Ruth Cato

17/06/2026

Will you join me, 18th & 19th July in this beautiful place for a weekend learning or deepening your practise of drum journeying and shamanic divination?

Details and booking here https://www.ruthcato.com/drumjourneyinganddivination

17/06/2026

🌱🌳🌱

10/06/2026

And if you’d like to immerse yourself in drum journeying and divination I have an upcoming retreat weekend in July 18th & 19th, at this beautiful space near Ludlow

https://www.ruthcato.com/drumjourneyinganddivination

WE NEED YOUR HELP

At the Women’s Drum Convetion last November, Professor Joyce Harper came up to me very excited and asked if I would be interested in creating a research project into Why Women Drum.

There is a lot of research out there into the effects of drumming and it often focuses on Djembe’s and drum kits and has never focussed just on women.

Sophie Messager and I joined Joyce to help co-create the research questionairre, she then sent it to the board of ethics. It is now ready to be filled in by as many women as we can muster!

This research has the potential to shape the world’s view on how drumming affects women and why they might continue to drum.

Please do use this link to complete it.You can pass it on to any women you know, the more the better.

https://ifwh.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2gwXdXWGuKX36Sy?fbclid=IwdGRjcASLzSljbGNrBIvNJGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHl2ntsfsSK-9gK3mhKUg-kqiZnhZKU_U6zUf7v4nPbZPQjtEp3QfYwQQFHCh_aem_XmVFs6JFnbdN-OYYf5996g

Such gratitude to you for helping shape this research!

08/06/2026

Early on a damp British morning, Lady's Mantle holds a small pool of water in the cup of each pleated leaf.

Not rainwater. Not exactly dew.

The droplets form from within the plant itself, drawn from the air through tiny pores at the leaf margin. Each leaf a perfect cup. Each cup holding water the plant gathered and offered back.

For centuries, herbalists and alchemists had a name for it: sacred water.

The genus name is Alchemilla.

The Arabian root of that name is the source of the English word alchemy itself.

This is not a minor coincidence. Early alchemists staked cloth in fields overnight to collect dew. Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris), with her cupped leaves gathering water from air, was seen as nature performing the same act spontaneously.

The alchemist's vessel. A plant made of the Water Element.
She appears in medieval herbals, in John Gerard's writings, in the notebooks of folk midwives throughout Britain. Centuries of documented use.

She grows in almost every British cottage garden.
Almost nobody uses her.

Here's what they're missing:

Lady's Mantle has one overriding gift: restoring structural integrity to tissues that have yielded too far.

Not stimulation. Not sedation. Not warmth. Not force.

The old herbalists called her "of a very drying and binding character." That phrase remains the most accurate summary.

She works on the tissue state vitalist herbalism calls damp/relaxation. The pattern that arises when something has become too open, too fluid, too permeable.

Heavy menstrual flow. Urinary leaking. Varicose veins. Leaky gut.
Different conditions. Same underlying pattern: tissue that has simply yielded too far.

Herbalist William LeSassier identified her constitutional picture precisely: the person with pale complexion and highly visible veins. Not aesthetic observation - clinical reading. Prominent veining points toward deficit of structural tone in the venous system.

Lady's Mantle's tannins tighten the venous wall. Her salicylates thin stagnant blood. Structural cause and fluid consequence addressed together.

We return to that morning cup of water held in the pleated leaf.
She gathers what is dispersed. Holds what would otherwise run.

Her medicine does the same.
Not by force. By restoration.

https://greenguild.co.uk/sacred-water-the-little-alchemist-growing-in-every-british-garden/

08/06/2026

There was lots of you that wanted to join the last one. July Nettle workshop Wildoak Wildcraft hosting near Shifnal.

18th -19th July: Shifnal, Shropshire

see below to book! See you there?
https://www.wildoak-wildcraft.co.uk/nettle

05/06/2026

Free Taster New Earth Call
Tues 9th June 8-9pm BST

There's some beautiful energy on 9th June, Venus forms an exact conjunction with Jupiter in Cancer. It's one of the most favourable alignments of the year. If you want somewhere to channel that and bring gorgeous, abundant, loving energy into your year - Join me. As it's in Cancer, and I'm holding the space my 11th house in Cancer will also be bringing a deeply loving energy to group dynamics, community and circle. Perfect.

You can sign up here, totally free.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/yQfYvcs2RoSI-w_fXJI1hw?mc_cid=2b39fca108 #/registration

Then can choose to join us for the regular weekly calls if you feel the benefit after.

Our New Earth Calls came through initially as a weekly ritual space channelled directly for the group who gather, supporting us into the New Earth. Clearing old patterns, welcoming the new energy, helping the body mind and energy body to adapt to the new flavour. While essentially also encouraging and inspiring everyone on the call to be able to take these shifts out into the world through your words, actions and energy.
They are now - while we are IN the New Earth, they have become a weekly point for healing - connection - clearing - grounding - ritually bringing through what is alive for you. Think of it as a weekly shamanic session to clear, ground and upgrade us. We vision, journey, relax, and use nervous system tools to support everything becoming grounded.

I'd love to see you there.
Totally free.
Tuesday 9th 8-9pm BST