles.
Download Medicine Stories and questing guidance from the Bewomaning website.
Enjoy a wealth of co-products that help you use the metaphors and knowledge embedded in the story to quest for your own personal dream.
Join Maria Mar in real life, real time, questing with her in one of her interactive performances.
Chat with the author in her interactive readings and lecture.
Leap out of the page and into your dream! READ MORE.
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Maria Mar is a Woman of Power, a writer, performer and visual artist. She has refined her 20 years of knowledge as a specialist in personal growth through the arts into an integrated system of self-transformation through the arts called The ShamansDance Way. Maria Mar has danced with the African Sangomas, joined in the healing circle of Mexican Curanderas, and worked with thousands of women from diverse cultures in the United States and abroad. She has walked her talk, and in the Bewomaning Creative System to quest for the Female Face of Power, she is talking her walk to help women step into their Dream. Her upcoming novel, Daughter of the Ancient Trees is the first book of the Bewomaning Series, and the core reading to join the many creative forms of questing offered by the author. Read more about author .
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Daughter of the Ancient Trees introduces you to a new universe. This universe exists in the fictional world of the Dream Forest, 160 miles of enchanted forest surrounding the normalcy-obsessed town of Reality. This universe is also a very real, alchemical and powerful universe of perception that Maria Mar, author and shaman, bequests to you. The enchanted characters, alchemical objects and heroic journeys encountered by Ana Danza lay a path that you too can follow. It is a path to the awakening of the Female Face of Power in you, and to the manifestation of your dream and soul's purpose.
Like Ana Danza, you will enjoy meeting the amazing inhabitants of the Dream Forest. The Vims, the most numerous of these inhabitants, are tiny energy creatures that show Ana the hidden truths about situations and help her discover the virtues of joy, play, change and dance. Ana's first friend among the Dream Forest's inhabitants is MiccaRicca, a shiny stone with six charming Stonebabies. There is Three Dreamers, the Oak that reveals to Ana Danza the secret behind the lies about the West Forest. The Town Father and Town Mothers of Reality started calling this forest the Witches' Ghostyard, creating a myth that the ghosts of witches and murderous women inhabit that forest. Three Dreamers tells Ana Danza that the true name of the West Forest is the Forest of Aché. The spirits of the Sacred Storytellers live in that forest. They will help a woman connect the threads of her life story, discovering the truths that Reality denies its inhabitants.
You will meet the four guardians of The Dream Forest, which are, Ana will one day learn, the four guardians of a woman's personal dream. Meet the Stonemother who guards the Dream Forest's Presence. Travel to the Sacred Mountain who embodies the Dream Forest's Faith. Sing and dance with Jumping Joy and Dancing Waters, the Great Guardian of the South Forest. Raise your power at the feet of the Great North Fire, the Great Guardian of the Dream Forest's Intent.
Your vision of food and plants will be transformed as you learn, with Ana Danza, the secret powers of herbs, trees and flowers. Throw a coin of wish in the Pond of Wishes. Will it fall into the heart of the Goddess Creatress who lives in the bottom of the pond? Or will she rise from the bottom of the crystalline waters to tell you the secret forces at play in your wish? Sit at the center of the Elm Prophets' Circle. Experience, with Ana Danza, the treacherous tricks that your expectations and assumptions play with the symbols and signals of life.
Travel on Great Eagle's back to discover the changing colors of the Ocean of Perception. Quest with Ana Danza to earn the Marriage of Power Ring, a power object that allows you to manifest your dreams. Create your own Woman's Power Belt as Ana Danza quests for her sacred objects to build her own. Through the many fictional adventures in this novel, Maria Mar allows you to engage in powerful spiritual and personal growth practices that renew the magic of your life and help you achieve personal fulfillment.
In this first book of the Bewomaning series, Maria Mar reveals the magical Inscapes of Female Power pulsating inside a woman. Like Earth, woman bursts with landscapes that hold stories, memories, Spirits and powers waiting to be awoken. Maria guides you through these Female Inscapes with the Sacred Story Daughter of the Ancient Trees.
Daughter of the Ancient Trees walks you out of your routine and into an everyday life full of passion, imagination and magical synchronicities. Maria Mar uses her superb storytelling abilities to summon the strength of your Spirit. As Ana Danza progresses in her apprenticeship, you too will progress in your life. As she meets and conquers her tests, you too can meet yours.
