#priestessing

I am used to being busy (and as some may note, over reaching) having raised 5 children (under 5), High Priestessing a coven within my beloved Tradition, The assembly of the Sacred Wheel, a full time job, married 41 years (June 25th), and teaching multiple workshops and intensives throughout the year. I am not listing these things as a marker of what busy looks like for me, but hopefully as a barometer of why I (we) all need some time to look within. 

“Drinking the water, I thought how earth and sky are generous with their gifts and how good it is to receive them. Most of us are taught, somehow, about giving and accepting human gifts, but not about opening ourselves and our bodies to welcome the sun, the land, the visions of sky and dreaming, not about standing in the rain ecstatic with what is offered.”—Linda Hogan in Sisters of the Earth

May you have a warm heart, open hands, a creative mind. May you experience inspiration and brilliance, clarity and focus. May you laugh richly and deeply. May you circle and celebrate, may you change and grow May that which is waiting to be unlocked be freed. And may you soar with the knowing that you are carried by a great wind across the sky.*

I stand rooted here on the earth and offer my gratitude. I turn to the East and offer gratitude for the air I breathe. I turn to the South and offer gratitude for the fire of my spirit. I turn to the West and offer gratitude for river, lake, stream, and ocean. I turn to the North and offer gratitude for stone, tree, and bone. I touch the earth and offer gratitude for this land I call home. I reach towards the sky and offer gratitude for sun and stars. I place my hand on my heart and breathe deep, offering gratitude for all that I am and all that I have and for the many blessings of my life. Thank you. You are enough.

“Eating the first corn, cutting the first ripe tomato, grilling fresh fish in the open air: if done consciously,  these can become rituals of love and thanksgiving to the earth that sustains us.”—Patricia Monaghan, The Goddess Companion

I have written quite often about the roles of Priestess and Earth Mother and how I balance being a Mother to my own flesh and blood child with the call on my soul to live out my calling as a Priestess. Many moons ago I would have had to choose a life of devotion as a Priestess or a life as a wife and mother, today the Priestesses in our midst serve their community while fulfilling and experiencing many other roles in their life as well. There are Earth Mother Priestesses, 9-5 career Priestesses, religious Priestesses, spiritual Priestesses, healing, psychic, playful, travelling, hermitted, botanical, activist, artistic, loving, raging, loud, proud, quiet, rainbow hued Priestesses, ad infinitum. The Priestesses role in society has shifted as the tides of humanity have shifted and we are both gifted and challenged with the freedom to practice our calling and magic with the world as Priestess while also fulfilling varied roles in our lives and in the life of our community.

When I became a priestess nobody in the family that I had grown up in were surprised to hear about it. For time immemorial I have been considered the eccentric, the odd duck, the one that just refused to fit in in our sleepy bible belt of a town that I grew up in, and consequentially moved back to four years ago.