Gaia's Agony

Upon the iron ground she lies

hands grasping the earth

to hold what cannot

be held or bound.

For what is sought

cannot be found

beneath this iron land.

She lies unmoving, blind

her face upwards

searching the sky

where in her darkness

no light breaks through.

Nor where the wings of prey

cut through the air

to scream

aaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

A sacrifice

from herself to herself

sustaining her being

with her own body.

In the space between the earth, 

hard, unyielding

and the space between the sky, 

predatory, unforgiving

she must forge her shield

from the fires of her own

surrender..

Upon the iron ground

beneath the iron sky.

Photo credit: Selma Sevenhuijsen

Cycle

For one brief day

my misty blue

fluttering veils

reflect the sky

in which I dance

Velvet blue

I wander midst

the flowers of

the realm of death

requiem

First egg am I

caterpillar

nymph am I

transformed

butterfly 

In pearl grey light

urgently quivering

with life, with death

I tear myself free

from the earth

I glide the land

through rings

of light and shade

and sense

the twilight calling

Knowing my time

is ending soon

I will fly north

lay off my wings

become a soul once more

Dazzling Darkness

The author Ursula Le Guin describes how she was once given a box by her young daughter. Without opening it, she asked her daughter what the box contained. ‘Darkness’, was the secretive reply! 

If we think of God in terms of either light or darkness, then we are almost sure to think of God as light. But to the Gnostics, God was described by the term ‘Dazzling Darkness’. To us the term seems self-contradictory, for surely it is light which is ‘dazzling’? This description of the Gnostics seems to function partly in the same way as a Zen koan – a contradictory statement the contemplation of which pushes us towards new enlightened realities. ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ is perhaps the best-known koan.

For the Gnostics, God is not the Christian creator god - the ‘God the father’. God is beyond this, something truly immeasurable, unknowable. If we even describe what God is, then what God ‘is’, is already changed by our attempts at some sort of a description. To describe this unknowable form of God, this ‘God which is beyond’, we perhaps need one word only. That word is ‘potential’. Think of darkness. Like the box which Ursula Le Guin’s daughter presented to her, we cannot see what it might contain. It might contain anything – and everything. We can neither describe nor limit what we cannot see, what we cannot know. Now we can understand the way in which God can be described as ‘Darkness’.

But why is darkness - of all things! - ‘dazzling’? ‘Dazzling’ describes the limitless potential which the darkness of God contains. To the mystics, this ‘holy dark’ was truly perceived as dazzling: something scintillating with rich creative possibilities. The mystics witnessed this glittering darkness in their contemplations (we would use the term ‘meditations’). God is indeed a ‘dazzling darkness’ out of which all else flows. Our inability to imagine what that darkness is, and what it contains, says something about our own limitations. But we ourselves emerged from that darkness.   

Glass perfume bottle 'Dans la Nuit' by René Jules Lalique

The Sanctuary of Emptiness

We tend to think of a sanctuary as being a place. Even when we talk of our own inner sanctuary, it is still thought of as being a place inside ourselves. But what if we as women find ourselves with no other refuge than emptiness? What if we feel that emptiness is all which we have left? But there is nowhere that is not in some way a sanctuary – even emptiness. And finding the courage to take refuge in this emptiness can become the greatest bond of solidarity between women.

The very fabric of our physical being – our DNA – is passed predominantly through the female mitochondrial DNA from one generation to the next. And yet in so-called developed societies it is the male side which is the recognised lineage. Australian Aboriginal society recognises its lineage from mother to daughter. Did these wise people instinctively know something which Western culture has suppressed for the sake of preserving male dominance?

So much of Western thinking has been deeply influenced by religious standards found in the so-called ‘religions of the Book’, taken to be Christianity, Judaism and Islam. All three of these religions are male-dominant, even to the extent of erasing any traces of female deities from their scriptures. Judaism grew out of beliefs which had both male and female creative deities, with female deities such as Ashtoreth sharing creative powers. But a reading of the Old Testament will now only reveal vague glimpses of this goddess. All direct references to her have been deleted by subsequent male hands. And in spite of a contemporary shift to explain the deity as being gender-neutral, God is still very much ‘God the Father’.

