The Luminous Dark Mother

I am deeply interested in the true origins and beginnings of the spiritual life of humankind. This interest has, over time, become a passion as I have expanded my awareness and understanding about our human story — most of which is not told in history books. As a long-time student of Goddess thealogy and spirituality, I have woven into the fabric of my life the inspirations and insights that have come from teachers, elders, and sister travelers who also share this same passion. I have also made spiritual journeys in search of ancestral wisdom about how our ancestors revered the most ancient and primal deity — the Great Mother, also known by some as the Dark Mother. I have found myself propelled into finding answers to the questions: "Who is She?" and "What significance does She hold for all of humanity?" I realized that I have had a profound inquisitiveness about, and yearning for, the Dark Mother for a very long time while not really knowing it, because I had no language for this longing until the Goddess spirituality movement became a reality for many women. From vision quests on mountaintops, to using sacred hallucinogens, to studying numerous Goddess cultures from around the world and traveling to sacred sites, I have been on a long quest — one that has taken me to the heart of the Goddess.

In 1998, I went on pilgrimage to Malta, Egypt, and Crete on the trail of the African Dark Mother who was carried in the hearts and minds of very early peoples migrating from the African continent into other parts of the world. My longing for this communion with the Dark Mother was also further deepened when I attended a conference in San Francisco on the Goddess at the California Institute of Integral Studies, in the late 1990s, honoring the work of the late archaeomythologist and linguist Marija Gimbutas. There I met cultural historian Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, whose work has focused on the origins of Goddess culture and spirituality originating in Africa, and the subsequent diaspora. I was enthralled with her research and could deeply understand her passion for educating people about the Dark Mother. Her wisdom ignited something deep within me. Perhaps it was more of an awakening — a remembrance bubbling up from my very cells. When Lucia planned a pilgrimage to Sardegna in May/June of 2004 to explore African migration paths and the Dark Mother, I jumped at the chance to travel with, and learn, from her.

I had been fascinated by astronomer Vera Rubin's discovery of dark matter (the word "matter" comes from "mater" or "mother"). Dark matter comprises about ninety percent of the matter in the universe (which I like to refer to as the "yoni-verse," as "uni" is a cognate of "yoni") and yet, is invisible. It is thought by astronomers and physicists that the gravity of dark matter shapes galaxies and holds them together. I had begun to think of this as metaphor and to consider what sacred meaning this metaphor might hold for humanity as a reflection of macrocosm in the microcosm. In other words, what is the correspondence between the Dark Mother of space and the Dark Mother in our human experience?

Lucia's work sheds light on this mystery. Her work cites research by noted geneticists revealing that African DNA is found in all races of people, and that humans — our species homo sapiens sapiens — originated in Africa. Her research has revealed that the worship of the Dark Mother followed African migrations after 60,000 BCE, first moving west into Asia and then spreading out across the rest of the world. From this evidence, supported by archeologists and other cultural historians, she boldly asserts that we are one race of people, originally African, and that we are all people of color!

Evidence of early African migration can be seen at the site of the oldest religious sanctuary in the world, Har Karkom, created in 40,000 BCE in the Sinai Peninsula, later known as Mt. Sinai. In Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum's seminal work, dark mother: african origins and godmothers, she notes that this ancient site is known as the geographic origination of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.1 Yet long before the emergence of these recent religions, in Paleolithic times, the site served as "an open air museum of a sacred place with altars, megaliths in alignment, and a cliff art record of peoples who have lived there."2 Their religion was centered on a female divinity, which would have been African and black, millennia before the rise of patriarchy.

My interest in learning about the Dark Mother has grown like a glowing ember, fanned by the wisdom of people like Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, who has inspired me to think of the implications of being originally African, and to find sacred meaning in the microcosmic experience of the Dark Mother. The first homo sapiens sapiens mother passed her mitochondrial DNA to her children and her daughters passed it to their children, and their daughters to their children. The mitochondria in DNA is the "powerhouse" of the cell —the organelle at the center of enzyme activity producing the storehouse of chemical energy, the power molecule ATP, or the vital power the cell needs to live. This mitochondrial DNA, shaped in the form of a double helix, is only passed by the mother. There is no corresponding genetic material which is passed from father to child. Therefore, the vital cellular energy of all people on the planet came from the first African homo sapiens sapiens mother — the original Dark Mother of our current human species. In dark mother, Lucia cites geneticist L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza who refers to the double helix as "the symbol of the evolution of the universe...the unlimited possibilities of becoming."3

