May the new wave of feminism be liminal. May the fundamental force of the universe, which is female, root in our hearts and heads. An omniscient observer, midwifing her ‘world soul’, in lucid slumber, biding Her time, is absorbing magic from the dark spaces She sought refuge in. Hers is a consciousness of ‘in-between’ spaces, endlessly spiraling – accessible to those who are ready to align.
“We are the blood
of the witches
you thought were dead
we carry witchcraft in our bones
whilst the magic still sings
in our head [ ]
you cannot burn away
what has always
been aflame” – Witch, Nikita Gill, Goodreads.
Second Wave slogans and gestures illuminated the tyranny at the root and core of patriarchal culture, but now is the time to shift r-evolution to the clair senses: claircognizance, clairaudience, clairsentience, clairvoyance. Liminal spaces are places to move through, but how can we invoke the ancient deities lingering there and what can they teach us about female power? Hecate, Goddess of magic and witchcraft, is calling. She suggests we birth an awakening by channelling the Primordial Wave of Feminism, which simply ‘was’ and ‘is’ the way of the cosmos.
Companion stars dancing in orbit, the ancient pairing of Hecate and [acting through] Medea remind me of Thelma & Louise.
“By the mistress I worship/… Hecate, dwelling in the inmost recesses of my hearth,/ no one will bruise and batter my heart and get away with it” – Medea. Willhouse, Adam, Hecate and Medea, Medea, (Euripides 394-397). 7th Dec. 2017. Women in Antiquity.
“Louise, no matter what happens, I’m glad I came with you.” – Thelma. Khouri, Callie, writer. Scott, Ridley, director. Thelma & Louise, with Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen. 1991. MGM Studios: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.
Thelma and Louise morphed into Warrior Queen fugitives, rebelling in, what I will argue, was a divine and fearless, ecstatic state, following a cataclysmic, life changing event (rape), leading to an epiphany.
“I feel really awake. I don’t recall ever feeling this awake.” – Thelma, Thelma & Louise.
Archaic rampage was divine and apocalyptic: when lioness Sekhmet ran riot, her flaming ‘eye’ incinerated all She saw whilst, in drunken trance, She vomited rivers of Red Rage. Medea rampaged with poison!
Empowered by Hecate, triggered by patriarchy, moon on fire, pounding mandrake, aconite, dittany, belladonna and colchicine, Medea worked with healing plants that are deadly in untutored hands. This ’Root Cutter’ wisdom, of sacred herbs and poisonous plants, released intoxicating potential and a spiralling, mind-altering epiphany: women’s wisdom was tolerated when it served the system of male privilege that is patriarchy, otherwise it was considered evil.
From Titan to Olympian, as World Soul, with roots in the underworld, head in the cosmos, Hecate withstood regime changes, intermingling with tyrants Hades and Zeus whilst, as survivor companion and guru, she empowered Persephone and Medea and sheltered Hecuba and Gale/Galinthias. She also jeered off rapist Hermes.
“Each time a woman stands up for herself [ ] she stands up for all women.” – Maya Angelou. Goodreads.
As the Olympian male divorced himself from the Earth Mother, he claimed civility and philosophy as the masculine domain, whilst marginalising women because they were creatures of cycles. Philosophers were major players in these culture wars, that took aim at women’s autonomy.
“The courage of a man is shown in commanding, of a woman in obeying” – Aristotle. The Politics. Translated by Trevor Saunders and T. Sinclair, 17 Sep. 1981. Penguin Classics.
Visual people scrutinise symbols alongside mythology. Just as the unspoken word holds power, in images ‘negative’ space holds meaning. Liminal space brews magic.
“When the human race learns to read the language of symbolism, a great veil will fall from the eyes of men.” – Hall, Manly P.. Melchizedek and the Mystery of Fire. Goodreads.
Hecate’s Strophalos, a spinning wheel, described as a golden orb spiralling from a thong, aligns the spinner with orbital resonance, unleashing a flow of possibilities and consciousness from ‘in-between’ spaces.
“I had imagined myself alone in believing that spiders should be the totem of writers. Both go into a space alone and spin out of their own bodies a reality that has never existed before.” – Steinem, Gloria. My Life on the Road. Goodreads.
Since the Goddess emerges from within and since the Golden Spiral expresses the exquisite geometry of galaxies and the human form, I imagine Hecate transcending realms as Penta to Hexa; apple to honeycomb; as Fibonacci sequences of the Golden Spiral, to Goddess numbers ‘3, 6 and 9’.
So is there a mathematical spell for asking Hecate to spiral out of the void into awareness? At a glance: as the Golden Spiral, ‘1, 2,3,5,8 and 13,….’, Hecate has one key, two torches and three faces. A five-pointed star (Pentacle) is created by Venus orbiting the sun every eight Earth years, equivalent to thirteen Venus years… and there are thirteen moons. As Chthonia, Hecate’s serpents may represent Fibonacci numbers, Kundalini shakti and chthonic wisdom spiraling to infinity. As the ‘3,6 and 9’, She is the Triple Goddess, with three faces, domains and directions, revolving around a six-pointed star (Hexagram). ‘6’ is the first ‘perfect number’ (link to description). Sources are sketchy: in Pythagoras’s theory, metempsychosis, ‘6³’ [6x6x6] is the periodic time for soul regeneration. Nine is the Nine Ennead, Muses, Maidens, Mothers, Sisters, Sorceresses and the Nine Mago (link to reference). Mayan calendars made use of Earth-Venus cycles (link to this math).
