Читать книгу Woman Most Wild - Danielle Dulsky - Страница 13
ОглавлениеThe Righteous Sun and Your Priestess’s Fire
If the moon is your temple dancer’s silver-charmed sheer skirts, the sun is your bejeweled Priestess’s crown. The sun has no patience for mystery or shadow; it is a brilliant beacon of the unrelenting spiral of time. Your solar-season cycles are far lengthier than your lunar cycles, but their impact is no less profound on your psyche. While the moon calls you to surrender to your soul’s purpose on Earth, the sun begs you to remember your role in the cosmic dance. You, stellar Witch, are reveling in perfect rhythm with the astral plane. You are star-stuff. Feel how these solar cycles live in your body, not subtly as the moon cycles do but actively and often without apology. To ignore the sun’s cycles is to be partially asleep, so open your mouth skyward and feel the heat on your tongue. Solar magick is spirit magick, and your inner Sun-Priestess remembers why.
In this chapter I offer you dream visions of seasonal transitions, rituals and meditations for living in alignment with these solar cycles, and glimpses into how the broad spiral of solar time shapes wild woman spirituality. While you may resonate more with the description of the season during which you are reading this, consider all seasons within the ever-turning wheel of the solar year. An understanding of how winter’s whispered voice begs you to rest will add much to your lived experience of summer’s sultry song. The seasons do not exist in a vacuum; they are points on a cyclical and enduring journey that is at once futuristic and ancient.
Before reading this chapter, take a moment to recall how your body and mind greeted the seasonal transitions during your girlhood. Close your eyes and remember the natural omens of solar change: the morning birds in spring, the late-evening sunset in summer, the dim rays shining through a nearly bare tree in autumn, and the chill of sunlessness on your cheeks in winter. These brief moments of pure presence alerted you to your place in the ecological turning of the wild wheel. You knew in your bones that you were a single pulse beat within the many-hearted Mother, and there was much soft-breasted comfort in that knowing.
THE WINTER WITCHClaiming Your Rest
A woman struggles deeply when the ways of the social world contrast sharply with the rhythms of nature. The Witch in winter faces a powerful social challenge; while all the world is bustling to commemorate various holidays with gift giving and candlelit perfection, the natural world is bidding you to come to bed. The winter solstice marks the longest night of the year, with the dawn after this long night deserving of immense gratitude. The rhythms of winter are slow and dark. You are a Goddess on the nest at this time, and it is normal to reject the intensity with which our consumer culture urges you to act. Move slowly and with purpose, winter Witch. Do not create that vision board just yet. Claim your rest, and know that all is waiting for you by the light of day.
The Return of the Light: A Yuletide Ritual for a Witch Most Tired
Carve out a bit of space and time for yourself on the winter solstice, my love. Draw the curtains, and go into your cave. Light no candles, and cast no spells. Let yourself be in a space of absolute darkness. In your left hand, hold a box of matches and feel the vibrant possibility of fire. Know the power of this sacred blaze’s potential, though it has not yet been realized. Relish the honor of being a fire keeper. Center your consciousness at your crown, and recall ancient memories of your ancestors, who stood within stone circles or other ritualistic spaces, awaiting the sunrise on this very day. Let a quiver of fear run through your bones, just as it ran through theirs: Will the sun truly return? Will life carry on? Is there an end to this enduring night? Honor these queries as primitive fuel for your flame now, and strike a single match.
The blaze illuminates your beauteous face and fills in the crevices around your tired eyes. The warmth of this flame, from the core of the Earth to the core of your belly to the core of the blessed sun, is the same as that which melted the trepidations of those in your bloodline. This flame is your inner dawn. Open to it, and drink in the spicy magick of a single flame lit within the blackness of winter. Let it nourish you, for you do not need much right now. This single flame is enough. Feel its warmth on your fingers, and then snuff it out just as the winter sun rises pink in a cold gray sky.