In the word mitochondria, "mitos" means "thread." My own view is that this thread relates to the "superstring" in modern astrophysics theory, which asserts that subatomic phenomena are actually manifestations of vibrations of fundamental, one-dimensional strings. As emanations of consciousness in form, humans are connected to a primary source through our cellular threads. Just as dark matter (mother) in space shapes galaxies, and holds them together, we are shaped and held by the African Dark Mother who has given us Her life force, and resides in the very depths of our being, where the macrocosm is literally reflected in the microcosm — creating an unbroken, ecstatic, (I prefer to think of the constant creation in the yoniverse to be of an ecstatic nature rather than a violent one, as is so often assumed in the patriarchal scientific rhetoric), luminous, cosmic weaving connecting mother and daughter, which is really more of a cosmic dance of continuous, whirling motion. This original "matriarche," as I am calling it, is completely inseparable from the greater body/yoniverse/source and beyond. In my view, and in this context, the term "matriarche" differs from the term "matriarchy," which most commonly defines a social system of culture (though is no doubt based on the macrocosmic reality). Some common definitions of matriarchy include: "a family, group, or state governed by a matriarch," and "a system of social organization in which descent and inheritance are traced through the female line."4 There are also feminist definitions, which I think are much more accurate, one of which is offered by philosopher, scholar, and director of the Matriarchal Studies School, Heide Gottner-Abendroth. Her comprehensive work on the subject, spanning some thirty years, redefines the term matriarchies more inclusively: "they are all gender-egalitarian societies, and many of them are fully egalitarian. This means they have no hierarchies, classes nor domination of one gender by the other."5 While Gottner-Abendroth does include the spiritual in her redefined view of matriarchy, which is too extensive to fully discuss here, my use of the term "matriarche" is closer to the core meaning of the truest essence of what I am presenting as an expression of yoniversal spiritual Presence. "Matri" means "mother" 6 and "arche" means "the underlying source of the being of all things," so, taken together, "matriarche," for me, conveys "mother as the underlying source of the being of all things."7 She is the yoniversal primal reality from which all is birthed. Thus, She is everywhere.

I am also profoundly intrigued by the recent discoveries in astrophysics of dark energy and dark flow. With the discoveries of these dark phenomena in space, I see a reflection of the sacred trinity of the Goddess/Dark Mother of our ancestors — creation, preservation, dissolution — which was co-opted and twisted by the church, resulting in the patriarchal reversal known as the christian trinity. Dark energy is said to be responsible for accelerating the expansion of the yoniverse. Dark flow, the most recent discovery, is believed to be a kind of unseen force, pulling on us from perhaps another yoniverse outside of our own, over 14 billion light years away, which can be detected in a clear patterned direction displayed by certain galaxy formations. Here is the dark trinity — right there in astrophysics! From my perspective, dark matter, dark energy, and dark flow seem to be a part of something so great and truly mystical — a vast energy that gives birth to Herself. The "Mother Universe" theory of Princeton cosmologist J. Richard Gott suggests that we live in a multiverse that has always been here — a Mother universe that gives birth to daughter universes, eternally. This theory, as I see it, reflects the early parthenogenetic Goddess of Paleolithic ancestors—The Great Mother/Dark Mother. Dr. Gott says "The mother universe, which is sustained by energy from the quantum world, creates itself and makes the first matter in some way we will never be able to know."8 Maybe our ancestors did know.

I am also equally intrigued by the recent acknowledgement by astrophysicists and cosmologists of the possible functions of black holes. Though little is known about these mysterious beings, some theorists now consider them to be centrally responsible for the creation of galaxies, since most galaxies have one at their core — the Dark Mother is at the core of every galaxy giving birth from Her great womb/cauldron of stellar creation! And some theorists go so far to say that because of their enormous energies black holes could be responsible for creating "baby universes."9

The darkness clearly holds all possibilities. It is not something to be feared; rather, it is a mystery to be lived. Understanding the meaning of being held and shaped by the invisible Dark Mother can give us insight into the true nature of our being, and can help us remember what we have lost when we have strayed too far from Her embrace. I believe women are the original and primal species of our kind, giving birth, just as the yoniverse gives birth. We are held in this deep mystery, which I believe is intrinsically, unequivocally female at its core. She simultaneously rocks us in the cradle of chaos and order.

