Feminism

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The Divine Feminine

I grew up in the Episcopal Church. I believe my parents chose that for us because members of my father’s family were Anglican. As it turned out, they all stopped going after a year or so, but I continued by myself.

Every Sunday when I came home, my father and I sat at the dining room table to discuss what the lesson was in Sunday school.  He would ask me what they taught me that it meant.  Then he would suggest that perhaps it could have a different meaning and then share his.  Finally, he would ask me what I thought it meant.  After sharing my thoughts, he always told me that what I thought was the most important thing.

The Episcopal Church is like that.  Each of us might have a different slant on meanings and most of the time we do not really share them with each other.  We find comfort in our own interpretation.

At some point in time, my child’s mind created a holy family of Father, Son and the last, Holy Spirit, the Mother. I knew even as a child that every living creature has a mother. I am aware that the Church as a whole does not think of the Holy Spirit as being female, but historically the Holy Spirit, the grammatical gender of the word for “spirit” is feminine in Hebrew (רוּחַ, rūaḥ).  All words in Hebrew ending in “ah” were considered feminine words. I do confess, that in my heart of hearts, I know that the Holy Spirit is the Mother of God.

I grew up outside. My early childhood was spent exploring the foothills of the San Bernadino Mountains and my summers were spent on the beach and in the Pacific Ocean.  Water was my element. I learned to body surf at the age of four and found incredible freedom in the water, floating, swimming and riding the waves.

It was only natural that my spiritual path became focused on the natural world. The love of nature, combined with the gift of magical thinking, handed down to me from my parents, created who I am today.

It seemed so right that my spiritual path diverted, and all emphasis was now focused on the divine feminine.  At the age of forty-five I knew that I would spend the rest of my life, helping women find their own power and to learn to be one with all things on this Earth where we live.

I live in an apartment complex for seniors, built by an Episcopal Church forty years ago.  Because members of that church are involved in activities here, I got to know them and their priest. Because I really like them and love how their Church is involved in amazing outreach into the community, I decided to go visit.  My visits have now turned into being fully involved there. That involvement has lifted the spirit of love in my heart. I have found a spiritual community where I belong.  Not a bad thing at the age of 82.

I am still Her Priestess – still working with women, still loving all the many goddesses that assist us in being all that we can be. Still a mystic. Still a believer in magic. That will not ever change.

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A New Year is Here!!!

logoAwaken Women! A New Year is arriving!! Have you dreamed of finding a mentor, a woman who will take you by the hand and gently guide you on your path? Do you yearn for a Sisterhood, where you can truly be who you are?

The Apple Branch – A Dianic Tradition extends an invitation to come explore fully how to be the priestess that you are! We have an online classroom with over 60 classes (always growing) where you can move at your own pace, and where you can share what you are learning with others, as well as beautiful rituals to inspire you on your path through the Wheel of the Year – the Goddess Cycles of Moon and Sun.

We offer three programs. First, our most comprehensive, Dianic FaerieCraft that is Dianic Wicca with added European/Celtic Craft. Second, Feminist Dianic Wicca as it has come through Z Budapest, and lastly, our path for our Crones, the Wisdom Path.  When you are at the website, please be sure to read See What Women Say and the Comments About the Ogham

Women! Explore – Choose – and Join!!

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Many blessings,
Bendis    click for email

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Becoming

The Year 2015 is coming to a close. It is a time of endings and a time of beginnings. That is the wonderful thing about our cycles. We all have the opportunity to end and begin – over and over. Each day, each month and each year. We all scurry about making resolutions for the new year only to see them fail almost immediately.

This is where a good basic magical practice can lend a hand with our resolutions. In every magical act we must first know what it is we wish to manifest. I am not talking some empty wish here but a real look at what we want – really want – for the new year to bring.

If there were one thing I would say needs to be given the most attention in one’s magical practice is the Art of Becoming.

When we cast our Circle and invite the Elements, in truth, they are already there. It is within ourselves that we must become those Elements in order to feel their presence in our Circle. This is why we need to spend so much time studying them for when the studies are finished, we then must learn to feel them, embody them and finally, to project them out to others.

It is the same when aspecting a Goddess – we must become Her. The only way to do that is to first know Her, not just from books and other references, but from our own personal experience as we embody Her.

In my healing method which I call Annym Billagh (the spirit of trees), one learns the healing energies of trees by becoming those trees, by feeling them within and projecting their healing energies onto someone else.

When a member of a Native American tribe dances an animal, he is not just imitating that animal he is becoming the animal in the dance.

When a dancer wishes to portray an image in her dance, she must become that image. When an artist paints, he first learns what it is he wishes to paint. He learns so well that what he wants to paint becomes a part of him and then it is moved onto the paper. When an actor portrays a character on the stage or on film, she must first become that character. When we have a desire, when we wish something to be in our lives, we have to feel and be in that state in order to manifest it in the world of form. We must become our desire.

