The Owl and the name Wolistic both relate to what we are trying to do with our artwork and counselling...

The Owl

Folklore speaks of the Wise Old Owl. The picture on our logo is actually Athena’s Owl, the symbol of the ancient Greek goddess Athena, who sometimes assumed the form of a bird and was most associated with the owl.

Athena is appropriate because

• she was connected with war, but this included fighting for her chosen people and protecting them;
• she was patroness of arts and crafts, especially spinning and weaving;
• she came to personify Wisdom.

And of course, if you were brought up on Winnie-the-Pooh, you’ll remember that Owl spelt his name WOL.

Wolistic

Wolistic refers by sound to: Artistic ~ Holistic ~ Realistic

Artistic:

• the art of listening, whether to people or life or God, and of hearing;
• the art of really seeing;
• therapy is only as good as its practitioner, its artist;
• the art of living well.

Holistic:

• whatever helps us to live more fully and more deeply and with all of ourselves;
• unpretentious creativity that attends to body, mind and spirit;
• art that helps make home and workplace more beautiful and more deeply human;
• the work of human hands, with its limitations, uniqueness and freshness, enlivens and affirms human lives in the face of mass production and employees as work units.

Realistic:

• grounded, and attending to the reality of people’s unique lives;
• realism of knowing that people and things cannot be ‘rescued’ and made better;
• a realistic self-knowledge that includes humility;
• realism that being faithful, attentive, committed and ethical practitioners of counselling and art is ‘good enough’, without having to be ‘world experts’;
• realism of people’s pockets: affordability is essential to accessibility.