I Run with an Old Priestess (poem)

I run with an old Priestess, Dana

Through an awning of magnolia and fern

A rainbow of our kind

Mirrors a path beyond the hillside

Where the Faery Folk entwine

She says she’s a Keeper of Ancient Rites

and bows to meet my ear

There is no magic without your heart,

So bless it always, my dear

As wind hisses through the Oaks

We find our garden grown Nature is our altar, roses of our will

We are temples of the Goddess,

Where the chalice always fills

Become the bud, become the bee Drink deep the nectar of the Sidhe

What worlds there are, what worlds shall be

Dana of the Silver Moon, Star of the Sea

---

When the Goddess Calls You: 6 Ways to Reclaim Your Goddess Power Within

There is a common belief that the Goddess exists outside of humanity, far off in a hidden temple yet to be discovered. Indeed, there are many independent deities who live beyond individual consciousness. However, the power of the Goddess, first and foremost, fully resides within, She is your divine life force energy.

The Goddess within is the sacred feminine Light Body, or “golden chalice”, which, when reclaimed and empowered, flows and emanates throughout your entire being. She is the primal catalyst for change and transformation as well as rejuvenation and healing. When activated, the once sleeping Goddess begins to spiral-dance with the dead and living aspects of your soul longing to return to Her arms.

When the Goddess calls, She is calling you to reclaim your own divinity, your birthright as a soul to evolve and expand into your highest potential in this lifetime. Many who hear Her call fear She may ask them to lose their identity and free will.

She may demand too much time and energy, or be completely overbearing and expect them to be pristine mirror reflections of Her image, nothing more. Some of them are intimidated by the Dark primordial Goddess, who often appears as a devouring, villainous old hag when misunderstood, demonized and repressed by society at large. Or perhaps She’s less than God, a smiling Mother with no real agency of Her own.

These reactions arise when you believe the Goddess has absolute, punishing, power over you, or no power at all, and although conditioned beliefs are understandable, it’s important to know how deeply rooted they are in humanity’s long history of distorted patriarchal control and desacralization of the feminine.

When the Goddess calls, She isn't asking you to give your power away, She asks you to harness your own. There is a refinement of your energy rising forward to be embodied and integrated even more. It’s always up to you to choose this path or not, as nothing can be forced against your will. The conscious mind may feel you wouldn’t choose certain lessons or experiences, but your soul knows when greater access to your divinity is yearning to reawaken.

6 ways to reclaim your inner Goddess:

1. Honor your worth. As cliche as it sounds, self-love is the foundation for any path devoted to awakening. Reclaim the Goddess by reclaiming your value and know that who you are is absolutely perfect right here, right now. This can be challenging and requires heartfelt dedication to remind yourself how innately cherished you are in the universe.

Remember that each time you attempt to shift from worthlessness to worthiness, you are reclaiming the Goddess even more. A simple way to develop self-love is to engage in a daily routine that nourishes your well-being such as getting a full night’s sleep, eating a whole and balanced diet, exercising, meditating, and spending time in nature.

Your routine is a clear indicator of where you tend to self-sabotage or abandon your needs. Take note of when this arises and be gentle toward yourself. This is all a practice. When you shine in your worth, the Goddess shines through you.

2. Validate your innermost desires. One of the most powerful ways to reclaim your inner Goddess is to validate your passions and desires. The Goddess is a Creatrix, and in order to create, there must first be a strong desire to do so. True desire is not selfish or indulgent, it is the generative energy of love.

Without an impulse or longing from our hearts, there is no life, yet most women feel guilty for pursuing anything outside of work roles or family obligations. Start small if you have to, immerse yourself in things you love doing for at least an hour a day, this is where your Goddess energy blossoms and more inspiration comes to you. Release any expectation for certain results to manifest right away. The joy and sense of play that flows through you is where the Goddess really comes alive!

3. Observe cycles in Nature and see Her rhythms reflected in yourself. The Goddess is cyclic and ever-changing. Just as the moon phases shift and seasons transform, our breath, menstrual cycles, and rites of passage are all governed by the endless spiral of life-death-rebirth. As we find ourselves reflected in the same universal pattern, we reclaim the inner Goddess in all of Her manifestations, Her many guises of Light, Dark and In-between, we reclaim our true nature as Wild. Pay attention to the parts of Nature that speak to you the most. Are you drawn to the ocean, mountains, or forest? Is there an animal or plant that you particularly feel a kinship with? These connections can help you deepen your communication with the natural world as well as your respect for being vitally interwoven with the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World, with Mother Earth Herself.

4. Listen to your intuition. Take time to get quiet and receptive enough to hear any guidance your higher self is seeking to share with you. The Goddess speaks in symbols and subtle energy. The more you engage your intuitive abilities, the more the Goddess is restored and balanced enough to soften the overactive mind and ego that usually runs rampant in our lives. I share more about the receptivity of the Feminine and tips on how to develop this state in my previous blog post: Feminine Receptivity: A Channel to Higher Worlds.

