“Women have been driven mad, ‘gaslighted,’ for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us.
We therefore have a primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.
Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience.
Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.
When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”
Mary Magdalene embodies the capacity we all have to merge with the soul and receive divine guidance through a love that never ends. Mary was born in the first century in Magdala, Israel. She was the first to witness the resurrection, and for this reason is revered in Christianity as the Apostle to the Apostles. Author and Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault relates that the Gospels of Thomas, Philip, and Mary Magdalene all reveal Mary not only as Jesus’s beloved companion, koinonos, but also as an equal partner in teaching and transmission. (p.42, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene.) Bourgeault believes that Mary Magdalene’s gospel contains a secret teaching that Christ gave to Mary so that she could pass though the seven stages to reach the soul, or the nous, which is the highest point of the soul. And it is this union with her soul that allows Mary to see the risen Christ.
In classic iconography Mary Magdalene is associated with an egg and the color red because of an Eastern Orthodox legend. It says that she used an egg to teach the court of Tiberius Caesar about resurrection. Caesar doubted her and responded that a person could no more rise from the dead than the egg in her hand turn red. The egg turned red immediately. Legends relate that Mary then traveled to the south of France to escape persecution and to continue her ministry. It is believed she lived the last thirty years of her life in the caves at St. Baume. There she met with Christ with a love that inhabits the human heart but that lives on beyond it.
When your soul selects her card:
Mary Magdalene represents the fierce, unwavering love that we all have access to within our own vulnerable hearts. It’s a love that renders all things sacred from the animals to the angels, from the poorest to the most powerful. It’s a love that sees the inherent worth of all things. And it’s a love that remains, even through the darkest times, even through death; her love is the one that resurrects.
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene relates that Jesus came to unite us, to demonstrate to us a “true human being,” an “Anthropos,” meaning a person who is both fully human, and fully divine. This is what Mary became and it’s why she was so beloved to Jesus. She didn’t seek to follow him; she sought instead to become her true self. Mary Magdalene reminds us that we have the power to receive vision from within. We are worthy of such proximity to the divine because that’s the other half of what it means to be truly human. She reminds us that there’s a bridge between heaven and earth, and that we are that bridge. And she wants us to remember that the truest church we can ever enter is in the heart. This is where our true power rests and where love never ends. “
Excerpted from “The Divine Feminine Oracle” by Meggan Watterson; illustrated by Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman
Living in the soul, rather than living in the overculture. To enter the soul, be it, teach it with as much wit, meaning, grace and grit—and cackles—as possible.
One of the best things about gathering years is the right to cackle with impugnity” “As a woman gathers more years, she becomes more bold, which is not the same as brave: Brave is jumping in. Bold is jumping in led by angels. In age, we learn to know the difference. For certain, ‘older is bolder.
In old tales, there are plenty of bitter old creatures railing about shrieking me me me. One of the masteries of age, is to divest of bitterness which acts as a dam to the inspiratus and to one’s sense of calm in ‘being enough.’ Bitterness is self-imposed ‘prison of unhappiness’ where the feelings of isolation and rage seem to enliven us, but in fact, only deaden us to love and creative force.
“The silvered glamour of the Woman of the Winter Moon may be woman in her greatest power, woman in her guise as Elemental, as Force of Nature. This is woman to be revered. She is a concentration of feminine wisdom gathered and concentrated over the years, blended with the astral knowledge of the soul-star, and blessed by the traditions of the Sacred Feminine that she has made herself, or resurrected from Time, and passed living and intact to her daughters.”
