~Magickal Graphics~

THE GODDESS,

ONE WOMAN’S WALK ON A PAGAN PATH

~by Shalimar

The Goddess. Who is she? Many of us have felt that first tug at the name Goddess. It could have come when you saw that workout magazine, using Goddess to describe a woman, beautifully in shape. It could have come when someone made the statement about the Goddess within us. Somewhere was that little voice, telling you to have the courage…to reach for her.

Getting to know the Goddess is not an easy thing. It’s not a thing widely accepted by society, and there are all these stories, designed to make you afraid to study about her.. I remember how I started my path on a bit of a tremble. Something inside of me wanted…needed to know her. Yet, all the things that I had been told, in my strict Christian upbringing, had me fearful that I was doing something very wrong. Then one day I read the book, “In the Shadow of the Shaman”, and one of the first things she said was this. We all have this innate sense of when we hear a truth, and when we hear a lie. Tell yourself a truth and feel how that vibrates within you. Next, tell yourself a lie. How does a lie feel within you? Now, read on, and if it feels like a lie, stop reading at once. But, if it feels like truth, try to set aside your fears and keep studying. Fear stops the flow within us. Fear keeps us from finding our own truth, our own path. Fear has its place, when we are in danger, yet we can allow fear to keep us stuck.

Well, I put this to the test, and I soon found myself doing some serious studying about the Goddess.

One of the first paradigms I encountered, which changed the course of my life, was when I was working at a college in Barrow, Alaska. I was attending some kind of meeting, when someone started talking about the box of which we grow up in. When we grow up, we are taught, all through our childhood, a set of beliefs. We grow up believing that certain things are right, and certain things are wrong. We accept these as truth. We incorporate them as our values. Often times, though, as we get older, it starts to dawn on us, that this is something we have been taught to see as truth. But is this our truth?

Agnes, in one of Lynn V. Andrews books, said, we cannot wear someone else’s cloak. When we are raised in a belief system, and told what to believe and what not to believe, we are trying to force ourselves to wear a cloak that may not fit us at all. If we continue our lives, trying to force ourselves to wear someone else’s cloak, sooner or later, we begin to rebel against it. We start to feel, confined, trapped. We start to feel as if our life does not have meaning, and we begin to question what is true that meaning. We start to ask what our purpose is in this.

There are many great books out there for finding your way to your most fulfilling job, walking within your true self, etc. Yet, is there something more inside of you? Have you had feelings about the Fey which you thought your friends would laugh at? Have you felt a need to be close to the Goddess but felt that you would be ridiculed? There is a reason you are searching. The Goddess calls you.

Gateways to the Goddess

I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness. My father was and elder. My mother an elder’s wife, and my sister and I were elder’s daughters. We went to the meetings two nights and one morning a week. We went out in field service every week. We went to three assemblies a year. Mine was a disciplined environment. There were many expectations of an elder’s daughter. And yet, I found myself continuously trying to tamp down the things I knew deep inside.

 At three years old, I can remember having such a close contact with animals that I knew what they thought. Not that they thought in a language, but…I knew what they thought. My dad was a bit of a horse whisperer, and I can remember him working with a horse named Cindy. She was upset with him, and I remember that there were little beings around me, but I can’t remember them clearly. I know I wasn’t afraid of them. They were my friends. I can remember knowing, as my dad putting the saddle on Cindy, that she was mad and getting ready. My dad would have known better if he had not been being stubborn at the moment. I knew she was going to buck him off the moment he stepped into the saddle, and she did. My little friends and I were quite amused.

By the time I was a little older, however, I had blocked out my ability to see the others. This type of seeing was not allowed in our belief system. It was considered to be the powers of the devil. The few times I ever brought up psychic gifts and synchronization, I was told…where do you think that kind of power comes from? Who do you think would want you to have that kind of power? So he can sway your mind!

At thirteen, however, I remember this new couple to the hall started having “demon problems”. Things were moving around on them, and they were having a lot of family problems. I was at their house, walking down the hall when I felt him. He had a terrible feel to him. This time, when I told my family, and they contacted the rest of the brothers, they did not have any problems believing me. They destroyed a bunch of things that belonged to this couple. It finally came down to a little picture of Jesus in the man’s wallet. They tried to burn it, but it wouldn’t burn. So they wrapped in stuff and threw it into the ocean.

I began having difficulty when I turned sixteen. I was rebelling, but I didn’t know what I was rebelling against. I slept with a boy, and I ended up in a series of elder’s meetings that lasted for months. There were a lot of things said to me. Some of those things were not at all appropriate. My parents were not allowed at these meetings, and I was not supposed to be sharing what was said with anyone. I did, however, share with my grandmother. We discussed ways of sneaking in a tape recorder in my book bag. (They didn’t have the mini taper recorders back then). But we never did, do this. It would have felt too deceitful.

