Soul Retrieval of the Sacred Feminine

For too long we have lived with a language that is inherently male biased which has shaped our collective human experience. Naming from an androcentric perspective has been disastrous for women in particular because in this language there is no word that women can claim as our own to describe ourselves. All words for women are in the shadow of the male, i.e., fe-male, wo-man, wo-men. We have been told that the name of our essential life force is "Eros"-the name of a phallic deity. We have lived with understanding the shadow as that which is split off from our conscious mind, named as such by a man, who no doubt has given the world valuable insights, but whose own sexism and racism have been nearly overlooked by the very field that embraces psychological healing.

We have also lived for too long with patriarchal religious and spiritual traditions that all share a commonality-the conspicuous absence of the presence of the Sacred Feminine. When we approach the investigation of exploring the thresholds of creativity through what we name as Eros, shadow and spirit, it is essential to look at what lies beneath the surface of the patriarchal overlay and delve deeper into the mysteries of our ancestors who were untouched by the patriarchal mind set, or what I term "pms". In this psychic archeological exploration we find ourselves tapping into the field that archeologist, linguist and historian, Marija Gimbutas, has termed the realm of archeomythology. Deeply buried in the layers of our cellular memory are the myths and stories of the Great Goddess; therein lies a connection to the very source of healing that we so desperately seek.

What, then, is our experience of the essential life force if we were to give to the quality of love and life a female name, such as Aphrodite-in which the primal female mothering energy is honored and respected for what it is? How would we be shaped by this naming? What does our experience of the shadow become when we name the profound split from which we all suffer as the Mother/Child split? I am not talking about necessary individuation. Sane individuation is quite different from a thanatos-driven separation from the very life force that births and sustains us. Unfortunately, in patriarchy, we encounter far too much of the latter. If we are lucky, however, and not too dissociated, we can feel our pain. Pain becomes a portal into deep awakening, and when we are truly blessed we can hear the faint and distant echo of the voice of the Mother calling to us through our pain, as she calls to us now. It is her blessing of love that fills our hearts and souls with the moisture of life, as we soak it up like land parched by drought, welcoming a long awaited rain.

We all share the same connection, as is revealed by the presence of our umbilicus. We cannot split from this source and expect to maintain a quality of life and love in the world. The Sanskrit word "Artha", meaning "mater-ial wealth" ("mater" means "mother) has given rise to other meanings that are familiar to us-such as Urth, Hertha, Eortha, and Erda-all names for our Mother, who sustains us with Her abun-dance. The Sacred Feminine, known by so many names the world over-Kali, Tara, Isis, Asherah, Yemaya, Guanyin, Coatlique, White Buffalo Woman, Hecate, Demeter, Persephone, to name a few, and whose presence inspired the naming of lands, such as Asia, Africa, Europe and Russia, is calling to us to re-member Her and to re-member ourselves.

The thresholds of creativity we behold when we retrieve the Sacred Feminine for ourselves exist in the internal landscapes of our deep inner being. There we uncover the sacred well of the Goddess, where we can drink freely of Her nurturing waters and feel cleansed of our suffering, shedding like the snake, the ancient symbol of the Goddess, our outworn skins of despair. She is the elixir of life, the fountain of youth. Her youth lies not in an eternally youthful appearance, but in Her powers of regeneration, well-known by our ancestors.

