Dark Goddess

“The Dark Goddess lives at a woman’s core. She guards the self. She is the friend of the soul, whose purpose in your life is to fiercely protect and further the whole process of your learning to live authentically from your core. She never trades in deceit, she never lies, nor does she veil her power. She refuses to uphold any relationship that doesn’t work, and she tears away at anything within us that is greedy or grasping or infantile. She continually urges us to reclaim our own power—the power to set limits and shout ‘no,’ and the power to say, ‘This is what I will do and this is what I won’t do’ when we are faced with any sort of abuse or anyone trying to steal our power or dominate us.”

~ Leslie Kenton, Passage to Power

Art by Elly Smallwood

http://www.elly.ca

1000 Global Goddess Gathering 10-22-22

This group is on Facebook

We will meet in private ceremony at our home – but broadcast the first part live on Facebook for those who would like to join us, or are unable to gather locally.

The 1000 Goddesses Gathering Global Grid is a call to action to elevate the Luminous Love energetics of our Sacred Earth by an annual powerful Unified Field of ceremonies — on October 22, 2022. Gaia Mystic & High Priestess Mare Cromwell first received the spiritual directive from Mother Gaia to organize this in 2016 and it has continued since.

Through a powerful Unified Field of multiple ceremonies, we manifest significant Divine Feminine healing energies to support all beings during these intense times and further the Birthing of our New Earth.

In 2022, Mother Gaia is specifically calling for us to gather in Ceremony and have a “Party”! She wants us to keen (mourn and release our grief by wailing loudly) if we need to, move our bodies, dance, drum and raise the energy and release our “ya-ya’s” from two+ years of pandemic restrictions, economic stress, fear, grief and sorrow.

The intention is to collectively weave together as One in a Global Grid with Mother Gaia’s Womb-Heart, affirming our Connection with the Womb of Creation in the Universal Realms – to anchor more Luminous Love world-wide! Yay!!

This global event is based upon a Tibetan prophecy that states that when 1000 Goddesses or Buddhist Taras gather, the Divine Feminine will rebirth through their combined energies, and the tone of the planet will shift from fear to compassion.

We encourage people to gather face-to-face in their local communities if they are able to. There are events scheduled all over the world!

Please support the tremendous work of Mare Cromwell with a donation if you are able.

Child of the Gods

“You are a child of the gods

And the goddesses.

You have seen the dark

Shades of the gorgeous abyss

And yet here you are,

Risen and risen more

Like the

Soaring Phoenix

Like the dove circling

Like the daring swallow,

Like the grand Albatross

Making her way

Across the oceans

Until she finally

Descends onto

The warm and welcoming

And soft and sunlit

Sand.”

Camilla Slater 2022.

Image Credit: Francoise de Felipe

Mother God

“Long before God the Father, there she was – God the Mother. Where did she vanish to, this great mother goddess? How did we women become so completely dispossessed? It wasn’t that I wanted to replace a male god with a female god; it wasn’t that I wanted to find a religion at all. I was simply looking for some sense that women might have worth. And I found it: there in the old stories of my own native land, I found it. Filled with images of women creating, women weaving the world into being, I took up knitting. Thread by thread, stitch by stitch, I began to knit myself back into being. I had never thought of myself as being a particularly creative soul, but I discovered that creativity was a wide-ranging affair. I simply thought about what brought me joy, and I began to cultivate it. I dug my hands into this strange foreign soil, and I began to grow things. I began to reacquaint myself with the soft animal object that was my body. Slowly, spending more and more time outside, focusing on the wisdom of my senses rather than on what was going on inside my head, I began to weave myself back into the fabric of the Earth.”

— Sharon Blackie (If Women Rose Rooted: A Journey to Authenticity and Belonging)

Art by Yulia Ustinova

Goddess Akhilanda aka the Phoenix

‘Akhilanda represents the essence of the Phoenix; she’s the indestructible energy that embraces change. Her full name is Akhilandaishvari. Ishvari in Sanskrit means female power or goddess and Akhilanda means never not broken, so she is the goddess of never not broken. She can never be broken, because she always is. She is the embodiment of what we try to avoid–the dissolution of our ego’s identity. She radiates the potent light and joy that’s the goal of change, transformation, or pain. There is very little written about her; she is meant to be known through experience. She is an intimate, interior goddess that we meet when we are in the darkest moments of grief and heartbreak. She shows us where our energy is trapped; where we have been stifled in routines or other’s expectations of us. And she whispers the liberation we will experience once we let ourselves break open, and allow the new expression of our self to come blazing through. She reminds us that we always have the power to choose to see every event as yet another opportunity to become more light, to become more of the radiant soul we are here to be.

