🏖Things that the sisters "may use", for our "Story Keeping" circle:
1. Some type of hand lotion or hand cream
2. A piece of adornment that feels comforting to your hands
3. A pen or pencil that feels easy to hold
4. Pages of a writing pad (or drawing pad) that you enjoy looking at
5. Candles
6. Comfortable seat or pillows or yoga mat
7. Tea or water
🦄*Prompts for the breakout rooms*🦄:
1. Imagine you are outside embraced by a calming breeze, in the air and fun of this Gemini moon, describe what it feels like for your hands to touch flowers that are pollinated by your most precious desires.
2. What is one kind of sensory detail you would include in a poem you would write (about a bee stinging your hand in a moment when you felt free and you frolicked in a field) while you were also feeling disappointed or afraid of a very expansive dream or goal?
3. What are the sweetest assets of your most expensive and limitless wishes?
*Suggested by Sarah on our 1st Advisory Call for Holy Woman: The Deepening" *
A. How can your life at home tomorrow, feel like you are on vacation with Camille in the Caribbean?
B. What is on your list of fun and delightful things?
A welcome addition to the growing strong-women-in-history shelf.
PIRATE QUEEN: A STORY OF ZHENG YI SAO
Written by Helaine Becker and Illustrated by Liz Wong
An inspiring story of Zheng Yi Sao, the real-life pirate queen who took control of her life—and the South China seas—in the early 19th century.
The most powerful pirate in history was a woman who was born into poverty in Guangzhou, China, in the late 1700s. When pirates attacked her town and the captain took a liking to her, she saw a way out. Zheng Yi Sao agreed to marry him only if she got an equal share of his business. When her husband died six years later, she took command of the fleet.
Over the next decade, the pirate queen built a fleet of over 1,800 ships and 70,000 men. On land and sea, Zheng Yi Sao’s power rivaled the emperor himself. Time and again, her ships triumphed over the emperor’s ships.
When she was ready to retire, Zheng Yi Sao surrendered—on her own terms, of course. Even though there was a price on her head, she was able to negotiate her freedom, living in peace and prosperity for the rest of her days.
Zheng Yi Sao’s powerful story is told in lyrical prose by award-winning author Helaine Becker. Liz Wong’s colorful, engaging illustrations illuminate this inspiring woman in history.
Published March 1, 2020 by House of Anansi Press/Groundwood Books
ISBN 9781773061245
🌹
Liz Wong was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she spent her early childhood painting and clambering about in mango trees. Winning the first place trophy in her elementary school poster contest encouraged her to pursue art instead of a sensible career in finance like the rest of her family. Liz holds a BFA in Art and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Washington and currently resides in Edmonds, Washington with her husband and son.
She continues to alternately delight and exasperate her family to this day.
Email me: lizwongillustration@gmail.com
For book illustration projects, please contact my agent, Alexandra Penfold at Upstart Crow Literary: alex@upstartcrowliterary.com
Helaine Becker is the bestselling author of more than 90 books for children and young adults, including the international bestseller Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13; and the #1 Canadian national bestseller and “enduring Canadian Christmas classic” A Porcupine in a Pine Tree (Scholastic Canada).
Recent titles include An Equal Shot: How The Law Title IX Changed America; The Fossil Whisperer: How Wendy Sloboda Discovered a Dinosaur; Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao; Emmy Noether: The Most Important Mathematician You Never Heard Of; and Alice and Gert: An Ant and Grasshopper Story.
Helaine's a multi-time winner of the Silver Birch Award and the Lane Anderson Award for science writing for children. Her books have been recipients of Picture Book of the Year Award, The Cook Prize, the Giverny Prize, Bank Street Best of the Year, Red Cedar Award, Eureka Award and JLG.
Helaine is a popular presenter and performer at schools, festivals and conferences across Canada and the US - and internationally. She was selected to tour four times for Canadian Children’s Book Week and has presented at Vancouver Writers Fest, Tucson Festival of Book, IFOA, World Science Festival (NY), the Festival of Women Writers, Frye Fest, Weaving Words, and other major venues.
She has also been the keynote speaker at SCBWI Canada East's regional conference in 2016 and SCBWI San Diego in 2019.
She has also taught at International schools in Ethiopia, Peru, Vietnam and China.
🌹
Fun Helaine Facts:
I'm both an American and Canadian citizen.
I grew up in NY and now call Toronto home.
