We are living the fracture of body, sex and spirit. This belief, which we have swallowed en masse as untenable reality, keeps us unrooted, disconnected from our power, fearful of our pleasure. It denies the ecstatic presence of Spirit in all matter, in the possibility that we can change this collective nightmare into a living dream of true harmony, true health, true love.
The root of this wound is a denial of the sovereignty of the Earth, of her existence as an autonomous living being, and the wisdom, creativity and divinity inherent in her body, which is all matter. Anyone knows that if you remove a child from their mother that child will wither, will suffer, may even die. He or she will certainly carry the wound of abandonment and how we learn to abandon ourselves so that no one will have the chance to abandon us first.
But, when a child is well-attached, when there is repair after the hurt and the mother wound is transformed, the strength and beauty of life within us is unstoppable. It is the endless motion of waves, the unceasing winds that blow across the Earth. It is the generative flow of blood within all creatures, the fire and electrical pulse of the heart.
The wound of our sexual trauma, of our fight for sexual sovereignty and bodily autonomy, is rooted in the sovereignty of the Earth. Unfortunately, there is a millenia long smear campaign against the Earth, the Great Goddess, against the body, against sex and Eros itself. The narrative is told many ways--the Earth is a destructive dragon that must be killed by the hero to save civilization, the Goddess is a demonic slut that eats babies and steals the seed of men to birth her own demon children. Matter is ‘dumb’, inert, sinful, shameful, the downfall of some disembodied, ascetic ideal. Blood is unholy, shameful, unclean, and childbearing a burden, a curse, an unholy lineage of pain passed down from Eve.
I invite you to think about the stories passed down to you. Not just your favorite stories, not just the stories you chose, but the ones that hang out in our collective psychic space. There are narratives that inform the ground of our group story, our group understanding. Stories that don’t care if you “believe” them or not--we live inside them, and they live inside us.
In a healthy collective, stories give us ways to navigate the journey of the soul in a body. They give us ways to understand what’s happening to us in a bigger picture than our personal suffering. These stories bringing meaning and teach us how to create beauty from pain--not because we idealize pain, but we know that it is part of life, a sort of prima materia that we can shape with our understanding.
However, the people/powers/institutions that seek to control, manipulate and enslave others also use story, but pretend that the story is ‘just the way it is’. Patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia--these systems create narratives that normalize a very singular, repressive way of being into a bizarre ideal that we are all not only supposed to live up to, but actually desire. And those normative creating narratives include consequences and punishments that, ironically, we sometimes inflict more harshly on ourselves than anyone else.
The good news is: stories can be transformed. Stories can be mined to find the gold--stories WANT us to find the gold. Stories live in the imaginal space, that realm of the soul that connects body to Spirit. Stories are alive, and will speak to us when we choose to make friends with them.
What is called the ‘Dark Feminine’ encompasses these narratives of the smear campaign against the Earth, against the body, against sexuality, especially feminine sexuality. There is an implicit bias in modern/western/patriarchal culture against the “Dark”--we are afraid of the dark, we are biased against dark skin, we say ‘love and light’, which implies that there is no love in the dark. This is deep seated in our language, in our bodies, in our spiritualities. But when we courageously, gently, fiercely turn towards those stories, towards those places in ourselves, we can find nourishment beyond compare. We can find a radiance that transcends the binary of light and dark. We remember the fertile, cosmic womb and the wise ground of Mother Earth. We discover how much Baba Yaga, Kali Ma, Coatlicue, Maleficent, the Witch, the Hag and the Slut love us. How much we need their clarifying mirror of truth and flaming sword of discerning love. That there is rest in the belly of the Great Earth Dragon.
Who have you always been fascinated--or even a horrified by? Who is beckoning you to look closer, to ask what else, what more, what has not been said? The capacity to tell stories is part of our super human powers, an ancient and primal coding in our DNA. And, with modern technology, we have SO much access to stories! I encourage you to begin or deepen this process for yourself, and to let it guide you from the depths of love.
If you’d like to explore the Dark Feminine within an intentional group, I invite you to check out my upcoming Lilith Moon Circle. Over the course of 5 online Zoom circles, we’ll be working with imagery, story, ritual and circle technology, we will get curious about a "bad girl", villainess, dangerous woman or dark goddess who fascinates us. Just like in the novel and Broadway show 'Wicked', where the true story of the Wicked Witch of the West is revealed, we will uncover the deeper reality of our inner embodiment of the unseen and unwanted feminine, claiming the gold of our soul, and the power and pleasure inherent within.
You can see all the details and register here.
Warmly,
Ursula