Magic, inspiration and lots of pictures from Rome! ~ October 2024

Myself with the Colosseum behind!

Hello my love,

Rachel here, I hope you and yours are very well!! 😀

I am back from my recent trip to Rome and have so much to share with you 😀 its a little late I know but it’s taken me a whole week just to process all of the magic, downloads, wonder, awe, tears, heart openings etc. that were this trip  <3 

If you have read my first book LUPA, you will know one of the main reasons Rome has such a special place in my heart and soul and in this newsletter I would love to share with you some of what I experienced, saw, ate (LOTS of gelato hehe) and discovered.

Keep reading for beautiful pictures and insightful sharings  . . . 

I must begin with saying that Rome really is an open-air archeaological site, it’s not like any other city you’ll visit, there are ruins every few metres, so many in fact that the majority aren’t labelled and you can walk past temples and significant monuments and places without even knowing (if you’re ever there, just message me and i’ll give you the low-down or help you discern what you are looking at!! 😉 )

With that in mind FYI i’m sharing with you just those parts that mean the most to me and i hold as significant (though i won’t include the hundreds of pics of roman toilets and pipes, i really do have a perhaps unusual and enthusiastic interest in ancient roman plumbing hehe) So here are my top 5 moments of Rome 😀

Me in the temple of Magna Mater, Palatine Hill

Palatine Hill 1

For me, the holy of holies in Rome is of course, the cave of Lupa *ahhwwooo* Closed for works atm (Rome’s Jubliee next year), so as close as i could get this time was the temple of Magna Mater on Palatine Hill, but even here there was of course, a fig tree, her sacred tree (behind me in the photo) that always turn up when i’m looking for her. The energy of this spot is SO P.O.W.E.R.F.U.L, it is after where it all began; where Lupa brought Romulus and Remus after she rescued them, to the cave of destiny where dreams and reality, magic and manifestation meet and align and the smallest seeds become the mightiest of foundations. If you have ever experienced with me a guided meditation (like this one) to journey with Lupa to her womb-tomb cave of destiny, then this location is where you journeyed to and experienced!! 
The energy of the Mother is strong here and I essenced a beautiful soft pink rose while there, which i’ll share about next week and hope for you to receive one day 🙂

(I will be sharing alot more about Lupa & her significance to Rome and you, in another blog)

The gardens of Palatine Hill, with the site of the roundhouses behind

Palatine Hill 2 

Also on Palatine hill, is a beautiful, peaceful, lush and quietly unassuming garden. I loved noticing so many people sitting down and just spending a long moment in quiet, perhaps they felt on some level the signficance of this particular garden. I spent a long time here journalling and writing poetry. In the picture, that area of green behind me is where archaeologists have found the remains of the very first early iron-age settlement; the settlement that in mythology was established by Romulus. In this location the ancient Romans preserved for over a 1000 years the original hut of Romulus himself. It is the centre, the heart, the nucleus, the beginnings of what became the Roman Empire. There is nothing left now but you can feel it 🙂 
Later, near this site, the Roman Emperors built their palaces, continuing the legacy of kingship and you can look over Augustus’ palace from the location.

This spot really gets you thinking about legacy and what we will be remembered for. What do you want to leave behind? How do you want to be remembered?

The vast public Rose gardens of Aventine Hill – Open May and end of October

Aventine Hill 

Rome is very green 😀 And it really needs those green, quiet spaces with so many tourists around!!

My favourite green spot is Aventine Hill. For the ancient Romans it was the hill of the Plebians, the working class people i.e the farmers, cultivators, those in production services and therefore also home to the deities and temples that mattered most to them – Goddesses Ceres, Bona Dea, Flora, Pomona, Ops as well as the God Liber and the graves of the early kings Remus and Titus. 
Now, you can gently meander uphill through the Rose gardens (on the location of Flora’s temple), past lush gardens of the large manor houses and relax in public fountain gardens and orange groves and take in the sweet scents and the vibrant colours. The gardens here often have live music playing and have THE best views looking out over Rome, especially at Sunset. 