Soul retrieval is a process in which power is restored to the individual who has experienced soul loss. Soul loss is a shamanic term used to describe the loss of vital life force experienced in trauma. I trained with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies where I learned techniques of soul retrieval. I came to study this shamanic work as a result of a very long journey of my own that informally began when I became a student of the path of psychoactive medicines. Not knowing I was entering the world of the.shaman/shamanka, I was held in grace as I spent many years navigating through the labyrinth and landscapes of my own mind. I believe it is a miracle that I am standing before you, for in those days, we just opened our mouths and swallowed. The substances themselves were my relentless, sometimes ruthless guides and teachers. I felt I was well prepared to use the techniques I learned from studying with the Shamanic Studies Foundation. I put the techniques to use, and worked with people for several years before my process with soul retrieval began to change. The more people I saw, the more I realized that most of the people coming to me were suffering from different manifestations of the same trauma. I had been working with family of origin trauma, which was important. I began to see a kind of inherited soul loss in the original families where abuse was passed down from generation to generation. I felt that helping to facilitate healing for the person before me was a good thing, but that a deeper healing was necessary. I was seeing that all forms of abuse could be traced back to a common psychic source-the soul loss of the Sacred Feminine.

What surfaced from this work for me was the realization that we are a people suffering from a collective trauma which impacts not only people, but all living things, including Earth herself. Because of this collective trauma, we are experiencing collective soul loss as well as a collective near-death experience. There are no words to describe this grievous condition. It will take each of us feeling this loss to restore our soul's connection to the Goddess/Mother and to the natural world. While we have many valuable sources of healing available to us, we still suffer and according to psychologist James Hilman, things are getting worse.

The further we remove ourselves from connection with the Sacred Feminine, the more we will suffer. Band-aids can only last so long. I believe our deepest healing will come when we lift the veils of denial, expose the androcentric viewpoint that currently rules the world, and make room for the Goddess/Mother to flood into our hears, minds and bodies. She is the wellspring of our existence. In our Western society we rarely hear of ancestor worship. We would benefit a great deal to remember our ancestors and what they knew, and bring that knowing forward into our daily lives. It is well known that Goddess sites in nature were often sacred wells where people could go to visit, to meditate and to find healing from her sacred waters. Without conscious connection to this source we experience a deep and severe cutting off from that which births and sustains us, becoming detached and dissociated. In the traumatic event of being cut off, our soul connection to the Sacred Feminine is diminished. When this kind of soul loss is experienced, when the well is covered over and hidden, when access to Her healing wisdom and sacred waters is blocked, sickness is a consequence. And sickness we have. You name it, we have it.

The Earth is sick. Her children are sick-the two-leggeds as well as her creatures of land, sea and air-trees, sea turtles, dolphins, whales, birds, and many more too numerous to mention. Because we are one with the Earth, we reflect in our bodies what is happening to her body. We are doing this to ourselves and to her, out our ignorance and denial of Her wisdom. The epidemic of breast cancer affecting the nourishing and loving charka of woman's body is no accident. When women are objectified, humiliated and sold into sexual slavery, specifically to satiate the sexual hunger of men who are really wanting something much deeper than this, who are longing for union with the Sacred Feminine but don't know they are being consumed by the demons living in their shadow, what do we expect is going to happen to us, and to the planet? Asthma is on the increase particularly in children whose bodies are telling us they are having trouble breathing. How can children breathe safely when adults, mostly men, hurt them at an alarming rate; when children living on the streets in South America are murdered by so-called policemen who consider them to be optional; when mothers in India are forced to abort their girl babies in utero or to kill them outright? And how can any of us breathe when the very lungs, the rainforests of the planet, of the living being of our Mother are being cut out of Her?

In looking at the metaphor of mother and child to illustrate the importance of soul retrieval of the Sacred Feminine, which is the metaphor the Dalai Lama touched upon in an article in Shambala Sun (1996) in which he described the need for a new spirituality in the world, we can say that the child feels protected, safe and psychically held when the mother is close. This metaphor assumes the natural loving state of motherhood. The child calls for mother above and beyond all things. When my mother was dying in her seventies, she called to her mother who had been dead for fifty years. When my children are sick, they come to me-to be in my bed, to be close to me, to feel my essence, which heals and comforts them. It is a preverbal connection with me they know in their bones they seek when they need healing. They seek the safety and healing of my womb-wisdom, my heart, my arms and my touch.

