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~ Seed Song ~
May life be given
a second chance -
like the wind-carried seed
of last Autumn's flower.
After days and nights of storm,
Being lifted into the high air,
turned and tossed among
winged dragon-leaves
of fiery-red, gold, and brown,
then falling not kindly
back to the earth in a new
strange place, alone, helpless,
the watch began. The wait began.
Nestled into the cold hard ground
all Winter long the is, almost
giving up hope of rebirth.
The enveloping darkness
is not that of the kin-flower-filled
Summer nights,
where one can still feel
the penetrating heat
of the sun, the life-bringer,
the light-bearer,
the warm embrace
of safety.
Gone ...
Then one day in March
the seed feels a faint, familiar touch;
Is this the awakening?
Or is this the wonderful dream
that has been with me from the beginning
that shall set me free again, alive?
Is there really a second chance of life?
Life here and now, as the warm light-bearer
draws near?
Dead dragon-leaves crumble,
And now above me, the scent of Spring,
and a different spirit on the wind
than the one who left me here
So many days, months, (years?) ago ...
Oh, Iolaus, caress me, sing to me, lead me.
Mother Earth, help me remember
the magic of change that is good
locked in my soul and body.
May life be given a second chance,
For I am a Seed
and I hold the memory of the living flower
in my heart.
Surely, with your help,
this is enough
for magic.
Lillian M. E., March 12, 2009
Submitted by Lillian, April 2008
"Mythology is the knowledge that the ancients had of the divine; it is religious truth expressing
in poetical terms mankind's desire for personal and visible Gods. Our object must be to discover, with the help of our
mythology, the Gods who manifest themselves throughout Nature, in the streets and in the trees and in the rocks; in the running
streams and in the heavy ear of grain; in the splendor of the sun by day and in the star-strewn sky at night. But it
is not the myth that Odinists believe in, but the Gods whom that myth helps us understand."
~ The Odinist Committee, in book: This Is Odinism page
5
I am not an Odinist. And I admit I do not know very much about their unique beliefs
and practices as Fellow Pagans. But I do relate to the words above. It is how I feel also: It is not the myths
that I believe in, but the Goddesses and Gods whom the myths help me understand, and so, draw closer to. It is in this
understanding, and desire to draw closer to them that I also remember who I am and what is important to me; what makes me
happy, and what will lead me home when this life is over. Blessed Be.
~ Lillian
| Goddess Altar |
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| (c) Nadean Young |
Nemesis, daughter of Night,
tracker of souls, Goddess of
Just Retribution, hear and see
our pain and hopes, receive an
offering! Fires of transformation,
take these Bibles and transform
their power into nothingness.
Avenge thy Daughters and
Creatures of Earth, Nemesis!
~~Lillian~~~
August 2005
| Goddess Nemesis |
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| Transforming evil biblical writings into nothingness! |
Invocation:
Beings of water, earth, and air,
Gather with me, come and share.
Nemesis, our lives defend!
Give us back our Home again!
Ancient Daughter of the Night,
Wielder of memory and rage,
Nemesis, set balance right;
Free us from this burning cage!
Pages given, pages read,
I have screamed and I have bled.
Nemesis, hear all I've said,
and save me from the living dead.
Ancient Daughter of the Night,
Lend to me the strength to fight
Only to be free once more ...
Nemesis, unlock the door!
~~~Lillian~~~
8-23-06
| Spiral Goddess |
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"Quest For My Lady"
Flaming cauldron, burn away,
Release your flame before the day
Fools shall come to smother Thee;
You die, then fools they'll ever be.
Never know and never care,
O Golden Queen who once burned there,
For they who choked your life pale,
And left the rope, so's not to fail.
I would find my way to Thee,
Far past the emerald-amber tree;
Your gown so 'live and yet your shroud;
Must to it I send my prayers aloud?
I've not yet found the pathway,
In the midnight flights nor halfday ...
Clawing for the murd'rous cord,
My hands long to release your light!!
~~~Lillian~~~
1977
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She changes everything She touches,
and everything She touches changes!
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The Mother is calling to us. Go out upon Her and be with Her.
Savor Her beauty and freshness. Listen to Her voice in the breeze. As the Great Mother opens to you, open yourself
to Her.
excerpt (c) Shirley Schnirel 2001
"The Goddess I love is the life force moving in smooth and tempestuos directions:
stopping, pausing, and starting; roaring, whispering, and silent."