What Lucia and others are telling us is that, contrary to modern belief, human nature has not always been violent. No evidence of warfare or weaponry in the artifacts and iconography in these early civilizations has been found. The work of the late archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas has shown the peaceful and creative nature of the early cultures of Neolithic Europe. In her monumental volumes, Language of the Goddess and Civilization of the Goddess, her discoveries about the peaceful and female-centered Goddess cultures are exquisitely detailed. Now, Lucia's work reveals the origins of European culture in a single source, the African Dark Mother, whose worship conveys peace, justice, and compassion. She inspired the creation of cultures of beauty and celebration on all continents. As the very early African rock carvings and paintings show, life was celebrated and enjoyed by our early ancestors.

Lucia's work demonstrates that at the heart of Goddess spirituality is the Dark Mother Herself — which is the living soil/soul of the Earth, the spinning matter/mother and mysterious unseen forces of the yoniverse, source of us all — peaceful and beautiful. It is my belief that, when we remember who we really are, and from whom we come, peace will once again reign as our birthright. When women are returned to our proper place of respect in the greater scheme of things, it will be very difficult to imagine a world full of violence, hatred, and war.

When women are loved, all life is loved, and from this organic flow, people will naturally revere life, as they did so many millennia ago. This lack of evidence of warfare and violence in the archeological evidence from many early cultures gives us new material to teach to our children. I think it is imperative that we teach them about the peaceful nature of early humans, as this will help change their entire orientation to life. In these very difficult times, we are witness to a collective desperate longing of our souls to come home. I see this desperation reflected in the violence our society perpetuates against women and children, and now, children against children — usually males against others. It is no wonder that our children, at this time, are experiencing a devastating despair and loneliness, fueled by an insatiable hunger for violence and destruction. The only culture they have known is founded on premises that promise equality for all — if you happen to be male and white.

This kind of arrogant exclusivity is taking a psychic toll on all of us, as well as the planet. Our so-called founding fathers modeled much of their constitution on the Iroquois Federation. However, I feel they left out the most important premise on which the Iroquois based their agreement — that the council of grandmothers and clan mothers was the governing body that determined who embodied the virtues of female wisdom enough to become chief — virtues of peace, compassion, and kindness! This council had the power to remove any chief who did not hold these values sacred. The Iroquois placed the highest authority into the hands of women — of wise grandmothers. To me, these grandmothers were the embodiment of the Dark Mother, and were respected as such. The Iroquois knew that human life comes through women, and so women must be revered in order for all life to thrive. We have forgotten this. And when people collectively forget this very basic truth, there is a high price to pay for their (our) amnesia. It is the wisdom of the grandmothers that needs to govern our lives once again. When the wisdom of the Dark Mother is denied, we spiral downward into a deep abyss of carelessness, confusion, violence, and a profound sense of separation from the living Earth as we witnessed with the 2010 oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. I feel it is imperative to bring to our children the truth about our real history —herstory — in order for them to find a positive life experience that allows them to look forward to growing into their wholeness.

In Malta and Gozo, I felt the presence of the African Mother in the fantastic megalithic temples — the first one constructed over 5000 years ago, and in the Hypogeum, a labrynthian-carved structure in the limestone earth some thirty feet deep, with curved and round, egg-shaped niches for burial. The Hypogeum felt to me like a large womb, once holding the remains of about 7000 people. There is evidence that a temple once stood on top of the ground, indicating that rituals of life and death, as well as perhaps healing, were all enacted in a sense of wholeness/holiness. The Maltese structures are the oldest free-standing structures in the world, pre-dating the pyramids by about 1000 years. The megalithic temples are built in the shape of a large-bodied woman, so that upon entrance, one enters the body of the Mother through her yoni/gate. They are "double temples," with two shapes of the female body, side-by-side, indicating perhaps, shared leadership, mother-daughter relationship, and/or lesbianism, and perhaps, even, the double helix.

The temple-builders were migrants out of Africa, apparently first arriving in Sicily. I was amazed at how some of the rock construction of these temples reminded me of the natural rock formations in Philae in southern Egypt surrounding the Temple of Isis, the black African Goddess. Was there a memory of these amazing rock formations in the minds and hearts of the Africans who migrated to Malta?

