“Relax Kid, I know how this ends. God wins.”

-Ray Wise as The Devil in ‘Reaper’

‘…I form fancy and plain,

Sculpting dull dreams and nightmares

as skillfully as shining visions’

-‘Bloudewedd’ by Elizabeth Rose

“She’s been speaking to you for the last 20 minutes.”

-Stephen Levine’s comment on his wife Ondrea’s meditative presence during a public lecture.

Sometimes, I am so FULL of sensation, impression, information but I can’t seem to get it out. Why do I lack language? Embodying something is necessary, translation is difficult. The Goddess is a language of being, of transformation. Created, destroyed in every breath. Speech IS breath.

This apocalyptic consciousness Daniel Pinchbeck speaks of is a living experience. True perception of the Ultimate ends or restarts Time. For me, that is embodied in the concept of the Divine Feminine, although it can be argued that it has no sex. That is correct and incorrect. Since the world we see is manifesting so much of the Masculine that energy has become negative, I sense a corrective as necessary. Contrary-wise I’ll hold to my decision to explore it as Mother, until all the world is alchemically hermaphroditic.

To me the world is full of mothers. Reclaiming consciousness, in our time, seems to me a matter of encountering and honoring them. Making their teaching our own.

There are the mothers of our bodies, our birth-givers. There are the mothers of our hearts, sometimes step-parents, teachers, mentors. There are the archetypal mothers. Mother Earth, our planetary birth-giver. The Maiden-Goddess, mother of our spirits, the eternally virgin kernel of soul. The Huntress, who, incarnated lives instinctually and understand the language and artistry of beasts. The Goddess of Sexuality, Aphrodite, the muse, our initiator into life, sex, passion – the world of the feeling, present body. The one, who for desire, drives us to create. The Dark Goddess – the one we must face with courage-the mother who takes us in, the one who ends life, the death-bringer. The wintry Earth who reclaims our substance and frees our spirit. Then there is the invisible Fourth Goddess--who may be a hermaphrodite—the one who stands between all conditions, thoughts and states. The Goddess of the Doorway. The shamanic initiator and guide to the final goddess she reveals: The Cosmic Goddess.

The swirling, star-jeweled blackness beyond concepts, formless at her heart. The Prajanparamita, mother of Buddhas and mother of Universes. Ourobouric, encompassing, surpassing Creator, holder of all knowledge, radiation, space-time-possibility. The One whose true name may never be spoken, ‘though every heart knows it. She is the one who allows us to navigate ALL transformations, including the one in whose coils we are presently wrapped.

There is a reason the communications of this coming/present/reverberating age come through nature. She IS nature. WE are nature. To say we are not, which is the lie of our present century, is to create a fundamental split in the Self. To make humanity mad. Which, if our current behavior is indicative, we are.

To understand, to heal, to change, I believe we must accept and understand Her, within ourselves. To hear what She is saying, we must listen, we must cultivate a radiant presence, a clear, passionate, engaged presence. This is the definition of love.

Love, not hate or fear, grows increasingly important as our time draws near.

Embrace those you love. Cultivate those spirits that help you see clearly, to remain strong. To vision and revision the world humanity has made we must love each other and behave caringly towards all that has been entrusted to us: each other and the world.

In the end, we must learn to embrace, at the level of soul and spirit if nowhere else, even those we hate and fear. Those agents whose actions endanger us and spur us towards change. This can be compared to the Tibetan rite of Chod, where the spirits of hungry ghosts are fed of one’s own substance. At that spiritized, alchemical level they can be understood as part of one’s Self. At any other level they are dangerous to engage. Let only the true initiate enter therein.

This is how I see our task: We plunge down into the Mother-Dark. When we return, we radiate the light of knowledge we bring back from there. Sometimes we radiate words, we radiate being and experience, we radiate art. This is heavy lifting so it helps to have help. That’s what friends, lovers, family and kindred souls are for. What the Irish call Anam Cara. Heart-friend, heart-kin.

I believe the wisdom comes from many traditions. The message is the same. Love, listen, extend yourself. Take action to help and to heal. Cultivate both the True Self and a healthy ego--which may also make a fitting sacrifice. Submit to grace, which sometimes looks like personal destruction, as the ego dies. Something, a phoenix, both personal and universal arises.

I know how it ends, God wins.

 -Elizabeth Rose

1/10/08