Blessings of the Dark
Today I am grateful for:
1. The dark half of the year. Time to slow down, dream, reflect, contemplate. #Darkness
2. Welsh Goddess Arianrhod. She lives in a wheel of stars at the center of the night sky. Arianrhod keeps the dead safe until it is time for them to be reborn. #RestingPlace
3. Celtic Goddess Elen of the Ways. She is a whisper, a gentle wind in the wilderness. Elen shows us our true path. #WayShower
4. The bone collector, a Celtic Crone Goddess who collects the bones of the dead animals all winter and sings them across the void to be reborn. #BoneSong
5. Hindu Goddess Kali. She dances a power dance and demands we embrace our shadow. #LookInTheDark
6. Babylonian Goddess Tiamat, the primordial power and chaos of the depths. She both creates and destroys. The early patriarchal kings claimed to have destroyed Tiamat, but we all know better. #Primordial
7. Ancient feminine energies / archetypes of darkness. These dark goddesses hold so much wisdom and power. #DarkWisdom
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Originally posted on Facebook, 11/28/19
Image: Paris Catacombs by Nancy L
The Crone
Hecate, the goddess of the crossroads, is the Crone. The crossroads in Europe still have little cairns where people drop their stones in honor of the goddess. Those cairns have always been the places of Hecate. The crossroads represents a place where consciousness is crossed by the unconscious, in other words, a place where you have to surrender your ego will to a higher will. The Crone has gone though one crossroads after another. She has reached a place of surrender where her ego demands are no longer relevant. This is the positive side of the Crone. She is a surrendered instrument and therefore detached.
Detachment doesn’t mean indifference. It means she has been there. She has suffered, but she can draw back from the suffering. A conscious person in the presence of an unconscious person’s pain may suffer more than the unconscious person. So, it’s not that she doesn’t suffer. It’s not that she’s indifferent or withdrawn. She’s right there, totally present. She’s got nothing to lose.
She can be who she is and live with the straight, flat-out, naked truth. Therefore the Crone acts as a tuning fork in an environment because she is so real herself. She rings a true tone. People are brought into harmony with that tuning, so it’s very releasing. People can respond to their own true tone. The Crone can afford to be honest. She’s not playing games anymore. She brings people into that soul space where all outer conflicts dissolve and they can experience their own essence.
She has nothing to lose. Who she is cannot be taken away from her. She has no investment in ego. Therefore, there is no power operating. She’s the kind of person you can honestly talk to, profoundly trust. She has no reason to persuade you to do anything or be anything other than who you are.
I would think of her masculinity as being very discerning, with no sentimentality. She would be able to cut with a well-honed sword. She would be able to see what is no longer essential to life, a relationship, for example, that has become destructive. She would perceive it, see through to the heart of it, and cut where necessary, but cut with love. I always envision her wielding a golden sword with a silver handle. All the perceptivity of gold, but handled with the love of silver. The masculine and feminine together. She has the kind of wisdom that takes life with a grain of salt, smiles at the divine comedy….
I have known four or five Crones, two of them men. I have gone to them when I thought I couldn’t go any further. Their love was palpable. No advice. Simply being, saying almost nothing. I knew I was totally seen and totally understood.
They could constellate my own inner healer because they could see me as I am.
~ Marion Woodman
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Image: Night Woman / Crone Tree
by Carolyn Hillyer
The Power of Feminine Wrath
“I think the nature of what needs to be conveyed by women now is wrath rather than rage,’
she says firmly. ‘Wrath is different. To me, it means an incontrovertible statement,
put across fiercely, and also carrying an urgent instruction about what needs to happen.
Wrath carries no hate, but for sure –just like the utterances of
the women Oracles of old –it comes with dire warning.”
~Scilla Elworthy
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Call on Kali Maa. One meaning of Goddess Kali’s name is “force of time.” She stands outside the constraints of space-time. Kali existed before the Universe was created and she will continue to exist after the Universe ends. No physical limitations apply to Kali. She is pure primordial energy.
Both creative and destructive, Kali Maa is a symbol of Mother Nature herself. She is capable of both devouring and nurturing us. She is the strong mother archetype, the fiery mama who protects us and fights for us. Kali’s dual nature shows us both the beauty of life and the harsh reality of death. She leads us to understand that one cannot exist without the other.
Opening to the power of Kali is both exhilarating and frightening. She transforms whatever she touches. Every woman carries the seed of Kali’s primordial energy within her.
