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 It’s not that she’s indifferent or withdrawn.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

Capricorn Full Moon

Full moon in earthy Capricorn. Retrograde Saturn, Pluto and a partial lunar eclipse add to the mix. The normally creative builder energy of Capricorn, Is in a more destructive clearing away phase right now.

Ready or not, your shadow is out. The old rules of life may not hold much longer. Literally everything is up for debate.

Self care is key to managing this level of change. Create a calm safe space you can root into and relax within. Try to love every wiggle and wobble you make as you feel your way into a new future.

Deep Yin Full Moon

Watery full moon in Scorpio, dark goddess of the deep. Yin feminine energy and shadow wisdom are surfacing right now.

Meditate or journey inward. Connect with your true emotions and desires. What needs to be forgiven and /or released? What needs to be acknowledged and embraced?

Venture into your darkness and be healed. 💗

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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

☾☽

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.

Goddess of the Silver Wheel

Corona Borealis

Celtic Goddess Arianrhod (ah-ree-AHN-rhohd) has a long and celebrated history. Through the years, she has gone by many names: Goddess of the Silver Wheel, Goddess of Reincarnation, Welsh Star, Mother-Moon Goddess, and the Silver Wheel that Descends into the Sea. Her name actually translates as ‘silver’ (Arian) ‘wheel’ (Rhod) in Welsh.

With skin as pale as the moon, Arianrhod is a beautiful and powerful Dark Goddess. She is the daughter of the Great Mother Goddess Don and her consort Beli.  And like her mother before her, Arianrhod is a symbol of feminine power and sovereignty. She rules fertility, birth and rebirth. She is also a weaver of cosmic time and fate, the one who decides when a Soul is ready to be reborn.

Arianrhod lives in the far north, on the magical island of Caer Sidi (Revolving Castle) with her female attendants. The ancients believed that her castle, Caer Arianrhod, was located in the Corona Borealis, a group of circumpolar stars that appear to rotate around the North Star. Corona Borealis means Northern Crown, which is very fitting for a powerful sovereign Goddess.  Legend tells us that poets and astrologers learned the wisdom of the stars at Caer Sidi.

The moon is an archetypal symbol of the ancient Mother Goddess that is connected to the female womb, death, rebirth and the sacred feminine power of creation. The Celtic people counted time not by days, but by nights, and made their calendars focused on the moon instead of the sun. Ancient Celtic astrologers took their observations from the position of the moon and its progress in relation to the northern stars. They were guided by Arianrhod’s silver wheel of stars.

Arianrhod’s starry home is also known as Annwn, the Otherworld or Land of the Dead.  When people die, it is said that Arianrhod’s attendants bring them to Caer Sidi. There, in the stillness of the hub of Arianrhod’s silver wheel, the Souls of the dead are nurtured by Arianrhod’s attendants while waiting for their fate to be decided.  Arianrhod is able to shape shift into a large owl. Like the moon,  the owl is an ancient symbol of death, rebirth, magic, spiritual wisdom and initiation. With her great owl eyes, Arianrhod can see into the depths of each human soul. She is said to move through the dark of night with power and purpose, her wings spreading to give comfort and healing to all who seek her.

As is the case with most of the powerful Goddesses, stories tell us that Arianrhod was eventually humiliated, tricked and stripped of her children and her sovereignty by a Christian warlord. For Arianrhod, death was said to come when the sea reclaimed the land where the Christian lord had forced her to live in exile.

And yet… when I look up and see her silver wheel of circumpolar stars that continues to revolve in our night sky year after year, I can still feel her power and grace. Arianrhod is there amongst the stars, patiently waiting for us to rediscover her.

☾☽

Messenger of the Dark

Raven Eye by Henry Percy

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.

Aspens In Fall by Henry Percy

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

Goddess Juno - Quattro Fontane in Rome
Goddess Juno – Quattro Fontane in Rome

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