HEKATE and the Blood Moon

International Women’s Day March 8th  2019

HEKATE is Goddess of the crossroads and holds the keys to the Underworld. She is associated with the dark moon and holds the energy of the ‘blood mysteries’ which are ; the first menstruation, menstruation, pregnancy, peri-menopause and menopause, all times of feminine power.

Menstruation stigma is still widespread in our world. Some societies see menstruation as unclean and  shameful . Many traditional religions still consider the monthly bleed as being ritually unacceptable. Often women when bleeding are forbidden to enter temples, touch food, have sex and interact with men. Menstrual exclusion in some societies exiles  bleeding women to menstruation huts. Menstruation segregation and stigma is a human rights issue.

Our moon cycles is a time for honouring the Feminine . The blood mysteries arise and align with the moon cycles encouraging us to listen and look beyond what we can see.

I AM BLOOD   #theredseedsoracle

HEKATE and the Blood Mysteries
I AM MOONBLOOD

 

 

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SHEELA-na-GIG in the FOGOU

SHEELA-NA-GIG is an ancient powerful goddess who was often portrayed over the entrances of religious buildings. She can still be found in situ in Ireland and all over Europe. Her image is as a grinning crone hag woman who is pulling open her exaggerated vulva for all to see inside, often seen as an obscene gesture.

Images of vulvas are represented in Palaeolithic art in ancient ritual structures such as Passage graves and fogous which had a vaginal entrance leading to a womb-like chamber.

Sheela-na-gig calls us to stand before the void from which we all come from and where we will all return. She guides us and opens us up to her gateway that reveals the continuous cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Her vulva is very similar to the sacred Hindu Yoni seen as a representation of the Goddess Shakti symbolising the divine eternal process of creation and regeneration.

“Dance me through to the stillness
to the point where the motion begins.
Dance me through to the silence
to the edge where the world begins.”
―Kathryn Price NicDhana

SHEELA-na-GIG in the FOGOU
I AM OPENING

ATHENA with her Owl in the Parthenon…

ATHENA was the Greek virgin goddess of wisdom, reason, crafts, strategy and war. Her temple was the Parthenon in Athens. She was often shown wearing amour but here I place the emphasis on her strong connection with the wise owl who represents and accompanies Athena.
Archetypally Athena models the strong Feminine endowed with great objectivity, insight and reason. Her left brained male energy acquires great knowledge which can be used in academia and business, and in all other areas  once seen as ‘a man’s world.
She is fiercely independent and doesn’t suffer fools lightly and has no time for dreamers. Perhaps at this time the Athena archetype is encouraging the Feminine to rise up and claim a voice of wisdom and reason, regardless of our gender. The feminine is a quality that lives in both men and women. We live in transition as the gender gap is closing and today men and women have to some extent interchangeable lives.

ATHENA and her OWL at the Parthenon
I AM REASON

The Athenian “owl” silver tetradrachm is unquestionably one of the most influential coins of all time. During the fifth century BC, when Athens emerged as the greatest of all Greek cities, owls were the most widely used international coin and helped to spread Greek culture throughout the Mediterranean world.

 

KOTYS in the Wild….

KOTYS was a Lunar Thracian Goddess. She was both a deity of wild nature and of war. Her celebrations and worship took place at night in wild places, deep in the forests or high up in the mountains, under the light of the moon. These gatherings, it is said, were hedonistic to say the least as riotous and licentious frivolity accompanied the frenzied music and ecstatic dancing. The priests of Kotys were transvestites and called the ‘baptai’ as part of the ceremony would involve their immersion into water for pre-ritual purification. Kotys’s rituals were originally practiced in secret because of their content  but in time they became quite mainstream and popular as Kotys’s worship spread throughout Greece and Italy.

I AM WILD          #theredseedsoracle

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves…..from Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

KOTYS dancing under the Full Moon
I AM WILD

The ebb and flow of SELENE

SELENE in Greek Mythology is the personification of the MOON, and sister of the SUN God Helios. Selene mirrors and reflects the light of the Sun to Earth at night and thereby controls the tides of the seas, according to the position in her cycles. Her brightness depends on where she is in her journey from new moon to full moon. Selene is always changing but always the same as she changes from darkness to brilliant light. There would be no eclipses without her, for at times she enters the shadow. She is energetically linked to the’ Feminine’ and holds the qualities of nurture, creativity, intuition, non-rationality, changeability, inspiration, reflection and emotional expression. Our world is changing and now there is far more space for feminine traits to be expressed and not suppressed and diminished in all of us. I AM TIDAL #redseedsoracle

“The gleaming stars all about the shining moon hide their bright faces when full orbed and splendid. In the sky she floats, flooding the shadowed earth with clear silver light.”― Sappho

The ebb and flow of SELENE
I AM TIDAL

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

BYRON

NYX in the Cave of Night

Today marks the darkest  night of the year, and so I am marking this powerful and liminal time with my recent print of NYX, the Greek goddess who was the NIGHT. She was seen as the source from which all creation emerged. Before there was anything there was only a void of darkness from which emerged NYX. Her story tells of her residing in a cave , in The Underworld, from where she offered her powerful oracular skills. Every day as dusk descended she would leave the cave to wrap the vestiges of the day with a velvet darkness, so as to allow life to rest. NYX was mother to many deities: among which were the Fates, sleep, death, strife and pain. In the Feminine mysteries the Dark Goddess is cloaked with a deep wisdom and knowing  which she offers with abundance to those who would dare to look deeply into her dark spaces. For it is said that in our darkness we may find light, understanding and eventually peace.

Darkness is a metaphor for the shadows that lie within us, the unknown side of our personality. In Jungian psychology this is called  ‘the shadow’ describing  aspects of the unconscious where we may hold and repress uncomfortable feelings such as denial, rejection, guilt and shame. Here lies those parts of ourselves that we don’t want to own or that we think society or our families won’t like. Such feelings Ignored and buried in the unconscious often end up being projected  onto others.  Jung said that ‘to become conscious of the shadow involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.’

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” Jung

NYX in the cave of the NIGHT
I AM DARKNESS

The MOIRAI and the Red Thread of Life

THE MOIRAI were the 3 goddesses of fate and destiny who personified the life and death cycle of humankind. Their name means ‘alottted portions’. The Moirai it was said they appeared three nights after a child’s birth to determine its course of life.

CLOTHO  spun the thread of life …BIRTH                                                      LACHESIS measured the thread and allotted … LIFETIME                   ATROPOS  meaning ‘she who cannot be turned’ severed the thread …DEATH

In the Republic of Plato the three Moirai sing in unison. Lachesis sings the things that were, Clotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that are to be.

“The meaning of being alive is just being alive.”           Alan Watts

It is suggested that a large part of all human behaviour is generated by a fundamental fear and anxiety in our unconscious about death. Our mortality often doesn’t sit easily within us consciously and unconsciously. We may worry and stress about how our life may turn out and may try to seek some sort of security that will make the feelings go away. Making sense of our mortality may lie in ancient wisdoms such as Zen Buddhism that teaches the value and emphasis of living in the present.

“Come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love.”….RUMI

THE MOIRAI apportioning the Red Thread of Life
I AM MORTAL