I love fluffy dogs, coral reefs, flowers and bright shiny colorful things.
I am a licenced pyrotechnologist (look it up!)
In my spare time I paint (www.helainebeckerart.com), make miniatures, and experiment with stop motion animation.
I always work on many different books at a time and yes, each book is hard to write. But it's also fun!
I once hiked up an active volcano in the dark. Without a flashlight.
I have swum with sharks, turtles and penguins (!).
My favorite foods include mint chocolate chip ice cream and New York pizza.
From stolen bride to pirate queen: a young woman’s rise to become the most powerful pirate in history.
When pirate Zheng Yi and his crew raid the port city of Canton, they plunder both goods and women. Zheng Yi picks one girl to be his bride. Boldly, Zheng Yi Sao (meaning “Zheng Yi’s wife”) shoots him a stipulation: She will marry him only “if he [gives her] an equal share in his enterprise.” Six years later, Zheng Yi is dead, and his widow now commands 70,000 men and over 1,800 ships. Zheng Yi Sao realizes that a queen can’t “win at cards” alone. She must “strengthen [her] hand by drawing from [her] decks,” winning the loyalty of Zheng’s lieutenants by sharing power. Before long, South China’s seas come under her control, and even the emperor’s ships are no match for Zheng Yi Sao’s Red Flag Fleet. Eventually, Zheng Yi Sao grows tired of life at sea. With the same defiance and boldness that she employed so long ago, she demands her freedom from the governor-general of Canton. There is little primary documentation about Zheng Yi Sao’s life, as Becker states in a concluding note, but working with what’s known she has woven together a poetic first-person story that’s both believable and readable. Wong’s stylized pencil illustrations highlight intricate details that epitomize turn-of-the-19th-century China, a restrained palette providing color.
A welcome addition to the growing strong-women-in-history shelf. (sources, further references, note on names) (Picture book. 6-9)
Which women from the Billion dollar franchise and global phenomenon appeal to you?
✨The Singers of the Soundtracks?, for example: Tina Turner & Shirley Bassey
✨ Does M resonate with you? Seeing the character Elderly and powerful and played to perfection by Dame Judi Dench
✨Moneypenny? Eve? Making being a partner and co-worker, an intellectual equal and not a lover?
✨What about Camille in Quantum of Solace, who has an emotional experience with 007 but not a sexual one?
✨What about the iconic, feminist pilot?
✨Perhaps the Bond Girls rising from the sea, like Honey Ryder and Jinx?
✨The artist, Kara, playing her violin?
✨The wife archetype played by Diana Rigg and Lea Seydoux?
✨The source of his passion and heartbreak and his reason for vengeance, played by Eva Green?
🏝🏝🏝🏝🏝🏝🏝🏝🏝🏝
“I was there in the room when everything changed,” says Chris Blackwell. He's referring to the moment the filmmakers of the first Bond flick, Dr. No, watched the scene they had just shot on the beach in Jamaica. “Until Ursula Andress walked out of the water, it was a B-movie. When the producers saw the scene they flew back to London immediately and said, ‘You’ve got to beef up the budget—we’ve got a magical picture.’”
More than half a century later, Blackwell, the founder of Island Records and longtime resident of Jamaica, is standing near one of the small pools at Goldeneye, an understated luxury resort built around the villa where Ian Fleming wrote Dr. No and the 13 other James Bond novels. Last week marked the premiere of the 25th film in the Bond franchise, No Time to Die. In a nod to 007’s spiritual home, the latest movie opens with the spy retired in a house on the water on the north shore of Jamaica.
TRANSCRIPT
LEWIS: And it’s just kind of a spread of them with a little poem that I wrote that kind of sums it up.
BRIGGS: Oh, that is so cool.
LEWIS: Yeah, it’s great. “Of marauding men at sea, many books have told the tale. But of all the pirates in all the world, the most fearsome were female.”
BRIGGS: Avast, me hearties. It’s time to walk the plank with the biggest, baddest pirate of all time, who just happens to be a girl.
I’m Amy Briggs, executive editor of National Geographic History magazine, and this is Overheard at National Geographic: a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world.
This week: Movies and myths might make you think piracy was only a man’s game, but we’re here to right the ship. We’ll learn about the real-life Ching Shih—maybe the most successful pirate of all time. She led tens of thousands of pirates, managed to keep them happy, and then pulled the biggest power move of all: going out on top.