5. Discover Goddesses that resonate with your soul. Create a list of qualities or archetypal energies you carry at this time (astrological associations may help) and then research Goddesses who either match these specific themes or who hold an important energy that can help you balance and reintegrate your own. You may feel drawn to a Goddess and have no idea why. Trust this too.

Read Her mythology and history, learn from devotees and priestesses who honor Her. If you aren’t able to find a Goddess, what types of women inspire you? What energies do they embody that you would like to refine within you? Although these activities may seem rather simple on the surface, they can do so much to reactivate your own inner Goddess power.

For example, I naturally hold the healer/peacemaker archetype which makes it difficult to maintain boundaries and sovereign relationships at times. I find Warrior Goddesses such as The Morrigan have helped me restore these less dominant qualities within myself. Again, this is less about finding a Goddess to worship or work with, although it can lead to that, but a direct way to see the Goddess represented as specific wellsprings of energy you can tap into within your own being.

6. Call Her back. A simple yet decisive way to answer the Goddess and to reclaim Her in your life is to call Her in. Light a single candle (any color will do) in a sacred space and open your heart to Her mystery. You can pray, chant, sing and dance, write a letter, invite her to walk in nature with you. Anything that feels authentic and genuine to you will be exactly what is needed to deepen your divine relationship and power within.

[My personal altar for the Divine Feminine]

The Sophian Journey of the Soul

Desire is the primal energy, and that energy is erotic: the attraction of lover to beloved, of planet to star, the lust of electron for proton. Love is the glue that holds the world together.

-Starhawk

The multiplicity of Source falls into a spiral of time and space. Western/gnostic mysticism delineates this “fall” as the Fall of Sophia, or Feminine consciousness, with fractals of Her cosmic wisdom descending into physical form. The life pulse of Her original magnitude exists in each of us, as it is never and can never be broken. Her immanent nature, all prima materia, (spirit hidden in matter) resides in the many as well as the one.

Historically, the fall of consciousness is a negative narrative in which the Feminine loses her power and must suffer the consequences of evil doing. The most recognizable culprit of women’s “wickedness” is Eve, who in taking a bite of the forbidden fruit, is forever cursed and banished from paradise. What’s confusing is that she is tempted by a snake-- the universal symbol of wisdom and healing energy. How is this possible?

If we re-envision Eve’s mythic-narrative from a gnostic point of view we can reclaim her as the Progenitrix of human consciousness, the “Mother of All Living.” Eve, or Havah, in Hebrew, can also be translated as "to be and become life." Biting into the forbidden apple, she honors the courageous desire to birth knowledge into flesh (earth realm) rather than remain in the Garden of Eden (spiritual/celestial realm). All potentials once unified with source-creation become uniquely embodied in skin and bone. "The effect of the fall was generation and sexuality. Eve was the gateway of generation" (Matthews, 2001).

Eve's descent becomes the initiatory pathway of making the unconscious conscious. Much like the Sumerian Goddess Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, who chooses to descend down the sevenfold stair to meet her elder sister, Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld. In order to remember her true nature she is stripped of false beliefs at every level, she dies to her old self and is transformed by a wisdom that can only be found in death. Rather than despise humanity as inherently shameful or evil, may we too find our soul's journey through life-death-rebirth to be a sacred process of returning back to who we really are.

The ego perceives wisdom as mysterious, veiled or secret, even though it is our divine blueprint. Due to this seeming paradox, our journeys become a mirror image of Sophia's original fall/descension. In order to see beyond the veil of such illusion, we re-experience Her spiral passage as an ascension that includes some type of egoic death in order to know ourselves. As we awaken, our Shakti-feminine fire is said to rise through the seven chakras like a coiled serpent from the base of the spine. According to this perspective, enlightenment is a reunion with all aspects of the Self, Sophia consciousness, and ultimately our Spiritual heritage.

What lies at the heart of this ongoing dance, the rise and fall of the Feminine? I believe it is Sophia's love that endures through it all, and why it's so important to restore Her wisdom now. When the Feminine is exiled within us we are at odds with our true nature. We lose the ability to trust our innermost desires, to commune with Spirit and experience deeper harmony with others and all life. We can certainly see how this distortion plays out in the shadow of our personal and collective consciousness. Especially in times of extreme animosity, fear, and degradation of the Earth Herself, we know we are missing a profound relationship with the soul of our world and the abiding grace of Sophia.

Thank you for biting the seed

For birthing us into being

Great Mother of All Life

Eve, Eve, Eve

Thank you for falling

May we rise in your love

Great Wisdom Incarnate

Sophia, Sophia, Sophia

Sources: Don, Meghan (2016). The New Divine Feminine: Spiritual Evolution for a Woman's Soul.

Matthews, Caitlin (2001). Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom Bride of God. Starhawk (1999). The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess 20th Anniversary Edition.