She wept.

It all began with her tears

Forming rivers

Channeling the canyons

Of wisdom’s lines.

She wept- as

The apple fell a second time

With all the pomp and circumstance

Of the first fall

Of man.

She shouldered that blame.

All eyes on her

Innocence held in tears.

She wept.

And now is the second falling.

The pomp

The circumstance.

The apple

The tears.

But this time is different.

She weeps.

Kneels deeply in prayer.

She lays belly down

In the rich, fertile soil

Lets tears form rivers

To nurture and rewild

This thirsty land.

And she rises.

With all the knowledge

Of grandmothers and

Medicine keepers she rises.

Like a full blood moon

She rises.

Like a swelling tide

She rises.

And she is rooted.

And she will not be buried.

She rises, and she is dancing.

She is divine rhythm

heart echoing

sacred drumming.

She is rising

From sacred ceremony

And soulsong rhythm.

This second falling

is a rising

She is moving and swelling and dancing

She is shedding 

that first fall-

Its fires

Its twisted stories

Its condemnations

 fall like ash-

Like apples

Like false accusations

This second falling 

is a whisper

Growing louder.

There is no denying.

She will not have this story buried

This falling set afire

Or twisted unholy.

She is rising

She is holy.

She is

Life.

She is the second falling.

She is weeping.

She is rising.

Dancing.

She is

Holy.

 

 

 

My childhood was a cartography of 20 acres of hilly field turned home with trees, and rambler, and long winding drive. Upon this map, I formed a narrative–my own personal patchwork history, rich with the threads of nature play and endless enchanting skies. Into these memories of limitless freedom of mind and spirit, I wove the preacher’s words, and the speculative assertions of Sunday school teachers who attended bible studies and discussed the fall of man. I can recall the story. The blame. The burden. Eve, that very first woman who was created by the mighty All-Father, from the rib of the first man.  Adam, God had formed from clay with his very own hands, in his very own image. God was nice to Adam- made him all creatures imaginable and let him give them names. As the story goes, Adam wanted something more, so God created woman. God created woman for man, from man. And there you have it– the manbirth of humanity. 

On with this original tale of the original couple– Adam, and his gal, Eve, lived in Eden, a perfect paradise,  until Eve’s curiosity got the best of her. In this garden, Adam and Eve were told to enjoy the fruits of trees, except for one. One tree was forbidden. Eve was tempted to eat from that one tree that these young and innocent lovebirds are instructed not to stay away from- the tree of knowledge. Lured by her curiosity, and tempted by invitation. . . All things in Eden were perfect, but there was this off-limits tree. And in this tree, there lurked a snake. And the snake was evil. Eve, perhaps entranced by the devil himself, ate of the apple, and worse. Not only did Eve commit the unforgivable sin of ingesting the forbidden fruit that was ripe with knowledge, but she then embodied temptation, playing the same seducing trick upon innocent Adam, that the snake played upon her. Seduced by this temptress, he ate as well.

I played this out in my head so many times as a child and can recall questioning this first evil curiosity, this first fall to temptation. If the snake represented Satin and all that was evil, and the snake was hanging out in the tree whispering sweet nothings to Eve in order to tempt her, then Eve became the seducer whispering sweet nothings to Adam in order to tempt him, does this indicate that Eve becomes Satin and all that is evil? And what about this knowledge? Does this story urge those seeking piety to shun knowledge? Was the all-father’s goal for humanity to keep a couple of ignorant and obedient claymade and ribmade humans about in his perfect garden? Perhaps we were pest control. Did we eat aphids? 

 The tale of these two innocent lovelies, these knowledge crossed lovers, goes on. Having ingested the forbidden fruit, they found themselves with sudden knowing. They realized they were naked and attempted to cover themselves in their shame. Then wearing their shame and a few figleaves for cover, they were then cast out, forever exiled from paradise. As it was Eve who fell to temptation first and caused Adam to fall as well, God (who was loving God, but sometimes a smiting God) cursed Eve for her sin of falling to temptation, eating from the forbidden tree of knowledge, and tempting Adam to follow her lead. God punished Eve, and all future women, for this heinous act. Eve’s sentence, the sentence of all women— blood and birth. Monthly blood. Painful birth. Woman– this is the burden you carry, for you caused the fall of man. This is the story of the start of humanity and the origins of menstrual blood- this was the narrative I wove together in my young mind– from the Bible, the preachers, and the Sunday school teachers. Amen.