When your soul selects her card:

Many of us exert tremendous energy in the effort to not break or fall apart. We resist our grief. Our heartbreak. Or we deny the need to change until the choice no longer feels like it’s ours. Something side swipes us from our ordinary life and shatters who we think we are and how we identify ourselves. Here’s what Akhilanda reminds us: vulnerability is our greatest strength. If we are always broken, we can never break. Akhilanda is the most intimate, and personally powerful goddess because she meets us in those moments when we can feel most alone, most exposed, and most afraid. She models how to thrive in the midst of change; she uses pain to joyfully and purposefully transform. She sees everything as an opportunity to release what isn’t serving her. And she knows that being broken isn’t a failure, or something we should avoid, it’s actually the whole point. We are here to let our ideas of ourselves go up in flames, so that beneath the ashes, the soft core of who we truly are arises. And so that we remember that it’s not the heart that ever breaks; it’s the ego. The heart only ever expands. ‘

– Excerpted from “The Divine Feminine Oracle” by Meggan Watterson; Illustrated by Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman

“Akhilanda”

Mixed Media

2018

Altar Art Prints of Akhilanda now available – click to purchase: https://etsy.me/3pn4Edn

Honoring Diana

Today, August 13th, marks the beginning of the week long Festival of Diana!

Themes: Fertility; Children; Providence; Abundance; Harvest

Symbols: Moon; Water; Forest Items; Sun

As a goddess, Diana embodies the moon’s fertility and watery aspects, along with the sun’s protective and nurturing power over the forests and its creatures. On this day she was celebrated in Rome, and she will be remembered in our hearts as the huntress who helps us capture the spiritual “food” we need.

To Do Today: Starting on August 13, the Romans had a weeklong festival for Diana, praying to her for the harvest’s bounty, and to turn damaging storms away. The traditional place to leave an offering of fruit or vines for her is in the forest, or at a crossroads. As you do, if any stone or leaf catches your eye, pick it up and carry it as a charm that will keep Diana’s power with you that entire day. Come night, release the gift to flowing water or back to the earth with a prayer of thanks and a wish for one of Diana’s attributes that you wish to develop in your life.

It is also customary to light some fire source to honor her on August 15 or anytime during the festivities. Afterward, to generate this goddess’s physical or figurative fertility within you, follow Roman convention and wash your hair with specially prepared water (water to which just a little milk is added so that it looks white, like the moon). If you have children, doing this for them incurs Diana’s protection over their lives

Excerpt from: “365 Goddess: A Daily Guide To the Magic and Inspiration of the goddess” by Patricia Telesco

Art: “ Diana” from “The Divine Feminine Oracle” by Meggan Watterson, Illustrated by Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman

“Diana”

Mixed Media

201

Green Tara

“Green Tara embodies the emboldened state that overcomes fear and allows us to take action on what we know is right. According to the Tara Tantra, eons ago Tara incarnated as a king’s daughter. She showed such spiritual excellence and such profound compassion that she impressed a group of monks. They told her that they would pray for her to be reborn a man so that she could reach enlightenment. She told them that there’s no such thing as male and female. The ideas, projections, and expectations that we superimpose onto the male form and the female form are not real. They are contrived. (Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.) Tara vowed then and there, before all the monks, that she would remain a female Buddha for all lifetimes until all beings were liberated from the illusion that a person’s sex determines their ability to become enlightened.

Tara has four different types of enlightened activity and divine attributes, depicted symbolicall through the colors red, white, black, yellow and green. Green Tara is Tara’s embodiment of compassionate action, or enlightened action. Her green color signifies vigor and vitality. Her mudra also represents vitality, and the purity of our life force, the prana mudra. She is the action we take from a deeply rooted place within our heart. She is the energy that seeks to act in alignment with what will free us as we liberate others.

When your soul selects her card:

Green Tara is that sacred nudge to get moving, to do what it is that your soul compels you to do. Don’t sit with an idea or a project any longer, take action on it. Don’t think about a friend that keeps coming into your heart, go bring her dark chocolate or send hera love letter. Don’t wait to express your love to someone you’ve needed to, go now– tell the truth. Let your feet be moved by what has been caged within you. Let your wisdom shift into inspired action.

