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Monday, March 26, 2007
Honoring the Colon
I have had to do so much stuff to help my colon get back to normal lately, and it has given me an opportunity to think more about this amazing part of the body. It takes a bit of daring and courage to talk about one's poop so openly, Goddess knows. Our society has not been known for much honoring or appreciation of this part of us, or even much awareness. We tend to be unconscious of our bowel functions unless they get disturbed in some way, even embarassed to discuss them. Or, we learn to treat colon matters as a joke. We forget how essential and crucial this part of us is for our health and survival. "Death begins in the colon" is a phrase I have heard, and it sure is true, as I've been learning for some years now.
I saw a writing somewhere that said some scientists believe our bodies actually have three brains; in the head, the stomach, and the intestines. Some folks are discovering how intelligent our colons are! So much goes on in the colon I once never knew. I thought it was just a kind of garbage chute, you know, simply for eliminating "waste." But I've learned that a lot of the digestive process goes on in the colon, and our ability to absorb nutrients is involved... as well as our immune system! And gees what an emotional organ. Realizing this has helped me to understand my health issues better.
The colon can be understood as a facilitator of our body's ecosystem. Just as we've had to learn to tune into the ecology of our environment and of Mother Earth... to pay more attention to what we do with those plastic baggies...those packaging leftovers... the impact we make when we dump pollutants... we need to understand the inner workings in this regard as well as the outer.
Growing up I was given a fairly enlightened view of the body's eliminations. My mom never made me feel ashamed or dirty or embarassed about my body's functions. She was always very respectful of nature and biology, and taught this to me and my sisters. I felt lucky and enlightened about it all and sad that more people didn't seem to get it.... though times have changed since then, and there is more awareness and acceptance now; at least I have found this to be so among healers.
But oh how much more I have had to learn.
So now I am doing what I can to honor my colon. Not only with physical care, but emotionally and spiritually too. When I'm on the "throne" going through the extraction process - sometimes challenging and difficult and scary - I have begun to incorporate prayer. I speak inside me to my colon and tell her how much I appreciate her. I wonder who the colon deity may be, and send out a prayer to them even as I still search for them. Sometimes I apologize to my colon for my years of unconsciousness and ignorance. For the dreadful insults she has had to endure from surgery...from chemo...from old grief and sorrow...from wrong eating and other emotional habits that stem from life's traumas... I can feel now how sensitive she is and how profoundly she feels things, how vulnerable and wounded. And I am astonished at how she has been able to recover and what a wise and savvy organ she can be. I think about how my inner ecology is connected to the Earth's ecology and how it's all part of the same continuum. She is the body of the Goddess... ours are the bodies of little God/desses... :0) Our bodies are amazing instruments, are they not? They may seem flawed and imperfect to us, subject to all kinds of rejections and judgements, but look how wise they are and how much they teach us. They surely deserve our cherishing, respect and love.
shekhinahmoon at 2:15:03 PM EDT
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Sunday, February 25, 2007
Catching Up
Hi everybody; it's been a while since I posted here. I hope all reading this are doing well and having joy and magic in your lives.
You probably know by now that I have been dancing with Cancer since December '05, and it's been a long long dance my beloveds.
Right now I am just home from surgery, and spending a lot of time in bed recovering. I've been struggling with pain, trying to find some pain meds that won't make me sick, trying to rest a lot. In between times I open up my new laptop, which, blessedly, I can have right here on my bed, so I can still talk to you. :0)
When I got home from the hospital I had a wonderful revelation. In my last post I griped some about how society has helped to make me ill. I have kvetched about being blocked in my work as a priestess...prevented from holding circles in my own community...my music and voice silenced. Thank Goddess for the internet, where I have been able to find some true sisters who care, who are interested, and who share themselves too.
But when I got home from the hospital I saw myself in the mirror and I looked like death. I have lost a lot of weight; have aged; have been unable to eat much, and my energy is still low, though I do get stronger each day. But I realized when I saw myself like that, post surgery, fighting with cancer, that I have begun the long journey towards my own death.
Not that I expect to die soon. Far from it; I intend to live on this earth a very long time.
I'm gonna live to a ripe old age
Write my books to the very last page
Keep all my teeth and eat real good
Have lots of friends in the neighborhood!
<grin>
But I realized that I am one of the priestesses in these times who is engaged on the Croning Journey. I have been given this gift, to discover it, remember, learn about it, share it with sisters, and some brothers too. I have written about The Seven Stages of Croning, just in brief, and I think each stage could be a book. Certainly, the final stage, Death Crone, is many layered and filled with tradition, ceremony, lessons, and information. In the year that I have been on this path I have had so many responses saying how much folks appreciate my sharing of the journey. They tell me I am still their teacher and their priestess... that they are still learning from me and finding inspiration and revelation through the things I share.