Ana Danza's training confers to you the knowledge and power tools which the author learned during the first stage of initiation as a Woman of Power. Ana Danza is one of many Female Power Selves Maria discovered in this journey. She embodies the beginning of a woman's journey to fulfillment: the Wounded Healer. Daughter of the Ancient Trees beautifully reveals the process by which this wounded healer within you becomes the Keeper of your Female Face of Power and the Keeper of your own Dreamscape. This story is a pristine reflection that travels through your Soul, opening deep circles in its waters. As you journey through Ana's story, you will feel new spaces opening within you. You are Bewomaning!
After you leave Ana Danza’s forest, Maria keeps helping you in your own Dreamjourney through an interactive website, interactive performances and a myriad of personal growth products, all bearing the branding of the Bewomaning creative system.
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Bewomaning: a creative system to quest for the Female Face of Power
Journey Bundle: Personal Growth Products to use the book interactively
Community Interactivity- art events, lectures, curriculums and more!
Related web pages:
Reserve the book now! Obtain Early Bird Discounts
Individuals:
Join ShamansDance
Circle. It's free
Obtain special membership discounts
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Personal Interactive Tools
Community Interactivity
Bewomaning
A
creative system
to quest for
the Female Face of Power
Bewomaning is the process by which a woman reclaims the Female Face of Power, redefining power in ways that honor her femaleness and the Female Way of Knowing. It is also the process in which a person helps the world move towards balance, peace and equality by the awakening of the Female Face of Power in humanity.
The definition of power we have learned is based on the Male Shield of humans --both women and men. It is based on the Male Way of Knowing --logical thinking, analysis, categorizatiion, thesis, antithesis and synthesis, etc. It is also based on Male Shield attributes, perceptions or values, such as control, penetration, conquest and independence.
We need to bring the Female Shield into the consciousness of what power is at the individual and social level. Attributes such as metaphorical thinking and emotional intelligence are at the core of the Female Way of Knowing, but have been devalued or made invisible as ways of knowing. Attributes, perceptions and values from the Female Shield are, for example: interpenetration, interdependence, adaptation and harmonic resonance. These are essential power tools that come from women and men who honor the Female Shield.
When a woman honors beauty, harmony, creativity, emotional intelligence and intuition as part of her female powers, she values herself more and will not allow what she brings into the world or into relationships to be devalued or taken for granted. When a man honors the Female Face of Power, he honors his female side and the women in his life. Bewomaning in a man is called Moongrowing, the cultivation of a man's Female Shield.
The Marriage of Power is the wedding of the Female and Male Shield, leading to personal fulfillment.
Bewomaning is a creative system for awakening the Female Face of Power in women. Created by Maria Mar, it offers activities, books and products as well as an interactive website and adult education courses to help women --and in some instances men-- to quest forr the Female Face of Power. The Bewomaning system includes:
The Bewomaning Book Series. Book 1 is
Daughter of the
Ancient Trees.
READ MORE.
The Bewomaning interactive website. This upcoming
cyberspace will offer an interactive web personal growth game based on the book
Daughter of the Ancient Trees,
so that you can talk to the characters and quest in the Dream Forest. It will
also provide members with interactive pages, web courses and
downloadable material for women, youth and families.
The interactive performance
Bewomaning: A
Woman's Dream. This is a QuestArt, a new performance genre created by
Maria Mar that allows you to quest and interact during the show, and to ask
questions to the Shaman's Bag, a character from the novel. Through
questions, games and movement, you will be able to obtain specific answers to
help explore your life issues and manifest your dreams. The Shaman's Bag
is full of power tools, fun tricks and hilarious observations.
READ MORE.
A series of
interactive community activities, such as interactive readings, lectures
and courses.
READ MORE.
A series of interactive personal growth products related to the Book series. They are collectively called the Journey Bundle. READ MORE.
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Journey Bundle
Personal Interactive Tools for the Book
Daughter of the Ancient Trees, like most of our books, is interactive. In addition, the Bewomaning Series and creative system will include the following Journey Bundle, each product coming out as you progress in your Dreamjourney, to assist you in your personal progress.
