Goddess Centered Practice
In the woods behind my house rest a collection of nine large flat rocks. Daily, I walk down to these “priestess rocks” for some sacred time alone to pray, meditate, consider, and be. Often, while in this space, I open my mouth and poetry comes out. I’ve come to see this experience as "theapoetics"—experiencing the Goddess through direct “revelation,” framed in language. As Stanley Hopper originally described in the 1970’s, it is possible to “…replace theology, the rationalistic interpretation of belief, with theopoetics, finding God[dess] through poetry and fiction, which neither wither before modern science nor conflict with the complexity of what we know now to be the self.” Theapoetics might also be described, “as a means of engaging language and perception in such a way that one enters into a radical relation with the divine, the other, and the creation in which all occurs.”
Endarkenment
Bloodtime
Moontime
Dreamtime
Darktime
thinking time
resting time
knowing time
hearing time
listening time
openness
flowing
knowing
transforming
becoming
whole…
I find that now is the time of year to contemplate the Dark Mother and to remember the many things that incubate and take root in the deep places within us as well as within the earth herself. I've been trying to implement dark moon retreat time into my own life on a regular basis. When thinking about what it offers, I made this list:
Time of self-care
Rest
Nourishment
Comfort
Growth
Initiation
Exploration
Transformation–-stepping into fullness of power
Surrender
Not knowingness
Wildness of spirit
Deepness of soul
Groundedness of being
Creativity
Stillness
Self-nurtrance
Time for mental quiet
Time for sinking in
Ask for help–-seek and find guides
I also think about the place where meat is chewed off our bones–-our strongest place. The place where we have grieved and despaired. Place where we have begged. And wailed. And the place where we have healed.
Darkness holds our DNA–-our link to past and future. At the birth of the universe, some part of us was there. I do not find that dark automatically translates as “bad” or negative or as the "shadow side" of anything. I think of cocoon. I think of womb. I think of germination. I think of a place to rest, wait, be still and transform. Emergence. Deepness. Rich earthiness.
The Goddess herself might be found in the dark and as Camille Maurine wrote, there is a secret in endarkenment.
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For more about endarkenment, see my post at Feminism and Religion.
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Good article. I've long embraced endarkenment rather than the fluffy bunny enlightenment path.