Through myths, cosmogonies and Goddess lore from our Sisters of the Past we are guided to expand our imagination into the invisible dimension of Dream Time, the “Fifth Province”, Sambogakaya, Nolava Lady of Avalon.
A dimension which is the Source that keeps together the four directions, the above and the below, and is at the center of Women’s Circles, from where new Forms may arise to carry Creation on.
Mary Daly wrote these words at the beginning of Quintessence. Realizing the Archaic Future (1998):
“The writing of this book is a Desperate Act performed in a time of ultimate battles between principalities and powers. More than ever all sensate and spiritual life on this dimension and anywhere within reach is threatened with extinction”.
Twenty years later, everywhere in our everyday experience we see, read or suffer from murdered women (femminicidio), lack of respect and recognition of women’s wisdom, rented wombs and temporary mothers, rapism, new burnings of women as well as of trees and forests. The Foreground is reduced to a Puppet stage of nechrophiliac shows, while the Background is a fermenting laboratory of new ways of living and producing but in-visible to the eyes of billions of people trained and tamed by mass-media. Our hearts are full of pain and fiery rage.
But Quintessence was/is a metamorphic book, it opens in your minds the faculty of being transformed while reading, and Desperate Acts are changed into Hope, Hopping Hope, because our Crone Sister Mary pulls us directly into the Fifth Dimension, the Fifth Province, the Fifth Spiral. Here in Glastonbury, we’d say that we are pulled into the Reign of Nolava, who inhabits and rules the core of the isle of Avalon.
The Fifth Essence, Quintessence, is the substance that we summon in the centre of any Circle of Awakened Women while sharing our deep feelings and desires. A Circle of Women has the faculty of giving existence and new forms to reality, allowing the transformation of ordinary time/space. In fact, every time you open a Circle, you create an extra-ordinary space/time, that is you do the Magic of entering another dimension. Provided that this is your strong intention, your shared will.
So did Sussitanako/Spider Woman, the Creatrix of the Pueblo Nation at the Beginning, when She sat at the centre of the threads she had spun herself from east to west, from north to south.
“In the beginning there was nothing but Spider Woman, She who was called Sussistanako, Thinking Woman, Thought Woman. No other living creature, no bird or animal or fish yet lived.
In the dark purple light that glowed at the Dawn of Being, Spider Woman spun a line from East to West. She spun a line from North to South, and then She sat by these threads that stretched to the four horizons, these strands that She had drawn across the universe, and sang in a voice that was exceptionally deep and sweet. As She sang, two daughters came forth: Ut Set, who became the mother of the Pueblo people, and Nau Ut Set, who became the mother of all others.
Following the directions of Spider Woman, these two daughters formed the sun from white shell, red rock, turquoise and pearly abalone shell. When it was ready, they carried the sun to the top of the highest mountain and dropped it into the sky so that it would give light. But when they saw that it was still dark at night, they then formed the moon, putting together pieces of dark black stone, yellow stone, red rock and turquoise. Still things were not quite right, for when the moon travelled far, there were many nights when they could not see. It was for this reason that with the help of Spider Woman, Ut Set and Nau Ut Set created the Star People, giving them sparkling clear crystal for eyes, so that there would never be complete darkness again. (Merlin Stone, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood)
That’s why we must be deeply aware that every time we open a Circle, we become the Fifth Cause, that is the Cause of causes, the “rough, rowdy, untamed Exemplar of Expanding Here that roves around subliminally in our intelligence”, carrying new Creation on, Here and Now. Pure concentrated Female energy.
Every time you guide a Circle of Women you must be aware of the Task/Charge you are invested by Quintessence, Sussistanako, Nolava, and so on.
The historical time we are living in, after the re-emergence of the ancient goddesses of the Creation Time, displays in all its evidence that god is dead, kings are naked and male energy left alone is whirling in a desperate revelation of all its brute destructive quality.
In order to be strong enough in counterbalancing this spread of destruction, we need to form a shield of creative imagination, able to turn the power of destruction into useful strength.
Do you remember Goddessing, that fabulous review by Willow La Monte which circulated wide during the Nineties? It was there I first read about the Goddess Conference, about women in spiritual Search all over the world, about the Quest expanding through the continents, about Sisters becoming drummers, painters, ceramists, dreamers, dancers, priestesses, Untamed Women …. I had been a Feminist since the beginning of the Seventies, but at that point a new direction opened in my commitment to women.
Many years have passed. Thanks to Kathy Jones and her Avalonian sisters, this Conference has grown as an attractive pole, sharing and expanding quintessential qualities that, in this turning point year, materialize in Lady Nolava, mistress of radiating energies, pulling us into new action.