Philae in southern Egypt, home of the Temple of Isis, was, itself, a very popular pilgrimage site in the millennium preceding Jesus and continuing several centuries beyond his death. Isis was a female deity with origins in central Africa, or Nubia, and was known as a compassionate mother. In dark mother, Lucia cites the work of leading nubiologist and archeologist, William Y. Adams, who considers Isis worship to be "one of history's most important ideological transformations."10 Adams further writes that Isis worship became "the first truly international and supra-national religion" because pilgrims of all classes and nationalities, including Meriotes, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and desert nomads alike flocked to Her temple for healing and spiritual guidance.11 Isis veneration spread as far east as Afghanistan, to the Black Sea, as well as to what is now western Europe in Portugal and as far north as England. It is Her legacy that has been inherited by christianity as revealed in the icons of the Black Madonnas found all over Europe; Isis and Her son Horus suckling at Her breast are most likely the prototypes for Mary and Jesus.

The Dark Goddess of Africa is the same Dark Goddess of India and the Far East — all with different names, but with the same power. Kali is a well-known Goddess from India, though we often hear Her name associated with the aspect of destruction. She was actually the Dark Goddess of India in all Her aspects — creation, preservation and dissolution. Why is it that her destructive aspect seems to be more visible in literature and in many myths than the others? It seems to me that associating the Goddess or Dark Mother only with destruction instills fear in people, and yet this is common. We have learned to fear Her power, the dark and death, with men in particular fueling this fear because of their own separation from the Dark Mother.

This separation is a result of the fear of the power of the Goddess that, for some reason, grew in men over time. The vast creative power of the Goddess, the Sacred Female, began to be taken as a threat by the male mind some 5000 years ago, and because of this fear, the need to "conquer" became the chosen acceptable heroic behavior for men in order for them to become "real men." To me, however, these men suffer from "PMS," or the Patriarchal Mind Set, which has only served to cause further separation and alienation of men from their source — the vast watery womb of the Dark Mother, who cannot be controlled.

The obsession to control and dominate has created a deep psychic split between mother and son, which is the only reason why rape exists. At the core of rape is a monstrously distorted compulsion to control, which comes from deep-seated feelings of being out of control, alone, and isolated from life and beauty. The projection of this fear of the Sacred Female onto women has created devastating destruction of the Earth and all her living children. The Dark Mother's message to us is that we must address this destruction—face the huge shadow that humans have created by denying Her. The shadow is all that has been split off and denied in our psyche, all that longs for attention and is, often, rarely seen. People act out what is in their shadow; often it is our children who carry the heavy burden of the unhealed collective wounding, with no idea of what it is that pains them so deeply in their tender psyches. Every day in the news, we see violent acts carried out by younger and younger people — mostly despairing boys and young men (though not all are young) whose souls ache from separation from the Mother.

In 1999, in Littleton, Colorado two desperate boys opened fire on students and teachers at Columbine High School, killing twelve students and one teacher before ending their own lives. Prior to that, in the Montreal Massacre in 1989, a twenty-five year old man, who claimed to be "fighting feminism," killed fourteen women at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec before taking his own life. And more recently, in China, there have been several horrific attacks by middle-aged men using meat cleavers and knives on beautiful little school children, killing sixteen children and one teacher before killing themselves. These heinous, unspeakably brutal crimes, which have become a cross-cultural, global phenomenon, would never happen in a culture where the Mother is revered. Never.

When a society idealizes and romanticizes war and violence, how do we expect our children will behave? We don't need scientists, sociologists, and psychologists to hypothesize about whether or not violent media affects our kids. How could it not affect the open bright minds of our children? Imagery is a powerful force — the root of "magic" is contained within it. We must be responsible for the magic we give to our children. If we give them glitzy Hollywood movies like "Star Wars," then they will grow up thinking violence is a neat adventure — full of excitement and power. Most of these kinds of movies are imagined in the minds of men, from Walt Disney to George Lucas. The visions in the minds of women are very different indeed, as is evidenced by early woman-centered cultures, which were notably characterized by the organization of community around the mother-child bond, egalitarianism, peacefulness, and an absence of weaponry. As Lucia notes, "The harmony of ancient mother-centered civilization is shown in that in Paleolithic Africa there was no division between sacred and profane and no division of self and other — the mother and her nurture of all life were one." 12

We often refer to the negative experiences in our life as "dark." As a sweat-lodge facilitator for women, I have learned that the dark is not a fearful place. In a sweat lodge, it is so dark inside that one cannot see one's hand in front of one's face. What I have come to experience sitting in this dark womb space is the incredible light that emerges from the deep dark — at times so bright, so luminous, that I couldn't tell that I was even sitting in the dark. I would like to offer that the dark is actually a nurturing place — just like the dark earth surrounding the tender seed, encouraging it, in full darkness, to sprout. If the seed is exposed to the light too soon, it will die. If the seed is not rooted in the dark, damp, rich soil, it will die. The darkness is necessary for life to take root! In that context, I would like to reclaim the dark, and refer to our negative experiences as something else — perhaps just "negative" — and let the dark emerge for us as the Dark Mother who holds us together and shapes us, just as a potter shapes her clay. The dark place of growth, Her womb, holds us and keeps us safe while providing us with nourishment.

