Musings From The Trail
I am the seed of
The Great Mother.
An Ancient Being
birthed from
Her Cosmic Womb.
A sacred symbol
of the stars,
I AM The Virgin Huntress.
A Woman unto Herself.
~Arlene Bailey
‘The Virgin Huntress’
🌙
Image: Artemis / Diana,
Goddess of wild Nature
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.
~Martin Prechtel
We locked up our wisdom into our bones
And swallowed the keys
They sank in our rivers of blood
And we forgot the maps
Because we had to forget the mysteries
To keep them safe.
We wove our hair into brooms
And swept over our paths
And then burned the earth with our rage
We didn’t teach our children
It was the only way to protect them,
we thought.
But in them we planted seeds, seeds and keys
And told them stories and riddles and songs
With no roots, just tangled threads
That would take years to unwind
Just enough time
For the rains to fall again
And put out the fires.
For the dams to break
For the rivers to flood
For the paths to be walked again
For the soil to breathe.
And as the old bones crumble
Deep beneath the rubble,
We find we’ve always had the keys.
Our stories and our maps
Our paths are revealed to some
And the seeds grow again.
The threads are unspun
And woven again
~Amara Bronwyn Hollow Bones
New moon in Aries, the fiery sign of the spiritual warrior. We are entering the fire of initiation now. These times are wild and scary and unpredictable. Any sense of control is lost as our world is upended. How this will end is unclear. Call in your spiritual support.
Breathe! Surrender to not knowing and not being in control. Simply feel whatever arises in you. Be gentle with yourself and everyone around you.
Now is the time to open your heart WIDE. The depth and power of the human heart can lead you through this. And you will be transformed.
Breathe. Allow your Heart to crack wide open. Surrender to what is.
❤️
Image: COVID-19 virus from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention’s Public Health Image Library
I am SAFE.
I am HELD.
I am LOVED by Her.
You are SAFE
You are HELD.
You are LOVED by Her.
We are SAFE.
We are HELD.
We are LOVED by Her.
❤️
Who is Her?
In the ancient tantric tradition, Adhara Shakti is the Goddess, the divine feminine who supports us in the physical realm. She is the supportive energy in the soil and rocks of our Earth, and in the bones of your body. She is there in the the steady beat of your heart and the solid support of your pelvis and spine. She is there, always there, in the ground beneath you.
To me, Mama Earth embodies Adhara Shakti. I am safe. I am held. I am loved by Mama Earth.
“I tell you here not a story out of a book, not an ‘approved’ story by a distant court, but a personal vision come into my heart from La Señora en una visita en un sueño despierto, from visitation.
I offer what I call in my life, ‘the vision that visited me’ here, only as it might be useful for others on their journey, to be encouraged that Everything will be alright. Keep to the Radiant Ideal as you see fit, and and if need be, fight like heck– and do not forget to
bless everything and everyone you can.
In much of our world, he is known as
Santo Cristobal, St. Christopher, the Giant.
One late day, he met a strange little child all alone at the edge of a raging river. The little child was dressed in a long white gown
People were afraid of the Giant. He had a reputation for being to himself alone, for being– just by gargantuan stature– a threatening figure that people feared and ran away from.
But at the river, the little one, unafraid, pulled at Cristobal’s armor, and begged to be carried across the river –for he himself could not negotiate the treacherous waters that leapt and dove deep as they crashed forward.
Cristobal bent to ask the child why he was not afraid of Cristobal. And the child replied he did not fear a giant’s Heart, only the raging places of no heart.
So Cristobal lifted the feather weight of the child onto his shoulder, and stepped into the cold rushing waters, struggling across the stormy river nearly losing his balance time and again.
With his tall, stout staff and his big rope-sandaled feet, he found his footing time after time until suddenly, in mid-stream…
the child on his shoulder grew heavier and heavier, so much so that Cristobal began to stagger in the currents.
Under this sudden huge weight upon one shoulder Cristobal fell, his body covered by the icy raging spume.
But with all his might, his muscles creaking, he fought and fought to lift the little child above his head, holding the little one above the jagged waters.
But then, the child became again lighter and lighter, and Cristobal finally, huffing and groaning like a huge sky furnace, found his way to the other side of the raging river.
Soaked to the bone, he fell to one knee on the sparkling sandy river bank. He gently set down the little child who was dry and unharmed. And whose little white gown now glowed as though lit from within.
‘Child, child, tell me how you became such a great weight upon my shoulder in the midst of a raging river?’
The child leaned forward and gently kissed the giant’s grizzled face, the child’s warm cheek warming the giant’s cold cheek.
“I am the force of Love in the midst of turmoil. As great as the roil might be, Love is the weightier, the more powerful. Those who struggle to carry Love in the midst of all else, will prevail. The treasure will be protected.”
And thus Cristobal, though as giant as before, was preceded by a radiant light as he walked, one to which others were attracted instead of being afraid. He carried much and many. With Love.
And the Child, true to his word, grew up to teach and heal the hearts of many in such love, was sacrificed by those without heart, descended into and utterly distressed hell with the purity of Love, came back from the dead, living onward forever.
As Love does. And will. And must, by hiding it in the place the raging river would never think to look ::: on the shoulder of the Giant Heart of the World.”
~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
💗
“I’ll tell you right now,
the doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious.
If you have a deep scar, that is a door,
if you have an old, old story, that is a door.
If you love the sky and the water so much
you almost cannot bear it, that is a door.
If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life,
a sane life, that is a door.”
~Clarissa Pinkola Estes