Where is Ashtoreth? Where is Sophia? Where is Shekinah? The shift to monotheism has only succeeded in deifying a supreme being who is unmistakably male. But Jesus himself sought to break the mould of his day by including women among his disciples. Salome and Martha were among his circle – and Mary Magdalene occupied a principal place at his side.

But the spirit endures, and the Spirit is female. It was Eve in her wisdom who caused Adam to fall. For how can the soul progress without knowing life and death? How can the soul gain ground without experiencing a human life, with all its joys and its pain? A blissful existence in Eden had little to offer the soul, and Eve knew it, even if Adam did not. And yet for millennia it is Eve who has shouldered the blame for the expulsion from Eden. In the eyes of male thinking, it is the woman who prompted the fall into sin. But it is the spirit – Eve – who showed the soul – Adam – the way to progress. 

And it is that progress which now needs to be heeded. All things serve their purpose, and the suppression of millennia is one side of the coin which is now beginning to show its other face. “Look” says the Spirit, “the new world has arrived. The landscape is changing around you.” And it is changing because women took refuge in their emptiness: in the last place which had been left to them.  Because in the end soul needs spirit, and spirit needs soul, and this is the true marriage, the sacred union.   

Invocation

Invocation

In the cracked and barren wastes

that always must be passed through

to reach the Promised Land,

we invoke you, we call to you:

Light of Darkness, Solace of Light,

Moon which guides us, Sun which blesses us,

Giver of Life, we beseech you.

In this land dry without relief

we give thanks to you

for the waters beneath these sands.

We give thanks that you are those waters.

in this land without trees

we give thanks in gratitude 

for the unexpected fruit plucked from nothing.

In this land without sustenance

we give thanks that you are the fruit

which nourishes and sustains us.

In this land without shade

we give thanks that you are the shade

which shelters and cools us.

Through your grace we discover

that this waste land bears its own seeds of liberation

before even the Promised Land is reached;

before even the taste of the old land left far behind

with its towers and temples, its fields and vineyards,

its giving wells of water, has faded from our memory.

We invoke you, Blessed One of the water-jar,

of the amphora, of the wine-press,

of the wheat, of the grain,

of the songs and laughter of our children’s games

as they played in the fields,

of the smiles of our elders

who once watched them playing

and whose smiles remain in our hearts

even though they themselves are faded into air.

In the desert of emancipation we call on you, Blessed Shekinah.

Give your breath to the breathless ones

who feel that they cannot journey farther.

Grant your sanctuary to those women

who are forced to leave their homes,

who are fleeing with their children

to seek refuge in tents and shelters.

Give your blessings to those women

who bury their own talents away for the sake of others.

Light the way for those women who search for themselves,

and imagine that they search in vain.

Enfold these women in your compassionate light,

give them their own voice once more

give them the power to sing

give them the power to believe that they can do so.

It is to Your spirit that we pray, Blessed Shekinah.

We pray for all women who are captive and long for release,

we pray for all women who are suffering through their race,

or through abuse, or through violation,

or through social or religious customs

which deny them their voice, and even their very femininity.

We pray for all women who are suffering for their beliefs,

or because of the beliefs of others.

We pray for all women who are suffering for their ideals,

or for their dreams unable to be realised,

or for no other reason than that they are female.

We commend all these women to your grace, Blessed Shekinah,

may they find solace in the shadow of your shining wings.

This Invocation has  been created as a video, set to the music of Hildegard von Bingen and can now be seen on my post:

Invocation: Hildegard von Bingen ~ Anonymous 4

The Ecstasy of Icarus

Daedalus has already created a legend. He has engineered and built an ingenious mechanical cow for Pasiphae, queen of Crete, to climb inside and couple with her favourite bull. He has designed the famed Labyrinth: that bewildering maze of passageways and corridors in which callous Theseus, hero in deed but deserting the fair Ariadne who had provided him with the means to carry out that deed, had slain Pasiphae’s grotesque progeny, the monstrous Minotaur.

This master craftsman is already a legend. But to create a myth, he needs his son Icarus. To create a myth, he needs something which Icarus possesses but which he himself lacks. To create a myth, it will take an extreme bravura gesture: a gesture of bold youth which calculating, rational, cautious old Daedalus is incapable of making.

