Читать книгу The Holy Wild - Danielle Dulsky - Страница 14
ОглавлениеWild women speak the language of ritual. We understand the art of marking our initiations and our endings, those many rebirths and deaths we undergo as Priestesses of the Wild Earth, and marking them well. The intuitive skills and ancestral medicine that support the shaping of a good ritual are treasures acquired along the underworld journey. We know in our bones when we are being called to our Craft, and we long for that particular closure and healing salve brewed only within the cauldron of ritual. Here, in ritual, we set boundaries around our life transitions and make the mundane magickal. Here, we hold rituals as symbolic action, impactful events of ceremonial sense-making that begin with an accessible container, a set of steps or conditions that serve to frame the transformation that will, eventually, arise from our depths and alchemize an ordinary moment in time into pure embodied presence.
The seven rituals offered in this chapter are intended to be adapted by you, dear Priestess, to suit your unique purpose and story. Some of these offerings are simple, easily performed in those small and unexpected moments of solitude and grace we may find ourselves in throughout the day, and some rituals are more complex, requiring a joyous but steadfast commitment, thoughtful resource gathering, and careful planning. Move through only the rituals that seem authentic to you; leave out any steps or wording that does not fit; and, as always, remember that the best rituals are the ones that will gift you with something you need, be it closure, healing, empowerment, or a sense of belonging.
In any solitary ritual, Priestess, you are the beginning, the center point. Start with your story. Recall the aspects of Lilith’s revisioned tale that resonate with you, and assess those traits embodied in the Priestess of the Wild Earth archetype that are your soul-true attributes. When have you eaten the forbidden fruit, breaking the rules and risking certain isolation in the name of sovereignty? When did you so bravely call in what was yours, sacrificing all that was not authentically for you despite any garden comforts? These are the moments worthy of honor, my love, for they are truly holy transitions, times of becoming, and more genuine birthdays than those we are accustomed to celebrating. Craft your rituals and begin with you, a living altar embodied in the soft skin of a woman.
YOUR INNER EARTH ALTAR: A RITUAL FOR THE EVERYDAY WARRIORESS
Materials: Paper and writing utensil
You are a living altar. Do not be afraid of leaving behind your Pagan statuary, blessed totems, and sensual candles, for you carry all the divinity you need with you in your blood and your breath. Handcraft a personal mantra to keep with you, to remind you of your journey along the Red Road and to affirm your personal Priestess power. Words carry power. What can you tell yourself, in a single sentence, that will remind you of your magick and your wild? What words can you cling to when the storm comes, when some snide remarks threaten to break you, when someone calls you “too” this or “too” that? What can you tell yourself to remind you that you are, after all, born of the elements, a star-child of the Holy Wild?
Any mantra you write with your hand will be far better than one I could give you, my love, but you can begin harvesting the right words by freewriting on the following prompts, if you need a starting point:
I am the Priestess of...
I am calling in...
I am building my temple for...
This is my year, and I will...
I am the wild Witch of the Earth, and I know...
Find a short phrase you can hold housed in your heart. Imagine it blood-written in calligraphic script and placed on that inner altar built from your rib bones. Every time you speak it, you are enacting a ritual of coming home to yourself, owning the value of your voice, and engaging in practical alchemy. If you feel called, write these words on a sacred object, a small piece of wood or fabric, and leave your mantra in a wild place for all to see. May a little girl find it, tuck it into her sleeve, and keep it close. And so it is.
BLESSING THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT: A RITUAL OF REBELLIOUS NOURISHMENT
Materials: Paper, writing utensil, large apple, knife
Eating the forbidden fruit is an act of necessary rebellion. As her time in the garden comes to an end, the wild woman is ravenous for a life she has yet to live, and her hunger pangs rumble through her gut like the foreshocks of a devastating Gaia-sourced earthquake. The yearning for freedom consumes her body and psyche, and what used to seem magickal in the garden now seems mediocre, frightening, overly fragile, too good to be true, or, otherwise and more simply, just not for her. The bright colors take on a sepia tone, and the freely served garden food on which the Priestess once gorged herself now tastes bland and fails to satiate her. She becomes an outcast in her own land, and it is now that she begins to truly embark on the feminine quest for freedom. She sees the garden for the cage it is, and her choice is to stay and waste away or risk her life in a no-holds-barred fight for her own wildness. In the end, she has no choice but to eat the forbidden fruit, to rebel against this too-small life.
