And then, when we finally get what we want, we do all that we can to hold on to it. It is at this exact moment that we fall out of flow with Life. Like the wheel of Life that never stops turning, the longer you cling on and try to stay where you were, the more out of flow with Life you get.
Life is not linear, it’s cyclic. A boundless journey of transformation. Of highs and lows. Of joys and sadness. Of contraction and expansiveness. Of birth and death. Of wins and losses. Change is a sure thing. Our ability to surrender to its natural rhythms is our greatest tool.
No day is better or worse, both have much richness to offer – the days when we rise and the ones when we fall. The sign of a true soul pilgrim is that when the brittle winds slap Her face, somewhere deep down there is an inner voice within whispering that this experience is good too. If we are here to rise and grow and expand and lead, then the challenging times aren’t worse than the celebratory ones.
If we fall it doesn’t mean that we have failed, rather
it is another invitation to transform and expand.
There’s a lesson in every battle, in every struggle, in every ‘what the hell do you want me to do now?’ And often it is the same, unforgiving wind that encourages us to effortlessly sail.
Rising is not linear but an endless cycle. Allowing it to change us takes courage, which is why most people resist it. You are not most people.
RISE SISTER RISE
What in your life is falling away?
What in your life has an expiry date?
TRANSFORMATION AND RECALIBRATION
The whole process of transforming is pretty miraculous. It quite literally means to change form, nature, and appearance. With all of the leaps in awakening and consciousness that stepping into a new age requires, we are each going through a massive recalibration. Changing both our physical form and our vibrational frequency.
In this life, changing at soul level is pointless if you don’t give your physical body time to embody the transformation. To hold the shift at cellular level as well as emotional, mental, and soul level. As we release attachments, identities, and old ways of being, our body too needs time to clear these things from our systems. Be compassionate and watch on in awe, as your miraculous body recalibrates to assist you.
If you don’t allow the time and space to incorporate the change, the higher frequency can’t be held in the body. The rise in consciousness is stuck in thought. All air. No ground. Leaving you to grasp and try and hold on, as the winds of time continue to blow.
This is not the time to have spiritual conversations.
This is the time to DO the work.
Just as the redwood that longs to rise toward the light must first drop her roots deep, so must we. She cannot grow tall without that anchoring, without being held by the Earth. If your body requires naps and rest while reading this book, honor that. Just because you’re doing nothing doesn’t mean your body isn’t doing something miraculous.
In the lead-up to and while writing this book, I’ve been going through my own sort of recalibration. I’ve been sick several times. Some days after finishing a chapter, out of nowhere I need to take a nanna nap. I’ve been honoring these calls, which quite honestly have been extremely challenging, especially with deadlines looming. I even requested a one-month extension a few months back, feeling it was necessary if I was to be able to embody the message that this book demanded.
We are being called to soften in order to strengthen, to drop our roots deep in order to rise high. Give yourself the rest and recuperation necessary for the transformation process to happen in full. Allow time to reroute and rewire.
Ask the butterfly. After it has eaten and grown all it can, it builds a cocoon. At a glance the caterpillar appears to be just chilling out and resting, but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Inside, the caterpillar is rapidly transforming.
It is actually during this resting phase that it is most productive. While it is cocooned in its sac, it is quite literally changing form! Organs, limbs, tissues, the whole deal – all parts of the caterpillar are changing. Interrupt this process too soon and the butterfly would be completely unformed. But wait in faith for just a moment; in between your breaths, something completely new and breathtaking will be born.
We need to change our belief that in order to be productive we need to be busy. To allow the wisdom of our bodies to do what they do best. To believe that the Universe and all of Life is supporting our constant transformation. Life is weaving, regardless of what we are doing.
The moment we get in the way or try to micromanage the Universe, we mess up the magnificent order of Life. Nature has an innate intelligence that knows exactly what to do. You are part of nature. So you do too.
RISE SISTER RISE
Are you honoring your body’s calls to allow
this transformation to happen?
OF ALL THAT FALLS AND RISES AND RISES AND FALLS
We are in a constant state of rising and falling.
Falling and rising.
All and everything we must do is allow what is
Falling to fall away and what is rising to rise.
Life is circular like that.
You can either rise and fall with it
Or resist and struggle against it.
The part of you that can never die
Is forever whispering stories of letting go.
You can surrender to the same force that controls the whole cosmos
Or rely on the fading strength of your separateness.
You can listen to Her whispers or you can
Wait for the tower to fall.