Now to bed, my love. Claim those last few moments of sleep, for the day will wait for you. You are a Witch most tired, and all your ancestral grandmothers want to tuck you into a warm bed. Lay your head heavy on a lavender-scented pillow, and feel your room surrounded by the spirits of sleep. Let them lull you into a snowy dreamland where all the presents have been wrapped, the meals have been cooked, the parties have been attended, and there is nothing more for you to do. You are neither consumer nor producer in sleep; you are simply a tired woman, claiming her right to rest. Hear the voices of the hooded ones as they sing you whispered lullabies and remind you, once again, of who you truly are.
Find an ancient solace in the smallest bit of firelight. Women understand the promise of the light’s return, for we have all been lonely lovers staring at a mass of black water and night sky, waiting for the return of a great something that has left us in our depths. The winter solstice is a time to wait without expectation, to rest without a plan to move, and to trust the infinite Mystery. A candle lit within a dark room is a harbinger of the yet-to-come, and small rituals like these do much to warm the heart weary of the wait.
Gift for the Miracle Mother: A Guided Meditation
Let this pathwork gift you with a renewed sense of purpose as winter waxes. In your dreams, you come to a frozen land. Your breath fogs in the cold, but your body is oddly warm in this frost-laden snowscape. The field before you is covered with a layer of virgin snow, whole unto itself, and the full moon glitters on the bare branches of the mighty oaks to your right. To your left is an uninviting cave entrance, the stone covered in moss-filled carvings of ancient symbols. To your Witch’s mind, they appear to be symbols of protection.
Dull light flickers from inside this subterranean space, and despite the entryway’s jagged, toothy images, you feel called to go inside. Move stealthily now, winter Witch, and listen intently to your belly brain. You do not know what waits for you inside, my love, so be guarded. Once inside, you are aware that the cave is quite large, though you duck the dripping, crystalline stalactite formations. The cave smells thickly of cold mud and contains an ancient, mythic memory. Firelight flickers from a still-distant place, and you begin to hear voices of the Old Ones. They echo stories of the miracle children, beings of light come to herald humanity’s evolution; these famed ones came too early, the voices tell you, and their sacred messages were nurtured inside their mother’s wombs long before those souls spoke to any crowd.
The light grows brighter as the voices grow quieter, and you find the source of the flame. She lies on a birthing bed most holy, surrounded by those who worship Her not because of what she holds in Her womb but because of Her own magnificence. This is the Mother of Miracles, dear one, and She begs you to trust your part in global transformation. Her labor has endured for millennia, and She is birthing the whole of the cosmos into being. Fall to your knees, Witch, and gaze upon this sacred moment. Today is our birthday, yours and mine, and this is our Mother. Look to Her birthing bed, my love, and know that all the blood that has been spilled, in every war and every horrific ego-born massacre, has been part of Her labor.
Gaze at the light dawning between the Miracle Mother’s legs, and let your eyes weep for the beauty that is coming. We wild women stand at the precipice of a new feminine age. We are witnesses to awakened humanity’s baby naming. This is it. Feel the warmth of enlightenment on your bare skin, and offer a gift to the Miracle Mother. What do you have for Her? What is your soul-designed purpose in this life? Cup your divine spark in your hands, and crouch at the Mother’s side. You are overcome by the gratitude emanating from Her eyes as you offer Her your soul’s gift. She has been waiting for you. Be Her midwife now as She enters the final stages of birthing our light into the dark. Do not feel you are unworthy, Gift Giver, for you are the one She needs at Her side now. You are the one for whom She has been waiting.
At this pivotal moment, women everywhere are waking to their designated task as wild healers of our wounded world. Know yourself as the Mother of Miracles, and trust your passions and desires as sacred clues to your purpose in this life. Make no mistake, Sister, you have been born for a reason, and the greatest change agent on our planet is a woman speaking her truth, telling her story, and fulfilling her divine mandate freely and without apology. Bill Plotkin writes in Soulcraft that “if, over time, you patiently hold your soul story within the context of your world story, at some point they will merge like a puzzle piece fitting into a greater mystery.” Women who carefully shape the landscape of their individual lives now, as our human community shivers in its own dark, cold winter gripped by ego and war, do much to nourish the fertile green Motherland that will flourish in warmer days. By the light of day, all is coming.