Well duh, I realized after looking in the mirror. I was never taken off the Path at all! I've been priestessing all along, just by being myself and living through what I'm living through and sharing it openly. Blessed Be!
Part of this journey, I'm discovering, is preparing for life on the other side. In a wonderful onscreen conversation with my sister Squash Rose, we agreed to begin the task of visualizing and developing our homes on the other side...a space in the faery realm...in the woods of course...in a magical realm...where we all can have spaces we design to our heart's content; just as we want them. Together we can build up the reality of this home for ourselves and each other.
After all, lots of other belief systems do this. We're given all sorts of messages about what it's like after death... heavens, hells, idyllic places, horrible places, and even places of nothing at all. Even death is political my friends, and ours to reclaim. Let's make a women's otherworld together... with all the beauty and joy we can imagine. Other groups have built up worlds; why not we? And interestingly one of the names of Faery is "The Land of Women." !! Any traditions we can find of women's afterlife spaces can only serve to strengthen our own.
My own home in the Otherworld magickal forest is built into a ring of redwood trees. It is high up in their branches, so that I am nestled amongst the leaves and close to the sky. You get up to see me by a ladder of stars... or in the basket-and-pulley elevatrix if you prefer. :0)
How do you want your Home in the next world to be? It's yours to reclaim. Some sisters in the Moonspell community are working on theirs too, and we are sharing. Any woman with loving intent is invited to join us.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Moonspells
Peace and blessings,
Shekhinah
shekhinahmoon at 11:24:54 PM EST
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Saturday, October 7, 2006
Cancer Musings
Sometimes our illnesses come as a result of pressures and rejections from society. After a lifetime of being strong in the face of it, resisting it as best we can, maintaining our devotion and our focus in spite of it... it is bound to wear us down eventually. I have had many sorrows and frustrations as I've made my priestess journey in this life - doors closed, ears shut down, hearts closed to me, communications blocked. I have been ostracised, silenced, ignored, backstabbed, exploited, blamed, misunderstood, lied about, impoverished, abandoned. I have kept going despite it all, and always will, because channelling Goddess reality is who I am. But these things do take their toll after a while, especially on the body. Our poor bodies end up taking the brunt of so many of our troubles. Because we have to be strong, we have to carry on. We send our fears and worries and rages and forgotten dreams into our Shadow Selves, where they lurk in the dark and draw power. Power that we need to release from those confines, and have access to again. Power that can become twisted and turn into things like infections and cancers.
Our healing is in the circle of loving sisters. Z herself (currently ill with infection, as I am with cancer) once said that to me when I asked her advice one day many years ago. It is in the loving circle of sisters that I have known the glory that keeps me going in the face of masculated rejections. In the circle of loving sisters we are immortal...we are all that we can be...our voices are welcomed and wanted...we are honored, delighted in, delighting in each other. In the circle of loving sisters we can fly... we can babble poetry in pure ecstasy...we become myth.
In a truly loving sister circle we are equals. No one is higher or lower than another, and every soul present is cherished. In this circle we are in the arms of the Goddess. And we can be in this circle even when we think we are alone, or simply communing with Her.
I have been "flying in the arms of the Goddess" for many years. I have known many times the alternate reality to all those woundings listed above. Where there I have been impoverished, here I have been enriched and showered with blessings. While there I have been ignored and silenced, here I am heard and my voice is wanted, received, respected, enjoyed, encouraged. While there I have been depressed and despairing, here I am vibrant with joy, revelation, inspiration. Because I have journeyed here, because I journey with She, my Muse, I have known many times what it's like to soar.
I am dedicated to that beauty. My thealagie, my music, my politics, my ritual practises - all are alligned towards the goal of re-manifesting that wondrous and beautiful state. I call it the Faery Ring sometimes... it is a continuum of spinning energy - yes, it's the cone of power too - yet it is deeply sensitized and focussed. It is sustained by our combined energies and conscious consent to all focus together on the same thing at the same time. It is sustained by love and trust and honest communication and hearts that are open to each other. It is one of the great Lost Powers of Woman. Retrieving and wielding it is magic. With its use we can manifest anything we desire; even change the world.
In that continuum I have flown on the wings of the Muse.
To retrieve and maintain that loving magical sisterhood, it becomes necessary to examine our circle experiences and our experiences interacting with others. Are they providing the Faery Ring? How much of that exalted magic occurs in our lives? How much is lost? What can we do to regain it? How important is it to us? Are we willing to let it disappear through disuse...to let it be forgotten? How much do we know about it? What can we do to learn more and develop its skills and traditions?
Much conspires to squash this experience. Many do not even know it exists. Even in my own movement and among many Goddess sisters, it is widely unknown. Dedicating one's life to such a thing is a decidedly uphill climb. Or up a waterfall, I think. ;0)
No wonder we get sick, right?
