Seasons of Womanhood: The Darkness Before the Dawn
“The Foretelling” by Gaia Orion from her Wild Women series
Once upon a time in a verdant land of deep green forests and clear running waters there sat a circle of women around a glowing fire.
From daughters to great grandmothers this circle of women knew each other intimately. They’d held each other through birth, menses, childbirth, child death, menopause, death and rebirth over and over again around the woman’s wheel of life.
They knew the rituals for each phase of a woman’s life and passed the sacred blood rites down through the generations. They sat together as a sacred sisterhood.
As they gathered around this fire they saw stories of their ancestors reflected in each other’s eyes and felt comfort in seeing where they were headed in the circle under the moon.
The fire crackled to life as a medicine woman took up the talking stick,
“I have received a vision I must share with each of you.”
The women fell silent as their deep attention extended to this one they loved dear, for they knew her medicine to be strong and clear.
“What I have foreseen will not be easy for us,
but it is part of what must be
for the sun and moon to find their perfect balance on this earth.”
The silence deepened and the women stared intently into the fire as they opened to receiving this woman’s gift of prophesy.
“I see coming a great tide, not one of water, to which we know how to yield,
but one of fire and sword.
It will overcome us.
The Goddess will be forced underground, dishonored and torn to pieces, as will many of us.
We will become second-class citizens, controlled by the men, used up for our gifts and thrown on the midden heap in the mad rush for power.
Just as the day turns to night, the moon wanes to dark and each of us passes through the Mystery before rebirth,
this will be a dark time for womenfolk,
But the cycle of dark and light is not unknown to us.”
Women shifted in their seats, one young maiden began to weep.
“Grandmother, what are we to do?”
The medicine woman’s eyes gleamed as she gazed into the fire,
“We do as women do my granddaughter, we do as women do.
We flow into the earth,
We embrace the Mystery, the unknowable,
We know that the darkest hour of the night foretells the dawn,
As the cold of winter beckons in the warmth of spring.
We gather in our food and medicine for the long winter ahead.
We store it in our seeds, our rituals, songs, stories and knowings.
We hold it tight, close in.
We keep it safe in our bones, our blood and in the earth.
Until such a time as the new shoots of the Goddess are ready to emerge from the blood soaked earth.”
“And what then Grandmother?”
“Then we will flourish again but this time in true and equal partnership with the men. We will carry within us the keys to the balance of the sun and the moon, the masculine and the feminine.
Then all that we have gathered in, our seeds, rituals, songs, stories and knowings will take root again in the deep dark soil, reach up into the sunlight, scattering their medicine seeds into the wind, nourished by our tears.
Each seed will sprout a circle of women, much like this one, who will hold each other in the great remembering, the re-claiming of what is ours and the reseeding of the river of women’s gifts for the people.
This will happen at the time it is most needed,
when it seems like the long, cold, night will never end.”
Another woman, a matriarch, leader of her clan stirred the coals and added more wood to the sleepy fire,
“Sister, I thank you for the gift of your sight,
And I feel the weight of your words in my bones.
We must begin the gathering, so our harvest of medicine may be unwrapped and savored by our yet unborn grand daughters in the spring we know will come.”
The women nodded in agreement, some wept. They held each other close as the moon dropped below the horizon.
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