The revisioned tale describes Lilith’s lament as she prays to the divine feminine at the foot of the Tree of Knowledge: I yearn so much for a freedom I know I deserve that my belly burns with the wanting. The Priestess of the Wild Earth archetype lives and breathes within our roots, and there is a necessary sense of entitlement that precedes the wild woman’s liberation. A woman will not leave her garden until she harbors a deep knowing, planted there at the base of her spine, that she deserves better. In the absence of this felt self-worth, the woman will stay in her garden-cage quite willingly until she embraces her right to have more, to be more, and to live in a bigger and brighter world where she can be fully and unapologetically herself. After she eats the forbidden fruit, after she gets a taste of a life that is more blissful, more true to self than the one the garden has offered her, there can be no going back.
Ask yourself now, Priestess, when have you eaten the forbidden fruit? Was there a time when you risked rejection in the name of selfhood or sacrificed, perhaps unknowingly, social acceptance in a group where you no longer belonged, success in a career that drained you, or some promised reward from a spiritual community in order to be truer to your genuineness? The forbidden fruit can mean any number of things to women, and the act of consumption may not have necessarily been ecstatic or blissful. Ask yourself what memory of the forbidden fruit you have today. Whatever your sinful pleasure was, you made a choice to indulge, and you felt more true, more you, for having done so. Maybe you asked a question you knew would not be well received by an authority figure, but you were well satiated by having spoken your mind. Maybe you skipped church one day as a young girl to play in the woods, or maybe you stood up for someone who needed you. Tasting the forbidden fruit may not have been an easy choice, and it may not have tasted so sweet at the time — but, in retrospect, these were the moments that marked your awakening.
List as many “forbidden fruits” as you can now. They need not be chronologically linear or brilliantly articulated. For each “fruit,” summarize the experience in just one word; it might be resistance, joy, hedonism, defiance, or any other name that feels right as a rite. With a knife, skewer, or other sharp utensil, carve as many of these words onto an apple’s skin as you can, then hold the sticky fruit in both your hands. Whisper-pray these words if they seem true: I am a Priestess of the Wild Earth, and I call in my most soulful joy. This forbidden fruit is mine, and I deserve all that is for me. When you feel ready, eat the apple, savoring the taste on your tongue. With every bite, go back to your list of “forbidden fruit” moments and relive one, apologizing for nothing and welcoming a fiercer version of yourself home. And so it is.
REPOWERING THE WITCH: A RITUAL FOR HEALING THE FEMININE SOUL-WOUND
Materials: Just you, adorned as the Priestess you are
While we must have joy in our Craft, we must also acknowledge our inherited wounds. The Witch lives at the edge of what is permissible, and, as a Priestess coming into her power, the wild woman sees with great clarity the systematic strangulation of feminine spirituality. Even women who are not raised within the confines of patriarchal religion are indoctrinated with beliefs that soften and dilute the power of the feminine. Regardless of gender, all human beings suffer greatly from the soul-wound of communal, feminine loss. Our society shapes us all to value the hard-edged, individualistic, toxic, and aggressive masculine over the sensually present, collectivist feminine. We are taught to devalue our planetary resources along with those of the holy feminine embodied in a single woman, the traits of the nature-loving Maiden, the nurturing, storyteller Mother, and the intuitive, ethereal Crone.
Escaping the too-small life is often prompted by the acknowledgment of a great injustice, but, regardless of how this blight or corruption is shaped, undergirding the violation is the denigration of the feminine wild. Remember, however, that the stranglehold of patriarchy on human society has not choked the breath from the Goddess. The feminine in all human beings has housed her, kept her warm, and fed her with soft whispers that tell her we still feel her inside us and our wounded world. In the cold absence of feminine spiritual systems that permit her to speak, it is the Witches and wild women who often become her voice.
