Sunday, February 20, 2011

Autumn and the Goddess

Autumn is the secret time, for it is the twilight of seasons when we are caught between life and death.  The turning of the wheel takes us down into the centre of women power.  If compared to a woman’s moon cycle, Autumn is the Waning Moon, the time of bleeding, of the womb, of the blood mysteries.

It is the time of intense colour, the turning of leaf colours, the shedding and releasing.  All life surrenders, leaving behind the stillness of action, and prepares to enter the silence, the season of death. 

The journey into darkness becomes an intensive time.  As power woman walks her path, she must be willing to release the extra baggage from her life and open to the changes that are smouldering just beneath the surface.  Being within her power and yet available to others is the balancing of Temperance.  It is the wisdom of the Crone that teaches us how to endure and pass through the season of release most effectively and make peace with the Death while welcoming Change.

Women often refer to this current age as “the time of Kali”.  Because of this claim, people are calling up Kali (one of the most extreme aspects of the Crone) to aid them.  Women are instructed to call upon Her violence and destruction, beg for her protection against the recumbent male of ignorance, seclusion, and oppression.  Women are told it is okay to call in the most raw destructive force and use it against life!  This is ignorance, for a woman who chooses to evoke Kali into the Earth’s plane in such a hostile manner has not learned the lesson of healing herself, finding her balance within, taking back her power and spreading the knowledge and wisdom of the Goddess.  Rather, the women who choose to evoke Kali in such a hostile way are lost in their own rage.  These women are still giving away their power; they are still giving away the management of their lives to their patriarchy. 

If we call up the mighty Crone for her destructive power, then we must be willing to accept the mighty consequences of using negativity.  The healed woman, the whole woman, the power woman, knows that it is the wisdom of the Crone that must be used.  The Temperance of finding the perfect knowledge in which to use the wisdom in order to gain the utopia women have known is possible to have here on Earth.  It is this wisdom and balance that will bring the darkness and the light back into balance, female and male into balance.

The world does not want an angry Goddess on their hands.  Look how long we have revolted against the angry God of the patriarchal.  We are doing the same thing they did.  We are striving for domination through the power of the Crone aspect of the Goddess.  We are so out of control in our rage, so swept away by our selfishness, that we want to risk losing utopia.

Find the love, the life, the heart of what all this is about.  It is the nuclear family we have been working towards.  Women, our power, our wisdom, our insight, our knowledge, our love, our heart is what is the shift of this new age into being.  Not fighting. No being better than or more powerful than the male.  And definitely not using the Goddess against mankind.  She will retreat from us if we continue to manifest Her in this way. Can’t you hear her crying?  Can’t you hear her whispering to us, asking us not to be so ignorant, to stop being daughters of men and begin being Her?

If, during the season of the Crone, we take the time to journey deep within our psyches, She will bring us face to face with anger and rage.  She will shed her waning light upon it and teach us how to release it and absolve it into darkness.  The Crone gives us the wisdom to understand and teaches us to know.

We must approach this master out of extreme respect.  We must be willing to look back at the aged and see the worth in their eyes, their lives and seek to understand the experiences they have had, for in understanding the experience we gain knowledge of what not to repeat, or what can be changed to make it better. 

All answers lie within.  This is the season of release, of travelling deep in our being that we may find Pandora’s Box and open it.  We will find that amid the waning light, the decay, the changing, there is substance, power and enlightenment.  It is during the time of release, the time of introspection when active energy is slowing down, that we have the opportunity to seek interior recesses of life.  The power woman knows that this is where the key to all lies buried, and so rejoices in the waning and finds release.


Source: "The Gaia Tradition: Celebrating the Earth in Her Seasons" by Kisna Stepanich

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"Dancing the Sacred Wheel" now available again

"Dancing the Sacred Wheel" now available again
The second edition of "Dancing the Sacred Wheel: A Journey through the Southern Sabbats" is now available through www.createspace.com or direct from the author (Australian customers only) for an autographed copy.

Great Goddess Isis

Great Goddess Isis

Exhortation of Isis

You are She in the dust of whose feet is the hosts of Heaven,
Whose body encircles the Universe,
Who turns the Earth in its orb,
Who gives light to the Sun,
Who rules the World.

You tread death underfoot.
To Thee, the stars are responsive,
To Thee the seasons turn and the Gods rejoice
And the elements are in subjugation.


You are She that is the natural Mother of all things,
Mistress and governor of all elements,
The initial progeny of worlds,
Chief of Divine powers,
Queen of Heaven,
Principle of all the Gods celestial and the light of Goddesses.

At Your will are disposed the planets of the air,
The wholesome winds of the seas
And the silences of the unseen world.