So ironic that my life has improved so much since I got cancer. Too bad the love and support and access to space and donations and offers of help didn't all come before I got cancer. I probably wouldn't have cancer if they had.
But I am nevertheless deeply grateful. It seems now that those two sides of my experience are beginning to integrate more. As the support comes, the doors open, the spaces become accessible, my potential to be fulfilled as a priestess increases, returns. And as I step onto this integrated braiding of paths, the world changes too. Perhaps the world is more in readiness this time. Perhaps now the doors can stay open more.
Being at death's door has this intense quality of potent and potential transformation. It is an opportunity to shift karmic patterns. Something must die and something must be reborn. But it doesn't necessarily have to involve complete physical death. I think physical death comes when those spiritual transformations can't happen while yet in this life. This is one of the lessons of the Tower card in the Tarot, which I call "Lightening" in my own deck. I deliberately mis-spelled the word. <wink> When we get irrevocably stuck, the enlightening lightning will strike. If we can bend and flow with the transition, it will likely be more gentle.
Let the healing begin...let the magic be fulfilled...let the transformation be gentle.
shekhinahmoon at 7:59:57 AM EDT
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Friday, September 22, 2006
Persephone's Day/Autumn Equinox 9/22/06
Greetings beautiful earthlings...
I send you my love on this magic day in the year ten-thousand and six of our Lady...
This is the women's holy day of Moonpaws... menopause... when the Goddess descends to meet the Crone in the Underworld. Persephone, the Dark Maiden, walks into the Mysteries. She is Maiden... but She is also Mother and Crone and all the aspects are each other. Her Croneself Hecate teaches Her about Immortality, Manifestation, and Healing. Once again. She will bide in the Spirit World through the winter, as seeds sleep beneath the earth, and will sprout green upwards again come Spring. Now she is Persephone...then she will be Kore. She is the cycling Goddess and the "fate of the grain."
Going within is an appropriate theme for this time. Like Birdalone, in my tarot deck, image of a cloaked woman going towards the moon. Like the woman whose children have grown and flown, so that she now has time for herself. Like the onset of moonpaws when a woman no longer has to mother as much as she used to, and she can take on the cloak of cronehood.
Like the separation between Demeter and Persephone, as Persephone grows up and away to become Herself.
"...Dark Goddess gonna set you free...."
How auspicious that Fall Equniox this year lands on the day of the Dark Moon! And not only that, there is also a solar eclipse happening! I woke this morning to a dark dawn, and the morning unfolded in a silver grey mist. A dark day indeed.
Let it be a good dark. The dark of warming in bed beneath sweet smelling sheets and blankets. The dark of a velvet night sky spangled with silver. The dark of a woman's dark eyes. The dark of the womb, the dark of the moon. "Endarkenment" my friend Sandra Pastorious coined.
There is magic here, in the glorious dark. I see us all together, circling in the Underworld.. in Faery. A circle of Crone Goddesses surrounds our circle. We pass the rattle and talk about what we are ready to harvest - or let go of - and what we are changing into. We rise in procession and each take a dip in Hecate's cauldron. We cast off what is finished into the pot...arise renewed. We walk together to the ancient Crossroads... where "three roads meet." And there we make our choices for the coming of winter.
Blessed Persephone Day to you all, dear ones.
Much love,
Shekhinah
shekhinahmoon at 6:33:29 PM EDT
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Tuesday, May 16, 2006
How to Live Witchily and Escape the Masculated Paradigm of Cynicism/Despair
Create good karma...
Follow the Golden Rule...
Walk the Golden Mean...
Practise right livlihood...
Honor your sacred woman Self (If you are a man, honor women as well as yourself.)...
Support sisters...
Follow your bliss...
Do your thing...
Create! create!
Let someone help you make your life wonderful....
Help someone make their life wonderful...
Speak up...
Listen well...
Let your garden be wild (plants are people too!)...
Be kind to animals (humans are animals too!)...
Connect with the Goddess...
Be ecstatic and free...
Recycle...
Practise giveaway...
Honor and practise nurture...
Worship all things female...
Express yourself...
Walk your talk...
Keep your promises...
Communicate, communicate, communicate!
All these things are acts of love, don't you think?
shekhinahmoon at 6:44:54 PM EDT
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Thursday, May 4, 2006
Defining Spiritual Feminism
What are spiritual feminist politics? This is a great question, and a good one to bring up on the Rims of women's circles. I think there are many ways to define them.
In my view, spiritual feminism is based on the essential premise of female deity, and the understanding that there was a patriarchal takeover that sought to remove the Goddess from Her former place in every aspect of people's lives.
Goddess reality is egalitarian, woman-loving, magical as well as scientific, earth-honoring, ecstatic, creative, compassionate and nurturing.