🌹
AMY BRIGGS (HOST): Did you ever play a video game that sucked you in and took over your life? I mean, if you have, you can relate. But if you haven’t, it’s similar to that feeling of reading an amazing book and staying up late to read just one more chapter—and then before you know it, it’s three in the morning. Playing Sid Meier’s Pirates! was like that for me.
VIDEO GAME CHARACTER: En garde!
BRIGGS: So the game takes place in the Caribbean during the 1500s and 1600s. You start out as an entry-level pirate, and you work your way up the food chain by plundering Spanish treasure ships and fighting some of history’s most famous pirates, like “Calico Jack” Rackham, Henry Morgan, and Blackbeard. So you take their ships, you steal their treasure, and you build a fearsome reputation. I was obsessed. It was adventure on the high seas in the form of many, many hours spent in front of the computer.
LEIGH LEWIS (AUTHOR): There’s just something about them. The whole—it’s like the opposite of what real life is, especially for kids.
BRIGGS: This is Leigh Lewis. She wrote a kids’ book for Nat Geo about pirates. More on that in a minute.
LEWIS: You know, there’s no parents. There’s no rules. It’s a life at sea instead of a life on land. There’s no school. They get to do what they want.
BRIGGS: Kids figure out pretty quick that a pirate is supposed to look like Blackbeard or Long John Silver or Captain Jack Sparrow—you know, a greasy dude with a long beard, maybe a peg leg. That’s how Leigh pictured pirates too until a few years ago. She came across an article about one she’d never heard of before: Ching Shih, who led a group of up to 70,000 Chinese pirates. The article made the case that Ching Shih was the most successful pirate of all time. And what really blew Leigh’s mind is that Ching Shih was a woman.
🌹
More after the break.
Ching Shih’s story begins in southern China, a little more than 200 years ago. In English, there are different versions of her name, depending on how you romanize Chinese. She’s also called Zheng Yi Sao, which is what historians prefer to call her.
(To Dian Murray) Do you remember the first time you started to learn about her? Like, what was your first impression?
DIAN MURRAY (HISTORIAN): I was really surprised. I mean, I didn’t go into this with any feminist ideas or anything.
BRIGGS: This is Dian Murray. She’s a professor emerita of history at Notre Dame. Dian first started researching Chinese pirates back in the 1970s. The U.S. opened up diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1979. And Dian was in the first wave of scholars allowed access to China’s imperial archives. When she started researching, Dian knew nothing about this female pirate.
MURRAY: The more I read, the more I just became utterly fascinated with this woman who seemed to excel and to stand out. So I was very surprised. I had not expected it at all.
🌹
RONALD PO (HISTORIAN): But first of all, we know very little about Zheng Yi Sao’s childhood and her background.
BRIGGS: This is Ronald Po. He grew up in Hong Kong—prime pirate territory, back in the day. He’s a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science who specializes in Chinese maritime history.
Zheng Yi Sao was born in around 1775 in the coastal city of Guangzhou, which Europeans also called Canton. At the time, the city was so crowded that it spilled over into the water, where people lived in floating villages.
BRIGGS: There were even rules about how to treat prisoners. When the pirates captured women, the code said anyone who raped a captive would be put to death.
But it wasn’t all about fear. Zheng Yi Sao also created incentives to keep the pirates happy. Whenever they unloaded their stolen treasure, there was a system for dividing it up fairly.
PO: Twenty percent of the captured goods were then allotted to those involved in seizing those—like, booty—while the remainders went into communal treasuries. So it’s very much like [an] organized welfare system in Scandinavia. Everything is, like, under control.
BRIGGS: But even in retirement, Zheng Yi Sao had the upper hand. She drove a ruthless bargain and only agreed to a deal once the government met her demands.
PO: Both sides reach a deal in which only Zheng Yi Sao was allowed to retain a fleet under her command of between 20 and 30 ships. And Cheung Po Tsai and Zheng Yi Sao were also allowed to keep much of the booty they collected. So they walk away with the ships and the money.
Ching Shih, the Pirate Queen,
was ruler of the seas.
She brought pirates and emperors
and dynasties to their knees.
Not much is known about her youth.
Her birth name is a mystery.
The story of young Ching Shih’s life?
Forever lost to history.
