Jeane F. Diamond's Life Story

I was born in Los Angeles, California and in keeping with the ethos of the time, I was put into psychotherapy as a child and again as an adolescent. I went to university in California, beginning in Berkeley in the 1960’s, and finishing in Los Angeles in the 1970’s. After completing my undergraduate degree, I moved to the UK. There were rich learning opportunities in London, with the College of Psychic Studies, the National Federation of Spiritual Healers, the Theosophical Society, the variety of hatha yoga centres and the various spiritualist churches. There were also WOOFing weekends (Working On Organic Farms), courses offered at the College of Naturopathy, books available from the vegan society, macrobiotic advocates, and vegetarian enthusiasts. There were museums and bookstores full of ancient wisdom and metaphysical insights, as well as a plethora of study groups. While in London I also concluded my full-term Freudian psychoanalysis and at the same time came to realise my reality as a homosexual, a gay woman, living life as a lesbian. I also became a British citizen, for which the American authorities rescinded my American passport, denying me American nationality for 18 years.

In the ferment of the 1970’s I became a feminist, and in searching for equal rights for wymn, explored the realms of religion and spirituality, becoming a Wiccan priestess in the Dianic tradition. In that capacity, and with the encouragement of feminist artist Zee Budapest (US) and matriarchal scholar Asphodel Long (UK), I began to lead many public rituals, train others, and provide pastoral counselling.

I took up a vipassana meditation practice when I moved to Somerset in the mid-1970’s. During my years of meditating and doing yoga in Glastonbury, I started reading Tarot in the back of a shop in Glastonbury High Street. My clients returned every summer, saying the readings had been very helpful, so I increasingly trusted my intuitive abilities. On the strength of my experience, I wrote “The New Feminist Tarot” which was published by Thorson’s Aquarian Press in 1984 and republished by HarperCollins in 1987.

Both meditation and magic make extensive use of chanting, and voice workshops, both mine and those led by others, were an important part of my life. I encouraged women/wimmin/womben/wymn attending my workshops to find their voice and use it to chant through their chakras, to chant in meditation whenever appropriate, and to sing uplifting songs whenever possible to raise their hearts to heaven. Jana Runnalls, then of the music duo OVA who also led voice workshops, taught me how to drum which – together with the spoon-playing Country Joe (of Country Joe and the Fish) had taught me years before – made me an accomplished musician around the many campfires I frequented in those years.

I was also introduced to the Bach Flower Remedies, and like Dr. Bach, became increasingly interested in finding more energetically subtle solutions to physical and emotional challenges. I began working with the Bach Flower Remedies at the end of the 1970’s and feel that learning to select the best remedies with clients has taught me an enormous amount about human psychology and psychopathology and has helped to make me a much better listener, a more sensitive spiritual counsellor, and a more nuanced life skills educator. I was introduced to the Metamorphic Technique also in the late 70’s, which taught me to apply the practice of detachment that I was learning in meditation to my relationships with my clients, to the benefit of all concerned. I gained an accreditation as a spiritual healer from the National Federation of Spiritual Healers in the early 1980’s. Spiritual healing also requires detachment, so that one channels the universal healing power rather than using personal energy to heal, which is a safeguard for all participants.

As the New Age geared up, I encountered Affirmations which made a natural link to Visualisations, a common tool in both occult studies and advanced meditation practices. Crystals and other gemstones began to be more widely available, and books on their healing and occult properties found their way into my library.

Colour therapy and aromatherapy were also subjects I studied during this transition. And on a more material level, I was very involved in this period with organic gardening and a range of nutrition approaches including macrobiotics, veganism, food combining and others. In addition to continuing my meditation and yoga practices, also had regular Alexander lessons, primarily with Dilys Carrington, for several years.

