Showing posts with label Goddess Theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goddess Theology. Show all posts

Monday, March 8, 2021

"Imagine a Woman" - for International Women's Day

 https://youtu.be/0C4zDxOdLY8

Poem by Patricia Lynn Reilly

“I have learned to trust myself and so have the women with whom I sit in circle. We no longer choose to expend our precious life energy scrutinizing every facet of our beings to figure out what is wrong with us. Instead, we celebrate ourselves as gifted and powerful children of life.”

― Patricia Lynn Reilly, Be Full Of Yourself: The Journey From Self Criticism To Self Celebration

“Instead of ascending to enlightened states of being that involve the denial of the self, we have discovered that ours is a journey of descent: we look deep within to reclaim forgotten aspects of ourselves.  In our descent, many of us rediscover “Sophia,” which is the Greek word for wisdom. She is a feminine aspect of the divine found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Her presence in the male pantheon of gods has been obscured, but not completely eradicated. In the Gnostic writings, considered heretical by the “orthodox” church, Sophia was present at creation and escorted Adam and Eve toward self-awareness.

Women are reclaiming Sophia as a representation of their own inner wisdom. No longer is “god's will” imposed from outside of their lives—wisdom unfolds from within them and is in sync with their own natural gifts and capacities. No longer available to turn their lives and wills over to gods, gurus, and experts, they’re refusing to surrender except to Wisdom's urgings. No longer abdicating responsibility for their lives, they are employing their own willfulness in harmony with Wisdom's ways.”

― Patricia Lynn Reilly, A Deeper Wisdom: The 12 Steps from a Woman's Perspective



Monday, April 4, 2016

Remembering Lydia Ruyle


I was very saddened to learn of the passing of Lydia Ruyle, creator of the Goddess Banners that have adorned and sanctified to the Great Mother so many places where people have gathered in Her honor.  Lydia was ever generous with her gifts, and shared her work freely with all, as well as being so encouraging to me personally.  She will be enormously missed by the Goddess community.

May all the Goddesses of her banners surround her with love and blessings, and may she rest in their arms and be renewed.







March 27, 2016

http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/21334637-113/greeley-resident-world-renowned-artist-lydia-ruyle-dies-at



Lydia Ruyle died Saturday morning after being diagnosed in February with terminal brain cancer. A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday at First Congregational Church, 2101 16th St. in Greeley.  World-renowned traveler, educator and artist Lydia Ruyle has died at her family’s farm in Alles Acres.

The lifetime Greeley resident was a wife, mother of three and a grandmother. She leaves behind quite a legacy as evidenced by the family members, longtime friends and admirers who hosted a party in her honor Feb. 20 at Zoe’s Cafe — shortly after she learned of her cancer diagnosis. Ruyle said at the time she didn’t want the party to happen after her death. She wanted to be there to celebrate life with those closest to her.

Ruyle touched countless people during her lifetime. In the 1970s, when she was elected to the Greeley-Evans School District 6 board, Ruyle fought to add art classes to the curriculum and won. It was about that same time she began painting,

In April 2013, Ruyle received the Century of Scholars Lifetime Achievement Award at the graduate school’s 100 Year Commemorative Celebration. She also taught art at UNC. Given her influence in spreading goddess art locally, the college dedicated a room — The Lydia Ruyle Room of Women’s Art — in her honor.

But it is through her depictions of goddess figures on Nylon banners for which Ruyle is best known. During the early days when she began focusing on goddess works, Ruyle would visit holy sites in England. Over the next several decades, more than 200 women would join her on spiritual journeys to Britain, Turkey, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Sicily, Malta, the Czech Republic, Russia, Mexico, Peru, the Himalayas, Hawaii and the southwestern United States.


— Tribune reporter Catherine Sweeney contributed to this story.

Monday, January 18, 2016

The Questions of Maat


In Ancient Egypt, it was believed that the Goddess Maat waits in the Underworld, before a door all souls who have died must enter to pass into new life. She holds in her hand a scale and a feather. Maat weighs hearts, and none may pass until they have answered her questions, and their hearts are as light as the feather of truth.  How heavy is each heart? 

