Your Spiritual Team

November 17, 2017 at 3:44 pm (Uncategorized)
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I love working with different aspects of deity. I am fascinated by how others work with the Divine. I have been a soft polytheist for years now. In my own experience, I have found that there are Gods and Goddesses that seem to be with us for life; I have some that seem to be very long -term, their presence felt in my life even before I became a Pagan, only later realising who there were, once I had a framework to understand them better. Then there are those that come to us at certain points in our life, helping us to explore specific issues we might be facing and then when the work is done, quietly move on. There are also deities that we might choose to work with for a single ritual or when honouring the seasonal changes. Sometimes we might feel a certain energy lurking in our periphery for years and then suddenly, when the time is right, they reveal themselves fully.

We can certainly choose deities to approach but I have come to believe that the ones most important to our development choose us. They can make their presence known through synchronicities, signs and symbols that jump out at us and nip at our heels until we pay attention. The contact will feel alive and vibrant. I have done rituals with a specific deity, choosing them for the purpose of the ritual and quite often when I have done that, the sense of connection to that deity feels intellectual; it can feel like going through the motions but not really feeling it. When we make a true and meaningful connection, there is a strong sense that there is someone on the other end of the line; it has a charge to it.

Because I feel comfortable viewing deity as having many different aspects and expressions, I like to think of the ones that I work with as my spiritual team. They are rooting for me; have my best interests at heart, even if their lessons are challenging. Sometimes, when I feel alone with my troubles, I like to close my eyes and visualise them standing in a circle around me – it is comforting, strengthening and grounding.

In the last few weeks a newish member of my spiritual team has come to light. At various points in the past, I have worked with the Goddess Bast but in a much more intellectual sense of wishing to explore her qualities and express them. Just over a year ago, I began working more in earnest when I began working with the moon cycles again (see Reaching for the Balance) but when that practice drifted, I hadn’t really thought of her for months.  Lately, there has been a sudden shift in gear and without prompting from me, she has stepped into the foreground.

A few weeks ago I came down with a horrible tummy bug; I felt awful and exhausted for days after and not at all right for most of the month. A couple of days in, I had fallen asleep on the sofa in the afternoon and I had a vivid dream, so vivid I actually thought that I had woken up. I dreamed I was on the sofa and my beautiful little  black cat – who died 12 years ago – was curled into my body. It was the most comforting feeling. I suddenly heard a voice say, ‘you haven’t been feeding the cat’ and I felt a sudden panic that I had to go and get food, berating myself that I had forgotten, and wondering why and how I had failed to remember. The urgency woke me and the first thought that came into my head as I came to consciousness was Bast!

From that point I felt the strongest urge to set up an altar for her and spend some time there exploring and meditating on her qualities, opening to her energies, reaching out. It has been an interesting experience that has revealed aspects that I hadn’t necessarily associated with her before, particularly with regard to her more motherly, protective sides. I think she is very much a goddess of joyful, sensual expression, a goddess of music, dance and pleasure (I certain haven’t been ‘feeding’ those in my life nearly enough!) but she was originally depicted with a lion’s head – very much like Sekhmet, and in her role as Eye of Ra, she goes into the darkness of the underworld with her father Ra and fiercely protects him on that dangerous journey. And so for all her ‘lightness’, she sees in the dark and can help us confront our fears too, all those things that can drain our joy if we don’t bring them to light and deal with them.