I did not want to rebel against Jehovah. So, for the next several years, I tried my best to be a good witness. I got married and raised four children. Time and again, I tried to go to the hall. I tried to take my kids to the hall, but I would often leave, crying and shaking. I couldn’t put this on my kids. I felt guilty for teaching them the same stuff that had nearly destroyed me, and I felt guilty because I knew that I was supposed to be bringing them up in the way of Jehovah.

I left my husband and took two of my children with me. Later on, my children went back and forth between their father, in Alaska, and me, in Colorado. It was here that I broke free. I did not know how it would be possible for me to have a spirituality without being a witness. All my life, I had been taught that there was one true religion, and that this was it. But I was deeply spiritual, and the idea of being cut off from being spiritual tore me apart. Yet, I could not get past the idea that God, the only God I knew, was Jehovah, and he was apart of being a witness. I had no idea how to separate the two. I was in torment. I was being split in two.

Over the next few years, I pretty much took myself apart and put myself back together again. I had to figure out what I believed, not what I had been taught. I had to figure out what I found to be wrong, and what I was merely afraid of because of those past teachings.

A Shamanic Death

As soon as I had given myself the go-ahead to move forward, that I was really going to do this, that I was really going to go after the things I knew to be true deep inside, I went looking for the oldest stuff that I could find at the local library. I was afraid of the word new age. I didn’t understand the concept of all of these people believing in some new-age beliefs, but I was starting to realize that there were many things that I did know, despite all the pushing down, and tamping into the farthest recesses of my mind, I had done to myself. The first thing I realized was, in spite of everything that I had been taught, I knew there were ghosts. And I knew how they moved around on our plane. I couldn’t get past the notion that science itself should understand this. Science was the one that explained how the molecules came together to form a bat, to form everything around us. Science explained, the more molecules, the denser the object. Head knock. Now, maybe this is an over simplification, and maybe I don’t understand science at all, but it seems to me if the denser the molecules, the opposite could also be true, and if you could move around molecules, or displace molecules, perhaps it would explain how one could pass through the other. But maybe that is just me talking.

I then started thinking about all the things that I had not wanted to see while I was trying so hard to be a good witness. My middle son could see and hear ghosts. My kids and I were very close, but I hadn’t been there for him on this one. It was too close to what I was trying very hard to control in my own life. We had moved into this old school house when he as around five years old. All the neighbors had told us it was haunted, but we didn’t believe in ghosts, right. My son had a terrible time. He would often come to me crying and terrified. He could see them, and he could hear them.

Now, years later, when I was ready to hear him, he told me what he had seen. There had been an older man, wearing a tweed hat and coat. He always had a curved pipe with him, and he always folded his arms in front of him. He was accompanied by a young boy. My son would often awake to have them looking down on him, talking to each other about him.

Later on, my son saw many other forms like this. He would always go to his oldest brother, who had never told me, but he had never believed anything that he had been taught by the Witnesses. Now that I was studying the shamanic ways, my oldest son and I had a lot of interesting conversations. I had always thought of him as an old soul, but this amazed me. How he could possibly know the things that he knew. I was studying these ancient teachings, and he could sit and talk to me about them with full understanding of them, without ever having studied them at all. It was to him, my middle son had always gone when he was terrified. And my middle son quickly came to realize that as long as he was around his oldest brother, none of these beings came around him.

Now that I was studying what I wanted to study, and figuring out what I found to be true, I found many issues that I needed to work through, along the way. All of my life, I had been taught about the word truth. As a witness, we were “in the truth”. We went from door-to-door and “brought people into the truth”. And now, I realized, that maybe not for many of them, but for me, everything that I had been taught to be truth, had been a lie.

I had been taught about truth and found a lie. Now, I was looking at the things that I had been taught all of my life to be the lie…and I was finding the truth.

During this transition of my life, I died many deaths and was reborn. These transitions were not easy, far from it. It was akin to walking myself through fire. I welcomed visions of myself flesh being eaten away by ravens, and my self being reformed from ashes and water. I often saw myself sitting in the middle of purple, red or white flames. It was the only at peace I was to find in all of this. Nothing could reach me there. I was being taken apart, and I was being put back together. And each time, I was reborn.

The Goddess Calls

When I was thirteen, we had moved to Haines, Alaska. There were a great deal many ravens there. Somehow, because this would probably not have been allowed if my parents had known, I had attended a ceremony to bring a totem pole back to the school grounds, where it belonged. This ceremony was profound to me. It moved me beyond comprehension. I could not figure out why anyone would think they had the right to desecrate these people’s burial grounds and move their totem poles around, and I was deeply happy that these adults had come to their senses, were honoring the wishes of these people, and putting this totem pole back. (Years later, when I attended the University of Northern Colorado, I was again deeply moved when this school realized that they, too, had a true and sacred totem pole and had it returned to its rightful place with the Tlingit).