Historically, this story did not work in favor of empowering our sisters to live in peaceful partnership with men. This story fueled many a fire of inequality and injustice. It fueled plenty of literal fires throughout the course of rather recent History as well. This story, although penned about the very beginning of time, does not anthropologically depict what we know about civilizations in prehistory. First off, the story totally usurps eons of historical honorning of women, their fertility, the sacred cycles of female bodies, and the magical way these bodies create and birth life. . . 

In the beginning, before the the All-Father birthed man from clay and woman from man, before man was given dominion – domination- over everything, before the nomenclature and separations there was Oneness– there was she. In the beginning when there was harmony with the rhythm of the Earth and her changing seasons, our Earth was honored and celebrated as a living entity, fertile in her giving of vegetation to nourish our bodies, and fresh springs to quench our thirst. She offered in her endless sky dance, darkness for our sleep and light for our toil- celestial orbs working in rhythm to create them both. In this rhythmic landscape of life, of light, of darkness.  All the anthropological and archeological evidence shows that early civilisations celebrated the Divine Goddess and the Sacred Feminine. The clues are there to indicate ceremony and ritual; all evidence and artifacts show that the early people of earth held a great reverence for the sacred fertility of Woman. She– the keeper of wells, the goddess of grains, the mother of birth, and death, and rebirth. She was the song of the sea, and she was the protector of people. She was ceremony and ritual, sacred and revered. 

The rise of the All-Father not only usurped the birth stories of Earth’s people with an omnipotent  man-god-potter, shaping the first human with his own hands to mimic his own masculine image, but also gave birth to a new patriarchal human consciousness. Like wildfire, the ideas and ideals of scarcity, coupled with notions of domination and subordination spread throughout the lands. These fires fueled justification for man acting with power over women, over plant, over animals, over his fellow man, and over, and over. Myths were rewritten with All-Fathers lording over lands and people. The grains of the fields that were once the sacred blessings of Demeter and Persephone, became the work of enslaved people. The food was locked up by community dominators and distributed per the governing plan. The sacred springs that were guarded and blessed by our Well-Maiden sisters, became the property of those who asserted sovereignty over the land. The sovereignty of woman was pulled away and she became the wild– to be claimed, domesticated, owned. Her body, her land, and her story, stolen away by the principles of a the power-over patriarchy. The medicine that was once the honored wisdom of the elder-women, was derailed onto a pathway of domination as well. The elder-women with her gifts of knowledge and skills in the art of plants and healing became one who consorted with the evil spirits; her art deemed punishable by a fiery death.  As the patriarchy began its prowel, the All-Father ideals campaigned their way into noble stature. Sacred Earth became man’s rock to claim. The wilderness was framed for being uncivilized and savage. Women and those who supported the old traditions became the wicked-wild and the evil root of man’s temptation. 

We only need to glance through the recorded histories of civilizations to see this domination consciousness gather speed and power. Crusades spread across the lands, enslaving societies.  Crusaders set afire the notion that the Earth was our fertile mother who provided for her beings. This idea was contrary to the one where society’s overlord was solely responsible for providings that could be governed– doled sparsely out to hungry, suppressed people. 

The story of the fall of man, with its blame and burden, is a story that needs to be unraveled. It was penned and annotated by the hand of men who hungered for power and domination. It was penned and annotated by those who yearned to burn our fertile bodies to root out their own temptations. It was emblazoned by a narrative that gave glory to the purity of human man. It twisted nature into an uncouth wilderness which required subduing. These ideas and ideals were bellowed from pulpits- words that shunned the wild, untamed nature. The message condemned the wild rhythm of women: the well keepers, the medicine weavers. Men climbed up on those pulpits and cast out condemnations, and our bodies burned in the wake. The divine body of our entire Earth is still burning in its wake. This story is still coursing through us, casting shadows on our past and is still at work in the world aiding in the demise of our planet. 