~ Mari Jorgensen, teacher
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The Importance of Women and Voting
( by Sally R.B. Bermudes )
Remember This Important Date: 4 June 1919
On this date, after nearly a century of struggle, the Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,
giving women the right to vote. The amendment was ratified a year later, allowing women to vote in their first presidential
election in 1920. With one exception: the women who had started the long sufferage campaign in 1848 at Seneca Falls,
New York, never lived to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Only Charlotte Woodward, who was nineteen when she attended
the Seneca Falls Convention, voted in 1920 at the age of ninety-three.
It seems timely to bring this issue up now as we're approaching another presidential election in 2008. Many times
after we listen to candidates, we feel that there isn't really any one person running that we would like to see lead our country,
so we consider just not voting. If you ever feel that way, STOP and REMEMBER the pain, suffering and humiliation the
suffragists went through to allow you and me to vote today ... and then ask yourself these questions, "Do I owe those brave
women anything at all? Might I simply vote for the person I think could possibly be better than the others? Do
I owe anything to myself in gratitude for those beautiful women, and ... do I owe anything to the women voters of the future?"
One other thing we need to be thinking about now is this: Because we are women, must we vote for a female candidate
simply because she's a woman? In my personal opinion, the answer to that is "NO." Female candidates MUST be considered
in the same way male candidates are considered ... look at their statements and their arguments on the issues and, in the
case of those already holding office, look at their past voting records. Do not be a "sexist" by feeling you must vote
for one gender or the other ... study ALL candidates with an open mind and then, vote your conscience.
Always remember Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the many other suffragists, and sing their praises for
refusing to give up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"BLESSED BE THE WITCHES"
At the time of the Christian festival of Palm Sunday, there is, in West Finalnd,
a festival similar to Hallowe'en in North America and Celtic Europe. Children dress as Witches and visit the local houses
in the morning. They carry a basket decorated with brightly colored feathers containing willow twigs. These are
waved about in front of the house, and a spell cast over them before being given to the house as a blessing. In return,
the children are given sweets."
~ Vivianne Crowley, from the book Phoenix From The Flame
| Mielikki |
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| Finnish Forest Goddess |
"Pagans do not, in the main, feel the need to create
intellectual definitions of their religious understanding. Words such as 'pantheist' and 'polytheist' are not widely
used; categorization of our belief systems is not important. We recognize that all such intellectual exercises are ultimately
futile. Rational explanations, and the dogmatic theological creeds to which they give rise, were a stage in humanity's
evolution, but they are ultimately illusionary. All religious dogma is an attempt to codify that which is beyond the
word-based conscious mind. We can only understand it by entering into unity with it."
~ Vivianne Crowley, Phoenix From the Flame
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"Knocking Down The Pope" by Artemis Oakstone
On December 25, 2009, a woman 25 years of age, Susanna Maiolo, succeeded in doing something that thousands
of women such as myself dream of. She knocked the symbol of oppression and abuse to women on the ground. This
was her second attempt to knock the Pope over. Let this be a lesson to us never to give up on our quest for human rights
for all. The huge and powerful systems that repress women can be knocked over if we start somewhere. In this symbolic
act, Ms. Maiolo has started a movement. We remember that it was only John Brown and his sons who started a movement
that ended slavery in America.
So I am declaring December 25th of every year as "Knock The Pope Over Day." I will use an effigy
of the Pope to knock over. But I will be knocking over all the male relgions with their all male clergies. And
not only that, I will also be knocking down all the churches, synagogues, and mosques. And there are Brahmin priests
in India who hate women just as much as the other god men do. I will knock them down also. But as an effigy that
represents all of those women haters, I will use an image of the Pope. As the Catholic church killed over 9 million
women during their Inquisition, perhaps they have earned the right to be the symbol that I will knock over.
As you know, the Vatican has gotten away with declaring themselves a country so that they can block
any reforms for women in the United Nations. They have blocked contraception for women worldwide for many years.
They lobbied in the US to block the needed uterine cancer vaccine for women claiming that it would make women promiscuous.
My best friend suffered horribly and died at age 35 as a direct result of not having that vaccine available. So it is
not only women in far away lands who have suffered needlessly and died because of the misogyny of male religions.
This statement came from the Vatican from Father Lombardi: "As I have already said, she (Susanna
Maiolo) was not armed and if anything the poor woman needs treatment which is what she is getting." For a religious
organization to state that anyone is in need of psychiatric care is laughable. They are the same organizaton that has
hidden and protected their pedophile priests and bishops worldwide. They condemn homosexuality while most of their priests
are homosexuals. And they have, of course, advocated that human beings put their faith in a fantasy world of demons
and angels. And from that fantasy world a real world has resulted in which women and children are victims of a male
hierarchy. Whatever Ms. Maiolo's motivation was, it matters not. It only matters that she has started a movement
for us and given us a special day.
