And then we'll take it higher"
~ Eddy Grant
The above song randomly came on the radio the other day, as I contemplated publishing online some of the most interesting information I'm discovering about Mother Shipton, revered by some as one of the greatest prophetesses who ever lived, rejected by others as a myth.
Conventional wisdom might say I should wait to publish my book due out in 2011, The Prophetess Legacy ~ Feminine Voices of the Divine, a book about many prophetesses, including Mother Shipton. But I'm not a conventional writer, nor do dollar signs dictate my every move. I have been writing online for a very long time, and clearly that will continue (visit my other blog Building Bridges to the Dawn for a glimpse).
Anyone who chooses to study Mother Shipton in any serious way will soon discover it's not a straightforward task. The internet is filled with inaccurate information, site after site after site, including Wikipedia. And if you go to the effort to find books on Mother Shipton, including those written centuries ago, you will soon realize why. People have been making up stories and/or misconstruing information about Mother Shipton for centuries, from the very first book known to be written about her, more than 100 years after what is thought to be the time of her death. Some authors have clearly had an agenda to discredit her; others have viewed her as a marketing opportunity, and still others have simply been misled. Like some age-old game of telephone, the stories keep repeating themselves in old and new ways, growing and growing and growing, to the point that many skeptics and serious scholars question whether this legendary Englishwoman ever existed at all.
It is the intent of my new web site ShiptonProphecy.com (still under construction) to set the record straight, revealing some rather startling discoveries in the process, discoveries I feel can no longer wait. This blog (also referenced from ShiptonProphecy.com) will discuss my research (still very much ongoing) and will welcome the questions, comments and insights of others.
I have decided to call myself an "intuitive researcher". With a background in both science and spirituality, I appreciate the art of consciously combining intuitive guidance with solid, logical detective work. Indeed such historical detective work has ALWAYS involved some degree of intuition, whether the researchers have been aware of this or not, but I choose to document the process openly. I listen very closely to intuitive clues and then logically follow where they lead.
I'm also not afraid to discuss the spiritual aspects of my life and my research openly, no matter how many times skeptics no doubt will choose to scoff. If they can disprove my theories in a logical, methodical, statistically sound way, I welcome the input. It is precisely such skeptics who wrote Mother Shipton off long ago, just because they didn't bother to separate the wheat from the chaff, the truth from the fraud. They saw fraud, and many immediately wrote everything off as fraud. Yes, there is fraud in the historical record, no doubt about that, but there is also a fascinating trail of truth, if one chooses to take the time to follow it.
Many in the spiritual community already familiar with Mother Shipton will at first be disappointed (or reluctant to accept) that a number of historically-justifiable facts do indeed strongly suggest that Mother Shipton didn't actually say a great deal of what has been attributed to her, nor is everything written about her story likely to be true. Even what has been said to be her name (often reported as Ursula Soothtell, Ursula Southeil, and many variations thereof) can be called into question, as can popular reports of her birthplace and heritage. What we hope to discover is the REAL Mother Shipton, a Yorkshire woman of the 16th century whose voice yearns to be heard once and for all, in as accurate a fashion as realistically possible.
And yet there is more...there is the mystery surrounding the words attributed to this woman, the mystery of their eerie prescience to the present day, and it is primarily because of the mystery I am here right now, writing spontaneously in this blog, not dutifully working on my book instead. The mystery simply cannot wait, including how I have already managed to intuitively decipher some prophecies in entirely new, historically verifiable ways. Soon we will explore the mystery together...