I find "the questions of Maat" such a significant metaphor, a metaphor about forgiveness and releasing the past to new evolution.  Because to dream a new life, to be born again, one must truly know the life that has been lived, one must forgive and be forgiven, enter into the stream of transformation.

When I turned 60 it was a tremendous passage for me.  Certainly, I felt the "lightening" that came with transit into my 6th decade. I had the urge to get rid of things that weighed me down, weren't relevant, and demanded my attention in some unnecessary way. Old love letters that just made me sad, pretty dresses that no longer fit and probably never will, dusty boxes of mementoes, weary assumptions, heavy handed beliefs, habits of mind that once were useful adaptations to something or other, but now were  boringly repetitious. I went through a period of self-examination, and noticed that very many of my assumptions were erroneous, often blocked my vision, and was probably unfair to somebody somewhere, including myself.  Unused possessions require care, require storage, require energy, require memory.  It was time to light-en up and enter the stream.

Natalie Goldberg, in her book "Writing down the Bones", tells of meeting Meridel le Sueur in her eighties.  A true nomad, Meridel told her that she lived nowhere. She visited people and places, writing wherever she was. The elderly writer asked Natalie if she knew a place to purchase a used typewriter. When she is ready to leave, she said, she will give it away so she doesn't have to take it to her next destination.  Now that I understand. Why should one wish to lug a typewriter around, or a bulky suitcase, or for that matter, an old grudge, a worn out storyline, or an exhausted persona?  Such unexamined baggage surely slows the creative journey of life down, making it difficult to create into the future.  

A reporter once asked the artist Pablo Picasso, at 90 or so, what he thought, after such a long and distinguished career, his greatest work was. He replied "The next one."  This is the lightening of the heart and mind the Goddess Maat weighs. Maat's name meant "truth" in ancient Egyptian. Her questions do not "damn" those who wait before the door....but without answering them, without finding the truth of one's life, no passage to other realms of being is possible.   We are stuck at the station, waiting for the train. 

Maat's questions are questions each soul must answer sooner or later. "Who have I not fore-given?" "What have I done that I cannot fore-give myself for?" "What part of my life story have I not been able to see, or to fore-give?" 

I am always stunned when I examine out of context the language we unconsciously take for granted in daily speech, and humbled further when I consider that each language has its singular depths of meaning unique to its cultural evolution.  In English usage, to "fore-give" is to do just that - to "give the energy forward". To the future, to the unknown, to new possibilities of relationship and creativity, to new responsibilities, endeavors, and perhaps high adventure. To the continual growth of wisdom and compassion. When we don't fore-give we are left with psychic baggage, stories told so many times they have lost any semblance to the truth.

I am not saying that fore-giveness is a simple thing.  Sometimes it involves working through layers of experience, telling our story over and over until it can be truthfully seen, and sometimes we need help from wise or impartial listeners. But ultimately I believe fore-giveness comes from being able to gain a wider perspective, the integral Soul's perspective.  From that perspective, which often requires faith as well, there is a greater landscape that weaves together the ways we were challenged and deepened by our experiences, our betrayals, our failures, our losses, our ignorance, and our blessings.

I remember years ago there was a man I was attracted to. The Eros of my experience fueled enormous creativity in me. His considerable talent inspired me as well.   And because I had a lot of unripe, naive ideas, and did not know how to confront him, he also had a lot of fun manipulating and humiliating me, probably just because he could. He never pretended that he was a kind or conscionable person, and I still cringe when I think about it. 

But until I was able to fore-give him and myself, I was unable to see the gifts in that experience, indeed, unable to get beyond it. Now I realize that had I not met him, I would not have created what I did at that time in my life.   And I probably would not have moved through the well defended "victim" template I was deeply entrenched in and attached to.  I could not assume a "victim" position with this man.  I had to grow and take care of myself, and from that perspective, ultimately he empowered me. That is the paradox of Maat's Truth.