Mother is primary-she is the primal life-giving and life-sustaining energy experienced by the child as a deep knowing in her/his body. This knowing is perceived through feelings and touch. Mother and child are in telepathic communion/communication. The child internalizes the love, kindness and safety of the loving mother. The child develops a core sense of self and learns to love and trust her/himself. I have four children. I have experienced what I am talking about. When the mother is not there, the child cries and longs for her. And so, it is the same for us, who without the Mother, have no idea of who we are, and have no sense of who holds us.

What has happened to us that we haven't allowed women to be the strong, powerful people we are? What has happened to us that some of us who have become mothers have lost the knowledge of how to birth and mother, who have learned to put ourselves into the hands of a male medical model that tells us how to birth, how to mother, and who have become afraid of our own natural body wisdom? Of course we have a shadow-mother experience when women are not allowed to be ourselves. When we split off from our true knowing what can possibly be the outcome of this condition? It doesn't help women or the world to create elaborate belief systems explaining women's so-called dysfunction from an androcentric view, which often blames women.

Gloria Orenstein, professor of Comparative Literature at USC, in an anthology celebrating the life and work of Marija Gimbuts, recounts her review of Andre Breton's book, Nadja. Nadja was a real woman-a an authentic human being. Nadja supposedly went mad and was institutionalized. Orenstein says, "…as I began to decipher the symbols in the drawings left by Nadja, I saw, in her visual hieroglyphics, the disclosure by a female visionary of the memory of her lost matristic heritage with the Celtic mythological tradition. All patriarchal interpretations had concluded that Nadja was mad, so she was locked away in a sanitarium forever. Yet, from 'feminist matristic' interpretation, Nadja can be seen as presenting a plea for the return to a reverence for the Mother Goddess as the primary deity to explain the universe and women's place in it. Nadja's madness, therefore, was her last refuge, that inner world where she could dwell alone among the symbols of her own matristic truth, symbols that were real to her but that were neither accepted nor recognized by the dominating patriarchal order of her time."

Of course we are madwomen.Why is anyone surprised at this? A moving excerpt from French feminist writer, Jeanne Hyvrard's book Mother Death in the same anthology courageously illustsrates the truth about women's so-called madness. Tjhere again we find a woman who is institutionalized because of her memories of a time when "the Earth was sacred and reverence for the Goddess prevailed." The protagonist has experienced colonization and conquest by androcentric invaders-a true condition. "They perverted language…They said I had lost my mind. I can't find the forgotten language. The language from before the invaders…The language in which words also mean their opposites. The language that liberates…The language even older than the statue with naked breasts. The language of the souls of the dead in stones. The languages of your caverns' paintings, your soul's pottery, your ashes' silica. The language of the naked woman, her thighs like mountains…They pillaged your tombs and wonder why they don't know anything…They say I have a sickness. They give it a name. They say I'm unstable, precarious, lunatic. They say they want to cure me…They want to cure me of what, exactly? Of the world's creation and erosion? Of death and rebirth? They say they're going to cure me. Of what? Life itself?"

The shadow-mother is a natural consequence of denial of the Goddess-of not allowing women to be empowered. When women are disempowered, all of life suffers. What we need is an understanding of how this happened, so that we can heal. We are told in psychotherapy we need to name the wound to heal it. This wound I am talking about-the deep Mother wound from which we all suffer, from which all woundedness emerges in myriads of forms-- needs to be openly named. This is not about the patriarchal so-called devouring mother. This projection of men's fear of women onto women has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as women internalize this mirroring and become exactly what is feared. Then the fingers are pointed at women, with cries of "You see? It's her fault." This fear fueled the fathers of the inquisition in the women's holocaust-the slaughter and burnings at the stake of millions of wise women healers. Do you hear the cries of the ancestors in your ears? Can you hear them telling us to re-member before it is too late?

