Calling the Great Mother
From my kitchen window I savored ever growing green vines that made beautiful a brick wall. Overnight, leaves burst from dry sticks, and tiny naked branches. Birds arrived to slip in and out creating a fervor of bird song, For a moment, I was thrilled. I washed the sills, stealing glances, mystified that spring had arrived on the back of an old factory. But yesterday, workers with yellow helmets and long knives, climbed tall wooden ladders, and cut down vines. Sleeping Beauty’s flowering protection disappeared. And, she was no where to be found.
All that was visible was the old fading red brick wall. Within hours, the tarmac below was covered with withering leaves. And the next day the brick was painted dark grey. I looked carefully for possible bird nests, and some remnant of sleeping beauty’s bower. She, the girl of a fairytale, however, still waits. How can we find her? I turn to myths that are always about the regeneration of existence within us, imagined, and felt.
While fairytales describe a path between this world and the inner world and back again, Myths are more direct.. They are the symbolic roadmaps that reach us from the fertile soil of imagery. She can be hidden, but not destroyed. Each time we remember and summon her from within our own heart mind, she appears. Words penetrate the thick skin of our deluded denial of her abiding presence. Myths are empowered by direct experience, by imagination, empathy, and the wisdom of knowing we are part of everything. Giving shape to elemental forces intertwined, contradictions, mysteries and processes we participate in the knowledge directly that each action has a myriad of consequences that effect everything knowable and unseen. Myths, like rooted plants, come back to life that which is within us. Seated at the window I found Her.
In the myth of Demeter and Persephone, a stoty at the border between the Divine Feminine as Source, and the increase of Divine Masculine replacing Her worship with Ruling, Demanding and Disrespect, The Great Mother Demeter, became enraged by the disappearance of her daughter. Kore, the girl, had been kidnapped by the brother of Zeus, who rules the heavens, given to his dry faceless brother Hades ruling the underworld. Unable to retrieve her daughter, Demeter crossed over to the human realm. Who else knows the terrible suffering of the loss of the feminine? Disguised as an old nursemaid, kidnapped and raped by pirates, she sought work as the caretaker of a Queen’s newborn son. In our world mythic occurrences ceaselessly repeating take shape as stories.
In the halls of Queen Mateneira’s palace, at night, Demeter did what only a goddess can do. She placed the baby in a fire to remove his mortality; make him and all the children of the earth. immortal. The Mother suckled him with her thumb, fed him amrita. When the baby cried, the Queen rushed to the chambers, screamed at the nursemaid , fearing the death of her baby. Disturbed in her sacred work Demeter revealed herself. The palace became radiant with her holy presence. The mother fell to her knees. The King was called. He too bowed before the Great Mother, Goddess of barley, wheat, and all things living, dying and rebirthing. He begged Demeter to remain in this world. “It has been so long since the Mother has been with us.” She asked for a Temple and a Temple was built.
Demeter remained in the Temple. What was lost, stolen, taken without permission, misused and reviled.had to be restored at all cost. A winter of unequaled drought and sorrow spread over the earth. Nothing grew. Zeus realized that without the Great Mother there would be no one to worship him. There would be no life at all. Finally, he agreed to let Kore return. I wonder what it will take for us to call her back?
Kore became Persephone, rising from the underworld with seeds falling from her skirts, from her skin, regenerating moisture and flowering spring. had taught Hades to love, had given him a face. She agreed to return and accompany the dead. Seasons were negotiated. Demeter rose from the heart of the earth to the heavens. All channels open. When we forget the Great Mother, we destroy what feeds us. As Sleeping Beauty reminded us without making our way through the tangled thorns of what has grown over our hearts, she will remain sleeping.
We must find a way, at all costs, to restore the feminine into our world. We must find within ourselves the ceaseless source of existence before cutting away the wild green vines of direct experience of our abiding being of everything. Within us is the source of creation. There is where She dwells. Can we nurture a remembering of the power of imagination and the truth of interdependence?