Patriarchal reality is dominant/submissive, woman-oppressing, scientific without magic, earth-exploiting, repressive, destructive, competitive and non-nurturing.
To practise feminist spiritual politics is to support the return of Goddess-based values to all parts of our world, including religion, relationships, education, marketing, government, family, and so much more. This is about returning women to the roles they once played, and awakening men to the women inside them, so that ultimately we all can live together in harmony.
Any more thoughts to add? Passing the rattle....
shekhinahmoon at 12:55:00 PM EDT
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Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Hearth Keeping
I reclaimed hearth keeping after I ceased to be interested in
marriage. <weg> Before that I always felt like I was "working for the Man..." if you know what I mean. I rebelled, even went on strike once and refused to do all housework. The man I was with at the time stayed away longer and longer. "There's nothing to come home to" he said.
Later I had the chance to experience just doing it for me and
the children, and later just me. On psychedelic journeys I gasped in awe at the beauty and sacredness of those humble tasks. My studies taught me that women invented the hearth and it was the beginning of fire magic. The eternal flame that we light for the Goddess is also the flame of light and warmth and life and nurturing and nourishment and pleasure and comraderie...so much converges around the hearth flame.
And hearths were always temples in the olden days... our lives were not split between body and soul. We were priestesses of those temples, and can be again. I have this feeling that every woman needs her own fire, her own hearth... a space for herself where she can provide for all her needs and be alone as much as she likes.
Alone is all-one.
I usually only do housework - or hearth-keeping, I would rather
call it, to keep the poetry alive... when I feel like it. LOL That
helps keep it special. So I may seem rather untidy by some
standards. I keep a lid on my dishpan and let things pile under
there for a while before getting around to them. And oh then the beauty. The smell of lemon and orange, the sparkling and the freshness... the bright colors. I find myself singing as I go,
sometimes making up new chants or fragments of new pieces.
When everything has been put away and straightened and rearranged and washed and adorned and adored, and the incense is lit, and some candles, and some music is played...lovliness. It won't last...this I've learned LOL!... But it is a fine ritual worth reclaiming. Either way, messy or neat, I'm free and happy in my home.
I love the smell of clean laundry. The warm folded colorful soft piles, ready to embrace me. The way the light comes through the water as it pours over the dish. I love the expanse of clean round carpeting in my temple where I can sit or lie before the altar, or schmooze with a sister or few...resting on fragrant cushions...or maybe have a small circle. Finding the cup I need without having to dig for it.. LOL... all shining and ready.
I remember in The Witch's Workbook by Ann Grammary she said you can always tell a witch's house because it is impeccably neat and clean. Yeah right... LOL Guess I'm not a qualified witch. Or maybe the contemporary witch's house can be detected by the happy smiles on its occupants' faces.
Ever notice all the words in hearth? Hear, ear, art, earth,
heart...!!!
shekhinahmoon at 5:47:29 AM EST
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Sunday, February 12, 2006
Poetry: Apple Tales
Apple Tales
by Shekhinah Mountainwater
2/11/06
Five things a proper apple must contain
Ripe, crisp, tart, juicy and sweet
To satisfy me tooth and tongue
And make the eating of her complete
Can these be alligned perhaps
With the magic pentacle?
Is that why She placed Her star
So cleverly within?
So hard it is now to find such
In the marketplace
Apples are there so vividly displayed
In colors red and gold and green
But alas they are mealy or dry or flavorless
Even now the beloved MacIntosh.
"Delicious" grown to distorted unnatural shape
And Braeburns from Australia
That I had found still held those Five
Have also changed.
Gone are the true authentic apples
Fading from our world even as Gaia herself is fading
Sisters we must bring them back!
Find the seeds and plant anew
Rewrite the myths now gone askew
No wonder apples have lost their taste
When the tales told of them speak untrue!
******
Written for my Grove sisters just now
On this 13th Day of the Laurel Moon
Hecaday (Saturday)
As she dances in the sign of the Sphinx (Leo)
In the year of our Lady, 10,006
2/11/06
*****
Join the Grove!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/moonspellstudycircle
The Grove or Moonspell Study Circle is a small group of
groovy witchy women, come together to share our wisdom
and learn about such things as sacred Trees, myths,
magic, shielding, runes, tarot and each other! Small
fees and full participation requested. Questions?
Email me: shekhinahmoon at aol dot com
(email addy spelled out to resist spammers)
shekhinahmoon at 1:31:21 PM EST
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Wednesday, January 4, 2006
Narnia Movie
I was so delighted to find out that a quality film based on the first of the Narnia series had come out. Last night neighbor Cyndia and I went to see it, and what a treat. My children and I grew up together sharing the Narnia stories. They even used to act out that early scene when Lucy first finds her way through the wardrobe and into that magic land, and meets Tumnus the faun at the lamp post. We would invite friends to come and see, and I would cook a huge pot of veggie stew for afterwards. I was director and stage manager and co-collaborator with my children, and they were the actors extraordinaire. Angel, (then Freya) was the quintessential Lucy, sweet and openhearted, brave and innocent. Frey was the perfect Tumnus, fae and magical and enchanting. He even made himself a couple of pointy ears using paper mache, paint and coathanger wire. These enactments were the prelude to the theatre troupe we would soon become, where I graduated to musician and storyteller and they added dance and mime to their repertoire.