🌹So begins the exploration of six of the most fierce and fearless pirates who ever lived, all of whom happen to be female. From Ching Shih, a Chinese pirate who presided over a fleet comprised of some 80,000 men (Blackbeard had 400!), to Anne Bonny who famously ran away from an arranged marriage to don trousers and brandish a pistol in the Bahamas, to Sayyida al Hurra, an Islamic queen who ruled the Western Mediterranean, this edgy illustrated book proves that since ancient times women have made their mark in all aspects of history—even pirate lore.
Reviewed by some of the world’s leading pirate experts and historians, Pirate Queens showcases six gutsy women who dared to rule the high seas.
Yo-ho, a pirate’s life for she! Legends of Blackbeard and movie buccaneers like Captain Jack Sparrow give us the impression that piracy was a man’s world. But historians and the Nat Geo book Pirate Queens: Dauntless Women Who Dared to Rule the High Seas are righting the ship. Join the fleet of Zheng Yi Sao, a woman from southern China who at her peak commanded some 70,000 pirates during the early 19th century.
Sara Gómez Woolley is an award-winning Latina illustrator, graphic novelist, and educator living and working in Brooklyn, NY.
Sara’s work has been recognized by the New York Society of Illustrators, the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles, and 3×3 Magazine of Contemporary Illustration. She has worked on a variety of exciting projects for clients including National Geographic, DC COMICS, Image Comics, Scholastic, Random House, Parallax Press, For Beginners Books, and the New Castle Science Convention UK.
Most recently, Sara was selected to join a contingent of fifteen American creative professionals by the State Department to represent the U.S. at the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d'Alger, Algeria, Africa. There she was a guest of honor, serving as a cultural ambassador. She met with international guests, spoke on panels, exhibited her work, and was the head juror of an international competition of cosplay (Costume Art). This festival attended by over 130,000 people, is the largest of its kind in the Middle East or the African continent.
Her most recent children's book Charlotte and the Quiet Place Parallax Press 2015, a picture book featuring a young girl of color growing up in the big city, and searching for a quiet place, won a Foreword Reviews, book of the year Gold Medal, an IPPY Award (Independent Publisher Book Awards) Silver Medal, a National Parenting Publications Award Bronze Medal, and was featured in Creative Quarterly Journal of Art & Design issue 41.
Sara is currently illustrating a Non-Fiction book for National Geographic, Pirate Queens, the Dauntless Women who Dared to sail the High Seas, due for publication Winter 2022. Sara’s most recent work a 170 page graphic novel, Wonder Woman: Warbringer, colored for DC Comics was released January of 2020, to very positive reviews.
Sara’s ongoing personal project, a fictionalized graphic memoir written collaboratively with her mother and art partner Leila Gómez Woolley, Los Pirineos the mostly true memoirs of Esperancita Gómez, was singled out for award by the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, the largest Latino arts organization in the US.
Sara is current faculty of the Communications Design Department at New York City College of Technology, CUNY.
The True Story Of The Vengeful Pirate Queen Who Ruled The Mediterranean
 by Isabel Carrasco
March 17, 2023

The True Story Of The Vengeful Pirate Queen Who Ruled The Mediterranean
00:08 / 00:21
The seas were a dangerous place after the Middle Ages, when privateers rose across the world. Pirates became nightmarish apparitions and ruthlessly preyed on anyone not bearing an ally’s flag, and in the 16th century, this was particularly true of the Mediterranean Sea. As Catholic nations expanded to the other ends of the Earth, Islamic and Turkish pirates sought to undermine Christianity’s power in Europe by controlling the seas. Among those privateers, there was one particularly noteworthy. A ruler among rulers, an infamous killer, a beloved figure. A woman. A queen. Her name was Sayyida al Hurra.

Her youth
Born Lalla Aicha bint Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami in 1485, in the region of Andalusia, Spain, Sayyida was fortunate from childhood. She was the daughter of Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami, sometimes known as Sherif Moulay Ali Ben Rachid, a nobleman and founder of Chefchaouen, “the blue pearl” of Morocco.
As a noble child, Sayyida was privileged. She enjoyed the best education available and all the comforts provided by her status. But then, by the time she was seven, something went wrong. The Spanish invaded her hometown.