My partner Steve found the most beautiful statue of Bast for me. He actually found me two, one the classic cat shape which now sits on my hearth and home shrine (Bast is a protectress of the home after all!) and one which is a copy of a Bast head housed in the British Museum. It’s such a gorgeous face – I love it! But moreover, on her ears and forehead is carved a vulture, its wings spread, it claws holding two symbols that look like rings. I knew that the vulture headdress was worn by Goddesses such as Isis and Mut but had never associated it with Bast. In Ancient Egypt, the Vulture Goddess was Nekhbet. Vultures were believed to be all female and self-generating; they were also seen to be devoted and protective mothers to their young. And so, Nekhbet birthed herself and all life and took these back inside her (vultures are brilliant at devouring carrion!), linking her to the birth/death / rebirth energies of nature – she was called the ‘mother of mothers’. In time her qualities were syncretised with Mut and Isis and other goddesses and to find her connected to Bast deepens my understanding of Bast’s nature; she may well rule pleasure but she is not just a fluffy sex kitten; she has depth and complexity as all aspects of deity do.

Hearth and Hone Altar with Bast and wall hanging by Wendy Andrew

I discovered that the vulture’s claws are gripping the Shen symbol, a ring that represents encircling divine protection. This combination of fierce, motherly protectress, joy bringer, fertile creator and healer, has been so what I have needed. Her call for me to ‘feed’ her is also a call to feed myself; to give myself the love, joy and healthy boundaries that I need to heal from the challenges that have faced me these last few years. Whether she will stay with me forever, or slip away when her work is done, doesn’t really matter; I am grateful for her presence.

Incidentally, I have now taken the plunge on Instagram, so if you feel you would like to, you can find me there @luckyloom369. xxx

Do take a look at Wendy Andrew’s beautiful wall hangings here.

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Aphrodite – Lady of Sweetness

February 27, 2015 at 6:36 am (Uncategorized)
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fullness

I am starting my mini-series about the deities that I currently honour with a goddess who I have known about all my life but only recently felt compelled to build a relationship with.  Given that I have been coping with grief and loss for many months, Aphrodite’s bright, vibrant energy felt very attractive to me, a much needed balance to my own journey through Persephone’s shadows.

As I began to read about her, it struck me how much in the popular imagination of our culture, that her deeper mysteries and power have been rather reduced. She is often depicted as a sex kitten, which is not to say she doesn’t have her flirtatious, promiscuous moments, but as a goddess of love, passion, union and sex, this rather shallow interpretation minimizes the depth and impact of all she represents. After all, love and sex can initiate our most profound, transformative experiences.  Aphrodite is the energy in nature that draws things into union – a connecting force; through her we build relationship not only with lovers, but all the other things in our life that draw passion and love from us – be it our life’s work, nature, our families, our creativity. She teaches us that such unions of passion and love change us, challenge us and work on us. Anyone who has ever been in a long-term relationship will know that in our lover’s eyes we ultimately find ourselves – the very best of who we are but also our shadow. Through union with another, we are offered the opportunity to not only know our partners more intimately but, in the process, learn more about ourselves; this can been the best of journeys and the most painful but it will never leave us the same – it is just not meant to.

swans

 

It has been of great interest to me that Aphrodite and Persephone have mythic connections.  They share a love of Adonis – after his death he lives part of the year in the underworld with Persephone and part in the land of the living with Aphrodite. They are also both key players in the story of Psyche and Eros. Psyche is tested by Aphrodite, given almost impossible tasks to prove her worthiness for the love of Aphrodite’s son, who himself is also a god of love. Psyche translates as ‘breathe’ and can be understood in the deeper sense as ‘soul’. This feels key to me with regard to Aphrodite’s more profound mysteries – the story of Psyche seems to suggest the soul’s growth and transformation through its encounter with love. Psyche’s trials on her journey to be reunited with Eros, takes her to the Underworld – Persephone’s realm ; love with all its pleasures and joys, undoubtedly has its shadow side, and we often meet these head on in our relationships: jealousy, betrayal and conflict. Like Psyche, our naivety about love and ourselves is burnt away in the crucible of our emotions, and the most direct and powerful of arenas for this transformation to manifest is our relationships with others.