And so Daedalus busies himself with the preparations for his most ambitious invention. He stitches and glues. He fashions feathers and wooden struts and wax. He makes wings for mortal man to fly like the gods. And when these great wings are ready, he and his beloved son strap them on, march to the edge of the Cretan cliffs, and launch themselves into the blue unknown.

Choose the safety of the middle way, the craftsman tells his son. Too low, and the waves will claim you. Too high, and the fierce sun will melt the wax, and you will tumble to earth. Choose the middle way. But it is the nature of youth to be impetuous. And it is the nature of Icarus to go beyond, to seek an ecstasy of knowing which his cautious father is forever denied.

Higher, ever higher, flies Icarus in the ecstasy of this cruel light. He wants to know the sun’s bright secrets, to know the waves’ restless turmoil, to understand the flames’ voices, and to feel their tongues lick his face. He knows a passion beyond the experience of any middle way as he begins to fall upwards, ever upwards, for ecstasy knows neither up nor down. He wants to go beyond. There, at the apogee of his flight, he becomes just another spark of light thrown out by the sun. And far below he will learn all which the journeying waves have to teach him.

Do not mourn for Icarus. His body will be carried safely to shore by the waiting sea nymphs who, themselves being immortal, recognise this fallen son as one of their own.

   'Icarus' by Herbert James Draper

The Light of Pure Consciousness

The Light of Pure Consciousness 

                                                                 

Dive deep into the ocean of being

Enter the temple of Stillness

Through the silent gateway

Between thoughts

Examine the ‘I’ and its entourage:

Sensory perceptions, feelings, 

thoughts, concepts, beliefs

Hold them, one by one

In the mirror of the inner eye

And ask

“Where do you come from?

Where do you go?

Are you who ‘I’ am?

And if you choose to vanish

Do ‘I’ remain?”

Dissolve all things

Completely and utterly

Into nothingness

Then ask

“Who am I?”

All will fall away

Only the One shall stay

It is

Awareness

Primordial

Before thought

Before form

Before time itself

Luminous, self-sufficient and untouched

The phenomenal world arises from nothingness

And returns to nothingness

Each moment

In the light of Pure Consciousness

by Joseph Rundle

The Moon

I am all that you dream.

Mountains of amber and of antimony

shorelines of crystal

more real than all the dusty plains 

and snaking grey rilles of reality.

Adrift in the night

Your dreams are what created me

your dreams formed my every grain:

silver-edged, howl-begotten,

in ancient times eaten by a dragon

I always restored myself:

my triumph gave you the fight 

to do the same.

Once your earth and I were one.

But violence gave birth to me:

tore me away, destroyed our unity.

Now I circle, collecting dreams,

myths, monsters, goddesses,

maidens more beautiful than words,

heroes and hunters of the night.

Neither wolf, nor lover, nor madman

could miss me.

They gaze upon my silver

to howl, or to love,

or to dream with greater passion,

or to take comfort

in the refuge of a small insanity,

or just to go beyond.

I give them wings

I give them longing

I give them my reassuring constancy.

Still a monthly meal for a dragon

I fight my way free.

Painting: Gazing at te Moon by Jan Sam

Stolen

Stolen

Before you were my daughter come into the world,

before you were even born,

you were promised to the darkness

deep beneath my giving earth.

I never knew

what one brother had promised to another,

I never knew

what great Zeus had promised to dark Hades:

I never knew.

Now you have been taken.

Perhaps a part of you went all-knowing

because your soul already knew

what was necessary:

the abduction of the self

the rape of the soul

the violence which comes with transformation

the violence that is necessary for separation

from me, from your mother.

And so for me begins a new state of being:

A new silence, like no silence I have known.

A trifle: a handful of pomegranate seeds

sealed your fate forever:

my child, you are now in Hades' world
and his realm is not mine. 
I, Demeter, who am mother to the earth itself

have had my motherhood stolen from me.

Now my own earth knows my rage
now the dry soil cracks with grief,

now Autumn has come in Spring:

new leaves wither and die in bud,

birds fall silent, fields lie fallow,

and I, the Mater Creatrix, rule a waste land.