Raukkadessa is a Finnish term a musician friend, Kathy Huhtaluata, used in her Saami inspired music.  She told me it means "beyond love". I find this concept profound - because even love, as we experience it, can be a veil, impenetrable in the present moment, and beyond that momentary experience is something vast, beyond the pairs of opposites, beyond time itself. Beyond love is the soul's love, the greater evolutionary pattern.

A Buddhist once told me that we should cherish all sentient beings, because, from the perspective of reincarnation, any sentient being you meet has at one time or another been your mother, brother, lover, enemy, has been your food, or has devoured you.   
One thing is certain. When we don't fore-give, we are unable to move fore-ward, because we are stuck in the past of phantom hurts and ghostly losses, attempting to keep them alive with our own life energy. 

And from my perspective, one of the wonderful things about having had the privilege of achieving the maturity of 60 some years is that one has the means and experience to finally know just that.   May all hearts be light as Maat's feather.

Monday, November 16, 2015

Death in the "City of Isis"

 AP/Jerome Delay
"Three terrorists believed in their own minds that they were holy warriors who would die "martyred" in their holy war and that they would live on in Paradise.One of the terrorists, Cherif Kouachi ........told French investigators that "the wise leaders in Islam told him and his friends that if they die as martyrs in jihad they would go to heaven" and "that martyrs would be greeted by more than 60 virgins in a big palace in heaven." This refers to the hadith, or saying of the Prophet Mohammed, that martyrs will enjoy the favor of 72 virgins."
           Peter Bergen
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/13/opinion/bergen-islam-terrorism/index.html
As I, with so many people around the world, mourn those  who died in Paris, I cannot avoid a  grim synchronicity that accompanies this latest act of  murder in the name of a "god" (and no, I will not capitalize the name of this murderous  patriarchal god, who  has had so many violent names in so many violent eras of human his-story.)   
My friends in the Women's Spirituality community, the Fellowship of Isis, and women and men  concerned with mythology and archetypal psychology,  have been disturbed that ISIS, the group claiming responsibility for this latest atrocity,  has been given, ironically, the name of the great Mother Goddess of ancient Egypt (I.S.I.S.).  

Isis with Her infant Horus, believed by many to be the origin of the famous Black Madonnas at pilgrimage sites throughout Europe; winged Isis who may also be the earliest "angel".   This  Mother Goddess was beloved for a millenia in Egypt.  In the later days of the Roman Empire Isis was imported to Rome,  and temples were built to Her, including those found at an outpost in Gaul named for  Her.    Many people do not know that  Paris, par Isis, once meant "city of Isis".