SHATTERING TO SET YOURSELF FREE
In order for the new to arrive, we must first allow the old to shatter. Sometimes this happens on its own. And sometimes it requires that we do the smashing. To tear apart what we’ve built because things have changed, including you. To admit that while it once was aligned, now it no longer is. This shattering requires both courage and faith. Courage to let go and faith that the pieces will come back together again in a way that is more aligned than it was before.
RISE SISTER RISE
What part of your life needs to be shattered
in order to set yourself free?
A NEW MATRIX
We live in a system that says we are not enough and so we are constantly striving to be something other than what we are. A system that tells us that anything that is outside of me is valuable. But that is just not true.
When you realize that what is truly precious is either already within you or coming to you, striving is no longer necessary.
When you realize that never-ending achievement doesn’t bring you what you’re searching for, it is revolutionary. For it leads you to a place where there is nothing you need outside of who you truly are. You are out of the matrix; you are able to unplug.
There is no external vision or model for what is ahead. We are the ones who are called to create that. We cannot look anywhere except for within ourselves for that.
This is the power of the wise woman. She knows that she has everything she needs within herself and that she has the power to create and birth life both within and outside her body. Can you feel it? A new future is being born.
RISE SISTER RISE
What are you being called to unplug from?
What new path or way of doing things
are you being called to forge?
WITH EVERY NEW BREATH
With every new breath she created a new matrix for herself.
A matrix this time so strong that it was impossible
to be penetrated by those around her:
By inherited patterns of stories told both to her, by her, and about her.
A matrix so fierce that it didn’t matter what was
Thrown her way, for now she drew her power and truth
From an untouchable unwavering place that resided deep within.
With every new exhale she released lifetimes of oppression.
Of holding back Her voice, Her truth, Her wisdom,
Her knowingness, Her powerfulness, Her holiness.
Of holding things in Her body that were not even Hers.
She was born in the fire.
Each new flame igniting an untamable power
that could never be extinguished.
Not now. Not ever.
With every new breath she created a new matrix for herself.
And when She was done,
She looked around and found Herself in a sea of sisters.
Who this whole time, had been doing the exact same thing.
RECLAIMING HERSTORY, AND THE SHADOW OF PATRIARCHY
God has been considered to be female for much longer than She has been considered male. Ancient Mother God worship (often referred to as the Old Religion) dates back more than 35,000 years, making it more ancient than Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.
Honoring Mother God
Cave paintings, carvings, and sacred art honoring the cyclic nature of the female body and worship of Mother God have been found in prehistoric caves and sites throughout Europe and the East.
Cave paintings dating back more than 35,000 years shine a light on what is thought to be the earliest depiction of Mother God worship.
During the last Ice Age humans were forced to surrender to the power of Mother Earth. It is thought that hunters and gatherers would connect with the spirit of the Earth and the animals in order to survive such brutal conditions.
Women’s bodies were seen as sacred and women as Goddesses because they quite literally give birth to Life. We all came from woman. The planet was seen as feminine (Mother Earth). Our menstrual cycle connected to the phases of the moon, our ancestors marking the moon’s phases through etching into bone. People lived in accordance with the Earth’s natural rhythms and cycles, and thus in harmony with all of Life.
Everything was considered sacred: Plants, animals, the Earth itself, and men and women alike. Those who could connect deeply with the spirit of nature were revered as shamans and Priestesses.
As the ice began to melt and the temperature got milder, ley lines were discovered (powerful energetic paths underneath the Earth’s surface). Sacred stone circles and temples were built on the ley lines as places of ritual and worship. The warmer weather saw tribes turning into communities as travel was now possible. Some tribes migrated to the Americas and settled there. All stages of womanhood were honored as depicted in the worship of the Triple Goddess. Women transitioned from Maiden, to Mother, to Wise Woman/Crone. In many Mother God societies, wealth and property were passed on through the female line with men taking the female name as their own when they married.
Healers were highly revered, working in harmony with nature, using herbs to treat ailments. Midwives welcomed and ushered in new life with sacred reverence. High Priestesses devoted their lives to honoring Mother God and her elements on behalf of all people. Seers were called upon for guidance and Wise Women were highly revered as wisdom keepers crucial for embodying and passing on the knowledge of life.
The Bronze and Iron Ages saw nomadic tribes devoted to the arts of war invading and conquering many of the Mother God-worshiping cultures of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India.
Women were raped, enslaved, and forced to marry, thus extinguishing the matrilineal lines. In her book The Spiral Dance, Starhawk describes:
In Greece the Goddess, in her many guises, ‘married’ the new
Gods – the result was the Olympian Pantheon. In the British
Isles, the victorious Celts adopted many features of the Mother
God Religion, incorporating them into Druidic mysteries.