Where are you, my daughter,
living out your shadow life
in the dark lands far beneath my feet?
Do you still live,
or are you now a shade among shades?
Where are you, my changed one?
Where are you, my Persephone? 

Gust of Wind by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer

The Cloud-Hidden

The Cloud-Hidden

I am cloud-cast.

This veil of mists and morning light

conceals my face from your view.

Through closed eyes you will see me

in your wanderings,

in your reverie of thoughts

while you never stir from your room.

Dare to travel far

by never taking a single step

for only by not moving

will you stand a chance of finding me,

only by not moving

can you journey to be with me.

I, who desire nothing

am all that you have ever desired

I, whom you will never see

am all that you have ever seen.

I am hidden for your sake.

My beauty

would make you afraid.

My beauty

is more than you could stand.

My beauty

would make you cry

were you ever to look upon my face

as would my love for you.

So why should you journey

to find me?

Why should you journey

to be with me?

How could I leave you

when I am always with you?

How could I not love you

when I look upon you?

I am hidden in these mists of morning

I am these mists

I am lost among the silent stars

I am those stars

I smile in the sun’s warmth

I am that sun

I am all that you have ever needed

I am you.

If I Had Something That Was Me To Give

If I had something that was me to give..

If there was one piece of advice that was mine to give because of the life I have lived it would be to merge with all aspects of the Earth.

Merge with a tree and know what it feels like to be a tree, feel your roots go deep touching the roots of the trees and plants around you, know what it feels like to share of yourself in a place no one else can see, yet reflects on the outside world so beautifully.

Merge with the water, run free, talk constantly like a babbling brook, enter into the stillness of the deep, roar like white water rapids, go places impulse leads, trickle down the path of least resistance, throw yourself off of the edge of your world with abandonment, not knowing where you will end up, be the water falling into a new world and discover that even there you are still who you are.

Merge with that which you are scared of, merge with two of those tectonic plates pushing against each other.. opposing views make mountains come forth.

Merge with the volcano and surf the lava to the center of the Earth.

Merge with Thunderbeings and sing their song.   Feel what they feel when their lightning strikes the Earth.  It makes protoplasms upon her body that looks like the roots of a tree going down into the Earth, touching the Crystal people, adding charge to their creativity, to the mathematical reason for their being.  In that moment they are one with the outside world, a portal, a doorway is opened..  Merge with all of her.  Do not be afraid to see what she has to tell you about how it should be.

Do not be afraid to get swept away by emotions that travel in different directions. Be the tornado, and be the beautiful sunset that reveals its face at the end of a tornado kind of day.

Be the seed inside the shell, struggle to break free and become all that you can be…  and when you break free let go of the shell (the memory of being confined) and just be.  Grow like you were meant to grow.  Turn your face towards the light and feel the love that is coming to you. Feel the clouds share their rain with you, the soil share its nutrients… and grow, grow, grow.

When disaster strikes give yourself permission to feel sorrow, but merge with the birds and ask them what they do and they will say, “it is time to rebuild”.  Going forth we find them building a new nest.  We find them singing like they do, gathering food..  They do not just sit and hold their sorrow inside of them for the rest of their lives. They say, ‘We go on. We rebuild.'

All of the rules for how we are supposed to walk through this dimension have been written upon the Earths body. There are many trees that grow in the forest, together in harmony they make sacred sharing of how we should be. All the rules for how to walk here in this world we know were written upon the Earths body.

Merge with the Earth, see the bigger picture, embrace the bigger picture.  Then there is no need for prejudice, for war, for hate.

There are opposites that work against each other, but even they have their place in the grand design.  When the two winds blow against each have a big emotion, but when again you find that other wind is somewhere else, then be the gentle wind that sneaks up and kisses a friend on the cheek..

Merge with the Earth..  if I had one piece of advice to give for guidance, that is what it would be. Merge with the Earth. 

Do not be afraid to hug something different than yourself.


My thanks to Earthen Girl for her permission to repost this post from her blog https://earthengirl.wordpress.com

Painting The Planting by Sandra Bierman