All Hail to Astrological Beltane and the Parting of the veils to New Life!
A little background..
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Blog posts tagged in Maiden
When I first began my Priestess training, forming a personal relationship with the wheel of the year: the four major elements, their corresponding season and corresponding Goddess archetype, is what lit me up and inspired a new way of being in the world for me.
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When I was eleven or twelve, my family took an epic road trip. We traveled from Michigan to the east coast, stopping in Washington, D.C., as well as visiting some family friends who lived near one of Virginia’s beaches. It was my first time meeting the ocean, and the part of the long trip I was looking forward to most.
I still remember the heady feeling of the waves carrying me as I floated, waiting on my borrowed boogie board, the taste of salt in my mouth. It was magical, and I fell in love with the ocean that day.
The Spring Equinox is one of the four major cross quarters of the year. There are two Equinoxes and two Solstices and for people that follow the wheel of the year these four major cross quarters are often celebrated in a group or solitary ceremony.
As a Priestess I have led many Equinox and Solstice ceremonies.I get lit up leading a group of women and men as we tap into the energies of the quarter we are celebrating, adding ritual tunes us into the cycle that we are entering and also gives us an opportunity to set intention for the upcoming cycle. We get to build on the cycle of the wheel, to flow with the rhythm of Mother Gaia and to be a part of the shifting cosmo's.
In short we are born anew on the Spring Equinox, we come together and merge, tapping into the ripe fullness of spring and the fertile times around us as we celebrate the earth and Her sensuous gifts on Beltaine, when the Summer Solstice comes around we give thanks for all that is manifest, we call upon the Light and shine it upon our life, illuminating and bringing into awareness what is, at Lammas we prepare for our harvest, we begin to take stock of what we have grown over the summer months, by the time the Autumn Equinox rolls around we begin to harvest, we gather what we wish to keep and to bring with us into the dark hibernating months ahead and we perish that which no longer serves, Samhain is a dark night of ritual where the dead is honoured, the veils are lifted and we go deep into the unknown, Winter Solstice we awaken from our deep slumber, take a break momentarily from hibernation and celebrate the coming light, Imbolc begins to quicken us awake as we go over the deep transformations that have taken place over the Winter months in our cave of hibernation and we prepare to be reborn into the Spring Equinox, and thus the wheel begins again.
These are the cycles that I celebrate and when the wheel rolls around to the Spring Equinox I gather those who are called and hold ceremony. Some years there are many of us that gather, some years it is my Beloved and I that gather together, just the two of us in a private ceremony and other years I honour in a solo way.
Of all of the phases of the wheel, this one is the toughest for me personally. Unlike so many others that struggle with the darker phases of the year, it is the returning of the light that has been a challenge for me, long before I was a Priestess, long before I had heard about the wheel of the year I struggled with the coming of spring. Once I began my path I would contemplate the visceral reaction that I had to the changing weather, my stomach in knots of anxiety, a sense of dread hovering around me and a desire to escape the world and stay in bed. It didn't make sense to my rational mind, this is the season everybody celebrates, the cold is gone, the sun is out, it's time to celebrate! Well for me it isn't.
Eventually I did come to a conclusion about my aversion to the Spring Equinox and the season it ushers in. The conclusion that I have come to is twofold. The first is that the springtime ushers in with her the inevitable summer, the long days and heady nights begin in the springtime, this change of weather triggered a response within me, a post traumatic response to a date rape that had happened when I was a teenager on a thick and balmy summer night. I didn't connect this occurrence with the spring, as it happened in the summer, however it is the shift into spring that first brings me back into the summer weather and that sense of the season would trigger me every year, and every year that I was triggered and didn't know the cause the trigger would just become deeper and more painful. Blessedly I entered trauma therapy and while I don't know that the wounds of rape ever vanish, the scar of that occurrence has sealed over and the wound has closed for the most part. This means that the warm air that begins to waft and the bright skies that begin to shine don't have the same affect on me as they once did. As I began to process and release the trauma that was trapped in my body I found that each passing spring was a new experience of more and more ease. I began to get excited some years at the beauty of spring, the warmth, the birds, and most exciting of all was that I began to remember a time when I didn't dread the springtime, a time long before date rapes and chaotic teenage angst when as a child I had really been as happy with the spring as everyone else around me. This healing and releasing of trauma has relieved so much of the wind of panic that would come up for me that I began to think that perhaps I wouldn't have a struggle with the Spring Equinox at all anymore.
