Ancient Dreaming

Dreamer of Malta, 3000 BCE

“Excavators uncovered one of Malta’s most famous Neolithic sculptures, the “Sleeping Lady” of the Hypogeum, off the main hall. She reclines peacefully on her side, head in hand…This sculpture and another one shown lying on her stomach on a couch reminds us of initiation and healing rites known in later classical times. During these various classical ceremonies, the initiate spent a night in the temple (or cave or other remote place). The initiate experienced a night of visions and dreams, with spiritual or physical healing taking place…This rite probably derived from Neolithic practices that likened sleeping in a cave, temple, or underground chamber to slumbering in the goddess’ uterus before spiritual reawakening. For the living, such a ritual brought physical healing and spiritual rebirth. For the dead, burial within underground chambers, shaped and colored like the uterus, represented the possibility of regeneration through the goddess’ symbolic womb.

~Marijac Gimbutas,
The Living Goddesses

Love Your Mama Audio Recording

Here is an audio recording of the Love Your Mama Event I held earlier today:

Take a guided dream journey in the shamanic style and ask the land and waters how you can help. Call on the Celtic Goddess Danu – the ancient, primordial mother of all things – and ask for guidance.

How can you be of service to Mama Earth? 
What does the land ask of you?
What do the waters have to share?
How can you tend to the needs of Mother Danu / Pachamama / Gaia on Earth Day and every day?

Mother Goddess Danu

It seems fitting to share Goddess Danu, the Celtic Mother Goddess associated with the earth, the elements, fertility and abundance on St. Patrick’s Day.

Great primordial mother Danu birthed all things, including the Gods. She has always been here. Goddess Danu holds all things and presides over all stages of life, death and rebirth.

It is said that Mother Danu passed on some of her magic and wisdom to members of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the original tribe of Ireland. The tribe’s name literally means ‘the peoples of the goddess Danu”.

As an elemental Nature Goddess, Danu is present in the soil and stone and waters of our Earth. She whispers her wisdom on the wind.

You can connect with Danu by sitting with, and listening to wild, uncivilized nature.

Grá mór (Big Love)

☘️

#celtic
#Irish
#danu
#goddess
#primordial
#elemental
#mother
#sacredfeminine
#herstorymatters

Image: waterfall in Glencar Ireland
by Nancy Lankston

The Coming of Spring

Brigid by Laura Tempest Zakroff

Goddess Brigid is honored and celebrated at Imbolc in early Frebriary.

Brigid was born at sunrise with a flame of light shooting from her flaming red hair. Her sacred fire represents divine inspiration, warmth, safety, and home.

Brigid is also known to be a great healer and protector of life. Ancient wells honoring her are still found in Ireland and Scotland. People have prayed and left offerings at her wells for thousands of years. Their waters hold healing powers.

Ancient Nature Goddess Brigid brings the light of spring. It is said that flowers bloom wherever she walks.

May Brigid bless the house wherein you dwell
Bless every fireside every wall and door
Bless every heart that beats beneath its roof
Bless every hand that toils to bring it joy
Bless every foot that walks its portals through
May Brigid bless the house that shelters you.

🔥

#brigid
#fire
#water
#goddess
#protectress
#sacredfeminine
#herstorymatters

Brigid’s Well, Kildare
Photo by NancyL

Holy Her

Goddess of Laussel, c. 22,000-18,000 BCE

“Before the shrinking of the Feminine was the Goddess—and all that is split in our own lives was in harmony in Hers. She was profoundly in Her body. Her body itself was sacred. In the Old Religion, body and spirit were one. She was seen as substantial, as essentially embodied. Her thighs, Her Belly, Her breasts were generous, Her physical strength apparent. We miss the beauty of such an image, we who have been taught to measure ourselves endlessly. Too fat, too thin, too flat, too wrinkled. Our bodies are never good, and in themselves. We must deny our naturalness to see beauty.

What we learn to reject was once holy. What we learn to hide behind closed doors was once celebrated in the open. Blood was sacred to the Goddess—menstrual blood. Some of Her images were painted red between the legs. What some of us and many of our mothers learned to see as ‘the curse’ was once seen as the Blessing, women’s particular creative magic. The blood that flows of itself and not from a wounding was thought to be the very source of life. One early creation tale stated than when the Mother created man and woman, She made them from a mixture of Her menstrual blood and clay. Moreover, every woman carried some of the Goddess’s sacred substance and participated in Her ability to create life.”


~Kathie Carlson,
In Her Image: The Unhealed
Daughter’s Search for Her Mother

🌙

The World Stops

god is a mother
and with that
sentence
the world stops
the world always stops
when woman and
divine
commingle
as if the
feminine
dilutes the
miraculous
when in reality
it embodies it
when jesus turns water
to wine
they clap
but when women turn breasts
to milk
they cringe
a broken man’s body
is celebrated each sunday
while a broken woman’s body
is just hidden away
and it’s no wonder
that mother is a word
used by men
to demonize those
who don’t claim the name
and weaponized to shame
those who step out of line
because
their ideal
woman
plays the role of
nurturer and silencer
in pews
built and led by them
but
when god
becomes mother
she is neither quiet
or compliant
she leads confidently
she questions authority
she commands respect
which might be the problem
for mother god
did not gather us up
carelessly
but took her time with it
she fed us milk
birthed our souls
and broke her body
and the permanence
can be uncomfortable
and to disentangle god
from motherhood
Is impossible
but
to disentangle god
from womanhood
is sinful
because seeing god as mother
is one step closer
to seeing god in me
and it’s in that
i am truly
born again

~Kaitlin Hardy Shetler

🌙

Image: A new mother nurses her baby
unknown photographer

A God(dess) Who Bleeds

Artist unknown

we need a god who bleeds now
a god whose wounds are not
some small male vengeance
some pitiful concession to humility
a desert swept with dryin marrow in honor of the lord
we need a god who bleeds
spreads her lunar vulva & showers us in shades of scarlet
thick & warm like the breath of her
our mothers tearing to let us in
this place breaks open
like our mothers bleeding
the planet is heaving mourning our ignorance
the moon tugs the seas
to hold her/to hold her
embrace swelling hills/i am
not wounded i am bleeding to life
we need a god who bleeds now
whose wounds are not the end of anything

~Ntozake Shange

Uterus Blooming I by Catherine Suleiman