The Woman in Late Winter
The woman in late winter is building a bridge between her third eye’s intuition and the sensuality of her sacral chakra; such construction requires multiple resources, not the least of which are her time and energy. The doldrums of late winter can weigh heavy on a woman’s shoulders when she is not permitted the space needed to engage her intuition and sensuality. She is overburdened by careful planning and strategic goal setting for the coming warmer season, when the very foundations for her spring have yet to be poured. Open spaces in late winter for pan-sensory being; feel the heavy wet flakes of the last snows on your skin, taste the melting icicles, breathe in the scent of iron-thick mud, hear the sounds of the night creatures, and see with three eyes. If you have even a few moments when nothing needs to be forced, use that time simply to be.
THE SPRING WITCHEngaging the Sensual
Your Witch consciousness, centered in your sacrum, experiences a sensual ignition when the days grow warmer. Even if you live in an urban location surrounded by built structures and concrete, Gaia calls to you from below. Spring Witch, it is in your blood to nourish something green and make it grow at this time. It will serve you well to spend as much time outdoors as you can, for your skin is thirsty for the warmth of sunbeams and the mist of a soft rain. Spring boasts a waxing sensuality that the other seasons do not share; it is the time of the awakened womb, creative spark, and resonating life-force. Your inner Witch is a medium for pure prana as the wheel turns away from winter toward spring, and you may feel so alive that to continue with winter’s tasks and schedules seems a dark and heavy burden. Engage the part of your magickal psyche that yearns for the new at this time, for your deep-seated Gypsy’s soul must be fed during these warmer days.
Crystal Planting: A Healing Spell for Earth Day
Wild woman, we have been born into this world with the same sacred wound; every time our Earth is carved, shredded, and denigrated, we feel Her pain within our bodies. Our feminine psychic lands are riddled with rage and grief over the harm done daily to our Mother, and we suffer largely in silence. Each time a tree is dug up from the root or a river is polluted with harsh chemical distortions, our own cells cry out for both mercy and justice. One of the great falsehoods accepted by the human community is that one person cannot possibly make a difference in global healing, but this, my love, is a lie born of fear.
You are the very embodiment of the feminine divine; this power lives inside you, positioned for you to wield it as you will. Our great responsibility as children of Gaia, at this pivotal moment in human history, is to use our magick for global transformation. Do not play small, you fierce Woman, for you are fighting for your home. Go to a wild place now, bring a quartz crystal you have soaked in moonlight, and find a Mother Tree. If you are unable to go into nature, hold a crystal in your hand and proceed as if this were a meditation.
You know the Mother Tree when you see it, for it stretches over you like an aged faery grandmother. Hold the crystal in your left hand and press your ear against the bark. Do you hear it? She speaks to you in the language of Gaia, and She tells you of Her hopes and fears. The Mother Tree’s energy runs through like a primitive current, garnet-red, straight from Her roots to yours. She knows you are a wild wandering woman, and She recognizes your true soul. Your crystal begins to vibrate with the resonance of Her, and you plant the offering at the Mother Tree’s base, watering it with your grateful tears.
Lie upon the ground now, dear one. Get mud in your hair and hike up your skirt. This is the true Mother’s Day, and you can feel the sparks of sprouting seeds below you mirroring the swelling pinpoints of light in your womb, belly, and heart. Honor yourself now, my Sister-Witch, for you have found your soul’s authentic home. Return to the Mother Tree whenever you feel trapped by the doldrums of daily life. Come back to lie upon the Earth whenever you need to feel held, and drink in the medicine of tree magick whenever you feel wounded. Know that She has endured through countless storms, and that She feels the same pain you do.
From the roots of the body to the roots of the Mother Tree, blessed be. Trees are the stuff of the hearty feminine, and so are we.