For any woman or group that can protest for Maiolo's release, I hope you will do so. But please
join me on every December 25th by knocking down a symbol of the repression and degradation of half of our spieces that has
made our world a living hell.
Hopeful for a better future for all, Artemis Oakstone
PEACE (by Artemis OakStone, Winter Solstice '07)
I am sorry to report that we are no closer to peace than we were 4,000 years
ago. Let's look at why that is. The earth is not 2,000 years old, but 4.5 billion. Humans are not 2,000
years old, but 2 million. And the dinosaurs are not a figment of someone's imagination; they existed 230 million years
ago before Mother Nature was ready to have homo sapiens come on to the scene through Her power of evolution.
Science has been able to escape from the stranglehold that religion had on it for centuries
so that we know the bible is not a book of facts. So why do religious leaders continue to deny with fervency the above
facts about our world? There is one reason and anyone interested in peace must come to terms
with it. To continue on with endless wars, humans must be made to believe that there never existed a time when women
had mother rights; and thus, war did not exist. That is where the term of "having faith" comes from. Humans must
also be made to believe that warfare is a natural state of human existence that we can never escape from. For women
to give up there children as human sacrifices/ soldiers to the wars of the looters, they must be unnaturally docile and passive.
But in truth, war is not the normal state of human existence; neither is the natural state of women one of passivity to the
point of not protecting their children. If you look back before 2,000 years; all those facts are evident.
For anyone who has had studies in science and/or anthropology, the above facts have been made
available. But even so, ministers, rabbis and mullahs rage against those truths because they have a stake in the present
system remaining just as it is.
The tribes of god men were not the peaceful villages of settled farming people as described
in Genesis in the example of Cain and Able. The Goddess-worshipping people were settled farmers so that when Cain offered
his gift of the first fruits of the harvest to god, he symbolically rejected them but loved the fat offerings from the first-born
livestock that the herdsman Able offered. The nomadic Herdsmen represented the northern tribes that were migrating into
the fertile lands of the Goddess people. An indication of when these invasions were taking place can be found in Genesis
4:22: "Zillah also had a son, Tubal Cane, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron." So this was the bronze
and iron age when the warring god men were also forging weapons of iron. The iron age enabled the northern men who learned
the skills of metal-working to easily murder the people of the farming villages they invaded.
Since those times of great migrations, the men who created gods have sought to loot the resources
and lands of defenseless people. And as you have heard Bush invoke the name of his god of war in many of his speeches,
we know that men of power and wealth have no intention of changing a system that enables them to steal, through violence and
invasion, the resources and wealth of other people. So how much do we want peace? For those of
us mothers who are broken-hearted at being witness to so many suffering and dying children that this war system demands calling
them collateral damage, we really do care. Count me as a woman who cares enough to demand change. A letting go
of and saying "goodbye" to all gods because they are one and the same as war is what has to happen before we can start to
entertain the idea of peace.
As most of you know, I recently debated the publisher of a magazine that is for women.
She objected to my desire to tell truths that are very important to women by stating that she "... had no intention of revisiting
the sins of the past." But we are living those sins every day and they shall never be in our past. When any woman
goes into a church, serves its all-male priesthood, is unable to reclaim her normal and natural human rights, she is living
those sins of the past that enable the war machines of the nations of men to continue on to their ultimate goal of annihilating
all life on Mother Earth. We cannot keep supporting the status quo of 4,000 years ago. I think the first step
is that we must demand truth ~ the kind of truth that is being told in Freethought Today. And regarding Freethought
Today, the word "atheist" has been denigrated just as much as our words of witch, crone and others so that the patriarchs
can try to connect their religions to morality which they are in truth the opposite of. Morality does not allow for
collateral damage, violence-hardened societies with war toys and games for children and teenagers, violent movies, murdering
defenseless animals for sport and so on. Freethought Today gives scholarships to our young people who
have shown an ability; not to believe, but to think. They will be our harbingers of peace.
So that if we want peace, I suggest that at this time of the
year we look for ways away from violence and be honest and truthful with ourselves and others about what has to happen for
the slightest change to take place. And I realize that I am not writing anything new for you sisters or that you do
not share my sentiments in this coven which about women and our children. We are earth mothers. No matter how
many times we write these things in our own different words this needs to be done until a time that we can reach enough women
with our message of truth. Men of gods believe that the lives of "the others" have no value. So that I think the
nicest message that could be placed at my resting place would be, "A god-hating atheist lies here."