While living in Somerset I founded the Feminist Archive, to capture the history/herstory of women’s activism during these important decades of the 1970 – 1990s, considered the second wave of feminism following the important work of the suffragettes earlier in the century. With the help of a number of women, the Feminist Archive established branches in Bristol and Leeds, both still extant and functioning. I was also instrumental in organising W.I.S.E., the Wymn’s International Summer Event – Britain’s only outdoor women’s music festival – which took place on the site of the world-famous Glastonbury Festival.

Then in 1981 I went to Greenham Common Wymn’s Peace Camp, where I stayed for two and a half years. There I had the opportunity to integrate all of my knowledge, skills and talents into living a fully potentised life with a gathering of like-minded wymn. Whether giving counsel to women there, advising on magical practices in conjunction with political action, taking collective political action outside or inside the military base, attending court or being in prison, everything I understood about self-actualisation was called into play. It was also wonderful to live out of doors, in direct contact with nature, even with the continual evictions by the police. It was a most rewarding period of my life.

After Greenham, and a brief period seeing clients at a clinic in Bath, I moved to the Peak Park in Derbyshire where I again began to see clients, both at my cottage in Wensley and at a clinic in Sheffield. I also led short residential meditation retreats, began teaching a variety of workshops, and introduced a cassette series of guided visualisations.

When the Berlin Wall came down, I felt I needed a crash course in intensive capitalism, and I had decided I wanted to be a radio producer, so I returned to Los Angeles, where I accomplished both those goals, producing a regular long-format feminist news analysis programme as well as a morning drive-time feature segment. I was allowed to reclaim my American citizenship during my decade-long stay in the United States, and I also earned an MA degree in Corporate Communications. I again saw clients during my time in Los Angeles and learned about the wide selection of 12-Step programmes available, and how tremendously helpful they can be for people. I established a training course for women wanting to become Priestesses in the Dianic tradition, and I also had the honour of living as Priestess-in-Residence at the Topanga Canyon ranch of Marija Gimbutas, a noted archaeologist and anthropologist, for the last two years of her life. Marija wrote very scholarly books about the Goddess civilization in old Europe which were a boon to the re-emerging Dianic tradition.

In 2001 I moved to Paris, and the city was extremely welcoming. I found wonderful people to work with, to continue my exploration of life and of my potential, studying astrology, and doing sacred dance and voice work as well as meditation and yoga. I participated in a variety of other workshops in various centres around Paris and in other parts of France, and earned my NLP qualification as well as learning La Trame, a body-work technique developed by a French alchemist, which I found very helpful in working with clients to release past trauma. I also became a French citizen. My life in France was extremely rewarding and taught me many things.

After nearly eight years in Paris, I found myself hungering to live by the ocean again. After much reflection and journeys to various parts of the world, including particularly Pondichéry in southern India, I eventually decided to return to Brighton – by the sea on the south coast of England – where I had lived 35 years previously and had felt very much at home. As fate would have it, after only five enjoyable months back in the UK, I married an old friend in a delightful ceremony in New Zealand and we moved to a beach suburb one hour south of Melbourne in Australia. In celebration of ten years of marriage and the legalisation of same sex marriage in Australia, we have recently taken the family surname of Diamond, which is now reflected on this website.

 

Life down under on traditionally Aboriginal land that was once part of Gondwana is truly a new adventure and one I welcome in my life for the renewed enthusiasm it has engendered, as well as for the expansion of my intellectual and metaphysical horizons that it demands. As part of this expansion, I pursued a PhD, investigating the mental and emotional strategies of successfully ageing resilient older women. I found that an internal locus of control orientation is the most valuable and significant character trait that enables successful ageing, and that such an orientation supports self-efficacy beliefs and a sense of agency. While these resilience traits are developed throughout life, it is also possible to reinforce these capabilities by using the variety of modalities discussed on this website.

My work with clients is immensely satisfying, and it is a privilege to work with each and every one of you. The work that each of us is doing to harmonise our energies and realise our full potential is part of the paradigm shift now occurring on our planet. Thank you for visiting my website and taking the time read my life story. I hope we may have the opportunity to work together.