Christianity and Mother Mary
With the introduction of Christianity, churches were built in honor of Mother Mary, who became for many, another way of worshiping Mother God. Many Mother God worshipers and High Priestesses who refused to marry took vows of celibacy and became nuns. They continued their worship of the Mother in the safest way they knew – by worshiping Mother Mary.
The Roman Empire began using Christianity as a political means to control the masses. Empowered women (and men) who saw themselves and the Earth as sacred were forced to convert and worship an external all-powerful external solo male God. Those who didn’t conform were branded ‘pagans’ by the Roman Empire, which historically means, belonging or relating to a religion that worships many gods, especially one that existed before the world’s main religions. Many Mother God temples and places of worship were conquered, as can be seen in images of St Michael slaying the dragon/snake – the dragon/snake representing the rising Shakti energy (serpent of the Goddess) and the sin of women – in many churches.
A woman’s sacred body went from being a sacred vessel to the property of man. Sexual urges of both men and women were seen as sinful, disconnecting us from our bodies. Women were forced to fit into two archetypes (the Virgin aka the ‘good girl,’ and the ‘whore.’)
In their book The Great Cosmic Mother, Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor explain the origin of the word ‘Virgin’:
‘Virgin’ meant not married, not belonging to a man – a woman
who was ‘one-in-herself’. The very word derives from a Latin
root meaning strength, force, skill; and was later applied to
men. Ishtar, Diana, Astarte, Isis were all called Virgin, which
did not refer to sexual chastity, but sexual independence.
Stories of the sacred feminine were changed to worship the masculine. Worship of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone were replaced with worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The powerful darker sides of the feminine were extinguished from society.
Sacred texts and scrolls of ancient mystic teachings including those of Mother God and Goddess worship were both suppressed and destroyed, most notably with the fire in the Great Library of Alexandria – one of the most significant libraries of the ancient world.
Mother God worship is also referred to as natural witchcraft, drawing its teachings from the cycles, power and wisdom of nature (Mother God). The term witch derived from the word wicce, which means ‘wise,’ thus ‘witchcraft’ meaning ‘craft of the wise.’
The witch hunts
The Inquisition began in the 12th century as a way of enforcing control, with many Christian sects such as the Cathars being accused of heresy. Witchcraft was deemed a heretical act, with women such as Joan of Arc being burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII pronounced a Papal Bull against witchcraft and the witch hunts and trials would continue until the 17th century.
In 1486, the book Malleus Maleficarum (‘Hammer of the Witches’) by Heinrich Kramer, a German Catholic clergyman, was published and would soon be by the side of every judge during the witch trials. During this time, the accused were attached to ducking stools and submerged in city rivers as a holy test. If they sank it meant that they were innocent and in fact not a witch (because they were now dead). If they survived, it confirmed that they were witches, in which case they would be baptized by fire and burned at the stake while people looked on.
Fear controlled the villages of Europe and parts of the Americas as their inhabitants were forced to watch the guilty ‘witches/pagans’ burn in front of them. Women were tortured and forced to sit on burning iron stools because their sexuality was considered satanic.
It was impossible to protect others or speak out against the terrorism for fear of being accused of heresy and given an unfair trial, and suffering an excruciating death. It is impossible to find a definitive figure of how many people were killed during the witch hunts, but estimates range from tens of thousands to many millions. The BBC recently reported that 900 ‘witches’’ bodies were found buried below a church in Aberdeen, Scotland, having been sentenced to death for crimes such as ‘healing cattle.’ The accused were not given fair trials and it is likely that most were not given tr
ials at all. Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor describe in their book, The Great Cosmic Mother, how it is believed that 80 percent of people sentenced to death for witchery at this time were women.
One of the most devastating things about this period of history is that it caused women to turn against each other as they were tortured until they named their accomplices in witchcraft, causing, I believe, a deep mistrust between women that still can be felt today.
Modern-day Goddess worship
Today, Goddess worship can be found in all corners of the Earth – India to Egypt, the British Isles to China, Greece to the Middle East, Turkey to Tibet. Goddesses such as Durga, Kali, Kwan Yin, Tara, Isis, Horus, Vega, Parvati, Mazu, Brighid, Danu, Morgan, Shakti, Selene, Ishtar, Hebat, Tefnut, Naunet, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hera, Demeter. The sacred feminine may have changed form, but She has never truly left.
We have come a long way and there is further for us to go in order to heal the wounds and soul rememberings of the past.
This might be the story of Her fall. But we
are living in the time of Her rise.
Through the winds, the trees and the
beating of our hearts She whispers:
‘Rise Sister Rise.’
Rise Sister Rise Page 6