If you attended my ‘Dance of Ceres’ at the Ninefold Festival for Autumn Equinox 2024, as promised, I took the seeds from the workshop, holding the energetic imprint of your wishes, dreams, hopes, intentions and releases and offered them on the hill, as close as I could get to where Cere’s temple was.
You were in my thoughts and heart – and so it is and so they all will be 🙂 xxx

The garden courtyard of the House of the Vestal Virgins

The Forum Romanum

The Forum is vast and so very, very busy, it can be difficult to take it all in and get a moment to yourself. However, that busy-ness is no change to how it would have been 2000 years ago as the heart of business, economy and public life for the ancient Romans. The large cobbles of the sacred way still run through the centre and you can walk where millions have walked from temple to temple, fountain to basilica. 

If you do want to connect deeper, I recommend visiting the house of the Vestal Virgins. It is off the beaten track, so quieter, with the courtyard garden of the Vestal’s still blooming. This sacred spot was home to 30 Vestals, the fire-keepers of the temple of Vesta. Here they lived, laughed, cried and devoted themselves to tending the flame, that was Vesta herself embodied and manifest and also the symbolic flame of Rome – while it burned, Rome would prosper. 
Around the courtyard still are the remaining statues made of the Chief Vestals and you can look into the faces of real women, real priestesses that once walked and worked in ancient Rome.

While in the forum i also recommend visiting the large Temple of Venus & Roma – maybe take some rose petals with you 😉 

Walking through the centre of the Forum. On the right is remains of 9th and 7th century (BCE) burial tombs and behind them the temple of Antonius and Faustina.

Apollo’s Temple 

I have to admit I got a bit fan girl at this point and there are pictures of me itching to dance and sing with my beloved Apollo! 
(I’m creating a course, so YOU can do just that, coming 2025!)

In this picture you can see Apollo’s temple centre, with the 2 columns, to the left is the theatre of Marcella and to the right front is the temple of Bellona.
Again this area is quiet as its off the beaten track and you pretty much get the temple views to yourself. The temple of  Apollo Sosiano now sits upon what was originally a grove in his honour and was built to him in his aspect as Apollo the healer, or doctor and was built outside the walls of Rome (as he was a foreign deity) when plague hit the city 5th century BCE.
I share in this youtube video why i love Apollo so much, so i won’t repeat myself (He’s the bees knees hehe!!!!) but check out in the second photo the lovely sunset he produced right over his temple on my last night there!

Bellona is the Goddess of war, war strategy, conflict and, I believe, anger management and right application of passion, fustration and all that inner fire we have!! She is the powerful feminine energy that gets mother-angry when boundaries are crossed and the innocent are harmed.
 I invite you while looking at this photo to join me in a little prayer to [whichever name for the divine you choose – God, Goddess, Creator, Father, Mother etc.] and let us pray again and again for peace and the end to all the senseless and ongoing wars in the world at present. 

Bellona, Great Goddess < or insert other name> May there be peace, may there be love and may our inner fires be those of the warmth hearth and light bringer, not of the destructive rampant fire that merely consumes and destroys. May we all channel our passion, our light, our radiance, even our anger and frustrations into making a difference for the better, channel them into taking nourishing and positive action on behalf of, and to protect, those that are young, vulnerable and innocent.
Thank you <3 

Temple of Apollo (the 3 columns) Bellona the ground ruins to the right

Apollo creating an incredible sunset over his temple!

I hope you have enjoyed some small part of my reflections from Rome! and i hope in doing so you have been inspired to visit or to discover more about this magical (and powerful city!!) There is more to come over the next few months as well. If you want to know more about ANCIENT ROME, then consider purchasing my book ‘Pantheon. The Romans. An introductory guide to the religion of Ancient Rome’. It includes priests, temples, emperors, gods, goddesses, curses, invocations and mythology, as well as tips and tools for you to connect to Ancient Rome in your own way 😀 Find out more here Speak soon and so much love and big hugs to you, Rachel xx

In the Forum with my book ‘Pantheon. The Romans’ with the remains of the round temple of Vesta to my left.