Questing
for Grace
Journalying Kit
In Daughter of the
Ancient Trees, as in the other books of the Bewomaning Series, Maria
Mar offers a wealth of very practical tools for personal power. One of the most
important practices you can engage in order to make these tools yours, is
Journalying. In this word Maria marries the practice of journaling or
journal writing, with the Inward Journey, a shamanic journeying for power.
Questing for Grace allows you to take Ana Danza's journey for yourself, in
real life. Living life as a shamanic adventure brings back the magic, passion,
romance and mystery into your life.
In Questing for Grace, the Journalying Kit that is part of the Journey Bundle for the entire series, Maria offers you journaling and journeying guidance to quest for the Female Face of Power using the fictional stories of the Bewomaning Series.
Questing for Grace includes:
Journaling and Journeying guidance
Beautiful quotes interspersed throughout the book, with teachings and meditations related to the readings,
Additional Medicine Stories that you can download,
A beautiful pen and totem,
Lined paper notebook for your own entries,
Beautiful color illustrations showing the Dreambody and chakras and Maria's black and white illustrations and poems,
The Rescuing your Dancing Shoes CD, and
The cover in binder form, so that you can keep using it for years to come, as you journey for the Female Faces of Power.
Every time a new book in the Bewomaning Series comes out, you can buy the package for that book, together with additional downloadable material, and insert it in the binder.
Other Interactive Products
Rescuing Your Dancing Shoes (CD)
Maria Mar tells stories from her own initiation and empowerment process. Funny,
incisive, full of human compassion and foolishness, this stories will help you
track down your own issues and have patience, love and understanding for
yourself as you quest for your Personal Dream. Each story suggests questions for
you to journey.
The Breath of
Life (CD)
Maria Mar's warm and soothing voice is accompanied by percussive instruments and
syncopated to the beats of a restful heart, bringing you into peace and helping
you with your practice of the
Breath of Life. There is a version with instructions and one with just the
music and meditations.
Dreambody Oracle
(Personal Growth Aid)
Play in the Dreambody Oracle to allow the Architecture of your
Sacred Self to be revealed. Based on a central teaching contained in the
book, this beautiful oracle map with a bundle of crystals allows you to journey
deep into your Dreambody or Energy Field, consult
your Essence, your Core Self, your Female
Power Selves, even your Shadows! It is a personal growth aid to help you
develop self-intimacy while allowing you to absorb deeply the knowledge of the
Architecture of your Sacred Self.
Bewomaning Medicine Cards (Personal Growth Aid)
Meet the characters of the books, the heroines and villains, Wise Women and
Female Powers through these beautifully painted Medicine Cards. Learn
about the different places of power within you, such as the Place of
Paradox, the Center of your Circle of Power. Find out how
to See with Your Own Eyes or to Break the Veils of
Forgetfulness. Full of wisdom and power tools, these cards will be
available to you after the fourth book of the series is out. Reserve and get
special discounts!
A Woman's Power Belt (Power Object Kit)
This power object kit allows you to engage in the construction of your Woman's
Power Belt. You can do it alone, for your daughter, or in a group of friends.
You can use it as a tool for your clients, and you can offer it as a gift. It
contains the materials and instructions that allow you to create your Woman's
Power Belt. This belt and the process of creating it, allow you to discover,
name and assert the Female Powers that you bring to yourself, the world and your
relationships. It is worn at a woman's wedding, requesting that her groom see,
name and swears to respect and support these Female Powers. It is given to a
daughter at special moments of her life, such as sweet sixteenth, eighteenth or
twenty-first birthday. It is given among the women in a family as recognition of
each other's powers. It is a tool for family intimacy and empowerment.
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The performance Bewomaning 1: A woman's Dream will also be available soon. In this performance, you can quest through the beautiful landscapes of the book with Maria Mar and Corazon Tierra and a powerful circle of women. Raise power to leap into your Dream! We are right now searching for a corporate sponsor for our National Tour, so stay tune.
Besides the Bewomaning 1: A woman's Dream Performance, we will offer the following community interactivity events.