Kali is the fierce feminine warrior; the sacred Goddess who kicks butt and takes no prisoners. Her energy is needed when demons are running amuck in the world.
Kali Maa, we call to you. We need you now.
Messenger of the Dark
Image by Henry Percy
“Crow is a symbol of solitude, spiritual strength, and the secret magic of the creative life. Black is the colour of creation, the dark womb out of which the new is born. The three crows were the messengers, reminding me of my intuitive, creative nature, waiting to emerge. Three crows, three sisters, three fates, three witches. They are the triple goddess in her dark, shadowy form.
The Dark Goddess reigns in the space without borders or boundaries. She is the dark side of the moon. She is the creative space, the womb space, the feminine blood mysteries. She is guardian of the life/death/re-birth cycles, and the mistress of transformation and change.
She is Pele, destroying everything that is not useful on our path; she is Lilith, reminding us of our deepest yearning and sexual desires; she is Kali, slaying the demons of our past; she is Sekhmet, showing us how to unlock our anger and our rage. She is the shadow side of our personality – what we try to hide, what we are ashamed of,
what we fear within ourselves, what we have been told to lock away.”
~Kristen Roderick
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As the nights lengthen
Dark Goddess whispers in the stillness,
waiting to initiate us into
a time of deep dreaming and seeing.
she pulls away the veils, and we are ushered into
a sacred dark space where we can remember, release, and recharge.
In this season of change and letting go
Meditate or call on the archetypal energies of
The Dark Goddess
Learn to release all that is complete, all that longer serves you.
Juno Stirs the Pot
Are you feeling it too? Relationship Goddess Juno is shaking things up this month (her namesake month). She has joined with dark Goddess Lilith in the heavens to ‘stir the pot’ and wake women up. Here is what Divine Harmony recently shared about Juno’s affect on us:
“… Juno’s retrograde journey is getting even more interesting as today she dips back into libra and she will station direct on June 22nd also at the 29th degree- a very karmic degree that speaks to completions, endings and letting go. juno essentially comes to a standstill at 29 libra- so from now until July 7th we are in deeply karmic territory in relationships, commitments and contracts in our lives. there are definite major karmic completions going on right now. whether significant relationships are ending for good or longtime karmic patterns of relating to others is what is ending (or both)- there’s some deep stuff to navigate in the realm of relationships. because Juno stations in libra- we are being asked to look at any issues we have with losing ourselves in others, over focusing on who we are with rather than who we are or if we are happy, as well as where we tend to sweep the shadow under the carpet (ours or another’s). libra is the sign of the scales which brings to mind the justice card in the tarot. right now the scales are being rectified- with all parties needing to account for their part in things in order for healing or closure to happen. navigate this month wisely- and focus on completing karmic patterns you are finally good and ready to leave behind!”
another layer of energy gets added in when we notice that Juno is journeying with black moon Lilith right now as well. they cojoined on may 29th and will do so again on September 11th. Lilith and Juno aligns the asteroid Goddess of partnership, marriage and commitment with the fierce Dark Goddess who governs equality, passion, power and sexuality. with these two dancing in the deep, intense, underworld waters of scorpio we can be deeply confronted with fear of or addiction to intimacy, misuse of or repression of sexuality, shared power vs power control dynamics, jealousy, possessiveness, obsession and operating in relationship from a place of ego need (i want this- fill me up!) rather than Higher Self awareness is up for us to address big time. with juno traversing with BML we also have an interesting juxtaposition of the Goddess of commitment and the Dark Goddess of freedom and independence. with both in underworld scorpio there can be big shadows up right now around fear of engulfment (BML shadow) or fear of abandonment (Juno shadow) and the things we do to avoid feeling all the emotions that arise when either of this are experienced. it’s important to pay attention to emotions, passions and desires at this full moon and do an honest self check in if they are running you or if you are running them, or if you are shutting them down altogether…”
excerpt from DivineHarmony.org
Seed Time
On Winter Solstice, we officially entered into Seed Time in the northern hemisphere. The sun moved into the sign of earthy Capricorn, the master of building and manifesting.
Winter is the time in Mama Earth’s cycle when she becomes still and appears to be lifeless. But beneath the surface, our earthy mother is very much alive; she is quietly gestating seeds for the new year, loving and holding them safe in the dark. This time of holding in the dark ensures that when spring arrives, the new seeds will be ready to sprout and grow.
What is yearning to come into your life now?
How does the Universe want each of us to sprout and grow in 2015?
Let’s get still and listen in the darkness…
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“Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness.”
~Julia Cameron