So it is if we wish to bring in something real with the New Year, becoming takes on vital importance. This year is coming to a close. As with all endings, it is a beginning.

This year, my Circle is honoring Frigga. The Goddess Frigga sits within Her hall and spins thread for the Norns to weave into the great tapestry of all life. She never reveals what is in the thread She spins, but we can tell Her of our dreams and ask Her to spin them into the thread of our life, if She will.

Frigga’s thread is the substance of becoming. We can ask for Her thread and once we have it, we can take it, and shape it, and manifest what is to come in our lives. What will you do with the thread Frigga gives you?

What do you need to know to become your desire in the coming year? Do you have a clear image of what it is you wish to become? Do you have a plan for becoming your desires? Will you be able to take the thread that Frigga has given you, and with your own full embodiment of that desire, manifest your dreams in the New Year?

May it be so! May all Blessings be yours in 2016 and may it be a year of “becoming” all that you can be.

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A Crone’s Life, an Embodied Experience

In January of 2013, I wrote an article here for FAR called Embody the Sacred. In it I wrote,

“If we are to fully embrace living a magical life it is important to remember how to live in our bodies comfortably and safely. If we re-awaken all of our senses, our awareness is expanded and our perceptions clarify and develop. Without this, our magical life will not develop as it could. Our enjoyment of all that is Sacred will be impeded, as if walled in and separated from all that is possible.”

I would like to rephrase this statement just a bit to reflect where I am in my thinking now.

If we are to fully embrace living, it is important to remember how to live in our bodies comfortably and safely. If we re-awaken all of our senses, our awareness is expanded and our perceptions clarify and develop. Without this, our lives will not develop as they could. Our enjoyment of all that is Sacred will be impeded, as if walled in and separated from all that is possible.

To clarify my own personal meaning of Sacred, I see the Sacred as All of Life. This includes everything we can see, hear, taste, smell and feel. It also includes all that is known and unknown to us, quantifiable and intuited. The All is Sacred. I choose to call this All, Goddess, as my own personal preference because I see the necessity of a feminine presence in the All. I am a part of this sacredness, a part of Goddess, for I am a part of the whole. My experience of this sacredness, of Goddess, is through my senses. Of course, we have a lot more senses than the five Aristotle described.

Through many years of learning to be aware of what my senses are open to, as well as placing more of my focus on what my body experiences, rather than what it “thinks” all the time, what I have discovered is that life truly has become an embodied experience. This comes from the sense that I call “knowing.”

About twenty five years ago I became acutely aware of suddenly knowing something that I did not know before. This increased for me as I developed my ability to “journey” or travel via trance to other realms or dimensions of our reality. This “gnosis” seems to have increased with age. It has helped me define my spiritual practice as well as guide me deeper into the Mysteries. I used to need drumming or singing, some outside source to help me trance, but now I just go. When necessary, I ask and just know.

It has also affected my sense of time and space as well as the cycles of sun and moon as I move throughout the seasons. I no longer have to look at a calendar to know that it is a new moon. Or that the moon is at its peak in the light it reflects.

My body feels the changing seasons and responds to them accordingly, and not always when the calendar informs me. For example, I had this incredible burst of energy around the first of February. I was creative, active and productive in my online work and writing endeavors. I got seeds for my garden then as well and had my garden planted before the first of March instead of in April. All of this activity typically hits me mid-March to mid-April in a normal year but this year it came early. Usually it is just now happening but instead I have now leveled off in my energy and found myself in an less frenzied state. Puzzled by that, I had to reflect for a moment and I realized that of course, here in South Central Texas, we really had no winter and our spring began in early February. Small green leaves, early flowering all began then and not now. Now we are fully green except for a few really late budding trees. Our bluebonnets are in full bloom along the highways. It was simply my body’s awareness of the changing season and responding. I was responding to the surge of beginning growth, the need to fuel what is blooming in me.

Because I am basically retired (I don’t have a job that I go to every day), the need to watch the clock has vanished. I eat when I am hungry and I eat what I am hungry for. I dropped the shackles telling me to eat breakfast food at breakfast! I stay up until I am sleepy and I sleep until I wake up. Occasionally I do have to use an alarm but when I do, it feels like an imposition.

It is a comfortable way to be, to live life through embodied experience while at the same time have an active mind, digging and learning all while sharing that knowledge with others. It is a nice give and take with the Universe just as it is a nice give and take with those in my life.

I am excited because I am beginning to feel the energy rising around me again as my summer rapidly approaches. I look forward to completion, nurturing my early spring projects to fruition, ready to embrace their fullness. I am dancing in Her rhythms, in tune with her song.