As I love children, animals, and all life, I do hate the gods that hurt, mutilate and murder
them. I was told by my Christian grandmother never to say the word "hate." In her world, women had to wear blinders
to survive and also were completely controlled by men in their thoughts and words. It was believed not "ladylike" to
hate or have real feelings. It was a fake world much like the pretend world that was created in Genesis. And I
can testify to the fact that my grandmother was not a happy person no matter how hard she tried to be. But I was so
happy this year to be able to write the following to sister Lillian: "You and I, Lillian, as coven sisters, stirred
the cauldron for a better world and woke up women in the SageWoman safe haven for forlorn Christian women victims.
We said, 'Stop seeing yourselves as victims and start seeing yourselves as creatrixes.' As true witches/women for change,
we stirred the cauldron, rocked the boat, lit some fires, and conjured up the winds of change. We really did a good
job. We were real witches." I wrote this when I was thinking of the witches of Samhain. Goddess bless you
all and keep up the good work.
Bibliography
1. DeMeo, James Ph. D., Saharasia: The 4,000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression and Social Violence in the
Deserts of the Old World, Natural Energy Works, 1991, or http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia.htm
2. Louise, Anita, "In the Land of the Mothers" The Neolithic Roots of the Goddess in Anatolia, present-day Turkey.
Anatolia translates to "Land of the Mothers." Go to Awakened Woman e-magazine at: http://awakenedwoman.com/goddess_in_anatolia.htm
3. Shlain, Leonard, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, New York, NY, Penguin Compass, 1999
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Imbolc Celebration
I have seen the Goddess at work here - She has been resting all through December and January, but a few days
ago, a quickening occurred down in the valley below our home. Driving along the main country road into town, I glanced
over at a field where many cows were grazing in the morning sun. Something was different, something had happened either
earlier in the day or during the night. A new life had entered our world - a beautiful small black calf had been born
and it was laying down near its mother, resting perhaps after its ordeal of being born. I felt my heart leap with joy
for I knew at that moment, that the Goddess was stirring Her cauldron once again - making ready for the new life that
would show itself to the Earth again, as it has for over 4 bilion years. When the calves are born the end of January,
I know that Springtime is just around the corner! I can feel the quickening in the ground when I walk our woodland path.
Even the small sparrows have returned to feed on our deck - wings flapping and small beaks pecking at the seed spread out
before them!
Thank you, Goddess - you've never failed us yet ...
~~~ Gaia ~~~
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Esbat Ritual
Envision a circle of healing and protection around yourself:
"Mothers Hertha, Selene, and Saule, your priestesses join together now to meld our
wills with your great energies. Let your energies end Patriarchy and all the greed and destruction it creates.
And by your energies may our bodies be healed and renewed now so that we may continue our fight to save all of your creations
and among them our species, our children, because children are the regenerative spiral that we know as life."
Raise your goblet in a salute to the blessed Mothers and say, "Reverence to you great
Mothers Hertha, Saule, and Selene. Mother Goddess Hertha let the healing power of your liquid bless my body with good
health." Take some of the liquid into your body and then say, "Blessed Mother Hertha, thank you for your gifts too numerous
to name. As priestesses of Hertha, we bless the Earth on which we stand as sacred, hollowed ground, too sacred for male
violence of and kind." Then pour out the liquid at the base of your tree or pole. "May the good changes in our
bodies and on our blessed Hertha begin now as such is our will. So mote it be. May the circle remain open but
unbroken. May the peace of our Great Goddess be always in our hearts."
~~~Aradia Artemis Oakstone~~~
2005
| Sun Goddess |
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| (c) Julie Fausette |
Ode to Gosport Chapel
Little chapel proud and lone,
Made of wood, cement and stone;
Anchored as you are on rock,
Skyward steeple does it mock
A god so up and out that we
Forget that She controls the sea?
Selene, Moon Goddess, turns the tide
And lights the ocean's ships to guide.
Bell on buoy, bell in steeple
Guide the lost and searching people.
Search beneath those rocks of ages
Question Priests, Rabbis and Sages.
When came their god of guilt and sin
Waging war on Goddess within?
Steeples rise and poke thin air
Distracting us from Gaia where
Our food and drink and we have come
And love beneath our sensuous Sun
Hear the bell and see the vane
We shall return to Earth again.
So turn the steeple upside down
To copulate with fertile ground.
We are formed of dust by birth
Wind and Water, Fire and Earth.
~ Virginia Costich 1992
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