Until the past few days, when the second part of my challenge with this time of year was revealed. The Spring Equinox is the time of the Maiden Goddess Archetype, it was no mystery to me or anyone else that worked with me as I developed in my Prietessing ministry that the Maiden aspect of the Goddess and myself held great wells of sorrow for me. It was when I was in my Maiden that I received all of my abuse, not only at the hands of my rapist but also from the men that were guiding me as I grew, the boys that I misguidedly chose to date as a teen and also from myself. These Maiden years were dark ones of despair for me, however I attributed the pain in my Maiden years to the first reason why the spring was so challenging and found that the pain and wounds of all abuse was released during my healing work thus nullifying the painful memories of being a Maiden as a reason for my springtime resistance. However, to my utter shock and disbelief, once the trauma had been felt and lifted out of the body that had stored it I began to have visceral memories about enjoying my Maiden self, I began to remember aspects of my childhood that I missed greatly. My teenage years, the ones that became so chaotically dangerous suddenly contained within them such precious memories, such deep moments of connection, sisterly bondedness, wistful dreaming and true idealism that I became profoundly appreciative of years that I for a very long time preferred to think about as little as possible and attempted to bury completely.
I am so grateful to the Goddess for clearing away the trauma and revealing to me the beauty and splendour of my Maiden years, the spaces within me that were untouchable by others and even by my own self destructive tendencies, and for recovering memories of a beautiful time in my life for me.
The second challenge to the Spring Equinox for me is not in facing the wounded part of the Maiden Archetype within me, it is the depth of grief that I have as I feel the Maiden aspect of myself drift further and further away from me as the years pass. I feel her like I would feel a ghost. I feel her longing for freedom and self expression and revolution. I feel her wistfulness, I feel her wonder at life and her belief despite all of the contrary evidence that at the core of everyone is the Divine. I feel her unbelievable, indescribable bond with her best friend, one dark haired, one light haired, both confused for one another because they are so fused, I remember finishing sentences, laying on each others laps, spending every spare moment together, watching t.v. shows on the phone together, I remember this love that is so intense and so passionate and so unromantic but as strong as any romance that I have had and I feel the hours and the hours that were hers to do with as she wished. I feel her and she is so much further away then she was last year, she is so much further away then she was before I gave birth, before I was married, before I fell in love, before I moved out west, before I dropped out of school, before I moved out of my house. Somehow the wheel keeps on turning and she continues to fall further and further away from me and what I once celebrated, the death of her memory I now grieve so deeply that each new springtime bud reminds me of a time when all I had was time, time to be unto myself and to wonder at what life would be.
This Spring Equinox is a resurrection of all things Maiden for me. The Spring Equinox, is a time of rebirth and my work as a Priestess is to allow the energy of the wheel of the year and the medicine that it holds to mould me and to guide me, and so, this year as I prepare for ceremony I prepare to rebirth my Maiden self. Though I am walking in my Mother years I still have access to that Maiden self, each waxing moon honours the Maiden within me and each Spring that is sprung is a season to pull her up from the recesses of my unconscious, Persephone returning from Hades, my Maiden self is returning from the hellish memories that once lived with sweet, tender, life filled ones. It is my job to keep that energy, the energy of idealism, faith, hope, revolution, love, sisterly bonds and deep healing alive within myself. These are the parts of myself that ignite the flames of passion within, the springtime is the season for the fire element with the wheel that I honour and my inner Maiden lights those flames.
In humble reverence to the mysteries that are revealed within each cycle of the wheel as it spins by I step out into this cycle and walk through the fires of challenge that the Maiden Archetype has held for me for so many years and I resurrect her essence within. If each one of us could hold the essence of our Maiden and Lad selves within us, could honour them for one cycle of the year each year, then we would have a generation of wizened Mothers, Fathers, Enchantresses, Wizards, Grandmothers and Grandfathers radiating from within them all that is enviable about youth balanced with the nurturance, magic and wisdom of the other stages of life that we walk in.
