“Cure yourself, with the light of the sun and the rays of the moon. With the sound of the river and the waterfall. With the swaying of the sea and the fluttering of birds.
Heal yourself, with the mint and mint leaves, with neem and eucalyptus.
Sweeten yourself with lavender, rosemary, and chamomile.
Hug yourself with the cocoa bean and a touch of cinnamon. Put love in tea instead of sugar and take it looking at the stars.
Heal yourself, with the kisses that the wind gives you and the hugs of the rain.
Get strong with bare feet on the ground and with everything that is born from it.
Get smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with the eye of your forehead.
Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier.
Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember… you are the medicine. “
The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences.
What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature, and its power is never diminished.
“Originally the Goddess ruled, or co-created, the magical life cycle forces of sexuality, birth, life and death. With the coming of patriarchal religions, the power of life and death became prerogatives of the male God, while sexuality and magic were split off from procreation and motherhood.” -Barbara Koltuv, The Book of Lilith
——- Image: the Laussel Relief 27,000 BCE. Found in southern France. It depicts the connection between a woman’s body and the mystery of the cosmos; one hand holds a crescent moon and the other points to her pelvis. Archeologists debate about what the 13 lines on the crescent moon signify. One possibility: 29,000 years ago, humans already knew that there are 13 moon cycles in a year.
A poem for our times from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
–When someone says, “We’re saying the same thing.” Say, “We are not saying the same thing.”
–When someone says, “Don’t question, just have faith.” Say, “I am questioning, vato, and I have supreme faith in what I think.”
–When someone says, “Don’t defy my authority.” Say, “There is a higher authority that I follow.”
–When someone says, “Your ideas are seductive.” Say, “No, my ideas are not seductive, they are substantial.”
–When someone says, “Your ideas are dangerous.” Say, “Yes, my ideas are dangerous, and why are you so afraid hombre o mujer? ”
–When it is said, “It’s just not done.” Say, “It will be done.”
–When it is said, “It is immature.” Say, “All life begins small and must be allowed to grow.”
–When it is said, “It’s not thought out.” Say, “It is well thought out.”
–When they say, “You’re over-reacting.” Say, “You’re under-reacting, vato.”
–When they say, “You’re being emotional.” Say, “Of course I have well placed emotions, and by the way, what happened to yours?”
–When they say, “You’re not making any sense.” Say, “I don’t make sense, I am the sense.”
–When they say, “I can’t understand you when you’re crying.” Say, “Make no mistake, I can weep and be fierce at the same time.”
–When they say, “I cant understand you when you’re being so angry.” Say. “You couldn’t hear me when I was being nice, or sweet or silent, either.”
–When someone says, “You’re missing the point.” Say, “I’m not missing the point, but you seem to be missing my point — What are you so afraid of?”
–When someone says, “You are breaking the rules.” Say, “Yes, I am breaking the rules.”
–When someone says, “That’s not practical.” Say, “It’s practically a done deal, thank you very much.”
–When it is said, “No one will do it, believe you, or follow it.” Say, “I will do it, I will believe in it, and in time, the world may well follow it.”
— When it is said, “No one wants to listen to that.” Say, “I know you have a hard time listening to that.”
–When it is said, “It’s a closed system, you cant change it.” Say, “I’m going to knock twice and if there is no answer, then I am going to blow the doors off that system and it will change.”
–When it is said, “They’ll ignore you.” Say, “They won’t ignore me and the hundreds of thousands who stand with me.”
–When they say, “It’s already been done.” Say, “It’s not been done well enough.”
— When they say, “It’s not yet time.” Say, “It’s way past time.”
–When they say, “It’s not the right day, right month, right year.” Tell them, “The right year was last year, and the right month was last month, and the right day was yesterday, and you’re running behind schedule, vato, and what in the name of God and all that is holy are you going to do about it?”
–When they say, “Who do you think you are?” — tell them … tell them who you are, and don’t hold back.
–When they say, “I put up with it, you’ll have to put up with it too.” Say, “No, no, no, no.”
–When they say, “I’ve suffered a long time and you’ll have to suffer too.” Say, “No, no, no, no.”
–When they say, “You’re an incorrigible, defiant, hard to get along with, unreasonable woman … ” Say, “Yes, yes, yes, yes …
and I have worse news for you yet — we are teaching our daughters, and our mothers, and our sisters … we are teaching our sons, and our fathers, and our brothers, to be just like us.”
The Spaniards came to our village in 1524, but they couldn’t get anybody to go to their church, so they demolished our old temple and used the stones to build a new church on the same site. (This was a common practice.) But the Tzutujil people are crafty. They watched as the old temple stones were used to build the new church, and they memorized where each one went. As far as the Tzutujil were concerned, this strange, square European church was just a reconfiguration of the old. (When I was learning to be a shaman, I had to memorize where all those damn stones were, because they were all holy. It was like being a novice taxi driver in London.)
The Catholic priests abandoned the village in the 1600s because of earthquakes and cholera, then came back fifty years later and found a big hole in the middle of the church. “What is that?” they said. By then, the Indians knew the priests destroyed everything relating to the native religion, so the Indians said, “When we reenact the crucifixion of Jesus, this is the hole where we put the cross.”
In truth, that hole was a hollow place that was never to be filled, because it led to another hollow place left over from the temple that had been there originally, and that place was connected to all the other layers of existence. For four and a half centuries, the Indians kept their traditions intact in a way that the Europeans couldn’t see or understand. If the Spaniards asked, “Where is your God?” the Indians would point to this empty hole. But when the American clergy came in the 1950s, they weren’t fooled. They said, “This is paganism.” And so, eventually, they filled the empty place with concrete.
I was there when that happened, in 1976. I was livid. I went to the village council and ranted and raved about how terrible it was. The old men calmly smoked their cigars and agreed. After an hour or so, when I was out of breath, they started talking about something totally unrelated. I asked, “Doesn’t anybody care about this?”
“Oh, yeah,” they said. “We care. But these Christians are idiots if they think they can just eradicate the conduit from this world to the next with a little mud. That’s as ridiculous as you worrying about it. But if you must do something, here’s a pick, shovel, and chisel. Dig it out.”
So some old men and I dug out the hole. Then the Catholics filled the hole back up, and two weeks later we dug it out again. We went back and forth this way five times until, finally, somebody made a stone cover for the hole, so the Catholics could pretend it wasn’t there, and we could pull the cover off whenever we wanted to use it.
That’s how the spirit is now in this country. The hole, the hollow place that must be fed, is still there, but it’s covered over with spiritual amnesia. We try to fill up that beautiful hollow place with drugs, television, potato chips — anything. But it can’t be filled. It needs to be kept hollow.
When I say the feminine, I don’t mean gender. I mean the feminine principle that is living—or suppressed—in both men and women. The feminine principle attempts to relate. Instead of breaking things off into parts, it says, Where are we alike? How can we connect? Where is the love? Can you listen to me? Can you really hear what I am saying? Can you see me? Do you care whether you see me or not?
Now, these are very serious questions. And the feminine is difficult to talk about because so few people have experienced it. The feminine is presence, and relatedness, and a heart that can open so that when you meet another person you actually are seeing that person’s authentic self. What meaning does human life have if nobody has ever seen you?
… The great work of our time is to bring the feminine into this culture. And it’s not an easy path. How does each one of us contribute? Believe it or not, it’s done in the most personal ways. Take time to listen to your dreams, to write them down. Take time to recognise that there are things going on within you that need to be felt, or said, or lived, or grieved. Pay attention to these things both in yourself and in the people in your life. Pay attention to the authentic self.