It was 1492. The Spanish Reconquista, when the Catholic kingdom expelled or converted the remaining Muslims in Spain, was ongoing. The Catholics were bent on retaking the Iberian Peninsula, and they didn’t play around. Sayyida and her family ran away and settled in Chefchaouen, as many other Muslim refugees did at the time. The Spanish were ruthless. Even though she was very young, she would never forget being driven away from her hometown—nor would she ever forgive the people who did it. From then on, she would harbor hatred for the whole of Christianity, especially against Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, Spain’s rulers.
Ferdinand II and Isabella I
The ruler of Tétouan
Around the turn of the century, at only 16 years old, Sayyida married Abu Hassan al-Mandari, re-founder and king of the city of Tétouan, becoming the de facto queen. He was 30 years older than her, though that simply wasn’t an issue back then—it was a strategic marriage arranged long before it happened.
Tétouan began as a small fortress, but it grew into a full-fledged thriving city due to the refugee influx from the Reconquista. It existed before Abu al-Mandari resettled it, but had been destroyed by the Spanish around 1400, as it became a hub for piracy. The city was destined to go back to its roots.
Some 14 years into the marriage, in 1515, Abu died, leaving Sayyida as the sole ruler of Tétouan. It was after her husband’s death that she assumed the mantle of “Sayyida al-Hurra, Hakimit Titwan,” which means “great noble and free lady, sovereign of Tétouan.” The rightful queen of her city, she showed skilled for government from the start, having enjoyed a full education from her childhood and marriage.

Turn to piracy
Still resentful for her family’s forced exile from Granada, Sayyida set out to take revenge. She planned to turn Tétouan into a pirate city once again and profit at the expense of the Spanish, so she wasted no time and sent envoys to the east. A meeting was arranged between her and the king of the Mediterranean pirates, Oruç Reis, also known as Barbarossa. He was actually already an ally, as he had helped with the relocation of several refugees fleeing the Catholic armada. Friendly towards each other’s cause, Sayyida and Barbarossa agreed that she would control the western portion of the sea while he ruled over the eastern side.
And she took her role with enthusiasm. She was quick to send ships to prey on Catholic merchants, mostly Portuguese vessels who soon grew to loathe her name. Though she never ventured out in the seas herself, she skillfully managed the whole operation from her city.
A French Ship and Barbary Pirates, by Aert Anthonisz, c. 1615
The Pirate Queen
For decades she raided Christian nations relentlessly, growing in popularity among the pirates and Muslims alike. Her power grew to such heights that even Sultans acknowledged her domain over the seas. The Spanish were forced to negotiate with her after a successful raid on Gibraltar in which the pirates took “much booty and many prisoners,” and this notoriety granted her more prestige than many kings in the region.
In fact, Sultan Ahmed al-Wattasi, after offering to marry her, was left with no option but to travel to Tétouan for the ceremony as per Sayyida’s terms, an unprecedented event that served to show the sheer dominance of the pirate ruler (especially considering she was ruler of a city-state, a far lesser title than a Sultan). After her marriage with the Watassi king, she became a queen in every sense of the word: not only as governor of a city, but as sovereign of a whole sultanate.

Downfall
As powerful as she was, by 1542 an alliance had brewed that forced Sayyida to abdicate. Relatives of the queen’s first husband reached out to her enemies to retake the city. While she was distracted with the war on Portugal, rivals of the Watassi dynasty eventually grew too forceful and, with their help, Sayyida’s son-in-law overthrew her. She retired to her old home in Chefchaouen, where she died in 1561.
But her legacy lived on. For centuries after, pirates following her example controlled the Mediterranean Sea, and she, the last person in Muslim history to hold the legitimate title of al Hurra, was forever remembered as “one of the most important female figures of the Islamic West in the modern age,” a true Pirate Queen.
Your voice matters!
Question (from: Lorraine Boissoneault)
🏝You include St. Augustine’s story about Alexander the Great capturing a pirate and berating him for molesting the seas, to which the pirate replies, “How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the world and are called an emperor.”
🏝Can you talk about this idea of the sea as being a place owned by everyone and no one and why that might have been appealing to women?🏝
Answer (by Laura Sook Duncombe)
🏖Maritime law is still a separate branch of the law. Crimes committed on cruise ships are treated differently than crimes committed on terra firma.
🏖The idea of the sea being a place of opportunity unbounded by country is appealing.
🏖Countries who may have been allies up in Europe are now [on ships] in the Caribbean, and it’s a free for all. 🏖The shifting alliances led to an explosion of piracy because everybody was out for themselves. 🏖You don’t know where someone is from, you can fly a flag from a different country and pretend you’re someone you’re not.