You still embody bone-deep bruises from the Witch-hunters’ weapons, my love. Wild women’s bodies are homes to souls who remember the threat of the noose and the stake, a threat that remains in many parts of the world in various forms. In Witches, Sluts, and Feminists, Kristen Sollée writes, “in the face of oppression, the Witch reminds us what we can and have overcome, and illuminates the path to power beyond patriarchy. As we undress the legacy of the Witch to reveal her potent history, we may in the process uncover something marrow-deep within ourselves.” The fear of claiming spiritual autonomy is a sticky, dripping darkness that crouches and snarls in the shadows of even the most awakened woman’s psyche. There is no escape from this soul-wound; thus we have little choice but to look the monster straight in its red eyes and honor our right to speak and be heard. We are here, gruesome creature, and we are not leaving. Teach us what you know.
In the cold absence of feminine spiritual systems that permit her to speak, it is the Witches and wild women who often become her voice.
At the hand of patriarchal religion, the stories of wild women’s bravery became those of the scandalous, broken Maidens. Lilith’s story becomes one of the demon Mother who was cast out of the desert, devolving into a licentious succubus. Countless other incarnations of the divine feminine dark have had their stories bleached to remove the magick, the divination, and the fem-force of righteous rage. These are the stories meant to keep the wild woman contained, safely tamed in a garden of half-truths where the feminine is demure, dependent, and distracted.
Remember who you are, Priestess. Stay awake. Descend into your depths now and know what it means to be spiritually free, unbound by the fear of being hunted down for your beliefs. Ask yourself what you truly believe. Feel the Goddess sparking in your blood, and refuse to be cornered. Sift through your memories and recall the first moment when you saw the feminine face of the resplendent Mystery, the vision that made your soul-wound of Goddess loss ache like a tired body before a storm. Perhaps you were a chubby-cheeked babe or a wise old Crone; linear age means nothing, because that day, that holy day when you spit out the beliefs they spoon-fed you, was the day you were born.
Stand in your power now. Feel where the feminine soul-wound aches in your body, but do not let it weaken your stance. Imagine roots sprouting out from the bottoms of your feet and sinking down, down, and deeper down into the Earth, stretching through time and space, connecting you to the cosmic web. Recall the wisdom of your grandmothers and all who came before you. From whatever Earth-based traditions your lineage hails, whether you know of your ancestral history or not, envision your roots tapping into a dark well of primordial feminine knowledge, swirling and bubbling and holding the very medicine you need right now. Soak the wisdom up through your roots. Let the brew run through your veins and reach the soul-wound, healing it over with minuscule bursts of love, with grace, and with the bravehearted, ever-enduring ways of the elders.
Stay with this vision for as long as you have. Let yourself be repowered and repurposed. Your soft body seethes with the blood mysteries, the herbal wisdom, and the ancient ceremonies. If “Witch” is a name you claim for yourself, shout aloud: I am Witch, wise woman, and wayfinder! You are the living antidote to the poison that keeps the wound from healing, and you are the rebel Priestess who has come home to the wilds. And so it is.
THE ROAD TO MANIFESTATION: A RITUAL OF MOVEMENT ALCHEMY
Materials: Just you and an earthy oil such as vetiver, cedar, or pine
Priestess, take to the road. This red journey can take place out of doors in a yard, in a forest, on a lonely sidewalk, on a long driveway, or even within an empty hallway. Find a place where you can walk in sacred solitude, relatively undisturbed, and let this small piece of movement alchemy signify your right to manifest your desires. Bless your body before the journey begins by anointing your feet with a bit of earthy oil or water blessed by you with a few select words. Whisper-pray before you begin: I call in abundance and grace. I call in ancestral wisdom, and I call in the next chapter.
As you walk now, my love, imagine that every mindful step you are taking is bringing you that much closer to fulfilling your soul’s contract. Every corner you turn is a decided step away from the too-small life and toward more authentic embodiment of your divinity. Step in rhythm with your heartbeat and imagine those beauteous scenes from your next chapter. Believe with every cell of your body that you are moving toward that vision. Look through your third eye and see all you deserve perfectly placed within your wildest home.