Green Tara is about aligning what moves us to tears with compassionate action. She’s the push to do something, anything that might alleviate the suffering of others. In the process of taking action with love and from love, we also liberate ourselves.”

– Excerpted from “The Divine Feminine Oracle “ by Meggan Watterson; Illustrated by Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman

“Green Tara”

Mixed Media

2018

Altar ARt Prints of Tara available – click to purchase: https://etsy.me/3C3CJac

Diana

Diana represents the call to embody a more primal connection to the wildness that exists within. The goddess Diana was worshipped in the ancient Roman religion that originated in Italy. She is the daughter of Jupiter and Latona born on the island of Delos with her twin brother Apollo, god of the sun. The temple of Diana in Rome dates back to the 6th Century BCE. She was the protectress and patroness of the lower class and slaves who could seek sanctuary and asylum in her temples.

The temple to Diana in Ephesus (later attributed to the Greek goddess Artemis) was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It took 220 years to build and the magnificent statue of Diana covered in breasts symbolizes her worship as a fertility goddess for women. Paul in the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament mentions Diana’s temple since her following was extensive and seen as a threat to Christianity. The most famous place to worship Diana was in the sacred grove of oak trees on the shores of lake Nemi near Rome. Out in nature, connected to the earth, and to the wild animals that roam freely across it, here she is the huntress with her golden bow and

arrows. She is the independent, free-spirited, goddess who communes with the moon, the natural world, and all those who cannot speak for themselves.

When your soul selects her card:

Sometimes the answer is the simple, elemental need to just walk bare foot in the grass, or even better, the mud. Sometimes we get so caught up in what’s happening (or what isn’t happening) that we forget to just be. We forget that there is tremendous power surging up from the earth wanting to take whatever energy is no longer serving us. We forget that we can commune with the trees, those ancient protectors and elders whose language comes with the help of the wind and the slow soft caress that touches your cheek. Answers sometime need to come from the basic desire of the body to feel grounded here on Earth.

Diana is associated with fertility, the phases of the moon, and the ability to communicate with animals. Of course, not with any human language, but with the frequency of love and intention which animals perceive. If we open ourselves up to it, we can connect to the wisdom in the natural world even if we live far from it. Even if we’re deep in the heart of the busiest city, a sign on a bus, a logo on a t-shirt, or a card someone sends us may carry an image of the animal that wants to reach us. Or we may be visited by a possum on the fire escape or a hawk on a window ledge. We don’t have to be in the wilderness to access the wisdom of the natural world. The wilderness is within us; we are a part of it. There’s so much more we can receive from the wordless life all around us. We just have to develop the heart that can hear it.

_Excerpted from “The Divine feminine Oracle” by Meggan Watterson; Art by Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman

“Diana (The Huntress)

Mixed Media

2016

Altar Art Prints available now of Diana, click here to purchase: https://etsy.me/3Ql1BOQ

Lilith

“Lilith refused to submit to the rules of the patriarchy. Unbroken and unbowed, she was painted as a demon because of her rebellion. Lilith teaches us that we may be demonized as we pull off the chains of the patriarchy, but we will be free. Lilith reminds us that we can survive anything. We can plant our own sacred garden anywhere we choose.” ~Ara

✩ Dive deeper into the medicine of the Goddess Lilith and her rebellion against the oppressive forces of the patriarchy in my book “Dark Goddess Magick” available wherever books are sold & on sale now on Amazon!

“Embracing Lilith” – https://thegoddesscircle.net/visionary-writing/embracing-lilith

Writing (c) C. Ara Campbell

http://www.thegoddesscircle.net

Ukrainian Winter Goddess ; Mara

MARA is the ancient Ukrainian winter goddess associated with winter’s death, rebirth (and dreams). In ancient Slavic rites, the death of Mara at the end of Winter gives rise to the rebirth of Spring. Despite this relatively benign process of nature, Mara is primarily a frightening figure, the agent of death.

In some stories, Mara is depicted as “a destroying fate-goddess who rides the night winds and drinks the blood of men. She is the ‘mare’ in the word ‘nightmare’, described as a monstrous hag squatting upon the breast, mute, motionless, and malignant, an incarnation of the evil spirit whose intolerable weight crushes the breath out of the body” (1).

Mara is known as Marzanna in Poland; More in Lithuania; Marena in Russian; and Morana in several other Slavic countries.

Source

  1. Macnish, Robert. The Philosophy of Sleep. Glasgow: W. R. McPhun, 1830.