Sunday, October 26, 2008

Sacred Medicine of Earth Mother

IT IS OUR PURPOSE, each of us, to bring balance to the Earthly Mother. In doing this, we bring balance to ourselves.

Within each of us, male and female, are male and female elements. For the past few thousand years, since the rise of settled civilizations in the West, the energy of the Earth has been tilted toward the masculine, a patriarchal power. This is not bad. It just is. In the scheme of things, perhaps it was necessary to provide the impetus for the rise of hierarchy, to bring order to the world in human relations.

We would not be a global society today without it. Technology, the result of the literal, rational left-brain thinking of the male power, is not a bad thing. It is a powerful force. But when out of balance with its goal-oriented, task-formed action, it also has negative influences such as cruelty, dominance, war and action without regard for others. And it is not the whole truth. Being literal, straight-line energy, its "truth" can be easily broken. (An example is legalese: How something can be true and false at the same time. How it can indicate one thing while meaning another, allowing "advantage" to one over another.)

The female power is necessary to hold the excesses of the male power in check. Female power is holistic, circular, right-brained. Its "truth" is often not easily described because it is non-rational, more symbol than word, difficult to put into literal words that separate ideas and, thereby, doesn't represent the "whole" truth when put into words. (An example would be: "My heart is warm and the birds sing, the Earth and I are one." It is true and totally true, and cannot be dissected, nor verified in a rational way.)

Prior to the ascension of the male power, for thousands of years, before even recorded time, societies around the Earthly Mother were based on female power, goddess energies. They took many forms, but the female energy of the Earth was bountiful, as the communal societies that resided in that power, receiving pleasure through the gifts of air, water, earth and fire.

It was a time of community when the interests of the whole took precedence. The tribe, the people came first. This is female energy: Inclusion, wholeness, being receptive and fertile to be in synergy with the male power. In balance, to provide abundance. Female power alone cannot sustain, as it needs the male power to come to fruition. But neither can the male power exist alone, for it lacks the ability to sustain. That, then, is the aim, to bring our energies into balance. That is to recognize the nvwati (Cherokee), the good medicine in all things. Manataka.org