So it was especially meaningful for me to see the film. I had seen earlier versions on tv over the years, but none as satifying as this one. The casting was really superb, and I loved all the children, and the animals were incredibly well done. They spoke and behaved like the conscious beings they really are, yet kept their wonderful animal qualities. And Aslan, the lion king was exactly as I used to imagine him when I first read the books.
There were a lot of things in the book that were left out of the movie...for instance the Wood Between the Worlds, and the lives of the children in the mundane world. 'Course that could be a good thing, as it encourages folks to go and read the books, and me to re-read them...
And of course the patriarchalelements of both the film and the books were glaringly obvious as I watched the film. I was innocent of all this when I first read Narnia, and simply enchanted by the magic. I didn't notice back then that all the evil villains were women. The polarization between the White Witch (evil) and Aslan (good) is disturbing in its reinforcement of the good vs evil male vs female paradigm that patriarchy is built upon. I don't like seeing children programmed once again to embrace this view of reality that sets up polarities and oppositions and engenders a war mentality and perpetuates sex roles and gender wars. I have the same problem with the Tolkien stories and Harry Potter. Not that the latter two emphasize evil in female, but they still are built upon that familiar good vs evil grid.
I prefer a circular grid that I sometimes call loving, loved, loveless. Getting stuck in lovelessness is to me what generates evil. Staying in the flow of love in all its stages, including taking breaks and time for oneself, giving love and receiving love to me is a better grid to work with than the old oppositional either/ors. All stages are included in the flow. In such a view there is no "other" to pit oneself against... all is connected. Just as in real life we all have the potential to be kind or nasty, and we all have responsibility in this regard. Life is really shades of grey and not just black and white. Often folks who do nasty things behave that way because they've been hurt. Better to find a way to heal the hurt instead of making war on it and creating more. It's ironic that forgiveness and compassion are integral to the Jesus archetype... qualities that come from the Mother... yet he has been set up as an icon of righteous battles with evil foes...."with God on our side." Of course that other army over there thinks they have god on their side too, and that we are the evil enemy.
The Christian elements in Narnia were clearly represented in the film as they were in the books. Aslan is obviously a Christ figure who is sacrificed and suffers and dies, and is then resurrected. The armies, the formal routines of soldiers lined up before the throne, the glorification of war in the name of all that's good and holy.... all of this is dangerously reinforcing of values and social traditions that have brought terrible suffering to our world....and tends to perpetuate the masculation* radical feminists have often decried.
Yet the underlayer of paganism shows through too in the Narnia books and film. The Stonehenge-like setting where Aslan is killed and reborn...the stone table on which he is sacrificed, which then cracks... the older traditions of the dying-reviving saviours that died for the Goddess and the Land.... tied in more with nature, with animals, with magic. Still, even these traditions were a departure from the far earlier gentle blood rituals of woman-centered societies. They do not represent a purely matriated* reality, but a transitional time between when masculated values were taking over.
The White Witch who obviously expresses the archetypal Bitch, the Snow Queen, the woman whose heart has grown cold, who cannot love, whose palace is made of ice, was in the film magnificent in her way. As woman warrior she was so reminiscent of others we have seen who fought for the good and to defend women. I couldn't help seeing how the roles could so easily have been switched, and how the Queen could have been fighting for good and Aslan for evil. That's how polarity works... it switches back and forth, giving the illusion that something has changed, but it is still about those "ignorant armies that clash by night."
It's true that sometimes women can be awful. Masculated women who have taken on the trappings of patriarchy... or just been so wounded by it that they have become emotionally shut down... or have become so male identified that they join in the competitiveness and estrangement. Perhaps this is the origin of such women that show up in fairy tales - like thewicked stepmother...Snow White's nemesis with the poisoned apple. Always in such tales the force of good and redemption is shown as male... the handsome prince who awakens us with a kiss of love. Yet the Crone with her apple of wisdom goes way way back and is a positive female archetype.
From a child's point of view, a mother figure who is not loving and supportive is a threatening figure indeed. And yet hidden in that literary reprimand is a warning to women... "behave as you are expected... continue to be a prop and a slave... to put others always before yourself and have no dreams or goals or needs of your own... the eternal dishmop... or you will be abhorred and cast down." Nowadays we hear the bitch applauded and see words like "no woman made great changes by being well behaved" or something to that effect. This is part of the positive effects of feminism that has sought to liberate women... but it is also what has been held against feminists, touted as angry bra-burners and trivialized.