For, if you change inside, heal yourself, transform your being but everything around you goes on the same or even worst, you can’t endure for long, nor give form to your vision.
That’s why we must hold clearly in our visions that in order to stop the winning destroying male energy on this dimension, we have to work primarily with quintessential energies, with the creative strength of Imagination. This is what our spiritual paths have taught us.
In the practice to Throma, the Black Dakini (in the form transmitted by Vicki Noble), between Dharmakaya (which can be translated as formlessness) and Nirmanakaya (the world of form), there is a dimension called Sambhogakaya, the reign of “Magical Visualizations”.
What are these magical visualizations able of shape-shifting the physical world? They are the thoughts, the imagines, the constructions, the projects we can create and expand on the ethereal dimension or quintessential world, which is stronger than any strength existing on the physical dimension alone. This is magic, the capacity of inventing new forms, of making them exist, the power exerted by the Creatrix at every new beginning. The Fifth Sacred Thing, in the words of Starhawk.
So my task, my Charge in coming here, in being physically present here and now in Avalon after many years during which I’ve been here only through mind and heart, is probably simply this: to elicit/to show/to suggest these links not necessarily self-evident to each of us.
That our work, that has been going on for more than 40 years now, is not only psychological, social, intellectual, politically involved, artistic, etc., but it has to be consciously “Spiritual”, willingly “Magic”, lovingly “Quintessential” – if we have to help Gaia and all Her sentient beings to recover and carry on the Cycles of Creation. “Dreaming Time”, the English translated the aboriginal word for “creation” in Australia.
Two more metamorphic images I want to borrow from Mary Daly, beloved Foresister Mary: the image of Roots, Rootedness, Radicalness and that of Reawakening the X faculty, where X is the form of the Female Chromosome, XX.
She writes: “Elemental Women surviving the apparent isolation inflicted upon us in the state of diaspora, commonly find that as we become more in Touch with our roots, we are more profoundly Present to each other. Our Be-Witching powers of communication are enhanced by our connectedness with our roots. Many women express a sense of identity and/or communication with trees … That is, the trees, like Radical Women, are most strongly bonded to each other in their roots. They ‘hold on to each other by roots’.”
Our common roots, re-emerged through the Lost and Found Herstory of the long millennia of the deepest human past, are the Great Goddesses, the archetypal images of the positive feminine energies of the cosmos. Nolava is one cipher of the Awakened Creatrix Woman we honor, invoke and evoke here and now.
As Goddess Movement we are now at a new turning point: a cycle of rediscovering, of returning, of reclaiming what has been removed is ending. We have been able to reconnect what was severed and diasporized, that is the primal bond among women, women and animals, women and different dimensions, women and earth, women and sky and galaxies.
If we have not yet succeeded in doing it materially, we have clearly and strongly done it in our minds, heart and senses.
Now, what we are longing for is a concrete new balance with the Mother, Mother Gaia, opening labs and working in labs where to practice, achieve, allow Sambhogakaya manifest on Nirmanakaya.
We strongly need daring to Dream future worlds where the counterbalancing energies of the universe (the conservative, caring and in-oriented Female energy; the diverging, separating, out-oriented Male energy) learn to move in balance again.
The Future is nothing more than Present in Magnetic Attraction, than Being in a Cosmo-biological Vision. Where positive and negative polarities don’t oppose but nourish and strengthen each other.
The last image from Daly is Reawakening the X factor, the feminine chromosome in all its power. You probably know that more than 90% of the cosmos is made by Dark Matter as well as a similar quantity of DNA is silent, even called (by male scientists) Trash Dna.
What does this mean? It simply means scientists do not know why there is so much unexpressed “matter” and which is its function. We could infer with our cosmo-biological wisdom of Crones that is a tank, a cauldron, a source from where new creation can rise to induce a necessary Leap in human evolution. And the X chromosome is the key: We are silenced quintessential matter to be turn on again, as in the Time/space of the Beginnings.
Invocation
Goddess of the Ancient, Powerful Foresisters of the Past
Whose spirit is re-emerging in our time
Bless the Earth and bring Harmony to people.
Be with us as we give birth to ancient Wisdom again.
As powerful symbols of life, nourishment and abundance
Inspire us Quantum Leaps to honor and take care of you!
Times are ripe for another Turning of the Wheel.
(inspired by Dee Pot, The Goddess Speaks, Sybil Publications, Oregon, 1998)
(Meet Mago Contributor) Luciana Percovich
thank you Luciana, what a pleasure to read, as one who set out consciously on Her/Goddess path in the late 70’s. I remember Willow la Monte’s Goddessing, even have some copies. I remember sending her money via Western Union or some now archaic method, and writing to her. Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father was the beginning of the journey Out for me.