Women carry the dark womb space within our bodies. To be in touch with our womb-wisdom is to know the wisdom of the Dark Mother. In my previously-mentioned journey to Egypt, I was led off-the-beaten path to the temple of Sekhmet, the fierce lion-headed goddess considered to be an aspect of Isis or the Goddess Hathor. Though Sekhmet's temple is not easily found, nor seems to be considered that important for tourists, for me, She was an awesome treasure. I was not interested in the grandiose pharaonic temples. I found them imposing and suffocating. Carved in black granite, Sekhmet was a regal and daunting presence. She was truly a magnificent embodiment of the Dark Mother. A solar disc rested on top of Her head and She held in Her hands a staff topped by a lotus, which perhaps was symbolic of the sacred yoni and/or the psychotropic blue lotus. After quieting my mind, I sat quietly on the temple floor and simply allowed myself to feel Her energy. She felt strong, protective, fierce, and peaceful. I felt that if I embodied the energies She was representing, I would be in touch with my own deep female strength and power. The fact that She was black made me feel even more in touch with the dark womb of the Earth and cosmos.

Several weeks after I returned from my journey to Egypt, Malta, and Crete, I participated in a teaching-transmission of the Tibetan Black Dakini, who is seen as a black lion-headed goddess, Simhamukha. Although She is Tibetan, Her energy and Her attributes felt the same to me as those of Sekhmet — fierce and powerful. It was the same archetype. I was truly awestruck by the similarities between these two goddesses, and felt Lucia's work resonating in my heart. I could see the arms of the original African Dark Mother reaching out across the planet, embracing Her children and encouraging them to come close to Her — to come back home.

In these desperate times, we need the healing power of the Dark Mother who is not afraid to cut through the egoic structures/strictures of dualistic thinking with ruthless compassion. Women especially need Her image to help us shed the heavily imposed patriarchal layers of definition by a mind that does not really see us — a mind that is only interested in controlling us and making us "behave." This healing power is a primal transformative force emerging from the depths of women's wisdom, which is, as we now know, genetically passed on to all of us. Men need this image in order to face their fear of the feminine, which they have learned to hate and which they have internalized as the hatred of women and of themselves. With the Dark Mother by their side, men can allow themselves to go into their deep feelings and not be ashamed to bring forth those frozen tears that often turn to bullets or violent attack. They can once again reclaim their heritage of being the loving sons of the Mother who has shared Her womb and breast with them to give them life. No longer will they need to conquer and dominate. With the Dark Mother's embrace, all people will be able to once again live in Her bountiful peace, beauty and celebration. Without Her, we will perish.

With a deep and profound reverence for our ancestors, and to the foremothers that have literally given birth to all of us, I offer a prayer in closing:

In the spirit of peace, beauty, compassion, kindness and love, let Her wisdom once again guide us out of our own mind-made prisons of distortion so that we may once again feel Her exquisite embrace and gracefully move our feet in dance to the rhythm of Her beating heart and come to know within the blessing of Her ecstatic joy. BLESSED BE.1 Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, dark mother: african origins and godmothers (San Jose: Authors Choice Press, 2001), 45.

2 Ibid.

3 L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton University Press, 1994), quoted in Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum dark mother: african origins and godmothers, (San Jose: Authors Choice Press, 2001), xxxvii.

4 Merriam Webster, "Matriarchy," www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/matriarchy

5 International Academy HAGIA, "Matriarchal Studies," www.hagia.de/de/matriarchy/matriarchal-studies.html

6 The Free Dictionary, "Matri-," http://www.thefreedictionary.com/matri-

7 Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1994, 1996), 23. www.amazon.com/Oxford-Dictionary-Philosophy-Paperback Reference/dp/0192831348#reader_0192831348

8 Roy Abraham Varghese, The Wonder of the World, www.thewonderoftheworld.com/Sections7-article83-page1.html

9 Ibid.

10 William Y. Adams, Nubia, 338, quoted in Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, dark mother: african origins and godmothers (San Jose: Authors Choice Press, 2001), 14.