Aslan cried "witch!" when he accused the White Witch of evil doings and denounced her... and one of course could hear how this word has become interchangeable with "bitch." When he finally pounces on her and kills her the story fulfills its theme; good has triumphed and evil has been vanquished once again. Now we can raise our swords in victory and our armies can rank themselves in neat triumphant rows, the bugles blowing, the banners snapping smartly in the wind.
"This movie isn't going to be good for witches" I whispered to Cyndia in the theatre during that scene. "Lucy is the real witch," Cyndia responded. :0) Good answer, I thought.
Please don't mistake me. I still loved the film and love the Narnia books. I will still devour any new Harry Potter book or film that comes out. The magic and the fun transcend it all. I just hope our coming generations can take these cultural experiences for that, and will know enough not to buy into the rest.
*****************
*Masculation does not mean "emasculation." It is word coined by Genevieve Vaughan, author of "For Giving", a book about the gift economy. "Masculation" describes the process whereby both women and men are conditioned to reject and devalue nurturing, free giving, cooperativeness, egalitarianism, supportiveness, and other qualities we tend to think of as "feminine." "Matriation" is a word I coined, after having been inspired by Gen's word... a word that expresses the antidote to masculation, a process that reclaims the above qualities for all.
shekhinahmoon at 5:23:29 PM EST
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Monday, December 19, 2005
Thoughts From a Mermaid Lesbian Feminist Witch
12/17/05 On "Creating Your Own Reality" vs Pragmatic Action/Thoughts on My Healing Crisis/On Being a Mermaid in a Superhero World
Hi folks, below are some excerpts from my parts of some conversations I've been having online, that I think might interest you. I am struck by the continuing split in the women's movement between the inward and the outward approaches to things like healing and societal issues. I have been yelled at to do more "positive affirmations" and I've been yelled at to do more "real" mundane actions too. United we stand and divided we fall, and this principle applies on so many levels. I'm also pondering the implications of a current healing crisis and how who I am in this world plays its part...
***************
When I was exploring alternative spiritualities back in the sixties, I was very influenced by the concept that Self is All and that by working inwardly one could change things outwardly. This message came especially from Eastern teachings and guru-types such as Yogananda, whose autobiography I read, and whose picture I had up over my bed for a long time. People used to ask me if that was my mother. LOL I used to go to satsangs in L.A. at Self Realization Fellowship, where they practised his teachings. We would chant and chant for hours, which I loved, and I believe was an important part of my training. In my years as a Goddess woman I have created many chants and still use them a lot in my life and practise. They are wonderful spells. :0)
But when I tried to apply that teaching to real life I ran into many snags. I innocently thought if I can just fix myself inwardly, all things would adjust outwardly. It was very liberating for sure, to know that we do have some power after all. That it is within our grasp to address whatever needs to be changed, whatever is oppressive or hurtful in our lives and in our environment. I even saw the principle at work in the larger picture, for instance with people and their governments...and that if people have a change of consciousness on a mass scale, their governing bodies reflect this.
All of these ideas have merit, I feel. But we humans have a tendency to be simplistic, and to glom onto one thing that makes sense at the time and invest everything in it to the exclusion of all else. We want to find that one formula that will take care of it, so we don't have to keep changing and searching all the time, or cope with so much complexity.
My mom was a passionate Marxist. She didn't approve of my religion or my approach to politics at that time. She came from the Old Left, whose approach had been at the other end of the spectrum... fix it "out there." Fight and struggle to make things change for the better. Protest...organize. Stand up to the corrupt powers in society and name them aloud. Get into solidarity with others who are also oppressed, and stand together so that the corrupt entities will have to back down and change their tune.
Interestingly, my mom was also my first spiritual teacher. She may not have thought she was, but the folksongs she taught me during my childhood years have played a big part in the mysterious ecstatic states I have had. RJ Stewart, who writes about the faery faith, and movies like Songcatcher, have shown me that much esoteric content exists in some folksongs.
My mom, despite the poverty we struggled with, and despite her proclaimed atheism, used to find a way each year to give me and my sisters a lavish Christmas. When we were carolling and decorating the tree she would exclaim "this is all very pagan you know!" She was an extensive scholar and knew a lot about Goddess traditions and the Old Religion. So I can see how my childhood years prepared me for becoming an intermediary between the pragmatic and the spiritual...the inner and the outer views of reality.
This split is still evident in the women's movement today. Local marxist-type feminists and lesbians here in my own community do not support me because of my overt spiritual stance. Non-spiritual feminists call us Goddess lovers "bliss bunnies" and assume we are just escapists and should be out there organizing. Another assumption is that women of privelege who follow the Goddess are shielded from the sufferings of sisters in dire circumstances, and they don't always see what's out there...or they blame the sufferers.