Liberating the Spring Snake: A Meditation for Removing the Creative Block
The denigration of the wild Earth is similarly damaging to women’s creativity. Much like our natural world, generative creative power does not wish to be fenced in, welled up, or manicured. Your creative fire is raw and serpentine. Woman, do not fear the snake, for it does not fear you. As you read this, a serpent lies coiled at the base of your spine awaiting your call. Your pelvic bowl is her home and, while there are times when she must sleep, now is not that time. Your creative fire has awakened her, and she longs to slither up your backbone to your emerald-green heart center. She longs to be liberated; now call her to action.
The snake is your feminine creative power and, try as you might, you cannot contain her on these warmer days. Envision your greatest blockage to creating. Where does it exist in your body? What color is it? What temperature? Now send your magick snake there. Let it lick away at the blockage, weakening it with every flick of her flaming tongue. She writhes around the blockage without effort, and soon your greatest creative obstacle has been removed, eaten away by the power of the Holy Wild. She moves now to your heart center and divides in two, ringing around your arm bones and crawling into your Witch’s hands. Your fingers are abuzz now with unbridled energy. You are an emblazoned creatrix, and now you must channel that jewel-orange power. Wild Witch, paint, write, cook, dance, or doodle. Make mud pies. Shape some clay. String some beads. Your snake is awake! Now keep her free for as long as you can.
We are taught to distrust the snake as a harbinger of evil. So, too, we are urged to suppress our sensuality. In Goddesses in Everywoman, Jean Shinoda Bolen writes that “every heroine must reclaim the power of the snake.” The power of the snake is the power of the feminine life-force residing within the sacred sacrum. A woman who begins to awaken this serpentine force, particularly if it has lain dormant for many years, will start to push beyond her own safe boundaries as an artist. She will risk much, allowing herself to be seen as an unbridled, and thereby untamable, force in her own world. She will buck against structures of oppression, and she will refuse to let her sensuality be contained in a lidded basket any longer. Once the snake is awake, dear Sister, both your creativity and sensuality have been similarly licked alive.
The Woman in Late Spring
The woman in late spring is a woman whose passion has caught fire. Know this passion as the sacrum-spawned energies that fuel your sacred work, your many tasks, and a true, active peak in the soulful being-doing-being cycle. The same pressures on the woman’s body and mind that pushed her in many directions during the winter season may well persist into spring, but her psyche is often better equipped to prioritize and negotiate these to-dos as the wheel turns toward the hot southern gate of summer. There is more light in our lives, and we may well need less rest. As a woman moves into summer, she is served best by engaging in movement alchemy, purposefully wielding her body as an essential and integral part of the sacred self. Channel the building solar energies through your body; shake and jiggle in ways you never have before, unwind the knots in your joints, and make a hell of a lot of noise while you do it. The woman in late spring prepares to embody everything, and pulling the consciousness down into the lower chakras creates support for physical pattern breaking; it is a time of making your inner temple ready for the sun to move in, a time when the soft body serves you just as much as, if not far better than, the hard-thinking mind.
THE SUMMER WITCHHeating the Cauldron
As the wheel turns from spring to summer, the Witch becomes a sheer force of fem-fire. She is a solar storm, and she must remember to nurture herself with cooling magick amid the heat of hedonistic play in the natural world. You can feel summer’s wildfire in your boiling blood, my Sister-Witch, and you have the power to burn down the parts of your world now that no longer serve you. Prepare to clear the fields, my love. Harvest all that will feed you, and then plan to dig up what does not belong. Here, under the summer sun, your body is fully alive and poised for action. Drink in this spice with all that you are. Give yourself permission to be a wise Maiden, sexually empowered and spiritually attuned to all that is.
The woman during the summer months yearns to paint her world with the cool greens of the forest and the hot bright reds of a flower garden. She will no longer stand for the mundane and the dull, and she seeks to simplify her home and her life. There is a purifying quality to summer’s heat that she recognizes immediately as a tool for the great purge, a tool that is hers to use as she will. The woman in summer is a creature born of the elements, and she seeks brilliance and fruition in all parts of her world; anything that does not meet these high standards she immediately recognizes as refuse, and she sets upon the path of clarity and release.