That is my vision for the whole tomorrow as I go into ceremony, I hold the Maiden Goddess Archetype up within myself and within each person that I find, remembering that we are all, at the core of us, Divine children of the One Mother Goddess. I honour the innocence in me that is alive and pulsating and I honour the innocence that is within my sisters and brothers, I commit to seeing past the stories, the wounds, the conditioning and to finding the spark that lives within each one of us that is ever ignited. I go within and I sit with my own inner spark and give thanks and praise to the Maiden that lives within me for shining her light throughout all of the dark and all of the joy. Blessed Be.
Happy Spring Equinox.
Grace Be With You,
Priestess of Grace,
Candise Soaring Butterfly
If you breathe deeply
You can smell the
Damp soil holding
The seeds of new life.
If you breathe deeply
The subtle fragrance
And the promise of
Flowering fields
Fills the senses.
Last week, my wife and I were blessed by a visitation of the Goddess in physical form.
Ravyn had been ill for a long time. In addition to intractable body pain which may or may not be caused by auto immune illnesses or spinal compressions, she had undergone questionable dental work which left her mouth throbbing from an incompletely-removed root fragment. This had persisted for over a year, until she changed her insurance and was referred to a compassionate and competent female dentist in a different practice.
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Thank you, all. -
This is an utterly beautiful piece. And it is totally from the heart. Bless you. -
Awesome! Indeed God/ess must be present, if we allow them to manifest. Also recalled me of healing power of Apollo. -
Really enjoyed this. Excellent suggestions to the medical field.
Here we are, in the midst of another Mercury Retrograde.
Being a Priestess of Grace my daily aim is to follow the path of Grace, not only do I follow where Grace leads I allow Her presence to infuse my life. When Grace is invited in karma is dissolved and 'worldly' powers have no effect on us, the caveat here is that we need to be aligned so deep in the Grace that it overcomes our conditioning or the strength of the pulls of this realm. I know at my truest core, that in the face of the One Divine One Mercury Retrograde has no power.
Being a Priestess of Grace my daily aim is to follow the path of Grace, not only do I follow where Grace leads I allow Her presence to infuse my life. When Grace is invited in karma is dissolved and 'worldly' powers have no effect on us, the caveat here is that we need to be aligned so deep in the Grace that it overcomes our conditioning or the strength of the pulls of this realm. I know at my truest core, that in the face of the One Divine One Mercury Retrograde has no power.
However.....
I'm pretty human and I feel Lady Mercury and her coyote spirit so strongly every time! I purposefully do not look up retrogrades in an attempt to further deepen my fall into Grace, the idea being that "thoughts held in mind produce in their own kind," and not knowing will keep me aligned with Grace and out of the effects of the retrograde, that little trick has not worked as of yet as I still find myself at a loss for words, riled up, impatient and frustrated that what I'm trying to say is not coming out clearly during each Mercury Retrograde that rolls around. Sure enough I check my Moon calendar and there we are in the midst of another Mercury Retrograde.
The beauty of Feminine Mysticism, is that it acknowledges the One Power while also finding the Divine in the human realm and all of the tides, cycles and rhythms that occur to us while embodied. I have found that the gift within the Mercury Retrogrades that I experience is in the pause, the pausing to think a little bit harder before I speak, to contemplate a little more mindfully before I act and to breathe a little bit deeper when it takes me 30 minutes to register for a new Wordpresss site, still breathhhhiiiinnngg over that one.
This particular retrograde that we are in has been tempting me to get pretty prickly, besides my general Mercury Retrograde struggle to push at keeping life moving smoothly and at a pace that is comfortable for me while stumbling over words (something pretty foreign to this write-a-holic) I found myself at a loss for patience and perseverance in my gentle approach with my toddler Maiden who happens to be going through a developmental leap and teething at the same time that Mercury is retrograde...coincidence? I think not.
Being a Priestess is magical, it is inspiring, uplifting, magnificent. It is also earthy, human and common. A Priestess is the bridge between both the Otherworld and the here and now, and in my here and now Mothering a one and a half year old Maiden takes up a good chunk of my practice.
The first 48 hours of this retrograde her and I butted heads, I snapped, which is unusual towards her, I was edgy, impatient and temperamental, she just pushed harder, experimenting with hitting, screeching, demanding 'milk, milk, milk' which means breasts out, sitting down and taking a break to breast feed her while I seethed inside trying to rush the process so that I could get back to what I needed to be doing.
