Avilayoq writhed against the icy cold that knifed Her body. Her hands tore upward at the edge of the kayak, but the Old Man took up his axe and cut off the grasping fingers of the G.o.ddess.
With a terrible scream, the head of Avilayoq sank into the waters of the deep.
It was then, say the angakok, that the fine clothes of the Land Maiden slipped forever from Her huge, beautiful body. Her hair, ripped from its hood, floated like wings about Her. It was then that the severed fingers of Avilayoq changed to seals, to walrus, to polar bears and whales. It was the body and blood of Avilayoq that gave the water animals to Her people that they might hunt and eat also in Winter.
It was then, say the angakok, that the Land Maiden, now the Great Woman of the Sea, took the new calling name of Sedna. As Sedna, She lies at the bottom of the sea in Her house like the houses of people. It is She we fear and She who gives forth all abundance.
But the thankless ness and broken promises of people, they say, collect like grease and dirt in Her hair that Her own hands are now unable to groom. It is by righting the wrongs of land and sea that we content Her by running the comb of diligence, patience, and frugality through the sheets of Her wild black hair.
IV.
The Force of Life: s.e.xuality and Creativity Desire turns the wheel of life on Earth. Moon fancies the swell of the sea. Twilight waits, eyes soft, for the night. Birds nest again and again because they ache after flight. The artist speaks of having to create, of holding inside her something that she must express, the thing in her that leaps after life. And surely as a diver braves the depths of the fantastically imaged sea, the artist plumbs her own deep for the treasure she then midwifes to air.
We give birth to ourselves over and over again. Before the birthings are the gestations. Before the gestations come the matings. Before the matings, the courtings and before them virginities. After the birthings, we grow, we lose, we mourn; we are babies all over again.
Then, even as we cling to the breast, the cells in us bound after childhood.
Desire pulses at the center of Earth-centered spirituality. In G.o.ddess consciousness, the s.e.xual is sacred. In this ancient, new religion we are remaking together, worship means savoring, delighting, preserving, luxuriating. In G.o.ddess consciousness we animate the gra.s.s and the water in the way we, delicious and sly, give name and personality to a lover"s genitals.
In this religion, we indeed "follow our bliss," as historian of religion Joseph Campbell said.
When s.e.xuality is sacred, creativity not compliance is our att.i.tude toward external reality. When we relate creatively and playfully to our world, we minimize the experience of feeling caught in someone else"s mechanizations. When we play and create, we are alive in s.p.a.ce and time. Wishes and objects intersect. Whole spectra of feeling replace the sense of futility.
s.e.xuality in G.o.ddess consciousness is far broader than feelings about reproductive functions or even purely pleasurable s.e.xual acts or choices. G.o.ddess s.e.xuality is a metaphor for what we yearn for and devote ourselves to not out of duty but rather ardor and zeal.
s.e.xuality is the way we are intimate with our own feeling states; the way we are moved by the diamonds of rain on a spider web; our paintings and letters; our laughter and stews; our persuasions and politics.
s.e.xuality is our moment-by-moment, changing relish for who we are.
s.e.xuality is our willingness to let ourselves really show in the world.
Even before the purposeful revival of G.o.ddess consciousness, people had begun to long for the kind of bodily state that would resacralize our beings. Free love and the drug culture were both ma.s.s attempts to break control-culture"s bondage.
"Love! Not war!" we cried in the time of Vietnam"s napalm, thus correctly tying the new relaxation of s.e.xual mores to a fervor for creation and life on ecopolitical levels.
"Be here now!" we chanted as drugs encouraged us to drop the inner nagging that cemented together our pressured lives. But "free love"
and "being here now" in a culture that trashes Earth with plastics and poisons and practices the "isms" of injustice are doomed to perpetuate the terrible chasm between our bodies" truths and our spiritualities.
In the culture of control, other people and our own experiences become objects to collect and consume. When we wield power over another and find ourselves in power-under positions, our creativity and ability to preserve become slaves to what can be bought and taken. Instead of being filled with sacred feeling, we are left struggling to conceal from ourselves how much we have wasted and thrown away.
But the consciousness of the G.o.ddess is uncovering the waste. Over the chasm between our bodies and our souls, we are building a bridge of equal partnership between what we consume and what we nurture. In G.o.ddess consciousness we do not pretend that life contains no death. We honor the reality that the preservation of our own lives requires death of plants and animals and minerals. We are frugal and mindful about our consumption. Nor do we pretend that death contains no life: we reuse and use again the endless cycle of our waste.
In G.o.ddess consciousness, we are inventing new ways of relating the feminine to the masculine. Everywhere in Nature are both forces.
Nearly every kind of reproduction involves both the yang and the yin.
Whether in h.o.m.o-, hetero-, or auto s.e.xuality we sense both masculine and feminine powers at work. The masculine of the control culture, however, has dominated our inner and outer lives. The feminine overpowered, we have been caused to lead lives disconnected with our souls and our abilities to be human "beings" instead of human "doings,"
as psychologist-writer John Bradshaw has said.
In G.o.ddess mythologies, the Great Female often has a Male Consort. The consort or lover of the G.o.ddess, sometimes also Her brother or son, is ready, devoted, and adoring. He is strong, full, and ever-changing in His own right, but it is the G.o.ddess Who is central. Her lover enters Her temple by invitation and with thanksgiving.