This link between Aphrodite and Persephone resonates with the earlier Sumerian mythology of Inanna and her sister Ereshkigal . Inanna was a goddess of fertility, love, lust and battle, and like Aphrodite was associated with the planet Venus, as morning and evening star. Although the Classical Aphrodite was only associated with love, we can see echoes of Inanna in her connection to the God of War, Ares.  Inanna descends to the Underworld realm of her sister Ereshkigal and is kept prisoner there. Like the Persephone/Aphrodite/Adonis myth, we see the seasonal story enacted, but it also says much about what happens when love is lost to us or our assumptions about love are dismantled. When love turns sour, or love is denied us through rejection, conflict or even bereavement, we too must engage with our own emotional descent.  This journey, although challenging, potentially deepens not only our understanding about love but our ability to love in a more profound and authentic way.

aphrodite roses1

 

When we examine the power of love to impact upon our very souls, Aphrodite’s ‘Sex Kitten’ image really doesn’t do her justice. Having said this, she is an essentially joyful goddess – love may bring us to our knees on occasions but it also brings us our happiest moments. For me, she is key to our creativity. As a goddess of attraction and union, she opens us to life and experience. When we look through her eyes, we are struck by the beauty not only of our beloved but of the world. Her energy is expansive, it is hard to contain it – love flows outward, to be miserly in its expression means that it shrivels and dies. Aphrodite knows that energy functions in exchange –the more we give, the more we have. She is a goddess that heals the split between body and spirit because for her there is no separation; through the sensual pleasures of the body and the intense emotional  connection that sex can bring, she affords us the opportunity to ground ourselves in the world  and in our bodies in the most joyful and energising ways.

Born from the foam, she is also a Goddess of the ocean and as fishermen once prayed to her to guide them through choppy seas to safe harbour, she can protect and navigate us through the turbulent waters of our emotions. I am lucky enough to live merely feet from the ocean and I watch over Aphrodite’s waters every day. I am struck by how relentlessly changing they are, very rarely truly flat calm. But Aphrodite’s numerous ancient epithets had her as Lady of Safe Harbour, and through her connection to Venus, Goddess of Gardens, she can bring us to a place of peaceful sanctuary.

aphrodite4

These last few weeks have seen Venus as the evening star.  I have watched her from my balcony shining above the sea as the sun is setting. She is stunningly beautiful and bright. As evening star, we watch her set below the horizon on her Underworld journey and we are reminded of our capacity to hold onto hope in our darkest times. As the morning star, she seemingly rises up from the earth, returning from the Underworld and teaching us of renewal. These settings and risings can remind us about the cycles of love, the way it can renew, burn fiercely, die back , then renew again, each of these emotional states a gift that can deepen our understanding of who we are and how we relate.

Aphrodite is both profound love and passion, and the horniest sex – she doesn’t see the separation between these. She can bring flippant encounters that are pleasurable but will never be lasting, but she truly comes into her own in our deepest love matches. The Greeks had her as both Aphrodite Urania, the starry goddess of Spiritual Love and Aphrodite Pandemos, earthy, goddess of the masses: Aphrodite contains these seemingly contradictory states within her and confounds all our most limiting assumptions about love.

She is also supremely helpful in teaching us how to love ourselves. It may be a cliché to say it but we love others more effectively, and perhaps less painfully, when we have a healthy sense of self-appreciation.  Aphrodite can teach us to take tender loving care of ourselves and to love and take pleasure in our bodies and beings; she can also encourage us to enjoy life and its pleasures, to revel in ourselves and the things that bring us joy.

Aphrodite came to Classical Greece via Cypress. The Cypriot Aphrodite was a much more rounded and complex goddess who, for me, is closest to how I experience her. She is essentially life-affirming; demanding that we engage with it, be touched, moved and changed by it. When we hammer up boards to keep life out, she will come like a tsunami to break our defences but when we embrace her fully and openly, we are rewarded with sweetness, depth, joy and transformation.  She is a garden in blossom, a sun-filled sea, an unforgettable kiss; she is every moment that reminds you how grateful you are to be alive; she is the flower that opens to the bee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Rekindling the Fire

February 6, 2015 at 8:34 pm (Uncategorized)
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Imbolc Shrine

Imbolc Shrine

It’s been a while since I have seriously and consistently celebrated the festivals of the Wheel of the Year. For almost twenty years, these seasonal festivals have been the foundation of my spiritual practice but this recent period, with all its attending difficulties, has found me only sporadically writing and performing rituals for them.