11 Ibid.

12 Birnbaum, dark mother, 6.

The Surviving and Thriving in Patriarchy

I am writing this on what our society calls Memorial Day. I watched a few minutes of a segment on a pbs station commemorating all the dead from all the wars. The segment I saw focused on an injured young man who survived a terrible head injury and his mother and sister who are his constant caretakers, their lives wrapped in grief, pain and self-sacrifice. This show seemed very, very weird indeed. Here were people performing, singing, speaking and doing dramatic readings to honor the dead who lost their lives in patriarchal wars. Most of the people who have died are young people. So here were all these people glorifying the death of children who were sent off to war by a white male elite as if it is the highest, most noble thing a young person can do with her or his life. (I am not saying that the dead shouldn't be honored. Of course they should be honored and remembered. I am emphasizing that this was an event glorifying death.) It was very difficult to watch how all of the death, destruction, loss, pain, grief and suffering of all those injured and killed and their families could be considered a good and noble way to spend one's life. To me, it was horrible, confusing, twisted and insane. And the country is off the hook with shows, newscasts and reports about glorifying the war dead today. It was like one long advertisement about the valor of war to entice our children into early death and that if they die in combat and/or are good at killing, and maybe even getting wounded in the process, then they, too, can become heroes. I felt it was a serious propagation of a seriously insane patriarchal death wish. I felt such deep compassion for the mother of the young man with the head injury who was confined to a wheel chair and not able to respond to his surroundings, and her daughter. I couldn't help but feel that their lives were also owned by the white male elite who sent that young man to war, because they were left with the aftermath-a son and brother who was missing nearly a quarter of his skull and brain. And for what?

Will we ever see a Memorial Day for all the women who have been raped, murdered and abused by patriarchy? Both in men's declared and undeclared wars? The greatest war on the planet, is, of course, the war against women, and all wars stem from this one. It has been the same war for 5,000 years. We end the hatred of women and war will end because you cannot have rampant normalized abuse when women are loved and respected. It's that simple, period.

Given this, I would like to respond to the question "How do you survive the times?". Because women live in a cultural battle zone, I have had to find a way to have a quality of life in spite of this horrific reality. I must first say that my survival depends on a deep spiritual practice that continuously fosters a connection to Nature. This practice at its' core is presence. Being present allows me to be in tune with the moment and the moment always teaches me about eternity. In the experience of eternity, all conflict fades away, and the glorious bliss of the earliest known deity, the Mother, rises from within, and is reflected without, simultaneously. Noticing the deeply aphroditic (rather than using "erotic", which is taken from the masculine "eros", I prefer to use a womanist term to describe what I am saying) qualities of Nature allows me to feel within my own body that same energy and life force and affirms my own beauty as part of Her creation. Having a strong spiritual foundation is my saving grace. This grace allows me to navigate the terrain of this; question with an abiding, uncompromising and grounded approach to a precious life that cannot be stolen, no matter what happens. If I appreciate the life I am, and I live that life with respect, love and awareness of my true nature, then patriarchy withers. It is much the same way of being that we hear some prisoners describe when they say that the institution of prison cannot take away their hearts and minds, even though their bodies are held behind bars. Freedom lives inside.

My own journey in patriarchy has been rather amazing. I am a mother of four-two girls and one foster son and one stepson. I was a Haight-Ashbury hippie back in the 60's and was indeed blowing my mind with psychedelics. I was one of those who took that path seriously, and instead of blasting my eardrums out at the Fillmore and Avalon, which I did do on occasion, mine was a more inwardly directed journey. These medicines were my allies and teachers, showing me things I could never have learned in school, though being a student at UC Berkeley at the time did provide me with unique opportunities. I joined with others in the psychedelic revolution and went back to the land, helping to form the Farm community in Tennessee in the early 70's. There I got married and had my daughters. We then left the Farm in the early 80's and began a new life in "normal" society, though I could never be "normal". I subsequently got divorced as I began to understand that the life I was living was really not my life. All during those hippie days, I never once saw the bigger picture of women's oppression. My own demons came to me. I delved deep into my unconscious and saw my own terrors and fears. But I never once saw anything about patriarchy. I never saw that the Farm was a patriarchal hierarchy and that all the colluding we women did with getting married and having babies as if that was the be all/end all of life was really about being good daughters of the patriarchy. Please don't get me wrong. I totally love my children. Nevertheless, the reality was what it was, and I didn't see it until later in my life when I was studying shamanism and the Goddess came to me, as if rising right out of the earth, and the ancestral Grandmothers reached for me and never let me go. From that time, I became a radical feminist-meaning one who goes to the root of fem reality, culture and wisdom, seeking the wildzone of true women's reality untouched by anything patriarchal. Not an easy task.