🏖It’s a *multinational masquerade ball*.
🏖For women this was appealing because they were able to more completely divest themselves of the repressive roles that they had been cast in in their own societies. They were able to make themselves anew.
🏝From renowned pirate historian David Cordingly, author of Under the Black Flag and film consultant for the original Pirates of the Caribbean, 🏝comes the thrilling story of Captain Woodes Rogers, the avenging nemesis of the worst cutthroats ever to terrorize the high seas.
🏝Once a marauding privateer himself, Woodes Rogers went from laying siege to laying down the law.
🏝During Britain’s war with Spain, Rogers sailed for the crown in sorties against Spanish targets in the Pacific; battled scurvy, hurricanes, and mutinies; captured a treasure galleon; and even rescued the castaway who inspired Robinson Crusoe.
🏝 Appointed governor of the Bahamas in 1717, the fearless Rogers defended the island colony of King George I against plundering pirates and an attempted Spanish invasion.
🏝His resolute example led to the downfall of such notorious pirates as Blackbeard, Calico Jack, and the 🌹female pirates 🌹Anne Bonny🌹 and 🌹Mary Read🌹.
🏝A vividly detailed and action-packed portrait of one of the early eighteenth century’s most colorful characters, Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean serves up history that’s as fascinating and gripping as any seafaring legend.
In 1645 there were 1,630 “Portuguese” (a term then synonymous with Jews) living in Recife, Brazil, according to Dutch historian Franz Leonard Schalkwijk. In 1654, as is well-known, 23 of them escaped religious persecution by ship and arrived at the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam – today New York City. Where did the other refugees flee to? Some returned to Amsterdam, including Isaac Aboab de Fonseca, the first American rabbi, and Moses de Aguilar, the first American cantor. Others disembarked at the nearby Dutch Caribbean colony of Curaçao.
Less well-known is that some of the escaping Jews sought shelter in Jamaica, the luscious Caribbean island that was then the home to several hundred Jews and Bnei Anusim (descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who converted to Roman Catholicism under compulsion).
In 1655, one year after the Jewish refugees from Dutch Brazil arrived in Jamaica, the Columbuses’ poorly defended private island was seized by Britain.Leading the armada was Admiral William Penn, the father of William Penn Jr., who subsequently founded Pennsylvania. Under British rule, religious freedom flourished. By 1720, an estimated 20 percent of residents of the capital, Kingston, were descendants of Spanish-Portuguese Jews.As elsewhere in the New World, Jamaica’s Jews sought economic opportunities.
The Jamaican community had strong commercial ties with Jewish businessmen in Europe including London, Bayonne and Bordeaux. Trade developed with the mainland British North American colonial ports, such as New York, Newport, Charleston and Savannah.
BUT SOME Jamaican Jews turned to a more adventurous – and dangerous – life at sea. Captaining ships bearing names like the Queen Esther, the Prophet Samuel, and the Shield of Abraham, Jewish sailors began roaming the Caribbean in search of riches, sometimes obtained under questionable circumstances.These Jews most frequently attacked Spanish and Portuguese ships – payback for the property confiscations and torture of their brethren perpetrated by the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
While pirates and buccaneers were outcasts and lawbreakers who attacked ships, raided towns and robbed people of their money and sometimes their lives, privateers were a legal version of the same. Mercenaries armed with a letter of marque and reprisal from their government permitting the attack of enemy ports and shipping during military conflict, they engaged in economic warfare – and turned over a portion of their booty to their king. In peacetime, they continued their plunder but flew the Jolly Roger pirate flag in lieu of the British Union Jack or the flag of free Holland.
THE MOST famous of the Caribbean’s Jewish pirates, or privateers, was Moses Cohen Henriques. His name is of Portuguese origin. Like many of his contemporary buccaneers, Henriques’s life is shrouded in mystery. Together with Dutch folk hero Admiral Piet Pieterszoon Hein, Henriques captured a Spanish treasure fleet off Cuba’s Bay of Matanzas in 1628. The booty of gold and silver bullion amounted to a staggering 11,509,524 guilders, worth around US$1 billion in today’s currency. It was the Dutch West Indies Company’s greatest heist in the Caribbean.