Don’t turn back, Priestess. Not yet. Feel your foot bones fall on the Earth as if you were blessing the ground with every step you take, and call in your soul’s greatest gifts. This is a moving spell, with every step raising energy and infusing it into the vision of your wild home.
If we are stripping our Craft down to the bare bones of the elements, down to nature herself, we begin here, with a mindful walk. We begin here, connecting to ground with every step, and we begin here, in the warm bodies we find ourselves in now, with our imperfect mental-emotional states and stretch-marked bellies, accepting the place where we stand in the total absence of shoulds and supposed-tos. This is where you are, on the Earth. Start here. And so it is.
PRIESTESS RISING FROM GROUND: A RITUAL OF SELF-INITIATION
Materials: Skin-safe mud or clay
Our ground is precisely where we find ourselves each morning when we wake; it is a place of genesis, of sparking to life over and over again, despite its apparent flaws, the cracks in the pristine glaze of our grandest plans and greatest obsessions. Here, with our bare feet firm on the ground, we embody our inner altar regardless of where our story has taken us. We understand that whatever wounds have scarred our skin, whatever agonies have brought us here to this fateful incarnation, we are eternally whole. We are unruined. We are precisely who we need to be, precisely who we have always been.
For the awakening Priestess, the Earth serves as a foundation for her rising. She no longer clings to outmoded identities or is confined by garden rules. She values herself and affirms her right to exist here on the primal ground as she is. Her descent could have broken her, but it did not. The upward journey could have overwhelmed her to the point of eternal exhaustion, could have forced her into waist-deep psychic quicksand, but it did not. Now, the Priestess has a true topside place to start building her home, and it is a sanctuary that can never be invaded because, though its foundation was laid with fierce rebellion, it reaches skyward with the unbreachable walls of feminine authenticity.
Lilith, Inanna, and Persephone carry their wild homes on their bare backs. They have been to hell, have returned, and know how to stand against the fiery tide that would curse them. They have lived in the underworld for a time, been burned there for days on end, and now they have the verses of the wild feminine whisper-hissing from deep within their pelvic bowls. The descent is invaluable because the wild woman must be pulled into her depths in order to understand her darkness, lest it direct all she does with a heavy, shadowy hand, undermining her sense of self-worth, invalidating her most authentic identity, and keeping her contained in the too-small life. The descent is necessary, for only from our depths can we begin to rise.
If you can be safely out in nature for this ritual, my love, go. Find yourself a secluded space you can call your own. Carry with you some wet dirt or clay, and, when ready, call to the four directions and build yourself an energetic temple here. Hold whatever vessel you chose for your symbolic “Earth” in both hands, and bless it with the words I offer here or others you have written yourself: This is my initiation. These wounds are mine. I am whole unto myself, and I am of this Earth. So it is. When ready, anoint your third eye, that space between and slightly above the brows, with earth, creating an imperfect spiral with the mud or clay. Say aloud: This is my initiation. I am returned from the underworld, and I reclaim my right to see in the dark. Anoint your throat center, then say: This is my initiation. My voice is loud, and I reclaim my right to be heard. Finally, anoint your heart center and say: This is my initiation. My heart is unruined, and I reclaim my right to be loved deeply. Seal the ritual by offering gratitude to the four directions and placing hands firmly on the Earth, affirming: This is my initiation. All blessings be. And so it is.
TO WED SACRED SOLITUDE: A SOUL-MARRIAGE RITUAL FOR THE TOO-MUCH WOMAN
Materials: Just you, adorned as the Priestess you are
The mutation of Lilith’s story has much to teach us about the mass rejection targeting a woman as she re-wilds herself against all odds. Much of what the feminine learns about itself during childhood, in babes of all genders raised within the confines of patriarchy, is inextricably bound to a fear of being too loudmouthed and demanding. Lilith is a too-much woman, and, in several versions of her-story, she was condemned for naught more than demanding equality in her relationship. The feminine surrenders during the years of youth to a life of low worth and lack, with this lack well positioned, in our very roots, to undermine our very sense of self.