The attack on Paris by Islamic extremists who have taken, ironically, the name of this Great Goddess of the ancient world is paradoxical.  The Divine Feminine throughout world cultures is about serving and nurturing life.  These religious fanatics are about co-opting those powers to serve the subjugation of women, and  death to all  who don't "believe" in the absolute  authority of their "god" .  
A further synchronicity  occurs that they chose Friday the 13th, no doubt because that day is long considered unlucky.  But  if considered from the viewpoint of  Europe before monotheism,  quite the opposite is true.  Friday the 13th was sacred to the Goddess - first, because Friday is named for the Norse Goddesses Freya/Frigga, representing love, sexuality, and child bearing, and second,  because  the number 13 has been associated with women since prehistoric times.  There are 13 lunations in a year, and 13 menstrual cycles.  Hence (not unlike  the long mythic descent of Mary Magdalene from disciple or wife  of the historical Jesus  to reformed whore)  a day once devoted to a Goddess became co-opted as  "bad luck".  
I remember a conversation I shared once  with Dorit Bat Shalom, an Israeli artist I know  who brought Israeli and Palestine women together in “Peace Tents” to share their stories  in the 1990's.  Just before the invasion of Iraq, Dorit said : "How can there be  peace  without the Goddess?"  The Shekinah is the feminine aspect of God in Judaism. Dorit went on to say "The Shekinah has been driven away from the holy lands. We cannot heal without her ." 
Indeed, endless strife takes place in the very heart of what was once the fertile homeland of the Great Mother, of Inanna, Astarte, Isis,  Asheroth.   The question Dorit asked stayed with me.  How indeed can there be peace, in the Mideast or elsewhere, when deity, and human values, are personified and polarized as almost exclusively male? A mythos that denies the feminine half of humanity, in Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and elsewhere......has left us a humanity divided against itself , and the more polarized the society, the greater the violence.  The male archetype carried to its ultimate extreme,  unbalanced and unmitigated,  is a killer.  
The "return of the Goddess" means,  to me,   restoring Balance to the profoundly divided collective spirit of the human race.   When half the human race is disenfranchised, enslaved, hidden,  that means that half of the collective mind of humanity is split off from itself.   Whenever we pray to "Him", regardless of which patriarchal religion we are aligned with, we are inwardly  reflecting that split, right there in what we literally say is Holy/Wholly  and, by omission, what is not Holy/Wholly.  The disenfranchisement of the Divine Feminine and corresponding feminine values, taken to its greatest extreme, results in violent cultures that worship war,  and entitlements that enslave and degrade women.    Every  fascist and genocidal culture, from Nazi Germany to the Taliban,  has from its very inception taken away the rights of women,  every single one.    
But so few people see how important the arising of the Goddess energy is to the psyche of humanity, and as the Dalai Lama himself pointed out in his famous comment, to preserving the world itself.   So few people can see how  much patriarchal culture has co-opted Her life-giving energies.  Perhaps this is the reason I notice such synchronicities, in the midst of such great tragedy.  This is what Clarissa Pinkola Estes called "the River beneath the River of the world", the collective Dream of humanity, the mythic language.

References:
1) "the Legend of Isis"  
 http://isisclinicdubai.com/?page_id=78
In ancient Egyptian mythology, Isis was the symbol of healing and the protector of children.
Often represented breast-feeding her son Horus, the legend of Egypt crossed the Mediterranean sea to influence the Phoenicians in Byblos (Jbeil), Lebanon, Greek and Roman civilizations.
Isis of Paris
As early as the 15th century AD, many Parisian historians believed that the city of Paris owed its name to the Egyptian goddess Isis. There are various manuscripts from around 1402AD at the “Bibliothèque Nationale” in Paris which contains drawings of the goddess Isis garbed as a medieval noblewoman seen arriving by boat to Paris and where she is greeted by nobles and clergymen under the caption “The very ancient Isis, goddess and queen of the Egyptians”.
In the 14th Century, Jacques Le Grant wrote: “In the days of Charlemagne (8th century AD) there was a city named Iseos, so named because of the goddess Isis who was venerated there. Now it is called Melun. Paris owes its name to the same circumstances, Parisius is said to be similar to Iseos (quasi par Iseos) because it is located on the river Seine in the same manner as Melun”.
After his return from Egypt in 1799, Napoleon was to develop a curious interest in the Egyptian goddess Isis, and eventually set up a special commission headed by the scholar Louis Petit-Radel in order to verify whether or not the claims made by Gilles Corrozet and others that Isis was the true tutelary goddess of Paris was tenable. After sometimes, Radel reported to Napoleon that the evidence he had examined supported the claim that the “Boat of Isis” was the very same as the “Boat of Paris”. Impressed by Radel’s report, Napoleon issued written instructions on the 20 January 1811 to the effect that the Egyptian goddess and her star be included on the coat-of-arms of the French capital city.


3)  Moon Goddess stone and  Yoni receptacle at heart of Mecca:  

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Endarkenment: Black Tara, Kali

"Kali" (2013)

I've been working on a Kali/Black Tara mask, and reference a wise article about the Dark Goddess, "Endarkenment", that I have been wanting to share for quite a while.  I take the liberty of re-printing here a wonderfully insightful  article by Theologian Molly Remer,  from the   Feminism and Religion website.

