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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in goddess inspiration
Binge Listen to Voices of the Sacred Feminine Radio w/Karen Tate

Voices of the Sacred Feminine Internet

Radio

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Weekly Goddess Inspiration: Rati

Spring is the season of passion, of stirring life, of creation. In my younger years, this season was all about Beltaine, and Beltaine was allll about passion and sex. One of the things I love best about my path is the celebration of sexuality as something sacred, as a gift from Goddess. As I've gotten older, sex has become less central to my Spring celebrations -- not because sex is no longer an important part of my life, or because I think it unseemly to be openly sexual and sensual now that I'm no longer in my 20s, but because I've begun to think about passion and creation in a wider sense. My Beltaine ritual this year involved working on my home, spending time with my partner, and honoring all the things I am creating, gestating, and getting ready to birth -- my women's circle, my priestess sisterhood, my creative projects. All the things that awaken passion in me, and all the passions I feel in addition to sexual passion. 

In my New Moon circle this past week, I drew oracle cards that encouraged me to step into my Authentic Self, to find my true passions and follow my calling. In some ways, this whole past year has been about accepting that I even have a calling -- something I've resisted for most of my Pagan life -- and learning what it might mean to step into it. So I've been spending the past week thinking about authenticity, about passion, about the role my politics around gender and sexuality and justice play in following my calling. I've also been reflecting a lot on the role that healing around my sexuality has played in my spiritual path, and about the ways in which I can help to create safe, brave, healing spaces for survivors of sexual violence in my spiritual community; about how I can help to facilitate the much-needed conversation about consent that's happening (or needing to happen) in Pagan spaces; and about what it means to be part of a sex-positive spiritual community in an overwhelmingly sex-negative culture.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Weekly Goddess Inspiration: Tara

Tara, Goddess of Inspiration, sometimes known as The Liberator, brings her message that we are not alone. She encourages us to remember that we can always ask for help, and it is through asking for help that our wishes can be granted and our troubles surmounted. Tara's message is especially powerful for women -- our culture encourages us to see ourselves as weak if we need to ask for help or if we are unable to handle all of our various tasks, obligations, and burdens alone. I know I have certainly fallen prey to the Superwoman syndrome throughout my own life, and have been struggling with feeling like my life was unmanageable on a practical level of late. And yet I have been afraid to ask for help -- even as I find myself resentful of the fact that no one's helping!. Tara comes dancing into my life right now to remind me that I have help available, human as well as Divine, if only I will ask for it. 

Tara appears in many forms in Buddhist cosmology -- White Tara is the sacred star, the liberator and wish granter; Green Tara, the Buddha of enlightened activity; Blue Tara, the transmuter of anger; Red Tara, whose power magnetizes all good things; Black Tara, who helps us access our power; and Yellow Tara, who brings prosperity and wealth. While the card depicts White Tara -- and my sense is that I myself will be walking with White Tara this week -- you may find that another one of these Taras calls to you. In the Goddess Tarot by Kris Waldherr, Tara takes the place of The Fool in the Major Arcana and is called Beginnings. I love this idea, that when Tara comes dancing into our lives, she is inviting us on a journey towards enlightenment, towards joy, towards our power -- and also reminding us that we do not walk alone. She is always with us.

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Weekly Goddess Inspiration: Ajysit

Among the Yakut people of Siberia, Ajysit is known as the Comforting Mother Goddess of Childbirth and Fate. It is she who guides children into the world through the process of birth, who comforts and assists with labor and birth, and who writes down the name of each newly born child in her Golden Book of Fate. It is said that calling out to Ajysit helps to ease the pain of labor contractions. She is also said to bless breastmilk so that it will be nourishing to the newly born.

While I have never had children of my own body and do not plan to, I spend a good deal of my time surrounded by midwives, doulas, and other birth professionals. (I joke that I spend a lot of time with a lot of people who spend a lot of time looking at other people's vaginas in a professional context, but I digress.) In working with, worshiping with, and simply knowing and loving people whose primary job it is to support labor and birth, I've come to believe that there are many times in our lives when we need a midwife -- not just when we are birthing a human child. In fact, one of my dear midwife friends calls me a "storycatcher" -- as she said once, "You know how I catch babies? You catch stories. You stay with people while they labor to get their stories out, and make it safe for them to birth them into the world." And so I do my own type of midwifery as a priestess, helping people, especially women, birth themselves into being. 

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Weekly Goddess Inspiration: Haltia

One of the things I love most about the Goddess Inspiration Oracle by Kris Waldherr is that it includes many lesser-known and even obscure Goddess alongside those that are familiar to me. I appreciate the chance to learn about Goddesses who may have been overlooked in my mythological education, and to find connections with Goddesses from pantheons or cultures I may know little about. 

This week brings the Baltic Goddess Haltia, Goddess of the Hearth and Home. She has much in common with the Estonia Goddess Holdja, and with Hearth Goddesses more generally. Honored among the Baltic Finns as the guardian of the hearth and hearthfire, Haltia lives on today as a general name for the house faeries or spirits who guard homes, water, graveyards and other places where humans dwell and carry out our daily activities.

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This week, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, wisdom, music, arts, and learning comes into our lives to serve as guide. Beautiful Sarasvati appears when we are on the cusp of enlightenment, of new learning, of finding new ways to express ourselves. If you have set creative, spiritual, or intellectual goals for the coming Spring (in the Northern Hemisphere), Sarasvati has come to tell you that you are on the right path. 

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And now for something completely different! 

Well, not completely different. But this week brings a reading from a new deck, Doreen Virtue's Goddess Guidance Oracle. I love working with Kris Waldherr's Goddess Inspiration Oracle, and will continue to do readings from that deck here on the blog. But I've been working with a couple other Goddess decks as part of my new monthly Women's Full Moon Circle here in DFW, and I thought it'd be fun to bring them to you.

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