Shrine to the Goddess

Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Walsingham. I took this photo of a shrine devoted to her in St. Magnus-the-Martyr in London — kneeling here, I had an immensely moving personal experience with Our Lady. The prayer to the right of the statue reads:

O Mary, recall the solemn moment when Jesus, thy Divine Son, dying on the Cross, confided us to thy maternal care. Thou art our Mother, we desire ever to be thy devout children. Let us, therefore, feel the effects of thy powerful intercession with Jesus Christ.

Make thy name again glorious. Pray O Holy Mother of God, for the conversion of England, restoration of the sick, consolation for the afflicted, repentance of sinners, peace to the departed.

Prayer of the Wild Body

The Mother Goddess

Mother Earth also known as the Earth Lady, Gaia, Tlaltecuhtli, Pachamama and Kallirugadh, is the primordial earth mother, the source of creation, and a powerful, dual-gendered deity. Like Gaia, she is the ancestral mother of all life, deeply connected to the earth and its fertility. She is often envisioned as a powerful being emerging from the soil, embodying the interconnectedness of all living things. Similar to Tlaltecuhtli, she can be seen as a monstrous, yet life-giving force, a being who both gives and devours life. Her dismembered form or body is believed to be the basis for the world, mirroring the Aztec creation myth.

Mythology: The Mother Goddess is the wife of Cernunnos, involved in the cyclical nature of life, death, and rebirth. Cernunnos' birth at the winter solstice represents the start of the new year, and his symbolic death in the fall mirrors the dormancy of nature. At Imbolc, his impregnation of The Earth initiates the cycle of growth and fertility, ensuring the continuation of life. She is both a nurturing and demanding force, requiring respect and offerings to maintain the balance of the world.

Devotional Acts

🦋 Patron of Plants, the Earth, Hosts, Mothers, and Pregnancy.

🌻Days: Sunday

🌎 Planet: Earth

Tarot Cards: 🌌The World, 🦁The Empress, and 💰Queen of Pentacles

Colors: Brown, Black, Green, Bronze, Jadeite

🐗Animals: Stags, bulls, boars, wolves, and snakes

🎍Crystals: Moss agate, magnetite, serpentine

🍈Offerings: Mead, Guava Nectar, Pine Cones, Horn of Plenty, Broken weapons to symbolize ceasing harm, Green candles, Barley, Corn, Honey Cakes, Milk, Rice, Honeysuckle, Cypress and Blood

🦚Devotional acts: Sex, nature walks, taking care of local parks, planting trees, dancing and green magic

Local Celebration

Pachamama Day: celebrated annually on August 1st, is a traditional Andean festival honoring Mother Earth, or Pachamama. It's a time for communities to express gratitude for the Earth's bounty and to make requests for the coming year. Andean cultures across South America, where people honor the earth and its natural forces, Celebrations often include rituals like digging holes in the ground to place offerings, pouring drinks and throwing coca leaves, and burning sacred items as a way to honor and thank Pachamama

(based on the)New Fire Ceremony: Every 52 years, a celebration of a new era takes place, similar to a new year, featuring a bonfire, stories of the past era, and tea boiled in a cauldron placed atop a statue of Tlaltecuhtli, using her stomach as the cauldron.

Gaia Day: either as a celebration of Earth day or as a reference to the name of the Greek goddess Gaia, organizations, like Gaia Movement USA, use "Gaia Day" to refer to a yearly commitment to environmental protection.

the balance between humans and nature, is central to celebration Mother Earth. returning to the Earth what has been taken from it, ensuring continued harmony even if thats form differs

Also Deity of Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Mabon

アトリエ空白competition#2優秀賞作品

I have felt very attracted to this imagery of Black Madonna, and I am just now learning of the epithet Lady of the Dark Forest. It reminds me of this quote that I have held dear over the past couple of years…

White Tara artist ,Lasha :: Mutual Art + Illustration

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Tonglen

On the in-breath, you breathe in whatever particular area, group of people, country, or even one particular person... maybe it’s not this more global situation, maybe it’s breathing in the physical discomfort and mental anguish of chemotherapy; of all the people who are undergoing chemotherapy. And if you’ve undergone chemotherapy and come out the other side, it’s very real to you. Or maybe it’s the pain of those who have lost loved ones; suddenly, or recently, unexpectedly or over a long period of time, some dying. But the in-breath is... you find some place on the planet in your personal life or something you know about, and you breathe in with the wish that those human beings or those mistreated animals or whoever it is, that they could be free of that suffering, and you breathe in with the longing to remove their suffering.

And then you send out – just relax out... send enough space so that peoples’ hearts and minds feel big enough to live with their discomfort, their fear, their anger or their despair, or their physical or mental anguish. But you can also breathe out for those who have no food and drink, you can breathe out food and drink. For those who are homeless, you can breathe out/send them shelter. For those who are suffering in any way, you can send out safety, comfort.

So in the in-breath you breathe in with the wish to take away the suffering, and breathe out with the wish to send comfort and happiness to the same people, animals, nations, or whatever it is you decide.

Do this for an individual, or do this for large areas, and if you do this with more than one subject in mind, that’s fine… breathing in as fully as you can, radiating out as widely as you can.

~Pema Chödrön

May all beings be well and happy...

The Queen Mother of the West

The Queen Mother of the West is an ancient Chinese goddess whose origin can be traced back to oracle bone inscriptions of the fifteenth century BCE that record sacrifices to a “western mother”. Even though these inscriptions illustrate that she predates organized Taoism, she is most often associated with Taoism. From her name alone some of her most important characteristics are revealed: she is royal, female and is associated with the west. The growing popularity of the Queen Mother of the West, as well as the beliefs that she was the dispenser of prosperity, longevity, and eternal bliss took place during the second century BCE when the northern and western parts of China were able to be better known because of the opening of the Silk Routes.

The Queen Mother of the West (西王母  xī wáng mǔ). She is often accompanied by the Jade Moon Rabbit who makes the pills of immortality, the Lunar Toad, the Nine Tailed Fox Spirit, and her messenger is the Three Legged Blue Corvus. 

Her full title is Her Great Holiness, First Sovereign of Preeminent Purity of the Immortals, the Great Divine Golden Queen Mother of the West, Eternal Goddess of Jade Lake, She of the Nine Numina, the Grand Marvel, and the Celestial White Jade Tortoise Mountain (上聖白玉龜台九靈太真無極聖母瑤池大聖西王金母無上清靈元君統禦群仙大天尊)… And breathe :)