In 1630 Henriques took his loot and led a Jewish contingent to settle in newly captured Brazil. There he established his own treasure island as a pirate base.But in 1654, he too had to flee South America. Ending up in Jamaica, he served as an adviser to the notorious pirate Henry Morgan. In 1674, England’s King Charles II knighted Morgan in appreciation for the colorful sea captain’s bravery, and the economic havoc he wreaked on the Spanish empire in the New World.
The Hunt’s Bay cemetery, also spelled Hunts Bay – Jamaica’s oldest graveyard – was the burial ground for the Jews of Port Royal. The deceased, who had lived across the harbor where the high water table of the peninsula prevented burial, were rowed to their final resting place.The earliest of the remaining 360 tombstones there dates to 1672 and its latest is from the mid 19th century.
Options to work together
1. Online Writing Retreats, from one day to one month
2. In person writing retreats in the Caribbean, from one day to one week
First Step:
Click the icon below to send me an email
*2nd Biography*
🌹Camille Lindsay is a multi-lingual and multi-ethnic, poet and story keeper who was "born with the gift to harmonize worlds".
🌹Her primary values are home, grace, nature, and caring for elders. She enjoys the power of kindness, homemaking, and interior comfort.
🌹Poetry is a garden where she can transport, embrace, and revel in, the fruits of her experience. She can sit under a tree with seeds from Ethiopia and leaves from Scandinavia. The wind can whisper to the birds perched on stanzas of her poems and translate words she has lived, in the Francophone and South Asia.
🌹Poetry for her is the rich blackness of the soil by the river Nile and cradles of civilization and the stones and seashells she holds from the Caribbean sea.
🌹Her writing circles tend to be open and full freedom and feeling.
🍓7:05🌹Hello sisters & Team Holy Woman. Thank you for introducing me Monique. (You are hearing Sona Jobarteh playing the kora and singing, in the background on low volume)
🍓7:05 - 7:20🌹
🍯There is a different energy in being live. Also, sisters, in this moment please check in with your body and your energy and your individual needs. If you are, for example, overstimulated or neurodivergent, this transcript is a more private or low sensory way to be present at your own pace and engage with my offering in a way that soothes your sovereignty. Monique will also share a link early, now, with the music, prompts, contact info & freebie. This is available to you sister, if your body desires being present here but your energy needs more time or space. The circle will still hold you.
🍯1. A link to the music I will use, starting with the first track and just running:
https://sonajobarteh.bandcamp.com/album/fasiya
Rationale: if people have the music, they could mute our sound and play it themselves or speed it up or replay one of the songs they like or just pick one they feel drawn to. Since my focus is the hands, I chose Sona Jobarteh because she uses her hands to play a beautiful instrument (called a kora) I love listening to. I'm flexible about how this particular music reaches people in the circle, and I just know this is the musician for the ceremony.
🍯Okay to those who are a full yes for the live experience, now, let's go. Let us close our eyes and breathe and believe. You are holding on to both your sense of freedom and the open seas. You are on a boat you own, sailing under a flag you chose. Let us time travel too. You are a legendary female pirate owning millions and the seas or you are an impossibly beautiful Bond Girl used to yachts and rising like Venus from the Caribbean seas.
🍯I feel like myself as the pirate queen, in this moment. The most powerful pirate was female and born in southern China. So imagine her energy, being born in poverty in the late 1700s (1775) in a coastal town called Guangzhou. I imagine the way her hands probably held each other when pirates attacked her town and the captain wanted her to be his wife. I imagine her telling him she will ony marry him if he gives her an equal share of the business. I imagine her becoming a widow in less than seven years and somehow navigating life as she takes command of the fleet. I imagine her growing, and learning, and aging, like me. I imagine her over the next decade building and expanding until she had a fleet of over 1,700 ships and she was leader for 70,000 Chinese pirates. I think of famous men who were pirates, like Blackbeard, who had 400. I imagine her using her hands and making strict laws which cost a man his life if he violated a female prisoner. Imagine maritime laws which made even a female prisoner that much safer. Imagine the same laws on land today.
🍯This is a choice you have in this moment. Be yourself as a Bond Girl or be yourself as a pirate.
🍓7:25🌹Monique is sharing the new moon prompts, from the last New Moon Ceremony, in the chat.
🍯My Full Moon for this Gemini Full Moon is : Fun, Freedom & the Sea
🍯I have five Breakout Room Prompts.
🍯Monique is posting all of these in the chat.
