Jubilation
With vibrant hues of reds, oranges and yellows, Jubilation captures the passion of letting go and fully opening up to life, lost in the joy of the moment.
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Category: issue28
“The Hidden Camino”, by Louise Sommer
I took this book with me on an overnight trip, not expecting to stay up into the small hours to read it from cover to cover, but found it so engaging that that’s exactly what happened.
Read MoreSeeds on the Wind
In the garden of She Who Creates, tucked into a very remote corner, grows a small, water-blue planet whose inhabitants call it “Earth.” The soil is rich but most of what grows there appears on the surface to be only straggly stems fighting each other for a place near the dim light. But yet, somehow the most spectacular blooms emerge from the planet by the billions every day.
Read More“Fierce Feminine Divinities of Eurasia and Latin America: Baba Yaga, Kali, Pombagira, and Santa Muerte”, by Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba.
Prof. Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, who is a professor of modern languages and literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio, opens her new book by telling us how the goddesses named in the title—and their worshippers today—are marginal and liminal. The term “liminality,” she says, referring to the work of Victor Turner, comes from two Latin words, limen (“threshold”) and limes (“limit”) “and indicates a state in between structure, which is characterized by ambiguity and ambivalence and is usually connected to marginality, inferiority [and] ritual powers” (pp. 3-4).
Read MoreBe Your Own Herbal Expert – Part 8
Honey has been regarded as a healing substance for thousands of years. Greek healers relied on honey water, vinegar water, and honey/vinegar water as their primary cures. An Egyptian medical text dated to about 2600 BCE mentions honey 500 times in 900 remedies. What makes honey so special?
Read MoreGrand Canyon Pilgrimage
“Where are you from?” they ask.
Before they tell us anything about the pottery we are admiring:
sharp blade etching, clay essence,
singed horsehair stain,
Yucca leaf brushing;
Not the Kind of Girl
I’m not the kind of girl they like
I write my own songs and sing my own
verses. Nothing here is scripted
sacred but never scripted.
Mother Song
Two and a half years ago my mother Jean received a terminal heart diagnosis. Since that time she & I became very close, as I helped support her to face and to prepare for her death, saying, doing and singing all the things I would want to do if I were able to be present to priestess her death but which was unlikely to happen. [She did indeed die alone in her own bed, of a heart attack as we expected, at Lammas 2015.] Of course this led me into preparing myself to lose her. Mother Song came out of our shared process and my anticipatory grieving last October. I sang it to her over the phone and recorded it for her.
Read MoreI Can Hear Them Drum: Daughters of the Moon Turns 15!
Opening Ritual. Allison calls together the flotsam gathering of royal blue-adorned women on the patio of the main hall at Piersol Group Camp at Meeman-Shelby State Forest outside of Memphis, Tennessee. The outline forms an amoeboid shape, prompting the traditional singing of Trudy’s famous “We are a polygon, within a polygon, and we go on and on… and on and on and on…” (Sung to the common chant “We are a Circle”.) This is Daughters of the Moon, 2014.
Read MoreHeart of Kali
You the one who Opens Hearts. You who defy this westerner’s preconceived ideas and bring me to the ground in surrender, time after time. Heart opening, tears flowing. You the dark one, Kali awesome power.
Read MoreShe of the Brilliant Eyes
There I stood before the Goddess. As her timeless gaze fell upon me, I shuddered. She was a pure combination of power and gentleness. At once fierce warrior, undefeated, and gentle guardian, bestowing her love and wisdom upon her people. Beyond anything else, in that instant, I realized I was receiving an image of the feminine I had forgotten existed.
Read MoreThe magic pouch
I have released my magic pouch.
Fathom this- the miracle sac nestled in my abdomen
where spirits come to Earth and find their destiny.
Triple Luminosities
Swept into Hades’ Hummer, she feels her hairdo take a tumble.
Voodoo conjures up an ice palace of perpetual frost
where uncle Helios, sun god, never dips.
Musings of a Shaman
A void of grating scales,
seeps electrifying purple fumes.
Tiamat’s crimson blood drips Iike jewels of Gaia.
The sound, all that is, the sound – rushing, echoing like stars both born and dead.
Celebrating Women’s Voices
We are living in incredible times, when a new wave is surging, washing over and through the old paradigm. No area of life is left untouched. Rising within this wave is the voice of the feminine, that which has been quieted, shut down and ignored is now awakening. Rumblings from the belly of the Earth mother herself, calling us to stand up and speak from our hearts.
Read MoreSkeleton Woman: Cremator of bones
With automatic hand
Your oar, strokes amorously.
Your boat
Gliding on the river.
Wing’d Heart
Naiveté says, a women’s heart is a white wing,
Flying high and free in the clear blue sky.
Yet hers is a downward winged spiral. A descent.
Hecate’s Supper
You know these roads –
Here at the crossroads,
Where Hecate’s hounds
Howl at night.
