My Cosmology pt2

A couple of weeks ago I was having trouble with overwhelm and family issues that I just couldn't hold so I was chanting to Kuan Yin. The relief and the love and the compassion that I felt and the shift was very real. That's why I say that I can work with these goddesses but I'm in devotion to the primordial mother.

I also think we could have, as women, a mindset shift. If we looked at these goddesses as sisters then we would be living our life as goddesses too.

What if we turned to these goddesses and said : (Kuan Yin)

You have walked this path. You have carried this compassion. You have become a vessel through which the Mother is known. When I need to remember compassion, I turn towards you.

Then you can turn towards Hecate when you need the wisdom of thresholds.

Towards Sekhmet when you need fierce protection.

Towards Brigid when you need the fire of creativity and healing.

Towards Oshun when you need to remember sweetness, beauty and the power of desire.

They become sisters in the great family of the Mother.

And then, yes, just perhaps, we can begin to see ourselves differently.

As women who is already a daughter of the Primordial Mother, carrying a particular expression of her into this particular time.

We could say:

I honour the goddesses who came before me. I work with the goddesses who walk beside me. I live as a goddess in my own time.

 Not in the sense of claiming to be omnipotent or superior to other people. In the sense of recognising that my life is also a place where the sacred is being expressed.

 What if the altar is a place of relationship?

 What if we look at the goddess and say:

 You are my sister. You have already walked through something I am walking through. Show me what you know. Remind me of what I carry too.

 And perhaps one day, someone else will look at the women of our time and say the same thing. She was my sister. She lived in my world. She carried something sacred through her life.

For me there is a difference between honouring a goddess and being in devotion to the Primordial Mother.

It's like when you have these priestesses who are the priestesses of Venus or Aphrodite and you follow the Aphrodite path or the Venus path. You know you honour that goddess, which I think is beautiful, but I think it's nice to do that alongside being in devotion to yourself as a goddess. If I had a real-life sister I could honour her but I wouldn't be in devotion to her.

You can have a sister whom you love deeply, respect, learn from and honour. You can recognise her gifts. You can turn to her for wisdom. You can celebrate her. But you do not organise your entire spiritual life around worshipping her.

And then there is the third relationship, which is your relationship with yourself.

Perhaps the structure is something like:

The Primordial Mother

The source. The vastness. The one to whom you offer devotion.

The Goddesses

Your sisters. Those who have walked particular paths, embodied particular powers, and become beings you can work with, learn from and honour.

You

A daughter of the Mother. A woman with your own particular expression of the sacred. Someone who can also live as a goddess in her own time.

So a priestess of Aphrodite might say:

I honour Aphrodite. I learn from Aphrodite. I work with Aphrodite. I carry something of Aphrodite's current into my life.

But she might also say:

I am not here to disappear into Aphrodite. I am here to become fully myself.

Because sometimes spiritual devotion can become a form of self-abandonment. We give our power away to the deity, the teacher, the tradition, the guru, the goddess. We become devoted to something outside ourselves and gradually forget that we are also a sacred being with our own relationship to the Mother.

Honour the sister. Know yourself as goddess. Remain devoted to the Mother.

You can place Aphrodite on your altar and say, I honour you.

You can place Kuan Yin on your altar and say, I honour you.

You can place a mirror on your altar and say, I honour you too.

And perhaps the mirror is not vanity. It is recognition.

Because if the Mother is the source of all life, then you are not outside of the sacred looking in. You're one of the places where the Mother is currently alive, breathing, thinking, choosing and becoming.

That gives me a sense that devotion to self as goddess is not the same as worshipping yourself.

It's reverence.

A willingness to treat my own life as worthy of attention,my body as worthy of care, my intuition as worthy of listening to, my boundaries as worthy of protection and my becoming as something sacred.

I have so many books to read about different goddesses. It's like I'm reading about my family tree: my sisters and cousins and aunties and great aunties and grandmothers. Who I respect deeply and honour deeply, and the same way that if a family member had died I would give honours and flowers and prayers to.

Some are distant ancestors whose lives and stories have become difficult to separate from myth. Some are women whose names have travelled through centuries and been transformed by the people who remembered them.

And when I approach them that way, the relationship becomes intimate without becoming devotional in the same sense as my relationship with the Primordial Mother.

Ah. This is one of my sisters. This is what she carried. This is how she moved through the world. This is what she can teach me about compassion.

This is one of my aunties. She knows the crossroads. She understands endings and thresholds. I respect her wisdom.

This is one of the women in my family who knows beauty, pleasure, desire and self-worth. Let me learn from her.

I can honour her/ them in the way I would honour an ancestor.

Flowers.

Candles.

Prayer.

Food.

Songs.

A place on the altar.

A moment of silence.

Because I love and respect the relationship.

You are part of my sacred family. I remember you. I honour what you carried. I am grateful that your story has reached me.

And then there is the Mother, the primordial vastness from which this whole sacred family emerges.

That makes the altar almost like a family home.

The Mother at the centre.

The goddesses around her.

And myself among them.

Not below them. Not pretending to be above them.

Among them.

These are my cousins and my sisters. This is my family and I have a mother.

I can have a different relationship with each of them.

I can meet one and think, I want to know you.

Another, I have so much to learn from you.

Another, I respect you, but I do not feel particularly close to you.

Another, You are powerful and I honour you, but I would not necessarily invite you into my home.

That is actually how family works.

And perhaps sometimes I'll find that I'll have a particular affinity with one of them. I may work with her for a season. I may feel especially close to her. I may honour her in my home or garden.

But I remain yourself.

I remain a daughter of the Mother.

And the beautiful thing is that this also allows me to recognise my own place in the family. I don't have to wait until someone else has written a mythology about me.

I am already one of the women living now.

I am already carrying something into the world.

So perhaps one day, in some form, another woman might look at my life and say:

Ah. This is one of my aunties. This is what she knew. This is what she carried. This is what she taught.

Less like a hierarchy.

More like kinship.