JillSmith

She and I were at Callanish, on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides, with a group of people at Midsummer in 1982 and we walked the body of the Sleeping Beauty Mountain.

Through her I met Eveon who midwifed the birth of my 4th child Taliesin at Talley Valley tipi village in Wales. Monica and her youngest son Leif spent time with us there waiting for Taliesin to be born. Monica often spoke of the amazing time there in the Valley at the time of a partial eclipse of the Sun when the valley people built a labyrinth round a great fire. Eveon, Monica and I walked the labyrinth naked and stood together with my great pregnant belly in the centre as though it were the belly of all three of us.

After Taliesin was born we went to Monica's and she gave him a second naming for the Goddess at St. Non's Well.

At St. Non's Well, June 1984
Naming Taliesin for the Goddess
Monica, Talie and Jill

A year later she took me to the Women's Walk from Avebury to Stonehenge across Salisbury plain at Beltane. At that time I was traveling on The Gipsy Switch, a year-long journey round England and Wales, seeing her several times in west Wales, especially one wild stormy Spring Equinox when we sat together on a cliff-top in horizontal hail as Monica made a sketch for a later painting. Later there were power-cuts as we sat by candle-light. Swedish Monica said the weather 'blew a few cobwebs away'. I loved it also.

When Talie and I finished our Gipsy Switch journey , the only person who offered us a place to stay was Monica, who had stored many of our possessions when we gave up horse and wagon to just walk. We moved to live in a tipi in her front garden, but it became a time of terrible tragedy for Monica as Leif was killed in a car accident in France and her eldest son Scan was diagnosed with cancer, Monica moved to Bristol to look after him.

When Talie and I moved to Lewis in the Hebrides, Monica visited us several times; sitting in the Callanish stones watching the full moon; visiting Brighde's well at Imbolc and being blessed by a beautiful aurora borealis that evening. I was able to take her to many other of the sacred sites on the Islands.

Monica with Talie Smith in front
of "The Shamanka of Callanish"
Gravir, Isle of Lewis, September 1987

She was always a supporter of my own art-work and my performance and many other things in which I was involved.
She inspired my own strength, amazed me with her intellect, her knowledge, perception and analysis of things. She jolted me politically at times when I was less able to be active and she shared her re-discovery of ancient goddesses and places I was unable to visit.

She was a true lineage-bearer of the ancient female ancestors of both the Northern Lands and of North Africa.
The otherworldly light of her paintings is haunting, taking us back into ancient times and into other realms and realities.

She was unique and irreplaceable.

Blessed Be, Monica. With love, Jill Smith

Artist, Writer, Performer
Click here to visit Jill's website
Artworks of Goddess and sacred site themes.

Jill as the Spirit of the North
at Monica's Funeral Ceremony