We tell ourselves we cannot have what we truly desire, for that very desire will get us kicked out of the life we know. We tell ourselves we cannot have what we want, particularly when that longing does not conform to the individualistic goals of our inner Fathers, those masculine commanders who rule over our psyches as if they were armies, fighting against anyone or anything we deem foreign or unfamiliar. We tame ourselves, housing multiple mechanisms in our psyches that carry their own whips, poised to strike if we speak out of turn or lose control, and we do all of this to keep from being abandoned by those whom we both love yet also see ourselves as subservient to; these may be our caregivers, our early mentors, our closest teenage friendships, our first lovers, and, most prominently, our heavy-handed egos. We wear many masks during our garden years, and, when the masks all finally fall to the ground heralding our pending escape, our real faces are raw and sensitive to light.
What healing salve can we put on our aching skin after our liberation, when we have few friends, few trusted souls who have seen us to hell and back? How can we sit on the topside world on the fringes of all we know, as the autonomous outcast in sacred solitude rather than the anguished loner? What grace can we find here in our bitter isolation?
Here, we have no choice but to become a bride to soul. When all others have forsaken us, when we have leaped so far beyond our most secure boundaries that we no longer remember the names we used to be called, we can trust no one except the reddest, rawest version of ourselves. This is a ritual of wedding the self and committing to soul.
Paint and adorn yourself as you like, my love. Wear all the jewels you value, or be naked as a newborn. Feel beautiful, and walk in grace toward a natural altar or one you have crafted for the occasion. As meaningful as it might be to have witnesses, consider moving through this rite in solitude. Your commitment to soul is a sovereign matter, after all. Place a warm palm flat on your steady-beating heart and know yourself as whole. Speak your vows with a voice so resonant that it ripples back through the very fabric of time and comforts you during your most fearful childhood moments:
Dearly beloved, I have planted my bare feet firmly on fertile ground and curled my toes into the primal mud. I am here to declare myself unruined and unbroken, and I am marking this day as my first sacred birthday. I, the woman most wild, hereby take my soul to love, honor, and cherish in this majestic, joyous life and in all my future incarnations. I am forgiving all my past transgressions, and I am unveiling my truest face.
I am the outcast Priestess no one understands, and I am taking a vow of rebellion. I have ripped up my roots and run into the desert screaming for a wilder life, and I am building a new house on these unmapped lands. I hereby promise to be the largest version of myself I can ever be, to replace complacency with self-compassion, and to reject apathy in favor of activism.
This is not a selfish ceremony; this is an act of soulful justice. I wed myself to vindicate the women of this world, the feminine in us all, and the wounded planet. My work does not stop here. I am sucking the poison of patriarchy and privilege out of the soil and spitting it moonward, for these are the dire days of the fallen kings and rising queens.
I am the wayward Priestess, and I do commit myself to cherish my deep self and all I stand for now, as the red sun rises and the futures of our children’s children hang in the balance. I am swelling to fill a bigger body. My hips are wide, and these new bones were forged in the crucible of my soul’s darkest night.
By the power vested in me by the Ministry of the Holy Wild and the sacred feminine heart, all blessings be.
BEDTIME INCANTATIONS: A RITUAL PRAYER FOR THE PILGRIM PRIESTESS
On your loneliest nights, love, whisper these wild blessings straight into the shadowy, haunted places of your psyche, those warm, wet forests where the truest fairy tales are told and the loam-skinned breasts of the ancient feminine rise and fall with breath under your bare feet:
I am wandering through these unmarked territories and learning new skills for surviving this particular wilderness I find myself in. This is the prayer of the last pilgrim Priestess, and I will whisper these words into the unforgiving chill, watching them fog out in all directions and willing them to bring comfort to every lonesome soul who finds themselves choosing stark liberation over a soft and sweet-smelling nest.
May I always grant myself permission to change, and may I see others as cyclical beings in their own right. I am the new moon Maiden, the full moon Mother, and the dark moon Crone puffing in and out of existence. I am the most ancient Mother Tongue language spoken by my ancestors, and I am just now remembering the words that are tattooed on my bones.
I am seeking out a new, wild home, and I am pouring its foundation on all I know to be true. When my hands are worn bloody with the work of it all, I will sleep safe in the knowing that my inner altar can never be crushed.
Blessed be this tougher skin of mine, and blessed be the Holy Wild.