As I see it, the underlying foundation of any woman's survival in a woman-hating pornographic culture is learning the art of not identifying with the oppressor. As Sonia Johnson has said in her book, Wildfire, many women suffer from what she refers to as "terror bonding" or "trauma bonding" which is also the oppressive reality of The Stockholm Syndrome.1

I am aware that it is easy to say that freedom is an internal state and that living it is a profound challenge. When women and girls are continually abused, battered, murdered, tortured, raped and sold into bondage and slavery in patriarchy, which depends on the degradation of woman, achieving this internal state may seem very, very far away. However, if we believe the hundreth monkey syndrome, which started with a female primate, then I believe the wisdom of the moorphogenic field will organically spread and women will rise up from the ashes of patriarchy and give birth to a life-affirming paradigm. The Rain and Thunder journal is an example of this rebirth. Women everywhere are gathering and dismantling the old male guard by creating our own rituals and celebrations, and by writing our own herstory. Of course, it is a process. One thing I know for sure. Primal fem consciousness can never be destroyed because it is the very stuff of the great mystery-just like dark matter, dark energy, black holes and super massive black holes. And just like these astrophysical phenomena are not well understood, neither is the primordial fem understood, except by those who know Her in their bones. It wasn't a big bang. It was a super magnificent, stellar orgasm. And what is the only organ in existence capable of such creative power? Yep-you guessed it. The clitoris. It's no wonder that men want to deny women this truth. They think that by cutting it out, or by making up androcentric specu/ejaculation theories about the beginning of the universe, which I call "yoniverse", as "uni" is a cognate of "yoni", it will go away. Not a chance.

As I age, I see that it takes a while for things to take root. Longer than I could have known. In the Tsalagi (Cherokee) tradition, one does not become a grown-up until the age of fifty-two. Now that I will be turning sixty-two, I understand this! Since I found myself at home with radical feminism, my life, of course, turned upside down. I wanted things to change rapidly. I wanted the world to know that no one thrives until women can walk safely down the street at any time of day or night or play fearlessly in the wilderness (that is, with no fear of the predatory male), that until women are restored to our true place of power there will be no peace until women have equality, no matter how many marches and speeches we do, all of which is completely absurd to even have to address, and yet without addressing the insanity of the lack of these things, nothing changes. I wanted to shout from the tallest buildings that I finally figured out what's wrong-it's patriarchy, plain and simple. I came to understand that pms is not what we have been told, though women's bodies respond in protest to patriarchal enslavement. Pms really stands for patriarchal mind set.

The first way I help myself and others to survive and thrive is by loving myself. This practice of self-love has been stripped of women and replaced with commands and demands of a woman-hating culture that tells us to hate our bodies, hate who we are and to hate each other. And, on top of that we are told we must find our self-worth in taking care of others at our own expense. Since this has been going on for over 5,000 years, recognizing the insidious patterns of co-dependency and self-erasure/effacement is sometimes not very easy to do, because of the depth of our internalization of patriarchy. Since I had children, I felt it was imperative that I model for daughters (my sons are a different story-one is a stepson and one is a foster son. Since they were with me off and on, I was not able to raise them consistently with fem values, which scared them as they got older since they threatened their inherent domination "rights". It is a whole story unto itself having sons in patriarchy, so I am focusing on my daughters in this writing.) a strong female/womanist presence. Well, being married made that difficult, but I did it as best I could. They have grown into fine young women, carrying the mother/daughter transmission into their lives and have formed an all-female music collective dedicated to fem values and consciousness, challenging the good ole misogynist boys' club of hip-hop. (see www.goddessalchemyproject.com)

I went to a garage sale the other day. It was run by women, of course. Most of the women were perhaps my age and slightly younger. I was deeply saddened at the quality of life most of these women had written on their faces. It was early in the day, and all of them had either a glass of wine or a bottle of beer in their hands. They were hardened, which is what happens to women in a world run by arrogant and dominating men. They were lost to their own culture. My heart ached. And even so, there was a tenderness inside these fem hearts that I could still feel-the heart of brave survivors who didn't even know what they had been surviving all their lives. I so wanted to reach out to them, to touch them and hold them and tell them that there is something else-that they don't have to compete with men to stay alive, nor do they have to take care of them. I wanted them to love themselves.