The lesson I believe is that there IS a spectrum, and both principles have truth. Everything has an inside and an outside, and the two interact and influence one another. So, for example, in the instance of a disease, you might address it with pills or surgery, which I would see as a more external approach. Or you might address it with attitude, mantra, visualization, realization, cognition about your own deep psychological patterns, prayer, and faith. You might go allopathic or naturopathic. Each approach by itself may not be sufficient. We have all heard horror stories, I'm sure, about what allopathic medicine has done to someone... and we've also heard them about someone who went the alternative route that didn't work for them.
There have been times also when I have tried to connect with folks who do outward activism for social change. For example, one time I joined a group in L.A. called the Food Conspiracy. We would go to warehouses at 2,3 in the morning and buy produce wholesale, load it up into trucks, and bring it to one member's backyard. We would set it all out in its boxes, and all members would come and purchase for pennies to the pound. It was sure a great way to save money, and a great idea I thought.
But the community I tried to interact with was very frustrating for me. They were completely pragmatic. There was no room in their beliefs or behavior for a woman like me... a woman of poetry and soul. They weren't interested in my songs, which I would have loved to contribute. They had no aesthetic, and everything about them was drab and dreary to me. I eventually left because there was no real space in the group for me to be myself and be accepted for who I am.
I think we cripple ourselves when we focus only on one end of the spectrum, making ourselves walk on one leg instead of two. It's like the pentacle of fire water air earth and spirit. Air alone and we float away. Fire alone and we burn up. Earth alone and we suffocate. Water alone and we drown. Spirit alone and we remain disembodied and unmanifest... at least in the earthplane anyway. But when we work with the elements in combination they enhance one another and create harmony and equilibrium. The old occultists used to callthis process when applied inwardly The Great Work. It is the basis of the Temperance card in the Tarot... though perhaps "Alchemy" is a better name for it. Crowley called it "Art." :0)
I'm familiar with the belief system about how we "create our own reality" and while I agree there is much truth in it, I don't agree with it entirely. We co-create our reality in my opinion. Each of us plays a part for sure, and needs to take responsibility for that. But other things and beings also play a role, and many factors impact one another in this web of connection we live in. While the "new age" philosophy of "you create your own reality" has been very liberating on some levels, it has also been damaging because there is a tendency for it to slide into blame. In that view witches are to blame for getting burned at the stake...Jews to blame for being put in the ovens...people dying of leukemia are to blame for their illness. Now there may be some truth in this, and I am not dismissing it at all. Again, like balancing between different healing modalities, I believe we need to have a more balanced view about how our realities are created too.
This belief process has gone from one extreme to the other in our society, as far as I've observed in my own lifetime. Back in the 50s I remember most people felt powerless. "They"...whoever they were...had all the power. "I" or "We" had no say in the matter and folks tended to stay trapped in powerlessness. Then EST and Werner Ehrhart came along with "the idea whose time has come." "You create your own reality" was his phrase that became popularized in the new age movement. There was an enormous swing to the other extreme in consciousness. Now each person saw themselves as creating everything. I'll never forget when R. who was my student in my very first women's circle up in the Santa Cruz mountains, came to class one night, having just been to her EST class. She looked around at us and said "I'm creating all of you."
Well maybe some folks agree with her, but that just doesn't work for me. We all have a say in what's happening here. R. was repeating what she had learned in EST, and I felt and still feel that was a distortion and not right at all.
I also don't think it's wrong to be scared and to say so. We need to have our feelings, and suppressing them doesn't help either. I've had people tell me not to feel things when there was obviously something very frightening and dangerous going on. Being real and letting our real reactions flow is part of the transforming process, in my experience. Emotions are a huge key factor in both illness and health, both safety and danger. Denying them does not feel helpful to me at all. What works better for me is to have support around my fears, so that I can feel them, address the causes and acknowledge them, let them flow through, then go to the next step. Nature gives us the ability to feel fear for a reason... it is part of our survival system.
Getting stuck in fear mode is not great either though. Again, it's about balance. Or, as I prefer to say, equilibrium.
On being a mermaid in a superhero world and my current healing crisis:
Any life threatening health issue is an opportunity and a blessing as well as being a problem. I know that the betrayals and abandonments I've experienced in my life are at the root of it all. I have done much healing work on myself around it. Coming online and finding a community of loving sisters has been a major part. A lot of my issues revolve around the need to have a voice as musician, poet, priestess, etc. and being silenced by competitive attitudes, classist attitudes, fear, and so on. I am constantly on a quest to find remedies. It took me three years to get a website up, and I did it mostly by myself. Isolation and a lack of support have been huge hurdles. Some of this is my own responsibility... I need to do things my own way, and other people's ways don't necessarily work for my specifics.... I have an independent streak for sure. But some of it is from misunderstanding, lack of communication, mistaken assumptions, conformism, classism, jealousy, ostracism and outright attacks that have hurt me very deeply. I did not create these; they are out there. I have had a lot of success in some ways, working around it... eroding away the resistance with love, compassion, reaching out, creating art and ritual and finding ways to share them... etc. etc. Deep Shielding has been an important part of this too. But the process, with all the success I have had, is still partial at this stage. I have high hopes that this will continue to develop, especially now that I have the internet.
