The Tao is dark and unfathomable.
How can it make her radiant?
Because she lets it . . .
This source is called darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
- Tao Te Ching
Dearest Wise Women,
This week we close our spring session and our brief, but intense, dive into the rebalancing of the Divine Feminine. I feel a strong pull to simply share stories, legends and visions of times gone by - to rediscover our magic and to dreams of new ways.
May you rest in your heart and your womb space as you sit back, listen, feel, and remember…
With utmost love and gratitude,
Patti
A Moontime myth from the Native American Traditions
A long time ago, women did as they do now, they held the family, they held the power (life-force) for the family, they held the happiness and joy, they held the sorrow and the disappointments. After time, the negative emotions and heartache that the women took on upon themselves on the behalf of their families would begin to weigh them down. The women would became sick and finally, could no longer take on the burdens of the family. Yet, the nature to do so had been imbued into them by Creator.
One day, a woman was in the forest, crying because the burden had become so great, when Raven heard her and asked, “Mother, why do you cry?”
The woman responded, “I love my family so very much. I hold my family in my heart and soul, but the pains of life have filled me up. I can no longer help my family. I can no longer take their burdens from them. I just don’t know what to do.”
Raven responded, “I understand the pain you feel, as I feel it also. I will go and ask Grandmother Ocean if she knows what to do” So Raven flew to the ocean and shared with Grandmother the plight of the women.
Grandmother Ocean responded, “If the women will come to me, I will wash their pain from them, but this won’t help the ones who are far away. Let me ask my sister, Grandmother Moon, if she can help”.
So Grandmother Ocean spoke to her sister of the women’s plight. Grandmother Moon responded, “I am the power of the feminine. I will send into the women, my sisters, your waters carrying my power. Once every moon cycle, you shall come into the women through me and purify them” And she did this. So ever since then, every woman has a time each moon cycle when she embodies the power of the moon and flows the cleansing of the ocean. We call this the woman’s time of the moon, or moon-time.
It is each woman’s responsibility to take the time when she is in her time of the moon to purify. It is the responsibility of the men to give the women the opportunity to do so.
~ Nicholas Noblewolf
This is a photo of my Salt Spring Island friend, Dana, weaving her latest creation. Dana is a master weaver who is intimately aware of the feminine need to unravel and reweave. How perfect that this photo is the weaving of red and white!
We need to unravel the threads of time that have left us separated from our past and future selves, and reweave the womb of timelines that connect existence together in a unified reality. The Great Mother Womb has always been known as a weaver, a Divine Creatrix, artisan, and craftsperson of all life. In fact the word crafty refers to the cunning Old Ways of the wise woman, and the Indian word tantra means to “be woven together.” The priestess title Magdalene (Mag-Dal) also translates as “great weaver” and “magic doorway.”*
In nearly all shrines dedicated to Artemis, spindle whorls, loom weights, and shuttles have been found, and in her sanctuaries woolen clothing and threads wound on spools were offered as gifts to her. On Corinthian vases, Artemis and her womb priestesses are seen holding a spindle.
The ancient and timeless Womb Mysteries are a path of love, a returning to harmony with the way of nature, with the dreaming of Gaia, with life’s vast benevolence, with Creator’s deep and tender love, and with the wild, untamed creative flows and cyclical rhythms. This feminine feeling dimension is rooted in love, wildness, kindness, tenderness, patience, and union.
Feminine consciousness is weaving a new way into being, and inviting us to step through the magic doorway to be part of the great change—to become conscious co-creators of a new reality.
She who lovingly created us, gestated us, and birthed us, is now calling out to us..
The return of Womb Consciousness is the greatest revolution on the planet at this time. The womb has the power to birth and to rebirth. The ancients looked to the womb for all their healing and redemption, and the feminine was honoured as the throne of creation.
As a web of wombs, we are birthing a new earth into being. Together we can heal the inner and outer wasteland and return it to love.
We are weaving a new way.
- Azra Bertrand and Seren Bertrand, “Womb Awakening: Initiatory Wisdom from the Creatrix of All Life”
Myths and legends of almost every ancient culture speak about the capacity of menstrual blood to promote health and longevity, and directly alter consciousness to produce states of illumination, sacred bonding, and embodied awakening. In the ancient days as well as now, the power of menstrual blood at times was used in the name of love and healing, and in other situations was treated as a commodity and exploited by the powerful castes who guarded its secrets for themselves.
Modern science has just discovered what the ancients have known for hundreds of thousands of years: menstrual blood is rich with these incredibly potent stem cells, which have the power to renew, regenerate, and create life. Stem cells are magical cells. They are similar in some ways to the imaginal cells that can turn a caterpillar into a butterfly, containing within them an incredible power of regeneration. They can regenerate and repair damaged tissues in our body in miraculous ways that science would have previously called impossible. Menstrual stem cells are multipotent progenitor cells—they can grow and differentiate into almost any kind of cell in the body as needed. Modern science shows us that within a few days, a single menstrual stem cell can differentiate into a heart cell that spontaneously beats. When two such heart cells come within a few inches of each other, they automatically begin to beat together in rhythm—they become energetically entangled in a synchronized dance.
The new scientific understanding of stem cells, and in particular menstrual-blood stem cells is truly breathtaking. And what is even more remarkable is that for thousands of years before modern science could prove their existence and healing properties, the ancients knew about their life-renewing potency through a process of direct intuitive gnosis, experience, and inherited wisdom.
We have the power within to awaken the magical properties of these stem cells, enjoying longevity, vitality, expanded sensory awareness, and regeneration. We can honor our bodies as holy and wise. This is why the ancient womb religion spoke so reverently of the wise blood.
We all have an “imaginal butterfly” within, waiting to take wings and fly.
- Azra Bertrand and Seren Bertrand, “Womb Awakening: Initiatory Wisdom from the Creatrix of All Life”
…Aaand if the last passage didn’t make your jaw completely drop, then consider this:
For many thousands of years these wonders of menstruation and the womb were honored and worshipped. In Hebrew hor meant “cave” and “yoni/womb.” Communing with the Holy Hor, the Holy Womb, was believed to gift a spiritual enlightenment called horasis to men. This gift was especially potent at the menstrual cycle, and is now diminished by the interpretation of hor (Hera/womb) as whore, meaning prostitute. It is time to reclaim the Holy Hor.
Azra Bertrand and Seren Bertrand, “Womb Awakening: Initiatory Wisdom from the Creatrix of All Life”
Longing and Wondering
My heart, like yours probably, has been aching when I look into my local area, my world, and see such a great need for the sacred. I see an unmet need in our young to have a place they can count on for mentoring, initiation, and coming into their womanhood with other women. I see an unmet need in our lives to connect deeply, rest and take time to simply be. I see an unmet need for our elders where they can gather to be honoured and share their wisdom. […] And I wondered what would happen in our societies of local places if women were to have a place we could count on where we are respected, supported and held. I understood from the work that I do that to empower women of any age means to bring health back into a community.
- ALisa Starkweather, at the founding of the Red Tent Temple Movement
Stitching revolutions together,
Spinning new worlds from our wombs,
Dreaming back the wild edges of our souls,
Calling forth that which has been lost.
We are women of the womb,
Maddened by love into action,
We are men of the heart,
Softened into surrender,
Afraid only of not feeling.
We are thinking in a web,
Your thread holds mine together.
We are tale-weavers and troubadours,
Telling the words that were broken,
Singing the songs of longing.
We are weaving a new way,
Gathering the thread of pain,
Spinning it back into gold.
- Azra Bertrand and Seren Bertrand, “Womb Awakening: Initiatory Wisdom from the Creatrix of All Life”