Venus is a shape-shifter, appearing as the ‘5, 6, and 8-pointed’ star in various mythologies. Seven is the Pleiades. As the dyad, Venus has two faces, appearing as twin stars – Phosphorous (Lucifer), the morning star and Hesperus, the evening star. The nocturnal womb space is gated by Venus. Perhaps Hecate’s two torches are metaphors for this. Venus spins in the opposite direction to Earth. Astrological conjuncts may open portals as cosmic energies converge.
One Roman spel, invoking Hecate, draws upon an eight-pointed star (link to image). One ancient artist drew Persephone’s underworld return, chaperoned by Hecate, framed by two eight-pointed stars (link to image). Subterranean traveler, Ishtar’s symbol is an eight pointed star. Venus and Goddess time and frequency maybe astrologically encoded into dark space and soul journeying.
As creatures of cycles (and numbers), the witches of Thessaly were astronomers, astrologers, herbalists and priestesses. Aglaonice predicted eclipses. Patriarchy claimed her cosmic observation skills were sorcery, believing women used deception and trickery! Just as Venus and Earth, dance in orbit, plant magic and astronomy intertwine – when to harvest, when to work with cosmic energies – I’m guessing relevant for emmenagogues (link to uses of dittany). Connection to nature’s cycles is a recipe for happiness. Happiness is powerful. The liminal cauldron is a wildly creative space and patriarchy is triggered by darkness.
‘Witches’ shaped feminism. Boundary setters – empowered, freethinking women, with scorpion stings, were labelled ‘witches’. Whole books were written to discredit them, including the ultimate work of misogynist rhetoric and ‘call to persecute’, the Malleus Maleficarum.
When Medea’s wisdom strayed dangerously into male territory Euripides depicted her as monster. Did Medea rampage with poison, or is ‘rampaging with poison’ a metaphor for intelligence, in the minds of women, upsetting the balance in systems of male privilege? Invoking the magic within our own stories stirs ancestral memory – patriarchal bias shaped female experience, whilst instilling fear of women into the male experience, the people they require nurture from, yet trample anyway.
Peering into the liminal past reveals cosmic powers that have been lost to us. May the Primordial Wave of Feminism, which simply ‘was’ and ‘is’ the way of the cosmos, spiral into consciousness from the liminal womb space, replacing the fear, instilled in humanity by patriarchy, with love.
References
Gill, Nikita. Quotes, Quotable Quotes, Goodreads, goodreads.com/quotes/8981914-we-are-the-blood-of-the-witches-you-thought-were
Angelou, Maya, Quotes, Quotable Quotes, Goodreads, goodreads.com/quotes/9758677-each-time-a-woman-stands-up-for-herself-she-stands
Hall, Manly P. Quotes, Quotable Quotes, Goodreads, goodreads.com/quotes/7657511-when-the-human-race-learns-to-read-the-language-of
Steinem, Gloria, Quotes, Quotable Quotes, Goodreads, goodreads.com/quotes/7606915-i-remember-spider-woman-from-the-first-page-of-leslie-s
Willhouse, Adam, Hecate and Medea, Medea, (Euripides 394-397). 7th Dec. 2017. Women in Antiquity, womeninantiquity.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/hecate-and-medea/
Aristotle. The Politics. Translated by Trevor Saunders and T. Sinclair, 17 Sep. 1981. Penguin Classics, amazon.co.uk/Politics-Classics-Aristotle/dp/0140444211
Sophocles. Rhizotomoi (Root-cutters), APGRD, Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, apgrd.ox.ac.uk/ancient-performance/performance/672
Khouri, Callie, writer. Scott, Ridley, director. Thelma & Louise, with Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen. 1991. Original Trailer. MGM Studios: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., youtube.com/watch?v=2iBFmKlO4BY
Kramer, Heinrich Godley, author. Sprenger, James, author. Malleus Maleficarum: The Hammer of Witches. Paperback 7th May. 2008. Forgotten Books, amazon.co.uk/Malleus-Maleficarum-Hammer-Witches-Forgotten/dp/1605069418/ref=asc_df_1605069418/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310970709075&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6804654195918352473&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045891&hvtargid=pla-720708304461&psc=1&th=1&psc=1
Virulent Ancient Roman Sex Curse Apparently Invoked Goddess Hekate, 26 Dec. 2013, Antonius the Gay God, antinousgaygod.blogspot.com/2013/12/virulent-ancient-roman-sex-curse.html
Asset number, 131845001, The British Museum, britishmuseum.org/collection/image/131845001
Perfect Number Mathematics. 23 Jun. 2023. Britannica, britannica.com/science/perfect-number
Hye-Sook Hwang Ph.D., Helen. The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia (Volume 1). Oct. 3, 2015. Mago Books, magobooks.com/the-mago-way-re-discovering-mago-the-great-goddess-from-east-asia/
Buchanan, Ashley Lynn. Dittany: Women’s Herbs and Reproductive Control. Dumbarton Oaks, Plant Humanities, 2022. lab.plant-humanities.org/Dittany/
Agarwal, M. K.. From Bharata to India: Volume 1: Chrysee the Golden, iUniverse, 2012. EBook, Google Books.
Flores, Alfinio, Dr.. Venus Synodic Period and Ancient Mayan Calendars, journal of mathematics and culture. Jul. 2016. https://journalofmathematicsandculture.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/venus-synodic-period-jmc-final-10-1.pdf
It is absolutely the liminal and intangible where the Goddess can be most experienced in her fullness. Here’s to the Liminal Feminist.