Bewomaning Lectures
Bewomaning, women's empowerment curriculum
Masks of Failure, Faces of Success - Psychofinancial women's empowerment curriculum or
Masks of Failure, Faces of Success, workshop
Daughter of the Ancient Tree -Storytelling and dialogues with the audience
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Excerpt from:
Daughter of the Ancient Trees *
As Ana removed the cover, she gasped loudly. Her eyes widened in disbelief. The
delicate gown was full of holes. It looked like an old dress left on a trunk for
years to be savored by generations of moths.
“This can’t be!” Ana murmured. “It was fine last night.”
Ana picked up the broom and frantically swept the floor. She searched the
sparsely furnished room inch by inch. She took all the cushions and covers
outside the cabin, and shook them until her hands hurt.
“There is nothing in the house that could do this damage,” she finally
pronounced.
Unable to find the source of the disaster, Ana Danza finally sat by the table,
took the spoiled gown in her hands, and softly cried.
“It was such an exquisite texture,” she sobbed. “And the design was perfect. I
had worked so hard, for so long, in these beautiful decorations. Now it’s all
ruined.”
Ana ran her fingers through a couple of holes. The fabric around these
perforations was completely ripped, impossible to repair. On some other spots
all but a few threads held it together. The holes were large, and the damage
severe. They did not look like an overnight damage, but as the result of a
prolonged attack. But by what?
“I won’t be able to fix this on time for the party,” Ana murmured, tears running
down her face. “Why? Oh, why? And how? How on earth did this happen?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” said a familiar voice behind her.
Ana leaped out of the chair and turned around, all on one sudden movement. She
let out a small, piercing cry as her eyes met the strangest being she had ever
seen.
It had borrowed the mannequin for a body, and if that was not enough, it had
“dressed” it in luminous fibers constantly woven and re-woven by butterflies of
every possible color and pattern. Since the mannequin had no head, the being had
borrowed her hand drum from the south wall where it hung, and it was now
floating above the mannequin. On the hide of the drum, Ana could see the
enormous, radiant eyes of this being, eyes that penetrated her every fiber. As
if this assemblage was not bizarre enough, the being had also borrowed her
knitting needles and was using them as arms.
“Who are you?” Ana squealed as she backtracked, hitting the wall behind her.
“The Weaver,” responded the being, as she knitted herself a mouth with some red
luminous fibers.
“Good heavens!” Ana exclaimed, rubbing her eyes. “I must be hallucinating. Did I
dig out the wrong type of mushrooms for last night’s super?”
“No,” The Weaver replied matter-of-factly. “You are not on a trip. At least not
the kind produced by hallucinogens. I tried reaching you through ordinary means,
but you are too stubborn. So I have been forced to engage in more... let’s say
‘theatrical’ displays to engage your undivided attention.”
“You got it,” Ana blurted out as she sat. Her legs were getting wobbly.
“You seem to be somewhat unhappy with the state of your garment,” said The
Weaver, pointing with a needle at the gown Ana still held on her hands.
“Unhappy? I am distraught!” Ana replied, anger moving her out of her shock.
“This was an exquisite work of art, and now it’s less useful than a rag.”
“Oh, you don’t like the pretty holes, I see!” The Weaver said with feigned
surprise.
“Are you mad? How can I like these holes? They have destroyed the gown!” raged
Ana. Suddenly she thought that it was too much of a coincidence that The Weaver
made herself visible just as the garment was ruined.
“Did you do this?” Ana confronted her.
“No,” said The Weaver. She had not raised her voice, yet it shook the boards on
the walls and the floors. “YOU did that.”
“Oh, no!” said Ana, who was not easily intimidated. “You are not going to ruin
my work and then pin it on me!”
Ana stood up and the dress fell to the floor. A loud moan came out of the purple
fabric. In a flash, Ana was back against the wall.
“This can’t be!” Ana muttered. The hairs on her neck stood up.
“It can be and it is,” remarked The Weaver. “This dress is alive. It is an
expression of who you are. I would say that this dress is a Mirror of its
creatress.”
Ana was frantically pacing across the room now. She pinched her arm. She slapped
her face. “This is not happening,” she said repeatedly. This is NOT happening.”
“But it IS,” said The Weaver, as she knitted herself a nose. “And by the smell
of it, it is here to stay. Let’s say that this dress is your Weave of Self. It
is the creation of your life. In other words, my dear, this dress is who you are
becoming. It is made of your choices, your interpretations. It is made by the
way you weave the three threads of your existence.”
