A Prayer To Her

If you are here always, and a part of me, will you help me? Will you send me what it is I need to live, to survive, to create? I do not want to always be asking questions. I should be listening to the answers, knowing them within me.

Why have I been made this way if I was not meant to be this way?

We must learn to be thought 

by the gods, not to think them.

           ~Robert Bringhurst

Do you think me? Am I thought through you? Thought Woman—Creatrix—She-Who-Is. Please think through me, let your thoughts become my thoughts, calm and profuse.

Earth, teach me. Darkness, teach me. I want to learn from the ground beneath my feet. I want to descend, to fall below the rational, the known, to find the core, primordial ways of knowing—the earth/water/air—all-one knowing. The love that binds and holds all together, like a prayer muttered, an incantation, a mantra that chants the world’s being. In my dream is a circle, a wholeness, a wondering within the Mystery that is my own life, in-held … blessed and born into flesh. A circular dimension, womb-like, the yonic shape of eternity’s folds. Veiled from matter, yet behind it all, like a fire, a warmth that suffuses life.

The Wise Woman must assert herself, her knowledge and ways. Have courage, she says. We are returning. We are within you, held in blood and bone, in genes that speak of past lives, of who we were. You know us, like you know yourself, and we can speak through you, direct you towards fate, destiny, life that is full of living. You must trust us, must simply listen, and rebel against those who would belittle and silence. There is so much more you need to know, and can, if you open your heart, open bodymind to our voices. We are all around you, in the ground, in the air, in the trees and birds. We whisper on the wind, we weep in the rain. Water carries us far.

In the mountain there is a heart, a core of being that is yours. It belongs to all, a gift from earth to her people. An opening into the earth can be found, a bountiful hollow that is filled with source, filled with essence, elemental energy. You feel it within you, like a name, a word, a practice of living, open to life and spirit—inspired and enthused. She-Who-Is compels you to try, to keep trying, to live and love and create from your body, like a star, an essence-filled fleshly being, a life of triumph, of power with the Others. Shared. Opened. 

I feel you within me and want you to grow, to strengthen, to gift me with what it is I seek: A wellspring that flows endlessly, to guide me through life. A torrent of aliveness, like a blessing, a bounty, a cornucopia of gifts and nourishment.

Hagia Sophia, by Meinrad Craighead (1987)

There is a blade I must use to cut away extraneous matter, to destroy thoughts that deaden and constrain. Cut away all that is not truth, is not woman-thought, is not love for what is. I defy the patriarchs: I sing out my curse over their dead lands, their prisons of suffering and despair. We will escape, back into the wild, with wildness in our hearts to replace the drug of civilisation.

Carrying this torch, this light that endarkens, bringing what is missing to the world, I step beyond myself and towards what is necessary, what is desired by earth-fast stone, tree, the greening life and the waters. All hearts yearn for this—the drumbeat of being that dances inside everything—I hear it, feel it, beckon it. It will enliven me, consecrate my actions, so they burn with a power that has not been seen for centuries. To be part of the turning—come what may—is a privilege—one of pain and sorrow—but we are alive within these times, and striving to become more so. To let love flow out over the land like a balm. 

I will defy the proscriptions of the masculinist world. I will defy and defy and defy. There is a strength in me that is more than I know, that is hidden and biding its time, but so powerful, it will awaken me from sorrowful slumber and turn me inside out, dismember and re-member this broken, wounded body, this self of confusion and hopefulness.

Creation is a cauldron of possibility. My body is a womb of light—blood-red and sensuous, of itself, made and formed by the Mother, blessed by her blood. 

What foremothers have made me? Who are my people? How do I find them, my ancestors, my spirits?

Listen. Pay attention. Be still. Look out at the world around you, the mountains, the trees, the blessed air, the winged ones, and the water.

Trust. Know you are held, loved, and born for something.

* * *

I wrote this several weeks ago, and gave it the above title when I turned it into a blog post; and then I read Sarah Elwell’s beautiful piece, A Hymn to Her, which I thought a beautiful and extraordinary synchronicity. It seems She really is returning, sung out by different voices in different ways, but needed and longed for no matter Her words.