Now, this had opened something within my thirteen year old mind. I learned that the ravens were considered to be these people’s ancestors. This, too, was profound to me. I remember coming outside one day, to this old raven mimicking a cat to perfection. These ravens, in Haines, Alaska, were quite large. He eyed me with an intelligence that left me humbled. I never forgot it. I watched him for some time, it may have been hours, and I realize now, that these two experiences had forever changed my life and altered the course of events that would take place. I had been called by the Goddess, but I wouldn’t understand this for many more years.

The Gateway of the Triquerta

I have learned that the experience of the triquerta is not unique to me. I am not the only one enthralled with the TV show Charmed. I watched it endlessly, once I was not a witness. I watched it some as a witness, too. But this was frowned upon, and it brought up too many things in me, at the time, that I was not ready to answer to, or deal with.

Now, however, I stared watching endless episodes, staring at the triquerta at the beginning of the show, and I would strain to catch glimpses of it on the Book of Shadows at the end, too. And once I had a DVR, or well, now….now I could stop the picture right on the triquerta, and slowly advance the frames to see every bit of what reminded me of the ancients. Seems silly huh. But you will be amazed at the things that will echo a deep response within you and call to you, your higher self, with the echo of the ancients.

The triquerta is an ancient triple symbol. It stands for as many triples as you can imagine. The maiden, mother and the crone. The three fates. Several sets of triple Goddesses, etc. It was also taken over by the Christian church to represent their triad, the father, the son and the holy ghost, or holy spirit. Many of your writings on the triquerta, will tell you that history cannot tell who had this symbol first, the pagans, or the Christians. Yet, common sense tells me the pagans were around long before Christianity, and it’s therefore pretty obvious to me, where the history of this ancient symbol lies.

I began having light meditations on this symbol, although I really didn’t realize it. At the time, I was just fascinated. Later, I started a fantasy novel, called Spirit Lighter, the first of which is called The Gateway of the Triquerta. In the writing of this book, I took the woman through a journey. At the first gate, she came across this dragon. The guardian of the gate. Fairly new to journeying, I had been studying meditation for some time and easily slipped into a light trance while writing about this journey, in which she met this guardian. I immediately realized that my hunch had been right, and the triquerta really was a doorway or a gateway.

I imagine that one of the writer’s of Charmed, perhaps as unconsciously as it was, had picked up on this thread of truth too, since they used it as a doorway to the other-side, or to another dimension. This was something that had rung true to me, watching the episode. Although they had used it, as predicted, to further their objectives for the episode, it had affected me deeply, and it was something I had not forgotten.

I had been working with Isis for sometime, although I had not formally acknowledged this. I had not, yet, worked past the notion of worshiping idols or false gods, since I had always been taught that Jehovah was a jealous God who forbids the worship of other false gods. But my longing for the mother Goddess was deep.

Sylvia Brown was the first to provide me with a way in which I could begin to let the Goddess fully into my life, with the idea of Mother God. I began to realize that, in the first place, paganism was not worshiping idols. This was a misconception. Pagans did not bow down to the representation of the idol being their god. They found their Gods and Goddesses in everything, and all of these things were aspects of the God and the Goddess. As Marion Zimmer Bradley best put it in her book Mists of Avalon, She has no face, and yet, as the face of many. She has no form, and yet, has the form of many.

Much later, I was to learn, that nearly every story in the bible had first been written about pagan Gods, from Moses, to Jesus and had identical stories to those found in the bible.

I had fully realized that the bible was a beautifully written history book some time before that. I came to realize, first in college, that Apostle Paul was the one who had introduced the notion of women having a place within the church and turned the whole tide of Christianity towards a patriarchal one. I also learned in college, that the bible had been in the hands of the Catholics, and they were the first to choose which scrolls were to be considered for the bible, and which were not. They chose not to include the scrolls about Mary Magdalene.

            Both of these relizations had a profound impact on me. I began to realize that if these things were true, than perhaps the ideas of there being a bunch of false Gods, and one true God, were also suspect. I had been taught all of my life that paganism was wrong and full of terrible things. All of the things that Christianity had expounded upon, as a means to turn people from paganism, were listed to me as a child. I was taught that paganism was full of idolatry. I was taught that pagans had done all of these horrific things. But now, as I studied paganism, and I found holes in the notions of idolatry. I also found huge holes in other notions about paganism. For with the Goddess, I found breathtaking love. Growing up, I had been taught about brotherly love, and now, on this path that I had been warned about, had been taught to fear, I found the most profound love I had ever encountered. Here was true sisterly love.

            The Mother is full of love. Her path…is one of love.

            Now that I was working through some of the darkest past teachings of my childhood, I was free to embrace the Goddess fully and with joy. The first thing I realized was that one Goddess, in particular, had been with me from the time I was thirteen years old. Quite obviously sooner, but this is where I could point exactly to when she had showed herself in my life.

She had come to me in the raven.