I am a Dark Maiden, an Aphrodite/Persephone woman, and the mermaid is an archetype I resonate with; also the Selkie or Silkie from Celtic mythology. Another mermaid sister recently shared with me some writings she made about it. Basically she talked about how we travel between the worlds and spend a lot of time in the underworld... or one could say in the realm of the Dark Goddess. Subconscious realms where we tap in to deep emotion, insights, inspiration. We also withdraw from the harsher realities there, for sustenance and healing. From these sojourns we create art; beautiful expressions of the "divine." If we can bring these back out to the world, we can be made whole by sharing them with folks who are inspired and moved by them. In return we get validation for who and what we are. This exchange is essential for well being and survival - for everyone involved.
Mermaids are super sensitive people. We need the kind of interaction described above. When the world doesn't receive us, it can be very painful and discouraging. I have been too much isolated because of a lack of response- or a hostile response- in a society that for the most part does not understand. I have also embraced my solitude and gained much good from it as well. No matter how much success I may have, I will still always need my solitude too. Another question of balance. Solitude has helped me to survive the hard parts too. In my own little world I can make myself happy.
It's where the interfaces are that the challenges arise. The need and longing and frustration and fear of rejection and anger and anxiety and anguish all have gone into my body, one way or another. In a nutshell, one can say that patriarchy made me sick. And I think patriarchy itself is a sickness that affects everyone on some level. So I do not blame the woman who is homeless and taking drugs... or the one who is raped... or living in poverty...perhaps a single mom... or the one who is incarcerated for trying to defend herself from an abusive man. Sure they may have unconsciously played into those situations and need to look at where they can adjust their own attitudes and behaviour. But to focus only on the individual's part in the scenario without addressing the larger picture... the system that we are all caught in to some degree... is to have only a partial explanation or picture. I like the feminist saying "there are no individual solutions." I think there is some truth in this. We're all in this soup together after all.
Interesting that "incarcerate" and "carcinoma" have the same root word in them. !!!!
On Wednesday I went back to Planned Parenthood to do some paperwork. On my way out I discovered that our local farmer's market was in full swing in the parking lot right outside. I hadn't realized that PP was in this location. I needed some veggies so I started to meander through the stalls. A woman named Martha Benedict had a table there, where she was displaying her oils and tinctures and other remedies. She is a crone sister and a wonderful healer. I had never met her or known about her before. I just started chatting to be friendly and browsed among her products. Well it turns out she knows everyone in the medical community here and has a great reputation as a healer. Her products called "Benedictine" are in many of the health food stores. I got some topical fungal remedy for my rashes (the antibiotics aggravated these of course) and some arnica oil for painful joints (also candida related).
Martha told me about a study that was done on three cancer control groups. One group did only mainstream medical. One group did only natural medicine. The third group did both. The mainstream med group died within two years. The natural medicine group died within five years. The third group is still alive and doing well today.
This illustrates my point so well, don't you think? :0)
So thinking on all of this and reflecting on my current bout with trouble in the belly chakra.... I am seeing how in some ways the Goddess has placed me as a bridge person for sisters. Perhaps my growing awareness on the need to reconcile seemingly oppositional phenomena will help to heal some splits in our movement and make us all stronger...and help to heal me too. As a matter of fact, some of the material on the tradition of the "High Priestess" in the tarot state that she is a reconciler of opposites. She is often shown sitting before the "veil" that conceals the mysteries. On either side of her are poles representing the opposites... male/female, good/evil, sickness/health, war/peace, rich/poor, black/white, life/death, youth/age, solar/lunar, pleasure/pain, and so on. She is placed between them... the mediating third factor that bridges what could other wise be conflicted.... turns the twos into threes so that they can circle together in harmony.
Guess I'm just doing my job, huh? <grin>
PS And I do have some opportunities coming up. I'm scheduled to go to VA in April to do workshops and magic and music with Linda Reichert's group Tidewater Pagain Women. Will announce more about it soon.
Have been invited to lead a Spring Equinox ritual at Gateways, the bookstore where I do Tarot on Sundays.
Am also scheduled to teach a class in Women's Mysteries at the local witchstore in early March.
And ongoingly there are the wonderful online Moonspell circles. I am so happy to have these sisters.
shekhinahmoon at 12:19:04 PM EST
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