Faery Gazing: Night Vision in the Moon Garden
The Fae are nature spirits, and they are not to be discounted simply as tiny-winged, wish-granting beings of pure light. Just as humans do, the Fae embody both light and shadow, and they do not wish to be used as a magickal tool. If your Witch’s psyche does not accept these Fae as real, energetic manifestations, consider these creatures a metaphor for humanity’s culturally suppressed kinship with nature. The Fae, and you know this in your Witch’s heart, are to be heralded as ancient entities who are very much of this Earth. They are as diverse as human beings, if not more so. They are beholden to no woman or man; and yet the Witch has a symbiotic relationship with these Old Ones. Do not fear them, but do respect them, my Sister-Witch, as you go into your garden, your in-home sanctuary, or an untouched, natural space.
The Fae are more heavily concentrated in spaces that human hands have left unbuilt and unmarked. Parks, wetlands, and protected mountainous terrains are the realms of the Fae, but any natural green space is likely to host a few of Gaia’s direct descendants. The Fae are no strangers to urban locales, however; if you live in a highly populated location, seek out even small green spaces, searching for their energy. You will feel it, Sister, when you have found the right spot. Yes. Yes, this is the place will echo at your womb-center. Surrounded by the Fae, you are; look around with night vision. Do you see them? Let your gaze go soft and blurry, and begin to see the swirling subtle energies that elude you during the day. Turn your soulful eyes toward flowers and trees. Do you see the circles of soft light there? Does a spark of brilliance catch your attention and then vanish?
They are showing themselves to you, summer Witch! Let them know you see them with whatever affirmation comes to mind. Keep looking, and they will keep coming. Stay in this place for as long as you have. Your connection to the Fae has been forged! Now they will show themselves to you more often, even by the light of day. Drink in the sweet swelter of the summer night, and honor the beauty of the unseen.
A wild woman embodies an intuitive understanding of the ethereal world. She does not discount the possibility of the unseen, and she gives regular nods to the mystical. Even if you are not certain that you believe in the Fae, entertain the maybe in all things. Always keep some psychic room for the unknown, and remember that the structures of human society, particularly our religious institutions, which depended on a singular faith in a male deity or the infallibility of a sacred text in order to survive, have had much to gain from the closed-minded discounting of the subtle ethereal. You see what you believe in, my love. By extension, you see far more when you claim little certainty.
For Your Consideration: As the Cauldron Bubbles
The wild woman in summer cuts through futility like a hot knife through butter. You are beginning to know yourself now as my wild Sister and, as the heat of our great sun shines His fierce light on all aspects of your life, you are discovering parts of that life that no longer fit. Look to your life now and compare the things you invest your energy in with the things you truly love and desire. My barefoot Priestess, there should be no comparison, for they should be one and the same! Command your throne now at the campfire’s edge, and consider these questions as your cauldron bubbles. Let the sweat form rivulets of change on your forehead, pulling out of your psychic shadows the hidden obstacles to your freedom. The sun sees all, my love, and now you do, too.
1. If your life were an epic myth titled The Woman Most Wild, what would the chapter titles be? Include chapters from your birth all the way up until your death ritual.
2. Within each of those lived chapters, list moments of bhava, moments when you were engaged in the feeling mind, when your body, mind, and spirit were fully present, fully connected, and fully engaged. These are the moments when you were most you. How many of these moments occurred in the natural world? How many occurred while you were in the midst of creating something? Are any natural elements (earth, water, fire, air, or ether) prominent?
3. What chapters in your life, if any, contain few or none of these moments? How many of these moments are in the current chapter of your life?
4. Now, my love, write the next chapter of your life in full. Forget grammar and spelling, and just freewrite this next phase of your life the way you want it to be. Your soul already holds a purpose, but you, Creatrix-Witch, are in charge of how that purpose will be delivered. Begin this next chapter with these words: She was a Woman Most Wild and, as summer came to an end, she knew in her bones that autumn promised change. Write with all the fury of a spell well conjured, for the healing of the global community depends on you.
