You're in ancient Greece, at the Aesclepion, participating in a ceremony - journeying into the dreamtime - dreaming a dream of healing for the entire community. You are not alone. Hundreds join you on this journey.
Healing and theater are one. Not separated like today.
Ceremony and ritual connect us to the divine in all that is around and within us.
Feel the echos from those times. Imagine a resurgence of those theatrical healing experiences.
Heal yourself, heal your community, and you can heal the entire world. Its not too late.
For more info. on the ancient healing theater read Carolyn Casey's "Making the Gods Work for You," which is available here.
Today's
Warrior Priestess
Ram
Dass uses "fierce grace" to describe someone who
combines divine grace with the passion to embody it.
From
this vantage point, I'll offer my definition of what it means
to be a Warrior and a Priestess.
A
Warrior
is
someone who is ready and willing to do battle with intelligence
and truth.
A
Priestess
is
a leader who embodies the qualities of integrity, truth,
honor, wisdom, and higher consciousness.
Together
that's a powerful proposition. A Warrior Priestess strives
to use "fierce grace" in her battle for truth and
higher consciousness.
Does
she have all the answers? Of course not. But,
she stays open to the divine inspiration that will move her
to act - when the time is right.
Warrior Priestess
Giza
Plateau, Cairo, Egypt
Looking
for your posse?
Perhaps
you're part of the
Cultural Creative Movement.
The
spiral is one of oldest symbols of human spirituality. It
also appears throughout the natural world -from shells to
the spiral galaxies.
Man
etched spiral symbols onto rock formations long before the
rise of the ancient Celtic or Greek civilizations. Back when
the goddess and Mother Earth were honored and held sacred.
The
spiral symbolizes the universal pattern of growth and evolution.
As it unwinds, it represents the bringing forth of life. In
reverse, a return to the divine center.
Caroline
Casey went on to describe a "moon phase" system
of symbology (28 moon phases and their associated archetypes)
that was first described by W. B. Yeats in the early part
of the 20th Century. (W. B. Yeats, "A Vision,"
New York: MacMillan Co., 1969).
Having
always been somewhat of a rabble-rouser, I smiled at the prospect.
Was I to play a larger part in supporting the global
consciousness movement? Was I being called to extract
a larger significance from my personal experience? And,
could I seriously pursue this ideal in a world where most
people could only relate to a woman warrior like Xena Princess
Warrior?
And
so began my exploration. I'd like to share it with you.
Won't you join me.
Bill Moyers issues a rallying cry. . . a call to arms
"The moment you realize someone else has been writing your story. . . it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself."
Speaking from the National Conference on Media Reform, Moyers compares big media corporations to plantation owners and American consumers to their slaves.
32:20
Part 2 (30:57) of the above video is available here.
The
forces of change are calling for us to cultivate a more expansive
worldview. No small task considering the state of our
present reality. The Warrior Priestess is up to the
challenge. You're invited on her quest.
We're
living through an age
of transition. For too long there's been an imbalance
between masculine and feminine life forces. The feminine
can no longer be held in exile. Balance wants to be restored.
The feminine archetypes are
reanimating - within us all. The Goddess is back
(although she never really left) to guide us in creating a
new global consciousness.
We
can't go back to our matriarchal past. Nor can we continue
living with our limited - "so last millennium"- patriarchal worldview. Its time to embrace a new way
of being - a new, integrated approach to being human.
Reanimating
the Archetype
The
Warrior Priestess is an archetype - one of many goddess archetypes.
Archetypes exist (whether acknowledged or suppressed)
in all of us - men and women alike. They're the foundation
for all our thinking, feelings, and behavior patterns.
According
to Jungian psychology, an archetype is an inherited pattern
of thought or symbolic imagery derived from the past collective
experience and present in the individual unconscious.
And
what of our past collective experience? What did it contain?
What's reflected out there - and what's being held in the
shadows?
We've
lived too long out-of-balance. The creation of a new
global consciousness requires that our feminine archetypes
are awakened (in us all) - and restored to full consciousness.
Source
for definition: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the
English Language, Fourth Edition, Published by
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.
Archeological
Evidence
In
her book, "Warrior Women," Jeannine
Davis-Kimball, Ph.D. outlines the archeological evidence of
a vast cross-cultural exchange that stretched from Central
Asia to Ireland (from around 6000 B.C. to the early centuries
A.D.).
She
discovered that there were powerful woman warriors and warrior
priestesses throughout these cultures. They were the
keepers of the wisdom associated with the Mother Goddess.
At
one site she describes how
ritual
swords and daggers were magnificently emblazoned with a
gold profusion of parading winged horses and snow leopards,
Trees of Life . . .
Given
their incredible wealth of gold and icons emblazoned with
supernatural power, it takes little imagination to realize
that these warrior priestesses had attained authority.
Dr.
Davis-Kimball also provides evidence that underscores the
great shift that occurred with the rise of patriarchal influence.
She found indications of women being purged from positions
of power and influence. Anything to do with the Great Goddess
was subsumed by the new patriarchal reality.