A sprained ankle several months ago and a cane I used to help me walk became wonderful metaphors for the G.o.ddess and Her Consort in my life.
When the speed of my life sapped away with the purple and pain of my foot, I found I existed, like the G.o.ddess Herself, in majestic slowness. And, like Her Consort, my cane was strong and available at my need: only together could we make the trip to the mailbox. Ancient and present in my body as I was, supported and safe with my cane, I was not efficient, but I was alive. I watched a leaf fall and the clouds make gray gardens in the sky.
Here was a partnership of feminine and masculine the cane useless without me, my body needing its simple reliability. Earth-centered spirituality, I am convinced, asks of us a similar partnership. Outer technology must be in service of the sacred well-being of our living Planet.
Huitaca (whee-TAH-kah) Queen of Pleasure (Chibcha People) Introduction Like other original peoples of the Americas, the Chibcha of Colombia may have roots in northern Asia from which as many as 42,000 years ago they are thought to have crossed the Bering Strait into Alaska, reaching South America by 6000 B.C.E. The Chibcha worship the Divine Ancestress Bachue, Whom they envision as both Woman and Snake. Bachue is Teacher of Peace and Order and Protector of Agriculture for the Chibcha, a role similar to that of Isis, Demeter, and Lamia (see stories) for Their peoples.
Like peoples the world over, the Chibcha picture the Great Mother in many ways. Huitaca is the aspect of the Great Mother who is Queen of Love and Pleasure. She is the Owl Moon Woman, Who cradles the rites of renewal and creation. The Chibcha pose Her wisdom against that of the wandering Bochica, the masculine deity responsible for the teaching of spinning, weaving, and industry.
I wrote this myth for Huitaca in order to invoke the sense of "G.o.ddess time" that has grown in lovely counterpoint to the production-oriented hustle of the city world in which I live. The hurried buying and selling for profit that the European-influenced world takes so for granted are hilarious (and tragic) distortions of human energy to peoples for whom Earth is alive. Present-day original peoples in Australia (the Australoids), for example, understand production in a completely different way than does the culture of control. The Australoids trade not for profit, but for symmetry. Goods are malign in and of themselves; they work against their possessors unless they are constantly in motion. Goods for the Australoids are tokens of intention: to trade, to meet again, to fix frontiers, to intermarry, to sing and dance, and to share ideas and resources. From this viewpoint, production of goods loses its tyranny and instead integrates into its rhythm personal, social, and spiritual well-being. Bruce Chatwin"s The Songlines outlines this understanding of Australoid trade.
Huitaca, for me, G.o.ddess of perfume and feasting, music and love, is certainly also G.o.ddess of the luxurious world that unfolds before me when I remove the clamp of the clock and listen, instead, to the lilt of my own bloodstream.
pay!!, The Clock That Was Really an Egg In ancient times, the people of a certain village lived close to their G.o.ddess Huitaca. Always She was in their midst, and it was due to Her presence that the people lived as if every day were someone"s birthday, which, of course, it was. The people of the village worked hard. But if they were tired, they rested completely. If they were hungry, they ate. And they never made a bowl or a basket or a boat or a blanket without adding the finest colors and pictures they could imagine. The people strove to make the objects of their effort reflect the beauty of their G.o.ddess.
So they sewed the birds and the sky onto their clothes, and gra.s.ses and rivers blew on their berry pots. When the people of the village lived close to Huitaca, they lived with feeling under their skins.
In those days, just anytime at all, the people made music.
"Huitaca!" they called.
"Come with bananas and bangles on Your braids! Huitaca! Come dance with us!" Then into reeds the people blew, and onto drums they beat.
The seeds of gourds shook, shook, shook, and in color and singing the feet and bodies of the people stamped and swayed. Eyes shone and mouths drank dark pink juice and skins gleamed with sweat diamonds.
Huitaca whirled in the center fast as fire, and Her chants spun men to men, men to women, women to each other, and back again the other way.
Huitaca laughed and whooped and panted. Her people clapped and hugged and leapt.
Sometimes when the reed blowers slept and the fruits lay sucked dry near the spent honey-wine skin, Huitaca lay quiet with Her people and looked at the sky. During the day, the villagers and their G.o.ddess found animals in the clouds. In the night, they cooled themselves under the scarves of shimmers that were the stars.
Huitaca was the bringer of perfume and play, jewelry and ornaments, soaps and oils, touching and love. When the people of the village lived close to Huitaca, they lived with feeling under their skins.
One day came the beginning of a big change in the village. Bochica arrived that day. Since he was a stranger and a tall and strong one the people gathered around him. Bochica had something the people had never seen before. It was small and round, with markings around the edge.
"Is it an egg?" the people asked, touching the markings they thought were funny-shaped speckles. No, it was a clock, Bochica told them. He explained how the clock could measure out minutes and hours and days.
"What"s that good for?" the people wanted to know.
Bochica seemed surprised.
"What"s it good for?" he asked.
"Why, without this clock, you can"t make enough things to sell and buy."
"What"s sell and buy?" asked the people.
Bochica shook his head. Now he seemed really surprised.
"Look," he said.
"You own a few things now, right?"
"Right," said the people.
"Well, if you had a lot more things, you could take them to the next village and get money for them, and with that money you can buy even more things!"
The people shook their heads this time.