We women must shape our her-stories. Personal mythwork is an invaluable tool not only for uncovering your purpose but also for tracking cycles and providing contexts for moments of immense bliss and deep woundings. Writing your own story is immensely healing and the stuff of true soul work, for you begin to frame yourself as the heroine in the greatest love story ever told. Your story is my story, and it is a story of a woman coming home to herself again and again, weathering countless storms, having her ego softened by intense blows, and then healing from them in order to be reborn a more authentic version of herself.
The Woman in Late Summer
The last weeks of summer embody a perplexing quality, and there is a reason for this; as the wheel begins to turn toward autumn, the curtain between the heavy world of humans and the subtler, higher frequency world of spirits begins to lift. Women are particularly attuned to this veil-thinning, and there is a mournful essence to it. The intensity of summer begins to give way now to an immense psychic space, as if a lightning-born wildfire has come through and cleared a forest for new growth. The grief of late summer stems from a desire to fill any open space coupled with the current inability to do so. There is nothing to fill this void with right now. You must be truly and authentically in it with your whole soul.
THE AUTUMN WITCHDigging through Ashes
A sexy sort of sadness comes with the falling leaves, autumn Witch. Not everyone can openly feel the relentlessness of the changing wind, but you can. Lift your hood but do not turn your back to the first fall chill, for this season of nature’s sleep holds it all for you. As the great veil thins and the days grow shorter and shorter, your spirit guides will sing in unison with your long-gone ancestors, hoping you will hear them. You, Witch of the harvest moon, must now dig through the ashes of summer’s fire. Give yourself over to this season, and let the autumn winds do with you as they will. The high-fire energy potent with the fertility of spring and summer is now waning, leaving much space for soul listening. You will feel bursts of intuition in these months; do not dismiss them, for your Witch consciousness is guiding you toward the next step in your soulful evolution.
Meeting the Soul-Mother: Pathworking as the Veil Thins
There is magick in your matrilineal bloodline. Breathe now as if the spaces between the inhales and exhales lasted an eternity, as if you could live an entire life in that time at the top of the in-breath and at the bottom of the out-breath. It is within those between spaces of breathfulness and breathlessness where you will find Her. As you sink into your breath’s ancient rhythm, let the beat of your heart-drum herald Her coming.
Imagine yourself standing now within a stone circle, each megalith carved with the language of your ancestors. You can almost read it, for your blood remembers. Here, as the gray autumn sky swirls in soft spirals, the hairs on your arms stand upright. Your Witch’s body is electrified by the energy of the divine feminine, and you sense Her presence long before your eyes find Her.
Who is this Mother of your Soul, autumn Witch? What age does She seem to be? How is She clothed, if at all? Does she appear human or otherworldly? Now, my love, ask Her these questions, knowing She will only offer answers She believes you are ready for: Mother, how long have you been with me? What is your name? What is my soul’s purpose? What is my purpose in this life? What do I need to know most right now? Ask your Soul-Mother anything else you wish to know right now. Perhaps She has a gift for you; perhaps Her gift to you is Her guidance. Finally, ask your Soul-Mother how you will know when She is around you. Is there a sign She can give you when She is near? Perhaps bells will chime from an unknown source, a bird will call to you, or you will see an unexplained pinprick of light.
Knowing that this Soul-Mother is always with you, bid Her farewell in whatever way seems appropriate. It may be a fierce, maternal embrace or a mere nod. Remember, not all Mother-Daughter relationships are marked by warmth. She leaves you now with greater knowledge of your soul’s purpose in this world. She leaves you in sacred space, and you return your attention to your heartbeat and the breath spaces. Having met your Soul-Mother, return to your life more whole and well-nourished, affirming this point in the cycle of transformation as soul designed and predestined.
Learn to trust your collective of spirit guides, even if you find it difficult to communicate with them initially. Know that they are here for you, and that wild woman spirituality is undergirded by a fierce trust in the Mystery. You may not see your team of angels, but know that they are there.
The Dumb Supper: A Ritual of Remembrance for Those in Spirit
