Before I began my Priestess walk in this lifetime I was an avid student of mysticism, so avid that I have named the brand of spirituality that I practice Feminine Mysticism.

 

When I first heard and felt the call to become a Priestess I was scared and resistant, although my heart and soul felt at home with this calling, it went against a lot of what I had been practicing in my mystic practice.....or so I thought.

 

I reached out to the only Priestess I knew and told her about my calling, she laughed and said she wasn't surprised, she knew that I was a Priestess of Isis and had been for many lifetimes.

 

"That may be so," I told her, "but I'm not aligning myself with a deity, can you still initiate me if I'm not a Priestess of a Goddess deity?"

 

"Sure, what do you have in mind?" she asked.

 

"I will align myself with Grace and with my Native American Animal totem, the butterfly."

 

"Sounds great," she happily agreed, "but just so you know, you're a Priestess of Isis," she chidingly added at the end.

 

Thus my Priestess journey began, I have been exceedingly encouraged over these past 8 years at the broadness of the Priestess path and the freedom that I have found to walk the spiral path of the Priestess in alignment with my own highest truth.

 

There is a balance between defining this path as my own and being committed to the role of a Priestess, simply, but not easily, put, which is to merge the higher realms with the lower (Heaven and Earth) and bring the As Above So Below mysteries into manifested form on Earth. How we do this as Priestesses and what it is that we align with as a Priestess will differ for each sister.

 

Grace first called for me to align with her when I was an 18 year old, wild child, partying Maiden, four years later when I committed myself to the path of mysticism Grace solidified it's presence in my life. For the first three years when my study was solely mysticism I began to cultivate a strong sense of what Grace was and how it worked in my life and once I entered my Priestess path I found the avenue with which to dedicate my life to that energy.

 

I was a Priestess of Grace for six years before I became a Mother and in those six years I stood back and flowed with the enchanting energy of Grace into deeper and higher realms of mystery, magic and romance than I ever could have created prior to my Priestess path. At the six year mark Motherhood hit me and it was a complete contradictory experience, in one realm of experience my heart was opened wider than it has ever been opened before, my entire life slowed down and I was enveloped in a cloak of warmth, bliss and surrender. In the other realm of experience I was grounded and became tied to the Earth plane in a much heavier way than I ever had or ever wished to be.

 

During my energy work studies teachers had convinced me of the benefits of opening my root chakra, I was scared of loosing my psychic abilities and connection to Goddess if I did, but I learnt the reasoning and benefits of being grounded and discovered that the deeper I grounded the higher I could open and sustain a vibration, much like the Priestesses parting the mists in the Mists of Avalon, there was great power in grounding down in a conscious way. Motherhood, however, took me and shot me right down into the realm of the primitive, ancient Mother Bear's, suddenly Earthly issues like finances, health and the future were nagging at me and my path to the gossamer twinkly road of Grace was eluding me. 

 

It has been three years now of me learning how to Priestess as a Mother that is now tied to her daughter and is tied to the Earth, I have learnt how to find and follow the path of Grace and observed how life gets lighter and more inspired as I slowly raise up as high as I grounded down. It was a deep choice of faith to recommit myself to following the principles of Grace while I was in the midst of such Earth bound consciousness, it was a step back into Grace and as I have been doing so I have been experiencing my own parting of the mists within my consciousness, the deeper Motherhood grounded me the higher my potential to rise up in Grace has become.

 

It is the last day of the Gregorian calendar year and I am contemplating what it is that I am taking from the year we called 2016 into 2017, like a great majority of us 2016 had some powerful challenges that I walked through. Death found our family and my husband and I, both introverts with strong water influences in our charts, had to learn to choose to draw together rather than apart as we faced grief for the first time in our marriage. With the advent of the Autumn Equinox life began to lighten for me and I reflected that I had begun to practice Grace yet again, and it had led me out of the muck. From the Equinox until now I have been reacquainting myself with life and as we approach the next year I have been clarifying what it is that I am intending. One of our sisters that writes for Sage Woman Blogs, Molly Remer, has a beautiful store called Brigid's Grove, in this store she sells Goddess figurines. Last night I opened a picture of one that she had named Resilient Grace, there was my answer, my intention for the upcoming cycle of 2017.

 

Resilient Grace is the perfect way to define the balance between being in this world, embodied, whole, a woman, wife, mother, but not of it, following Grace rather than the influence of a society fuelled by fear. It takes resilience to remain on the path of the Priestess when we are no longer called to live in sanctuary's away from the world, focusing solely on connecting to the Goddess, Priestesses are called now to be out in the world, amongst the people of all paths, faiths and expressions of self. It takes resilience to show up as a Priestess committed to her path while juggling the roles that we have signed up to fulfill and it takes Grace, it takes Grace to flow, to receive the Goddess in the everyday, to believe, to emanate the magic of the upper realms.

 

Resilient Grace is what I am walking into 2017 with, I don't know if this will be a year dominated by growth moments disguised as challenges, a year of ease and flow or, most likely a combination of both. What I do know is the power that I have in my commitment and that as I strengthen my resilience to the lessons of life, to the winding roads of the spiral path and to the mystery that surrounds me and as I practice the principles of Grace within this resilience, there is nothing that I cannot face that my Priestess Path can't transmute into Divinity.

 

That is my commitment to 2017, I wonder what all of my Priestess sisters are committing to for this upcoming year and I wonder what each one of the community of souls seeking a higher way of living are committing themselves to. We walk side by side on the path of the Goddess, each in our own expression, each with our own commitments, each bringing Home a little closer to Earth with each day that we remain committed to our calling.

 

May 2017 be a year that calls us all deeper and more committed than the year before, I shall see you as we dance along the spiral path, homeward bound.

 

Grace Be With You,

Priestess of Grace,

Candise Soaring Butterfly

 

 
 
image taken from: http://www.stmarymagdalenes.org/stmarymags-karmievarya.jpg