“What three threads?” Ana said, as she pulled her hair and jumped on place.
“The thread of your Essence, the thread of your Heritage and the thread of your
Becoming,” explained The Weaver while she knitted herself a pair of ears. “You
have been weaving your past into your present, and by the sound of it, your past
has been poking holes into your present.”
“But that can’t be!” Ana protested. “I was creating a beautiful gown, with
shimmering roses. This old sift is NOT my creation.”
“Yes it is!” thundered The Weaver, making the jars full of herbs rattle against
each other.
Ana sat in her rocking chair and lowered her head. This was the place that
brought Ana back to herself, her place of listening. Something extraordinary was
going on here, and she had learned enough from Forest Mother to honor this
lesson, no matter how bitter or absurd it may seem.
“That’s much better,” The Weaver remarked in a soothing tone. “You create great
beauty around you, Ana. No one is denying that. You, however, give that beauty
away to others. All of it. Constantly. For yourself, in your life, you are
weaving this old, habitual rag full of holes.”
“How can that be?” Ana asked, sincerely shaken. “I love and honor myself. I keep
a clean home, a good life and a healthy body.”
“That is what you believe, but your Weave of Self tells a different story. It is
full of holes,” said The Weaver. “You see the luminous fibers in others. You
have the ability to see when they are broken or torn, worn out by too much use
or knotted by abuse. Yet, being capable of Seeing all this, you have not looked
at yourself long enough to see your own fibers. Had you given yourself a
fraction of the healing attention you give others, you would have seen that you
yourself are full of holes.”
Ana walked up to the mirror on the southwest wall of the room and looked into
it. She was horrified. Staring back at her was a being of radiant Light. The
light was woven in the form of an egg, and wrapped with shimmering golden
fibers. The entire circumference of the egg was stitched with fibers of the
purest white light interlaced with yellow and blue fibers, some of which were
very opaque. Quite a few fibers were broken.
In the center of the luminous egg there was a terrible mess of entangled fibers.
Inside the egg, the colors of the rainbow pulsated in a vivid dance of Light.
The vision would have been beautiful, were it not for the fact that there were
dozens of holes in the luminous eggs, some of them oozing fine threads of smoke.
In some places, the white fibers of light were sticking out, like broken cables.
In others, there were large black gaps through which all the colors were
escaping.
“That is why you have been feeling so exhausted after you heal others,”
explained The Weaver. “All the energy your Allies pour into you for Acts of
Power, Beauty and Healing is leaking out of you, and you are using your own
energy, which is rapidly dwindling.”
Ana had been listening to The Weaver as she kept examining her Energy Body,
finding not only hole and knots, broken fibers and entanglements, but lines of
light that shoot out of her into the distance, thinning almost to a breaking
point as they lost themselves in unknown places.
“How? Why?” she asked, turning to face The Weaver.
There was no one there. The mannequin, naked and headless, stood lifeless in a
corner. The drum hung on its usual place on the wall. The knitting needles were
neatly tucked into a basket, and the dress was carefully laid on the worktable,
just as she had left it the previous night.
Ana approached the worktable slowly. She placed her hands on the muslin cover
and delicately removed it. The dress was intact. The star garden shimmered in
the dark purple like a constellation in the night sky.
“Weaver?” Ana called.
No one answered.
Ana sat down and continued working, though her hands were shaking as she strung
the sequins into the neckline. She expected to hear The Weaver’s voice at any
time. But only silence spoke.
It filled the room with a deep, velvet presence. Something was full, like a moon
ready to be harvested. Something was coming. Something was dying. Something
wanted to be born.
Ana worked on the gown all day. As she worked on the purple silk, Ana could feel
a large presence weaving the space within her, as if a giant weaver was working
on her own tissue as she worked on the dress.
She dared not ask more questions, and the night fell quickly over eyes and
fibers.
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* EDITORIAL NOTE: Details and aspects of the book as it is portrayed here, including cover, as well as interactive products, might undergo more changes in the final process of book production. We will keep you informed.
ShamansDance Way is Maria Mar's methodology for living creatively and transforming your wounds into medicine, your pain into power. The old name for the method was Path of the Swan. Follow this link to learn more in the old pages. The new website will have the updated information.