After so many years of orientating myself through the honouring of these seasonal changes, it has been strange to let them go for a while. In the past, the qualities and themes of each season played an enormous part in my well-being. Through joyful times, they enriched my life and when life presented its inevitable struggles, I found the wisdom of the Wheel a huge help in getting through.

As the grief took hold of me, I stopped hearing and seeing the wisdom. The sense of spiritual connection that I had once felt crumbled in the face of the overwhelming loss that I was experiencing; the spiritual meaning that had once felt so deep and nourishing now appeared shallow and brittle.

persephone 2

When our spiritual survival kit stops working and there is nothing to replace it, we can suddenly feel ourselves resident in a psychological wasteland. The wasteland is an interesting place; it is a bleak and shadowed landscape, lifeless and featureless. It exists in parallel to normal life and those caught behind its veil can continue to witness life going on around them and yet cannot see its colours, or fully feel its sensations. It is as if we gaze at life through darkened glass. We can feel that we are in life but not of it. It’s a painful place to be.

It takes courage to function without any spiritual scaffolding but I have come to believe that this process is actually a very important part of all of our spiritual journeys. There are many stories and myths that tell of a descent to the Underworld. I have written here before about my love of the goddess Persephone. Her tale articulates so well the experience of being catapulted into the wasteland by painful change in our lives. Persephone’s abduction to the Underworld by the God of Death is an archetypal experience. We will all find ourselves in such a position at some point in our life when we lose something precious to us – a loved one; our health or any other loss that shakes us to our core.  When faced with such devastating change, we are compelled to take that journey to the land of the shades, and whilst there, we will encounter our hopelessness, cynicism and nihilism. It can feel like crying out into a void, hoping to hear an answer to our prayers but receiving only silence or echo.

We might fear that we are trapped in this grey place forever but gradually, and with faltering, meandering steps, we find our way back to the light. The darkness will always remain a part of us but somehow we will now understand its inherent wisdom. It changes us but it doesn’t have to destroy us.

I have just celebrated Imbolc. I wrote a ritual for it – my first in months. I threw myself in to decorating my shrine in honour of the season, making it pretty and decorating it with things that spoke of the first stirrings of spring.

Bride by Jane Brideson

Bride by Jane Brideson

Imbolc is strongly associated with the Celtic Goddess Brighid. She is a goddess of fire. At this time of the year she is the light that warms the soil and brings it to life; she is also the purifying and transformative flame that burns away all that no longer serves us and keeps us chained to the past. She is a matron of midwifery and as such is connected not only with physical birth but with helping us to birth new ways to be. When we are stuck and stagnant, her fiery energy brings movement – she is the rekindling; that glorious moment when we feel the life and hope within us returning.

Brighid has long been one of my special deities. I honoured and worked with her for many years but in these recent times of upheaval, she has felt very distant. Brighid was a core deity for me, so it was a surprise to sense my relationship with her slip away. I had started to feel that Brighid and I had lost touch for good but this last week, particularly since my Imbolc ritual, I have felt her presence growing.

This reconnection has undoubtedly been triggered by the realisation that I need to let go of some things I have been holding on to. When we are in the wasteland, the past calls to us; all that we have lost resides in our memories. Reaching out to the past is a natural response to grief; all that is lost to us returns in those moments of remembering. It is a way of coping with loss and honouring what we grieve but we cannot stay in this place for ever – we must come to the place of letting go. This process takes a long time – months, years even – there is no timetable that we can follow; these things unfold at their own pace, but we must all return to the surface – Persephone can’t stay in the Underworld forever or spring will never return.