🍯I'd love to have everyone copy and paste them, so you can have them for the breakout rooms
🦄*The 5 Prompts for the breakout rooms are *🦄:
1. Imagine you are outside embraced by a calming breeze, in the air and fun of this Gemini moon. Describe what it feels like for your hands to touch flowers. How would it feel knowing that the flowers are pollinated by your most precious desires.
2. What is one kind of sensory detail you would include in a poem about a bee stinging your hand? Suppose it happened in a moment when you felt free and you frolicked in a field? What if it happened while you were also feeling disappointed or afraid of a very expansive dream or goal?
3. What are the sweetest assets, of your most expensive and limitless wishes?
I also have two awesome ones that were *Suggested by Sarah on our 1st Advisory Call for Holy Woman: The Deepening" *
A. How can your life at home tomorrow, feel like you are on vacation with Camille in the Caribbean?
B. What is on your list of fun and delightful things?
🍓7:27🌹Monique is sending everyone to breakout rooms. Each room will have 4 sisters. (Monique pauses the recording while sisters are in breakout rooms and Camille is either in breakout rooms or in the main room with Khadija and Monique)
🍓7:55🌹Welcome back sisters. Thank you Monique for bringing everyone back into the main room and turning the recording back on. We appreciate you and the team so very much for all you do to nourish Holy Woman.
🍯Sisters, for our closing of this circle, I would love for you to touch the lotion you have with you and just moisturize your hands, with love and gratitude.
🍯Our hands have served us well as we did our writing today. Our hands have tended to our bodies, our homes, our families, our projects.
🍯Now move your hands a bit near your face and just enjoy the scent of the lotion and the sight of your beloved hands.
🍯Thank you very much for taking the time to be in circle today with me and for giving the gift of ceremony to yourself.
🍯Yes, I do have a link to a freebie and a way for you to connect with me later or continue this conversation with me or work with me. Monique is putting that link in the chat now. It was lovely to be with you all.
🍯Okay it's time to hand over to Monique for her to unmute us so we can say goodbye together
Write 1-2 sentences describing what followers will find when they tap the link.
Write 1-2 sentences describing what followers will find when they tap the link.
Write 1-2 sentences describing what followers will find when they tap the link.
What is Rebirth?
Rebirth is a free 3-Day online ceremony and workshop where we use Sacred Feminine Wisdom and Ancient Practices to allow you to access the next version of you – the most soulful, clear, confident, on purpose, take no nonsense, version of you.
The Witch’s New Year is called by many names: Samhain (sow-win) / Day of the Dead / Night of the Ancestors / Halloween! This is when the veils are thin – when we have access to the unseen language of the Divine & our good ancestors, where those who have ears to hear will remember who they are, and why they’re here. It’s the threshold of death and rebirth – a time when we can allow our old selves to die, so we can truly live.
Ceremony may feel new and fringe but is actually an ancient practice that’s been utilized for millennia. When you come into Ceremony, you will experience an almost automatic shift from identifying with your personality, or who you should be, into feeling the truth of your essence and your soul.
I’ve been a member of Sarah Jenks Holy Woman Community since Spring of 2020, and gathering in Ceremony with other Sacred women has been one of the catalysts for some of my deepest transformations.
Sarah creates a very specific energy field and brings you through a Sacred process of connecting directly with your Soul (your higher self). When you can fully hear your soul, you have access to unlimited creativity, incredible bravery, and crystal clear vision about where you are meant to go. It’s hard to explain what happens but it’s also impossible not to FEEL it when you are in the space.
This is for you if…
You’ve ever said “I’m spiritual but not religious”
You keep your spirituality a secret or are very guarded about it
You are into meditation, yoga and gratitude practices but want something juicier and more impactful
If your spirituality is a hobby, but not part of your whole life
You want to meet other spiritual, out of the box, interesting women
You feel like the black sheep in your family
You’re ready to take your life to the next level but don’t want to push or work harder
You know that you’re here for a reason, but you don’t know exactly what it is yet
You’re in your purpose, but you know you could be more “out there” with what you do.
You’re curious about the Sacred Feminine and have an inkling it’s going to light your whole life up.
What is possible?
After REBIRTH, you may step into the next version of yourself and elevate part of your life – marriage, health, motherhood and career.
OH HEY, FOR BEST VIEWING, YOU'LL NEED TO TURN YOUR PHONE