Lemurian City of Ladies Walking Tours

On a crisp spring morning eager participants gather at le Enchanteur's Villa, in the oldest part of the city, eagerly anticipating the first walking tour.

Capture the scene with your camera. Make a slide show. Observe using all your senses. Describe the mood as everyone gathers in the foyer and awaits Enchanteur's arrival. Make sure to include details about how you have come to join this tour and what you are particularly looking forward to seeing.

Post in the City of Ladies under 'Walking Tour'.

Dame Washalot comes down from the Faraway Tree, gives up her usual washing routine and runs a ecclectic bath house in the City of Ladies. This is the first port of call on E's walking tour. E has this theory that folk need to be cleansed of all self doubt.

Rub a dub
three walkers in a tub
Dame Washalot ready to scrub

Dame Washalot is waiting sleeves rolled up, bucket of water from the Blind Springs, ready to scrub away inhibitions and preconceived notions. Are you ready?

Consider writing a piece about being 'Naked Without Identity' or about being cleared of artistic inhibitions.

The Lemurian Mouseion is modelled on the historic Mouseion, built by Ptolemy, in Alexandria. It has a rich history and is the place where those, who want to learn more about this ancient City of Ladies, should wile away some quiet hours.

The original Mouseion is believed to have been built by the earliest Greek rulers of Egypt, specifically Ptolemy I Soter, adjacent to his palace. This area of Alexandria was at first called the Palaces, and later the Brucheion. Strabo, writing in the first century BC, described this quarter as forming one-third of the main enclosure of the city. The university itself consisted of a public walk, and exedra (a hall or arcade with seats or recesses suitable for lectures and discussions), and a large building to house the scholars who resided there. There were also laboratories, botanical gardens and areas that held various animals, and attached to it was the famous ancient Library of Alexandria, as well as a theater.

Properly, the Mouseion was a shrine of the Muses, the goddesses of literature and the arts, and its head was a priest of the Muses, first nominated by the kings of Egypt, and later by the Roman emperors.

It was She Wolf who stumbled in to the the Beggars Quarter and, in doing so, reminded le Enchanteur to take her walking tour to all parts of the city. This part of the city is filled with people from all over the world and attracts graffiti artists who cover the walls with their images. Make sure to visit today.

A grotto is an artificial recess or structure made to resemble a natural cave. The Grotto della Sibilla in the Umbrian Mountains which was first mentioned in classical legend. Guerino the Wretch reaches a mountain pass near Norcia in Umbria where he meets with the Devil. The Devil, of course, wants Guerino's soul and tempts him by describing a subterranean kingdom where every delight will be his. Seemingly, in this kingdom, trees flower and fruit at the same time and there is no pain or age or sorrow.

In 2005 a group of travellers slipped through portals and entered the Grotto of the Enchanteur. Their unforgettable journey of the heart lives on in all their hearts.

The Grotto, in the Lemurian City of Ladies, belongs to le Enchanteur. To work with her here is to come to know and fully understand Lemuria.

While here travellers often take the opportunity to
drink from the fountain of forgiveness.

Enchanteur has organised a special night at the
the Taverna di Muse. This is an opportunity for travellers to strut their stuff under the spotlight in the Taverna. Songwriters, singers, storytellers, performing artists can make a debute and introduce themselves. Make sure to take the time to learn about the Blue Stocking Society while you are there.

In the City of Ladies there is a road that is known as the
Royal Road of Unconsciousness. It leads to the Labyrinth. In the centre of the Labyrinth is the famed Tholos where people like the Selloi or Helloi lay on earthern beds and had dreams which they interpreted prophetically. Herodutus says that the Nasmoni, a Libyan race which dwelt in the neighbourhood of Mt Atlas, slept on the graves of their ancestors in order to have dreams.

Come to the City of Ladies Marina on Duwamish Bay. Duwamish Bay is expansive and ferry boats take you to various destinations.

The Marina is one of the earliest and busiest of Lemurian ports. Travellers come from far and wide and often this is their first view of this old city.

These days the Circus and Fair are a popular attraction, as are the curiosity shops that line the foreshore. A visit to the City of Ladies is not complete if you do not stop here.

It is the Lemurian Ferry Women who meet and take travellers to the mysterious Isle of Ancestors. These women are special women who have lived and known Lemuria and the spirits who inhabit it.

Upon arriving Wyrd Spirit wrote "I stood transfixed by the beauty of the landscape that appeared before me. I decided to stay here awhile and let the serenity of the scene seep into my spirit before turning to face the mayhem of the market and docks that lay several hundred yards behind me."

Lemuria is the realm of le Enchanteur. Back on the 12th Night, 2008, travellers stepped through portals, all over the world, and arrived at Rainbow Beach, Lemuria.

Portals to the outer world of Lemuria are dotted throughout the city. Alternatively you can just go down to the harbour and catch a ferry across to Rainbow Beach. Rainbow Beach is a base for those wishing to travel further and reach the Sanctuary of Mnemosyne, high in the mountains that tower over the beach. All activities for this wilder region can be found in the Rainbow Beach Tour Office.

Lemuria and the Lemurian Archipelago have been populated by eclectic and interesting people for a very long time. When you come to Lemuria you may meet them in the City of Ladies, on the roads that lead through this mysterious land and living on the islands that make up the Archipelago. Time spent in Lemuria is time spent meeting people and hearing their special stories.

When you set out on the Art Trail it is not only to meet working artists. You are encouraged to carry your supplies and set up on street corners, within old buildings, in curious corners or wherever you feel your imagination will be fired.

The Rose and Swan is the theatre where members of small groups, housed within Soul Food, deep within Lemuria, offer the first fruits.

Participants, Rose and Swan initiates, know, by the clangour of the cranes, that it is time to form a torchlight procession through the cobbled streets of the Lemurian City of Ladies, towards the timeless Rose and Swan Theatre. They come to perform before Demeter and Persephone, the mother and daughter who take turns living between the underworld and above ground.

Born in Venice, Christine was taken as a small child to Paris, where her father, a scholar and physician, had received an appointment at the court of Charles V. In 1380 she was married to a royal secretary. Charles V died later that year and her father's position, until then prosperous, declined; her husband, however, continued to do reasonably well at court and three children were born, a daughter and two sons (the younger son to die before 1399).

In 1389, Christine's husband died; her father had died two years before. Her husband's estate was involved in several lawsuits, so Christine found herself in relative poverty, with her children and widowed mother to care for. Two brothers had returned to Italy after their father's death, so she was truly without support. She spent the early 1390s trying to get her property back, with all the going from courtroom to courtroom and waiting for magistrates which that entailed. She eventually got a settlement that was enough to at least keep her family together.

In the mid-1390s Christine began to write lyric poems and to search for patrons who would accept them as gifts and reward her --- with cash, a small jewel, cloth ---, a common procedure for male poets, but not for women. She became known in court circles as a poet and began to receive commissions to write. At the same time she was reading and studying, so that by the early 1400s, she was ready to seek commissions for other kinds of writing and to join in as a full participant in the intellectual life of Paris.

Christine's major works were completed between 1400 and 1418. In that year, during the civil war that had followed the French defeat by the British at Agincourt, she left Paris and apparently spent the rest of her life as a lay resident in a convent, probably at the royal priory where her daughter was a nun. In 1429 she celebrated Joan of Arc with a poem; she appears to have died sometime within the next five years.

Not all of Christine's works have yet been translated into English, but enough have so that you can hear the remarkable variety of her voices.