From a spiritual feminist perspective, definitions of such terms as Eros, shadow and spirit take on new meaning. This perspective sees the presence of the Sacred Feminine in all things. In this reality, language finds different expression. Why is it that we describe the energy of life in a male term and relegate the female maternal source that births the male to a secondary position? How does this make sense? And what are the effects of this kind of mythos on our psyches? For the erotic to be truly stirred, the aphroditic must be totally embraced by women and men alike. Author Patricia Reis tells us that female erotic energy is aphroditic and is a resource that lives deeply within all life. Aphroditic energy is Shakti-the activating creative life force that energizes Shiva in his universal dance. Without Shakti, Shiva is lifeless. This is why we see Kali dancing on Shiva in East Indian iconography. She is the creatix, sustainer and dissolver-all comes from Her and all returns to Her. Long before Kali, Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples knew this to be true.

In looking at the concept of shadow, I feel it is important to understand what created the shadow in the first place. We have elaborate descriptions, meanings and definitions of the concept of shadow. I have often wondered if our ancestors living prior to patriarchy had such a concept. Evidence certainly exists as to the notion of the Death Goddess, but she was always combined with Regeneration (see my book, Midwifing Death: Returning to the Arms of the Ancient Mother). Marija Gimbutas has shown us that early people had a deep respect for the cyclical nature of life. She tells us that early people understood death to be a part of life. In this wholistic view, death is not split off from life--there is no dualism, only continuity. In these early cultures of Old Europe, there is no evicdence of war-no weapons have been found, nor is there any depiction of war in the iconography. It would appear that these Paleolithic and Neolithic people did not experience a sense of splitting the way we post-Bronze Age, post-Descartes, post inquisition and post industrial revolution people do. These early matri-focaled cultures were marked by a profound connection the Goddess, excelled in creativity and existed peacefully for millennia. In archeological digs in Catal Huyuk in present day Turkey, three different skull types were found existing side-by-side in a peaceful matri-focaled community that lasted nearly 1,000 years. Ths informs us that three different "races" (I use quotations as there really is only one race of people-African) of people lived together in harmony. This does not seem to be fertile soil for a concept of shadow. It does appear to have been fertile soil for living in mystery and peace in close connection to the Earth, where the sharing of a profound and sacred shamanic reality was a way of life.

Patriarchy has succeeded in demonizing the Sacred Feminine. The rampant disrespect, crime and misogyny in our world today are killing us. The projection of fear onto women creates an extremely disturbing shadow. Without naming this shadow for what it is, and I am not talking about penis envy, which is some kind of strange projection from a man obviously suffering from a deep internal conflict, we will continue to be afflicted by the contents of that shadow, without understanding how to fully heal. We are suffering from a soul loss so staggering that I am not sure we can retrieve all of it. I pray for my children's sake and their children's sake that we can.

There is a definite connection between rape and the tearing open of the ozone layer. This is the nature of the shadow we have normalized and live with-like a village built on the side of a volcano that is about to erupt. Some Native Americans have a saying that says you can tell a lot about a people by how the women of the tribe are treated. So, what kind of people are we?

The Laws of Manu, though replete with patriarchal ideology, at its core embodies an important teaching. It says, "Women must be honored and adorned by their fathers, brothers, husbands and brothers-in-law, who desire their own welfare. Where women are honored, there the gods are pleased, but where they are not honored, no sacred rite yields rewards. Where the female relations live in grief, the family soon wholly perishes, but that family where they are not unhappy ever prospers. The houses on which female relations, not being duly honored, pronounce a curse, perish completely, as if destroyed by magic." Feminist writer, Barbara Walker, tells us that this advice came from the place northern Aryans referred to as Mutspellheim, or the House of the Mother's Curse, in the 'hot lands of the south'. She writes, "the Scandinavian prophecy of doomsday or the Mutspell would fall upon the violent patriarchal gods who ignored ancient tribal bonds and rules of morality, and instituted cruel warfare. The result of the Mother's Curse would be the death of all gods, their Gotterdammmerung or Going-Into-the-Shadow; thus it seemed the Mother's word of destruction meant the end of the world." This is not punishment from the Mother who sits in judgment of her children, wanting to burn them in brimstone and hellfire in eternal damnation, demanding that they live in fear and trembling of her. Rather, this curse is self-inflicted. The rules are simple. Disobey the naturals laws, and suffer the consequences. In Magic Dance, a book on dakini wisdom, Thinley Norbu reminds us, "from beginningless time until now, all ignorant sentient beings tried to find company, but we are always isolated meaninglessly because we disobeyed our Self-Awareness Noble Mother's advice." It is my belief that if we wake up and begin to honor the Sacred Feminine, the Noble Mother within ourselves, we can reverse this self-inflicted curse. I pray we have the time.

