Sacred Feminine - Wise Woman

You hear a lot these days about the "sacred feminine" but how do we interpret this? I think the sacred feminine is the soul of women, the primal part of us that is who we are at our roots. Women have a natural born intuition, a sensing, a knowing, a being that has become lost over the years of patriarchy and masculine domination. Yes, masculine domination in the world. As civilization developed, the essence of the feminine was lost and the world became a place where feminine uniqueness became subordinate in largely male created civilization. The world is now off balance, out of kilter, in deranged order.

Progress has been made with feminist and womanist efforts, but even these causes are somehow trying to compete in a man's world, on a masculine playing field. As glass ceilings are broken by women in the political and business worlds, has women's energy become more "womanly" or just a female version of male energy? Do young girls strive to become the women there were created to be or strive to be women coveted by men or women in male persona to garner the same opportunities as men? The masculine - feminine off balance is subtle, almost unrecognizable these days.

We, as women, need to dig through the bones of lost woman to find our primal selves. Find her, find her innate wisdom and being. Bring her forward; let her bloom. This is soul work. Hard work. We need to reconstruct ourselves into ourselves. I believe the future evolution of earth depends on it.

Inside each and every woman is a wise woman who knows what only women know. She comes from the eternal feminine divine, the circle of all women who ever lived or will ever live. She is our grandmothers who were and our daughters to be. She's there weeping in our souls and longing to speak to us.

I found a wonderful piece of art by Margaret Carpenter Arnett titled "Wise Woman." She has graciously allowed me to post this piece here. You can visit Margaret at http://www.margaretcarpenter.com/. You will be enriched by her soul.

Women Drumming... Soul Stuff

San Diego Women"s Drum Circle at the Hillcrest Book and Literacy Fair, June 10th, 2007.

Teish's Goddess Lore

A clip from the Women and Spirituality trilogy from Alive Mind.

We are all one in the same soul stuff.

Close Encounter

She who spins the world on her little finger, leaned
over and picked me up like a baby. Chants rose
through the night and bells tolled in my tiny heart as
She whispered incomprehensible syllables into my
ear, intoxicating me with her scent of jasmine, rose
and vanilla, pressing the ash of a million melted
corpses between my brows, branding me with a
third eye that flooded with cosmic Light and purified
me of my past. A smile of bliss spread across my
soul. Jeanine Canan

Yellow Woman

My family knows to paint my face yellow when I pass to the other side so that the Great Mother knows that I am a woman.

I am Kochinnenako and I dance on the sacred circle that surrounds my people. I am a Woman’s Woman, the spirit of all women.
I encircle all women from the first who emerged at the beginning of time to the last to pass over at the end of time.
I am the beginning and the future.
I was thought into existence by Thought Woman. The Great Corn Mother, Irriaku, breathed her yellow life into me. Red Spider Woman weaved together the fabric that connects me to the world. I continue to exist through the blue Old Woman who tends the heart fire. I exist through all of the Grandmothers of the light who bring us Dawn and who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life though and into inner and outer worlds.
I exist through… Radiant movements, Powerful songs, Essential stories.
I freely and effortlessly move in and out of the hearts, minds and spirit of all women. I live among the mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, singers, dancers, basket weavers, fire tenders, rain makers, bone singers, pottery makers, rush gatherers, root pickers, healers and wind walkers.
I have the ability to recover ancient values, restore life and hope and I sing to greet the coming day.
I whisper in the ears of daughters to come away with me, to let me sing them to the other side.
To the side of blossoms and of reason.
To the side of abundance and wisdom.
I am Kochinnenako and I dance on the sacred circle that surrounds my people.

Come away with me.
Leave your home to come home with me.
This way. This way.
My adventures are extra-ordinary.
My journeys are of awareness and imagination. I will take you to the other side so that you may return to your village with your baskets filled with balance and prosperity. I will nourish you and quench your thirst. I am resourceful and you will be safe.
We will flee into the juniper forests to the mossy sandstone edge of the spring. We will lounge sleepily under the cottonwood trees and pick cattails and wild watercress. We will get close to the ground and listen to the whispers of the snakes as they reveal secret information directly from Mother Earth. We will skip with frogs and toads, the beloved children of rain clouds.
And we will laugh… and laugh… and laugh… and laugh.
We will perch ourselves on a rocky island in a sea of tall grass and smoke the sacred pipe as we watch masked dancers make love to White Buffalo Woman. Her four winds will comb our hair from the front, back and side to side. And we will wrap ourselves in snow white blankets dropped from the moon and gaze at the stars through a thousand eyes. We will wait in the center of the universe for Kurena, the sunrise, and drink from her rays.
We will thunder after injustice and cry clean tears into our dirty waters. We will breathe in dirty air and clean it with our very own lungs.
I will take you deep into the mountains to take Ka’tsinas as lovers and become brides down under the earth where heat rushes like a flash flood touching every inch of you.
We will give birth to twin sons with magnetic forces and leave them in the company of their fathers.
We will have sovereignty over our own lives.
I am Kochinnenako and I dance on the sacred circle that surrounds my people.

I will return you to your clan with the loveliness of passion, daring strength and fearless sensuality.
I will show you that true beauty is really only harmony and health walking side-by-side and you will be a strong and sturdy woman. We will wrap your legs in soft buckskin to protect them from the hard work. They will look like tree trunks, muscular and robust.
I will teach you how to handle ladders with great ease and sniff out good mud.
Clear water will pass through you and feed your creativity like a wild river that runs underground. Your creativity has the potential to feed a continent and one creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone.
And you will be filled with love.
You are Kochinnenako and you will dance along the sacred circle that surrounds all people.

Rochelle Bayless Simon

On Women Who Run with Wolves

When women hear the term wild woman, it is like "the fairy-tale knock at the door of the deep female psyche" and "an old, old memory is stirred and brought back to life. The memory is of our absolute, undeniable, and irrevocable kinship with the wild feminine, a relationship which may have become ghosty from neglect, buried by overdomestication, outlawed by the surrounding culture, or no longer understood anymore. We may have forgotten her names," Estés writes, "but in our bones we know her, we yearn toward her; we know she belongs to us and we to her. A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, and roving."

In her book, Estés explains that she uses the word wild to mean living "a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries." She stresses that balance is necessary and good, and that women should beware of overdoing it in any area of their lives, even in creative work.

The wild and instinctual nature means "to establish territory, to find one's pack, to be in one's body with certainty and pride regardless of the body's gifts and limitations, to speak and act in one's behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one's cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as we can."

Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Imagine a Woman

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past's influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.
Imagine yourself as this woman.

“Imagine a Woman” © Patricia Lynn Reilly
http://www.openwindowgallery.com/