This last month I have been able to take a step back and see just how much I have been clinging to the past, so much so that the current blessings of my life are being missed. Key to reclaiming the present is acceptance – beneath the heavy weight of anger and impotence that loss brings, awaits our acceptance. Acceptance is compassionate and patient and will wait for as long as we need to discover it within us.  It is an extraordinary moment when we begin to feel its effect upon us, as I have this past week.

For my Imbolc ritual I felt the strong urge to offer up my recent past to Brighid’s healing fire, handing it over to her with trust and faith that nothing is truly lost but merely transformed into something new. I made a commitment to myself to embrace the tender stirrings of healing and renewal happening within me and in doing so, I have felt Brighid’s protective, joyful and empowering presence growing inside me.

Snowdrop by Amy Weiss

Snowdrop by Amy Weiss

A month ago I could never have envisaged this shift happening but the gift of acceptance has laid down its thread of light to guide me back from the wasteland. The wasteland is not the enemy, or a punishment –it is, in fact, a place of healing although it can feel the opposite when we wrestle with our pain. The wasteland is the dark, cold, wet soil of winter waiting patiently for the warming light to stir it. The rekindling has come; the frozen earth cracked open by a tender snowdrop.

 

 

 

 

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Sacred Sex and the Goddess and God of Beltane

May 1, 2009 at 3:10 pm (Uncategorized)
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Lady of the earth’s desire and the earth’s yielding, of the sap rising and the embrace of longing, as the kiss of the sun awakens you, we too are awakened to the yearning of our bodies and souls. As you unfurl each petal, you release the scent of bluebells, may and apple blossom – this is your love song, your call to union – and we too must answer.

It is hard to resist loving this time of year, everything feels gloriously alive and renewed; the blossom abundant; the green of the trees that special shade that our eyes seem magnetically drawn to. The colour of bluebells has an equally mesmerising effect, as if we are thirsty for it, that rare, vivid, unearthly blue that dissolves and overwhelms our defences with joy. 

Beltane is the festival of the Sacred Union of the Goddess and God. It’s a deeply joyous affair, celebrating sexuality on many levels, its rites ultimately honouring our striving for that union of the Divine Masculine and Feminine deep within us. I always think of it as exploring that magical process when we truly open to another – just as the blossom to the bee – and in the surrendering of that boundary become something more than ourselves. Love and sex bring us some of our most profound experiences; some ecstatically joyous; others deeply painful – but at best they open us and let the mystery of another’s being flood into that intimate, hidden space, changing us.

I have always been very interested in the spiritual dimensions of sex. From very early on, I had an inkling that sex had the potential to be a gateway to God which was rather strange considering my early experiences of it, which at best were rather empty, superficial teenage fumbling, at worst humiliating abuse. Even at the lowest moments of the abusive relationship in my teens, when sex really did feel like the sharpest and most brutal of weapons to my young psyche, I knew deep down that in its purest form it could be a profoundly connecting and intensely spiritual act. What my early experience taught me was that it takes a great deal of courage to let sex work on you in that way because such an experience demands a mutual surrendering; a letting go of all that keeps us feeling safe; a stripping away of those masks that hide our vulnerability. In abusive relationships you have a dynamic where that surrendering is being actively forced upon one party by another; the enforcer does their utmost to surrender nothing – they control the surrender by force or coercion and vicariously experience it for themselves whilst retaining a sense of power. Such an approach is mainly about power – it’s not even really about sex. Sex becomes an enticing setting because it is potentially where we expose our greatest vulnerability.

