“Unstiffen your supple body. Unchatter your quiet mind. Unfreeze your fiery heart.” – Celeste West
I have known it all along.
I’ve known it since my fingers tingled reading The Mists of Avalon for the first time. But then I put the book away, afraid of where there was room for goddesses and magic in my good Christian life.
I’ve known it since I read my first SARK book, tucked up in bed and breathing differently for the first time. But then I put the book on my bookshelf and decided I was not an artist after all.
I have known it since my friend Carla showed me her tattoo of a woman giving birth and something about the symbol stuck with me so deeply that I can draw that image to this day. But then I became afraid of how true she was to herself, myself by comparison small and afraid.
I have known it since I picked up a big black book and read about Women Who Run with the Wolves. My soul responded and I heard the roar for the first time that would echo through my days forever after. But then I experienced profound grief that made me switch off and question myself and disconnect from most people for a long, long time.
I have known it, but definitions and stereotypes made me question everything: Woman? Witch? God? Goddess? Sacred? Feminine? Heroine? Queen? Faery? Dark? Light? Magic? Spirituality? Religion? How could I – a ‘good girl’ – find my path amongst those trees?
I have been writing and living and reading around and around it for a long time now. Every time I got close to touching it, my fingers longingly toying with my pen, knowing that I was capable of saying more, I would retreat to the haven of familiarity and safety.
But it hasn’t given up on me, and now, as I get closer and closer to the centre, it has begun to follow me around. Images like the one on this door knocker, words tumbling towards me from pages and blogs and meetings with remarkable people all seem to be pointing to the same place.
Sacred. Feminine. Divine. Beautiful.
Home.
there is so much that is un-acknowledged, hovering like shadows of the past, and stories that need to be told about this subject. Like you, I feel it too, but often retreat to familiarity. I have just embarked on my fine art MA because I want to explore the stories of myths and fairy tales that have existed for years that have helped form the identity and images for women . . . I think there are many new stories that need to be told and I can’t wait to explore this subject.
Thanks for sharing. I often find that when I start on a ‘journey’ I see re-inforcements of it everywhere like you say.
Amelia.x
Your writing here is really beautiful.
This is such a subject, a deep subject. And it gets passed over, or written off by most of the world. In school, doing my minor for religious studies was about the last time other than in books, I ever knew of anyone really speaking of the feminine aspect of Spirit in a real way. Now as a mom to a tiny woman, I try to teach her about the truth that God is– and in my mind can NOT BE– only male, if as the Bible says, WE were created in Gods image…How in thoe world did it happen that half the humans on this planet are thought to be what? After thoughts of the creator? Oh yes, guess we need SOMEone to grow and birth new people, hmm, might as well be this animal? Really?!
No. No way.
But yes, it almost feels like taking a “risk” to depart from what we are taught in church. I think this is part of what I found as a kid in Catholic chruch– Mary. The “Holy Mother”. It wasn’t exactly right… but it was the closest thing, you know? And the women saints, and mystics.
Do you read the magazine, Sage Woman?
🙂
I. Love. This.
xoxo