Black Tara is the ferocious, evil destroying aspect of Tara, and in many Tibetan Buddhist paintings it is easy to see the symbolic overlay of  Hindu Kali.  Kali's name derives from "Kala", which means Time. In the Mahanirvana-tantra, Kali is one of the epithets for the primordial sakti":
"At the dissolution of things, it is Kala [Time] Who will devour all, and by reason of this He is called Mahakala [an epithet of Lord Shiva], and since Thou devourest Mahakala Himself, it is Thou who art the Supreme Primordial Kalika. Because Thou devourest Kala, Thou art Kali, the original form of all things, and because Thou art the Origin of and devourest all things Thou art called the Adya [primordial Kali]. Resuming after Dissolution Thine own form, dark and formless, Thou alone remainest as One ineffable and inconceivable. Though having a form, yet art Thou formless; though Thyself without beginning, multiform by the power of Maya, Thou art the Beginning of all, Creatrix, Protectress, and Destructress that Thou art"**


It is from this dark space that we emerge—whether from our own mothers or from the more mysterious cosmic “sea” of soul—and it is to darkness that we return when we close our eyes for the final time.

I find that within Goddess circles the idea of “the dark” remains commonly associated with that which is evil, negative, bad, or unpleasant. The Dark Mother, while acknowledged and accepted, is often at the same time equated with death, destruction, challenge, trials, and obstacles. While I recognize that the concept of a dark, demonic, and destructive mother might too have a place in goddess traditions (as with Kali or Durga), I also think this is unnecessarily limiting and that the idea of the “Dark” in general is in need of re-visioning. It is not just with regard to the role or place of death within the wheel of life or the Goddess archetype that Goddess as Dark Mother and destroyer can be honored or recognized, but the Dark as a place of healing and rest can also be explored.

In her article “Revisioning the Female Demon” (1998), Elinor Gadon explains that there is a tendency in the contemporary Goddess movement to “ignore her dark side” and she remarks that, “in the fullness of her being she is both creative and destructive…The women’s spirituality movement needs a more inclusive mirror in which to recognize and recover elemental female powers that have been split between the peaceful, good nurturer and the evil, warlike destroyer” (p. 2).

In the book Fire of the Goddess by Katalin Koda, in the chapter Reclaiming the Dark Mother the author says:
The feminine qualities of darkness, moistness, birth, and blood symbolize the dark mother and our inner Initiate. We have been taught to deny these parts of ourselves and bodies; honoring the sacred feminine invites you to reclaim these as not only part of who you are, but a powerful aspect of your life. When we face our shadow, we are initiated into our deepest powers. We may be afraid of these parts; these howling, undernourished, repressed, and rage-filled aspects of ourselves that demand to be heard, but which we cannot bear to face.
But what if the Dark side of the Goddess is not an evil, raging, and destructive side? In fact, what if the Goddess Herself is found in the dark? Judith Laura writing about dark matter in the cosmos writes, “might we call this ‘unseen force’ Goddess? Dark matter could be identified with the womb of the Mother, continually gestating particles, suns, galaxies, which flow from her in a continual stream…Dark matter might also be represented as the Crone aspect of the Goddess—dark and powerful” (Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century, p. 181).

Part of thealogy’s task has been to re-evaluate the concept of darkness.  Jacqueline daCosta notes, “This darkness…equates with the darkness of innate, instinctive knowing, where we are within the womb of the Goddess” (p. 115). DaCosta’s observation is consistent with my own experiences and observations of the world. In darkness, things germinate and grow. The dark is a calm, holding, safe, welcoming place—we come from darkness and that is where we return. The womb is a place in which I’ve nurtured and grown my children and it is dark and safe in my experience of it. In fact, isn’t darkness the womb of all creation? It is from this dark space that we emerge—whether from our own mothers or from the more mysterious cosmic “sea” of soul—and it is to darkness that we return when we close our eyes for the final time.