Sex can be the most meaningless of acts, a superficial if pleasurable sensation; it can be a battlefield, the most painful wedge of separation between two people; it can also be a gateway to another’s deepest being, a connecting force between the soul of one to another; it can bring an intensity of emotion and feeling that blows life as we know it apart – all known signposts gone – and from this intensely vulnerable and alive place, a new potential of being can be born. Spiritual sex, sex that engages the body, mind emotions and soul surely takes us to the Divine within, shows us most vividly a glimpse of that Divine Union that we strive for within us, the union that Beltane is ultimately about.

Our particular Beltane rituals tend to focus quite a lot on self-worth. I think for many people there is a lot of healing to be done with regard to sexuality and intimacy; good boundaries and healthy self- esteem are so important. It can be easy to make sexual and emotional choices that are less than good for us when we have a fragile sense of self. Self-love and care are psychologically strengthening; they help to bring clarity and re-engage us with a healthy and flexible self-protective instinct. We start to develop better judgement in deciding ‘what’ and ‘who’ are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for us.

The Goddess and God of Beltane – as I understand them – touch me deeply and help to heal my old wounds. The Goddess is the Lady of the Heart’s Blossoming, Divine Lover, setting fire to our bellies with Her joyous heat and animating our bodies with the blissful energy of Her love. We honour Her as Queen of the May, Lady of Life and Love, naked and radiant with the power of Her desire. She reveals to us the joy of union, the exquisite unfurling of body, mind and spirit. Crucially She teaches us that the treasure of our Yoni is truly precious, a place of inspired creation and pleasure, the gateway to life, challenging the often derogatory and confused undercurrent that seems to underpin attitudes to female sexual organs and sexuality; she taps us in to their deeper power and significance. In Her heart burn the fires of love, both the love of self and of others. She holds up Her mirror and reflects back to us our true beauty and worth. When we gaze at our reflection, we see Her beautiful face, body and being. I have learned that Her beauty is our beauty, that in valuing and loving ourselves, we are honouring and loving Her. She expresses the wisdom that without such loving self-care we can never truly open to another. She is passion, joy and creativity; queen of her own body, emotions, mind and spirit but also striving for joyous union with the world and others: She is the needy heat of desire; powerful self-love and the passionate love of others; She is ecstasy and the dance of life; She is sensuality and deep connection; She is the intimacy of skin upon skin. We feel Her pulsing though us when we fall in love, when desire takes over; when we reach out to touch the soul of another. We also feel her when we take joy in ourselves, when we feel and see our own beauty and worth. Historically She has been given a terribly hard time. She has been called whore and punished for Her beauty and Her power. She is often the one within us that needs the most healing.

The God of Beltane expresses a joyous desire, he is Lord of the waxing earth and sun; vibrant spirit of the wildwood whose green blood fires our hearts. He is the moist fingers of outstretched leaves and His vibrant growth is the tender hand that moves upon the body of the Goddess. He is the warm kiss of sunlight, the heat of passion and the dance of life. He has helped to heal a great deal in me, teaching that the treasures of His Sacred Phallus are not violence, senseless aggression or abuse but strength, passion and reverence. He is our energy and vigour. He is the Great Spark of Light and Life, and as bluebells cover the woodland floors; apple and hawthorn trees blossom and everywhere grows lush and green, His desire intensifies. At Beltane He hears the voice of the Goddess deep in the greenwood and with joy answers her call, drawn by her glorious scent, striving to merge and surrender to the bliss of her embrace. He is the heat of passion; the sweet pain of yearning; the reverence that true intimacy and love inspires. Through Him we are transformed by desire; we open to the mystery of another; we die to our separate selves and become the ecstasy of life. He touches us with His urgency; move us with His need; take us to the core of ourselves.

Beltane encourages us to ask – ‘What is life without passion and connection?’ It opens us to the extraordinary energy of our desire but also to the deeply empathetic nature of our being, one that strives to relate, make connections, open ever further to  the mystery of life. This Beltane, may each of us be blessed with deep and abiding love – of self, others, our planet – and through those healing fires of love and passion, may we each find our true path to Union within.

bluebell

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Brighid’s Thaw – For Imbolc

February 2, 2009 at 2:03 pm (Uncategorized)
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Winter had settled over me,

The frost sealing my eyes, my mouth;

My bones as ice,

Stilled

Beneath frozen water.