It is time. We must pause, breathe deeply, reflect, and begin the unweaving- pulling the threads of a twisted story from the fabric of our being. It is time—to let these threads dissolve. It is time to dig into the stories of our grandmothers and grand-sisters and begin to weave a new story.  It is time to nurture and heal, and time to reclaim and rewrite our stories in our own hand. The journey from shame to honor will not be an easy undertaking but, if we can dig past the patriarchal ideals that justified the domination of women and many other peoples, a patriarchy that has taken our planet and twisted her living, giving goodness into a wild and inanimate rock that requires the hand of man sculpt and form, then we as beings can rise empowered and holy. In this rising and empowerment of her beings, the Earth will also rise, as well as hope for a future of lush naturescapes.

There is a fire burning in our souls; it is a fire that burns of the stories of the land. It is a fire shedding light on the mythologies and spiritual practices of Hystery, of women who held sovereignty over the land, and who cared for its springs and healing waters. There is a fire awakening our souls, giving voice to the long silenced stories of women who were burned as witches for their understanding of herbs and healing, for consorting with nature, for being of nature.  It is a fire that burns with recognition that patriarchal ideals swallowed the stories of Hera, who nurtured the hearth and home, of Demeter who gave us grain long before long before “dominance agriculture” striped the life from our soils. As women reclaim the echo of our stories, the mythologies that have woven and will re-weave the fabric that connects us to our bodies and to the land, we will not only heal this wounded planet, but also restore balance to her people. Though the stories of our grandmothers who kept the wells, collected the herbs, and nurtured the land, we are blazing a path that will ensure that generations can act outside the patriarchal ideas of domination over people and planet- working in partnership with the Earth and all her people regardless of gender, color, location, or spiritual origins. The time is now; we must courageously find our voices and blaze a trail into this wild unknown that is both our distant past and immediate future.

We are living in an era of Spiritual awakening. We are moving, en masse, towards spiritual practices of self-directed Being and an the understanding that we are ALL part of the same threads of existence. We are no longer looking to the pulpit for forgiveness and redemption. After a couple thousand  years of clergy selling us pathways to forgiveness and salvation, we have taken our salvation into our own hands. After a couple thousand years of a peace-filled afterlife promised to a select group of elites, whilst those who were unaware of this new world-order, or sought to uphold the beliefs and traditions of their families, would eternally suffer the burning fires of hell. We are walking-out of the patriarchy to the rallying cry of our sacred souls’ understandings. They will no longer burn our bodies. They will no longer shame our bodies for gender, for color, for sexual identification. The moon is new; the time is right . We are rising without looking back. 

We are leaving the churches. We are leaving abusive relationships. We are leaving behind the notions that we are less. We are rising– claiming sovereignty over our bodies and stories, taking charge of our personal spiritual journeys. We are parenting our sons so that they will not repeat the patriarchal echoes of our forefathers, instead teaching the ways of partnership and the balance of the sacred feminine and masculine. We are parenting our daughters to be empowered equals. We are blazing this path that is opening before us- we are rising.

The new age needs our light. As the infrastructure of the passing age of “power-over” political ruling passes into memory, it is time for us to shine into this age of light, of compassion, of healing, nurturing, and understanding. Domination, and power-over ruling has caused many wounds, and we (humans and planet alike) require much healing. We must bravely answer this invitation to bring our gifts of healing and empowerment to creating this new reality and woke reality. 

It is time that we step into the light as leaders and teach the path of oneness. We cannot continue to tolerate ruling that justifies oppression and domination of people and planet. We are called to root down into our sacred soil and nurture the ground beneath our feet. We are called, sweet sisters, from the Spirits and the Divinity, our grandmothers who gathered plants and herbs, who gathered in ceremony, and sacred ritual- to nurture and celebrate. Can you hear their whispers- calling out- inviting you to light the sacred fires and choose a sacred path? We must awaken sweet sisters. We must blaze this new pathway of light and understanding so that the entire world might take head and follow. Awaken and lead. Shine your divine light into this world sweet sister. Shine your love and understanding. Let the wisdom of whispers of our grandmothers flow through you and shine.