Darkness holds our DNA. Our link to the past and the future. At the birth of the universe, some part of us was there, in that explosion from darkness. In the book Meditation Secrets for Women, Camille Maurine writes about the idea of descent and “going down” into one’s own dark places:  “There are times in a woman’s life when the call downward is a transformative journey, a summons to the depths of the soul. People tend to think of spirituality as rising upward into the sky. In the traditional (male) teachings, enlightenment is often described as a flight from the lower centers of the body, the instinctive and sexual places, to the upper centers in the head and then out. By contrast, a woman’s spiritual quest at some point leads to a soulful sinking down into herself. Everyone fears this descent, this sinking down. Yet sinking down connects us with the earth, with our personal ground, with our foundation. There is a secret in ‘endarkenment.’” [p. 210, emphasis mine]

The Dark Goddess need not automatically associate or translate into “bad” or “suffering” or “negative” or “shadow side.” I think of the darkness as a cocoon. I think of the womb. I think of germination. I think of a place to rest, to wait, to be still, and to transform. Emergence. Deepness. Rich earthiness.

I love the notion of endarkenment and that the downward call, the downward journey, like Inanna’s descent, is a hera’s journey of transformation, courage, and potency. In the same book, Maurine describes the soul in very different terms than in classic Christian conceptions:

“The realm of the soul is not light and airy, but more like mud: messy, wet, and fertile. Soul processes go on down there with the moss and worms, down there with the decaying leaves, down there where death turns into life. Deepening into soul requires the courage to go underground, to stretch our roots into the dark, to writhe and curl and meander through rick, moist soil. In this darkness we find wisdom, not through the glaring beam of will, but by following a wild, blind yet unfailing instinct that senses the essence in things, that finds nourishment to suck back into growth. Rare is the man who can take it. That’s why male spirituality is so often about getting out of the mess, about transcending the passions and bloody processes of life. Who can blame them, really? It takes a woman’s body and strength of spirit for this journey.” (p. 211)


My experiences with pregnancy loss have played a profound role in the development of, articulation of, and engagement with my spirituality. One of my favorite songs to listen to after my miscarriage experiences had a refrain of, “it is dark, dark, dark inside.” While previously not connecting to “darkness” as a place of growth or healing, during these experiences I learned, viscerally, that it is in the darkness that new things take root and grow. I also created a series of black and white mandala drawings during the year following my miscarriages and the subsequent year of conceiving, gestating, and birthing my new daughter.

Gloria Orenstein refers to endarkenment as, “a bonding with the Earth and the invisible that will reestablish our sense of interconnectedness with all things, phenomenal and spiritual, that make up the totality of our life in our cosmos. The ecofeminist arts do not maintain that analytical, rational knowledge is superior to other forms of knowing. They honor Gaia’s Earth intelligence and the stored memories of her plants, rocks, soil, and creatures. Through nonverbal communion with the energies of sacred sites in nature, ecofeminist artists obtain important knowledge about the spirit of the land, which they can then honor through creative rituals and environmental pieces” (Reweaving the World, p. 280). This speaks to me because of my theapoetical experiences of the presence of the Goddess in my own sacred spot in the woods behind my house, where I go to the “priestess rocks” to pray, reflect, meditate, do ritual, think, and converse with the spirits of that place.

I attended a presentation about birth stories at a conference in 2011 during which the speaker, Pam England, used Inanna’s descent as a metaphor to explain some concepts. She said that the place “where you were the most wounded—the place where the meat was chewed off your bones, becomes the seat of your most powerful medicine and the place where you can reach someone where no one else can.” This is what I feel like the Dark Goddess also offers. She is present when the meat is chewed off. She is there in the healing of the wounds and knowing Her, walking with Her, facing Her, leads to powerful medicine.
For each of us as women, there is a deep place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises…Within these deep places, each one holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us…it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.

–Audre Lorde
 Molly Remer is a certified birth educator, writer, and activist who lives with her husband and children in central Missouri. She is a breastfeeding counselor, a professor of human services, and doctoral student in women’s spirituality at Ocean Seminary College. This summer she was ordained as a Priestess with Global Goddess. Molly blogs about birth, motherhood, and women’s issues at http://talkbirth.me and about thealogy and the Goddess at http://goddesspriestess.com

 http://imageserver.himalayanart.org/fif=fpx/59743.fpx&obj=iip,1.0&hei=262&cvt=jpeg