By the end of the 48 hours, after a snotty nosed melt down and a nap on Mom I was spent, I knew that I was veering way off my Mother Goddess mark and I took some time to re-evaluate. Not only was I going through another Mercury Retrograde, my sweet little, still-incarnating soul of a daughter was too. I began to empathise with her, still learning how to communicate in this realm, no longer able to desire and instantly manifest like in the one that she has just left behind, trying to learn our language, our societal norms, how to navigate the spectrum of emotions and moods that course through her and me and her father and the world at large and then boom, this cosmic halt on all things smooth insofar as communication goes comes waltzing into our lives. I looked down at her tear stained sleeping face and just felt the weight of this world on her little shoulders, and I just wanted to wrap her up and hold her close, forever, or at least until this retrograde is finished.
This is where my Motherhood began to feed my Priestess path this month. For years now, I have navigated how to flow through retrogrades with as much ease as possible, this month it became about navigating myself and another, as within so without was never so true until my daughter arrived.
What I began to do was to use less words, always a plus with toddlers, but an exaggerated amount less, I sang more, I hugged more, I counted slowly 1....2.....3.....ahhhh haaaa over and over again, I danced, I coloured, I came into myself and relied less on the spoken word and more on the language of the heart. My daughter and I have thrived since this shift, our bond is supernatural again, when we struggle to express ourselves we pause, we hug (she initiates sometimes even!) and we slow down. Our 20 minute walk to the store the other day took us an hour and we had never been so happy.
When I began my journey of the Priestesshood I was inspired by the magic I was beginning to conjure, the inspiration and the connection to the cosmos, I tried to brush off the number of sages, teachers, books and confidantes who had told me that in order to be in the state I was seeking I needed to become willing to be fully human. And then I became a Mother and found that life has never been so ripe with magic as coming fully down into it. I found in my Priestesshood the sacred centre of Gaia and Heaven and in that centre I have discovered that Heaven speaks to me through my life on Gaia. Since my transition into Motherhood my Maiden has reflected back to me the spaces that I have lagged in my spiritual practice, she is the Divine reflection of what was justified away coming up to be addressed. Being spicy isn't an excuse for impatience when there is a little Lamb looking up at me with watery sapphire eyes ready to emulate my response to life disappointing me in the moments that I am tempted to loose my temper. Flying off the handle and yelling at my Beloved because I'm a wild feminine Oceanic expression of the Goddess doesn't cut it when my daughter's whole concept of God is my sweet husband for now, may she never believe that the Goddess should destroy the God because of her femininity. And ignoring my need to be where I'm at, sensitive to Mercury Retrograde, and push ahead bullheaded and insistent that I be heard as I forcefully try to explain myself 'one more time', doesn't cut it when my little girl begins hitting and screeching because she isn't being heard and to because to be honest life is like one big Mercury Retrograde for her at this age.
I bow down to my life on Gaia and give reverent thanks for the lessons I am afforded. I shudder in embarrassment at the arrogant insistence I had that life be more magical, less earthy, and more deep than other people's in order for me to justify my existence on it. And I breathe as I reflect during this retrograde, finally stopping to follow the lead of this spiral path and learning from the moment that we are in.
I look forward to guiding my daughter as she ages, teaching her about astrology, the occult, retrogrades, moon phases, red tents, all of the juicy aspects of life that have lit me up. I'm also prepared to learn how to play basketball, study biology, listen to her fascination in mathematics, or any other number of interests she may decide are inspiring to her, despite how lost I feel in those subjects. Her emerging self will reveal to me how to best Mother her as she grows. But for now, until she tells me otherwise, she has a Priestess as a Mother and I will follow my path to support and love her in the best way that I can, and today that means slowing down, getting quiet, reflecting and listening deeper while closing my mouth.
I will listen to Mercury Retrograde, I will listen to the reflections that my loved ones shine upon me and I will listen to my gut, my inner wombspace of wisdom and I will allow myself to grow and to learn in the uncomfortable spaces. As I learn to do this for myself and to support my daughter in being held through her first experiences with frustration and impatience I become better equipped to take my Mother presence, the space within me that expresses the Mother Goddess, into the world to nurture, hold space and unconditionally love all of the children, both small and grown, as we flow to the best of our ability along the spiral path of the Goddess.
Blessed Be Mercury Retrograde and all my relations.
Grace Be With You,
Priestess of Grace,
Candise Soaring Butterfly
image taken from: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ea/75/94/ea75941e1f563820c683cb08a5c7bd3d.jpg
ty!