If I love myself first, then I have love to give. We hear all the new-age stuff about loving ourselves. This is beyond that. This is about reclaiming our truly fem hearts, bodies, minds, spirits, ancestry/ansistery and space. So, this is what I now do to help women liberate themselves. I teach about these things. If women don't understand our own oppression and how we collude with it, then we only serve our own demise. And extricating oneself from the pms is no easy task. One woman I work with is eighty years old. She has just come to realize in the last year that she has been a dutiful daughter of the patriarchy and she is now finding light at the end of her tunnel, as she makes her escape. However, she has shared that she is addicted to patriarchy. After all, we have learned to survive in it, and when we awaken to the mess it has created, of which we have been a part, the question arises "what is next for me?" It can be pretty frightening. Imagine doing that at eighty! And I encourage her and tell her how fortunate she is to be waking up! I love her for it! She is a-mazing (spelling borrowed from Mary Daly)-that is, undoing the maze of patriarchy. This work is guided by the wisdom and intelligence of the spirit of Harriet Tubman, because helping women to escape the chains and enslavement of patriarchy is truly about women becoming free.

Something else I am currently engaged in is appearing on elder councils at large music festivals. The addition of elder councils has been a recent thing at these events. My most recent endeavor was in Maui at a festival called The Mystic Garden Party. These councils are not easy for a radical feminist. Not at all. The truth about women's reality is hidden behind all the same old stuff that fills the space-male domination everywhere you can see, only younger. Then there was the husband and wife duo of high patriarchal artistic acclaim on the council who seem to see themselves as the high priestess and priest of elitist heterosexism. They were encouraging young people to get out there and get into relationship-het of course-and find themselves. This male artist is extremely well known for his "trippy" psychedelic art of the human body. They influence a lot of young people. So, I consider this front lines work I am engaged in because I feel I am the lone voice for radical fem truth on these councils. Very few people seem to know anything about this reality and many seem to shake in their boots when this voice speaks. However, I received feedback from some young women who told me they felt that I transmitted the truest activation they felt from the council. Now that was music to my ears! And I have appeared on councils with Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrim, chairwoman of The Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, who has told me that she feels I have an important message that many people need to hear. That was also music to my ears and warmed my heart, even though she, bless her, has been programmed to pray to grandfather all the time. Someone at one point at a council I was on with her asked her to call out to Grandmother, and she did. Yay Agnes! I plan to continue to present on these councils whenever I can. If I am the lone voice, then so be it. That is my path and I am at peace walking the talk. It's the only walk and the only talk I can do.

Another project I am working on, in addition to writing, is gathering women together in retreat space to explore women's culture and doing soul retrieval of the sacred feminine work. My focus is on intergenerational circles where we can feel the expanse of sisterhood and begin to reclaim the depth of the fem mind and heart. This work is challenging because many young women are in that mode of protecting the abuser, without knowing it. Even Lesbian women sometimes reflect the male/female dynamics so prevalent in patriarchy. I think that we need women in all communities (community means sharing gifts, as "muni" is Latin for "gift") to keep putting it out there about the truth of patriarchy and the global oppression of women and how this directly affects our environment and how all the ills we see in the world stem directly from this original wounding. Helping women connect the dots through any means possible is essential because women are the culture creators, and the well being of ourselves and our planet is in our hands. Patriarchal men have messed it all up, with their seemingly never-ending blood lust and heinous need for war against life itself. We need to develop a deep and rich connection to the original deity of our planet-the Great Cosmic Mother. This is not about religion. This is about spirituality, which many feminists have not embraced. I am saying that a true awakening of empowered fem consciousness cannot happen without the conscious embodiment of what our ancestral Grandmothers knew. The expanse of lineage holders of women's wisdom stretches far back into antiquity, landing right in the lap of the oldest known human figurine carving, dating from 232,000-800,000 years ago, the Acheulian Mother, from the border of what is now Syria and Israel. The beings that made this statue were not even homo sapiens. In an indigenous culture, the teaching of ancestral respect is foundational to the survival of community. We have all but lost this ancestral respect in our Euro-Western culture, and I can say the ancestors are not happy about it. It is time to reclaim, reconnect and respect our woman lines, our mother lines, that we may heal from the terrible plague of patriarchy. With our foremothers standing behind us, we can move together as one, knowing the ground on which we stand, rooted, like the trees that make up the beauty of the forest. ______________________________
1Johnson, Sonia, Wildfire, Igniting the She/Volution, Wildfire Books, Albuquerque 1989