~ Elizabeth S. Eiler Ph.D., Singing Woman: Voices of the Sacred Feminine
“ What compromises the Wild Woman? From the viewpoint of archetypal psychology as well as in ancient traditions, she is the female soul. Yet she is more; she is the source of the feminine. She is all that is of instinct, of the worlds both seen and hidden—she is the basis. We each receive from her a glowing cell which contains all the instincts and knowings needed for our lives. “…She is the Life/Death/Life force, she is the incubator. She is intuition, she is far-seer, she is deep listener, she is loyal heart. She encourages humans to remain multilingual; fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry. She whispers from night dreams, she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman’s soul a coarse hair and muddy footprints. These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés “When Women Were Birds” • 2015
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“She sat at the back and they said she was shy, She led from the front and they hated her pride, They asked her advice and then questioned her guidance, They branded her loud, then were shocked by her silence,
When she shared no ambition they said it was sad, So she told them her dreams and they said she was mad, They told her they’d listen, then covered their ears, And gave her a hug while they laughed at her fears,
And she listened to all of it thinking she should, Be the girl they told her to be best as she could, But one day she asked what was best for herself, Instead of trying to please everyone else,
So she walked to the forest and stood with the trees, She heard the wind whisper and dance with the leaves, She spoke to the willow, the elm and the pine, And she told them what she’d been told time after time,
She told them she felt she was never enough, She was either too little or far far too much, Too loud or too quiet, too fierce or too weak, Too wise or too foolish, too bold or too meek,
Then she found a small clearing surrounded by firs, And she stopped — and she heard what the trees said to her, And she sat there for hours not wanting to leave, For the forest said nothing, it just let her breathe.”
I think it was Brene Brown who told a story about a village where all the women washed clothes together down by the river. When they all got washing machines, there was a sudden outbreak of depression and no one could figure out why.
It wasn’t the washing machines in and of themselves. It was the absence of time spent doing things together. It was the absence of community. Friends, we’ve gotten so independent.
We’re “fine” we tell ourselves even when in reality we’re depressed, we’re overwhelmed, we’re lonely, and we’re hurting. “We’re fine, we’re just too busy right now” we say when days, weeks, months, and years go by without connecting with friends. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. It’s so easy to say even when it’s not true.
We’ve become so isolated and it’s hard to know how to get back. It’s so hard to know how to even begin to build the kind of relationships our hearts need. And I think In our current culture, it’s just not as organic as it once was. It’s more work now.
Because you know, we have our own washing machines. We don’t depend on each other to do laundry, or cook dinner, or raise babies anymore. We don’t really depend on each other for much of anything if we’re being honest. In Brene Brown’s book Braving the Wilderness, she says that being lonely effects the length of our life expectancy similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. I don’t say that to freak anyone out, but to let you know that the longing for connection is LEGIT. I think we’ve treated friendship like a luxury for far too long; friendship isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.
We don’t want it. We kind of need it.
Be independent. Be proud of it. But be an independent woman who realizes the value and the importance of opening the door to other good women. You can do it alone, but you don’t have to. Islands are only fun for so long. There is true magic when women come together and hold hands and share ideas and share stories and struggles and endless bowls of salsa. You use your gifts, and I’ll use mine, and then we’ll invite that girl over there who brings a completely different set of skills to the table we are building, and we’ll watch together as something miraculous unfold.
My grandmother once gave me a tip: In difficult times, move forward in small steps. Do what you have to do, but little by little. Don’t think about the future or what may happen tomorrow.
Wash the dishes. Remove the dust. Write a letter. Make a soup.
You see?
Advance step by step. Take a step and stop. Rest a little. Praise yourself. Take another step. And then another.
You won’t notice, but your steps will grow more and more. And the time will come when you can think about the future without crying.
“Before there was the Word, there was the Land, and it was made and watched over by women. Stories from almost every culture around the world tell us that once upon a time it was so. For many native tribes throughout America, Grandmother Spider continually spins the world into being. For the Andean peoples of South America, Pachamama is the World Mother; she sustains all life on Earth. In Scotland and Ireland, the Cailleach – the Old Woman – made, shaped and protects the land and the wild things on it. …
Women: the creators of life, the bearers of the Cup of knowledge and wisdom, personifying the moral and spiritual authority of this fertile green and blue Earth.” ~ Sharon Blackie, If Women Rose Rooted
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