From a feminist shamanic perspective, spirit is the internal experience of the Goddess-not as a she replacing the he in the sky, but as the limitless primordial ground of being, the Prajnaparamita, or Mother of All the Buddhas and the Earth herself. Hers is a both/and universe. She is the immanent/transcendent All-Ramakrishna's Mother Kali, whose love, compassion, mercy and fiercenss know no bounds. To see Her is to be One with Her, to revel in her wildness, to experience ecstasy and to recognize that Her love is the antidote to our suffering. Connection with Her is connection with the essence of creativity itself. All of Her children have access to Her through direct communion and transmission, without the need of any mediator.

In the mother/child bond, if allowed to flourish the way it was meant to, without invasive, colonizing and controlling patriarchal thinking, this bond grows like a flower rooted in the life-giving, rich moist earth. No one needs to issue directives to the Earth how to grow a plant. She does it by herself. It is the mater-wealth that feeds and sustains the plant and child equally. This power is great-miraculous. It need not be feared, nor can it be possessed, though there are those who ceaselessly try. This creativity that births us is alive in every moment-there for us to suckle. When we have our fill, we go on about our way, feeling, exploring, playing, dancing, singing, loving, creating beauty and sharing ourselves with each other in life-affirming ways. When we need to return to the source for sustenance, the well is there, and all that is asked of us in return is humility, gratitude, acceptance, surrender and respect. Why is it so hard for us to live in this way, loving ourselves, loving each other, loving the earth? Do we really need to compete in order to measure our own self-worth? Do men need to dominate women, and do women need to be submissive?

The Goddess is not just for women and feminists. She is all-inclusive. Males are as much Her children as females, as are all our relations. However, it is Her children who must do the re-membering in order for Her to inform our lives. We are responsible for transforming our dualistic and delusional thinking. We are responsible for exorcising our own demons in order to heal. If we write mountains of books, and do not walk our talk, unfortunately, we will not have healed very much. The living Goddess finds expression in each one of us, as we open to love and let go of fear and destructive anger. We have all been abused because we live in an abusive paradigm. The healing we all seek from this abuse lives in the flowing waters of the Goddess' love, Her life-sustaining cosmic milk and the new life that comes from Her regenerative powers.

May we learn to drink deep from Her well, and find Her well deep within. We deserve to be loved. We deserve to be cherished. We can ask for what we need, and knowing we deserve to heal, then, may She bless us all with the sweet nectar of her blissful and ecstatic presence.

PUBLICATIONS CITED
Marler, Joan, ed. 1997, From the Realm of the Ancestors. Manchester, CT: Knowledge, Ideas & Trends, Inc.
Norbu, Thinley, 1981, Magic Dance: The Display of the Self-Nature of the Five Wisdom Dakinis. New York, NY: Jewel Publishing.House.
Reis, Patricia, 1996, Through the Goddess, New York, NY: Continuum.
Walker, Barbara, 1983, Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row

END NOTES
1. Marler, 1997, p. 458
2. Ibid. p. 459
3. Ibid. p. 460
4. Reis, 1996, p.119
5. Walker, 1983, p. 200
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Norbu, 1981, p.52