Dear Friend,
Well, what a wonderful response to our last letter. Birthday cards, good wishes, advice, expressions of thanks, poems, and…. around 500 new and 1500 renewing Cygnus Supporters! This is a marvellous first step towards our goal, and we feel so grateful to you all! Thank you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Your positive actions strengthened, nourished and reassured us both materially and spiritually. We’ve still quite a way to go, but we feel really confident that we’ll get there now, and in this letter we want to share with you some of the plans and ideas we have, and some of the wonderful things that have fallen into place in the last couple of weeks.
Help us find our tribe
The idea to ask the majority of you to become Cygnus Supporters actually came to us a few months ago, when we met a Cygnus member called Guy Hayward at Jill Purce’s sound healing intensive, back in May. Guy said something we thought was really wise: look at Jill; she has found her tribe. Her tribe support her, and she supports her tribe. This is how it should be for Cygnus too. A window opened in our minds when we heard that, and we realised that Cygnus doesn’t have to survive through constant growth (the old, capitalist model); it needs to survive through connecting with the right people – our tribe, our spiritual family – the Aquarian model! We don’t need to draw everyone into Cygnus, whether they see its real worth or only view it as a source of cheap books. We just need to find the people who really value and love Cygnus and share and support its aims, and do the very best we can to love and serve them in return. Our task is to draw together a tribe of like-minded individuals who support each other because they share the same priorities, and because they see, know and understand each other in ways that other people don’t. So, if you are willing, may we ask you to help us find our tribe?
There are two ways you can do this:
1) If you value Cygnus but have not yet signed up or renewed as a Cygnus Supporter, would you be willing to do this now? As explained last month, the standard annual contribution we suggest is £12 if you live in the UK and £15 overseas. However, if this is not affordable for you, you are welcome to contribute less. (Some people, on the other hand, have felt moved to contribute more!)
2) Maybe some of your friends, family, colleagues or clients would benefit from reading the Cygnus Review? If so, please could you encourage them to make contact with us? (We can send you extra copies of the Cygnus Review to give to them, if you would like. See overleaf.)
That would be wonderful, and we would be so grateful! It is also our practice to send you a £2 voucher as a small token of our thanks when any friend of yours places an order with Cygnus (your friend would need to tell us your membership number for this to happen).
The more Cygnus members there are, the more of us there will be to support each other, and the easier it will be for us all to co-create the kind of world we want to live in. On a practical level, the more ‘tribe’ members we have, the easier it will become for Cygnus to publish books and music that are specially important and helpful for us all; the easier it will become for us to afford to create vehicles through which the whole tribe can communicate and share; and, quite simply, the easier it will become for us to survive.
Becoming producers
Talking of publishing things brings us to our next point. We’ve realised that there’s another way in which Cygnus needs to adapt if it is to survive in the times ahead. We need to become producers of things, rather than merely sellers of things. We’re not planning to do this in any massive way just yet (‘slow and steady wins the race’, as they say), but just to publish a few titles that we think will be especially beneficial to you. This year we’ve published full UK editions of The Coming of the Holy Grail by Claire Nahmad and Mick Revill (see p. 11 of this Review), and Be Still and Know I AM God by Nick Gancitano. We also became the exclusive UK distributor of Finding Joe DVD, and produced book club editions (only available to Cygnus members) of Dare to Care by Louis Bohtlingk and Birth 2012 and Beyond by Barbara Marx Hubbard (see p. 4 of this Review). All these titles are proving very popular, we’re happy to say, so if you haven’t tried them yet, perhaps you’d like to now? You’ll find further details on our website, or you’re welcome to ring us and our staff will read you the blurb. In our next newsletter we’ll be letting you know how you can help us promote these titles, and how you can benefit from promoting them. But for now we’d also like to tell you a bit about the publications we are planning in the next couple of months.
Jewels of Silence
We have a game that we play on Spotify (an online music source) – we search for a beautiful word, like ‘peace’, or ‘harmony’ and listen to all the music that comes up. We then choose the tracks we like best and add them to a playlist. We were searching for the word ‘Mary’ one night when we came across a truly magical singer called Ashana. She sings and tones with crystal bowls and other natural instruments, producing music for meditation and healing that is incomparably lovely. Her voice just blows us away and we honestly don’t think we’ve ever heard new age music that gives us such a deep sense of peace and calm. She’s American, so we rang her up and asked if we could produce her CDs in the UK under license. She said yes, bless her, so you’ll find the first of these – Jewels of Silence – on p. 4. Even if you don’t choose anything else from this issue (although we hope you will of course!), you really should award yourself this. It is pure nectar for your soul.
Coming up in November
We’ve been working on a really inspiring creative project that will be available to you in our next issue: producing a beautiful book of Jehanne Mehta’s poems, inspired by the spirit of the Yew Tree. Called The Heart of Yew, it will contain not only poems, but gorgeous photos of yew trees by Andy McGeeny, and a free CD on which Jehanne reads the poems (she has the most resonant and expressive speaking voice) and Fred Hageneder plays harp music inspired by Jehanne’s words. This book will make a wonderful Christmas gift – a little oasis of peace and beauty for your loved ones – in amongst all the razmatazz that Christmas often turns into.
We’re also planning to publish our new Cygnus 2013 Calendar in time for our November issue. Following your requests we will be producing a larger calendar, twice the size of previous ones, to allow you more space in which to write your appointments etc. Ann is writing it now, and Janet Baxter is producing the pictures, and as always it will be designed to bring you comfort, guidance and inspiration throughout 2013.
Thirdly, we’re going to be helping our dear friend Jerome O’Connell to produce and distribute an inspiring meditation CD called Journey to the Cave of the Bear Ancestors. Jerome is a talented musician and composer as well as a natural healer and medium, and you will be able to benefit from all his skills when you listen to this powerful guided meditation. So look out for all this and more in our November issue!
Zero carbon next-day delivery service
Finally, we’d like to announce that we can now offer a zero carbon next-day delivery service. Provided by DPD, it also gives you a one-hour delivery window notification on the morning of the delivery provided we have your email or mobile number, allowing you to rearrange to a more convenient time. Please see our new order form on the back of the enclosed magazine for further details.
The sweet scent of change
Our hearts are feeling so much freer and more creative now that at last the right time has come for us to begin the process of turning around the ship that is Cygnus. We hope you can sense this change in the atmosphere, too, and feel inspired to help it along.
With so much love,
Ann, Geoff and the Cygnus Team