 

You came

And planted your sun like a seed in me,

Warm,

Precious,

Pearl of light,

And my being became the song of snow-melt,

A river-burst of birdsong

Rising.

 

At your touch my body is a garden

Of snowdrops;

This tender blooming

The greening of my soul.

                                         

                                         Maria Ede-Weaving

 

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Search for the Wight Goddess

December 2, 2008 at 7:44 pm (Uncategorized)
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One of the main reasons for starting this Blog was to write about my relationship with the Isle of Wight from a Pagan perspective. It has been my home now for eighteen months and I have spent a good deal of time exploring the landscape and my relationship to it. I had started this process many years ago, visiting with my family as a child and walking here as an adult. It has long been my nearest ‘far away place’, and after living in the congested and densely populated city of Portsmouth for all my adult life, the move here felt a very profound one.

A practicing Pagan for eleven years, my search to discover the Divine at the heart of nature has been an ongoing journey. I have come to believe that nature – and therefore the Divine – resides in both the city and the countryside; there is no place that nature is not and the trick is to connect to the Divine in whatever environment you occupy. However, living on the island (in a more rural setting) has helped to intensify my experience of immanent Deity, and has led me to ponder on what it means to connect to Deity in the local landscape.

The Island has a different feel from the mainland. In many ways it is a similar landscape to Hampshire, Sussex and Dorset, sharing the rolling sedimentary down land with these places. However, it has a unique quality. Partly, this stems from it being an Island; it separateness lending a special appeal. I wanted to understand more fully what this all meant with regard to my own experience of deity.

Until recently, my approach to Pagan deity had been to explore the Gods and Goddesses of established pantheons, feeling drawn to specific deities, attempting to deepen my understanding of these by building relationships with them.  My concept of Deity has been universal in the sense that I have grafted on deity to place in a fairly flexible way. But of course, what appear to be universal Gods and Goddesses were once very much attached to actual landscapes; in fact they grew out of very specific environments and cultures. As I became more fascinated and drawn to the Spirit of Place, it occurred that our ancestors’ understanding of deity was shaped by the very specific qualities of their environments. The flora, fauna, weather and topography collectively produces the character of a place, and it seems to me that this character – with its unique feel and gifts – is the foundation of local deity. I certainly found it very easy to relate to the Island as a Goddess, and it has been the search to know her more intimately that has been dominating my spiritual practice over the last few months.

I have been calling her the ‘Wight Goddess’ (my own little pun and doff of hat to Robert Graves) and I have spent my time here exploring her deeper nature, discovering this via the different aspects that she expresses through her landscapes and changing seasons (as I perceive them).

This raises all sorts of tricky questions about a personal view of deity. There is obviously a great comfort in being part of a shared faith system; one’s concept of deity is confirmed and affirmed by the group. When God/Goddess is shaped and defined by a long held tradition, that deity’s authenticity is strengthened; it has a life and presence that can easily be felt and drawn upon – a momentum all its own. In exploring one’s perception of local deity, things can feel a little more complicated, the external affirmation harder to come by. In its place is one’s own rather flawed and limited perception. I am constantly asking myself if what I instinctively feel about the Island is utterly subjective. Is something in this landscape communicating itself, and if it is, am I perceptive enough to hear its message with clarity? Maybe it doesn’t really matter.

Remaining open and flexible and maintaining a sense of humour seem vital;  reminding myself regularly that each of us who feels the need to reach for the Divine, can only ever glimpse a little of a much greater mystery. To a certain extent we will always shape God/dess in our image. We each have the freedom to start from relative scratch, and I guess this is my current experiment. The Wight Goddess calls and I feel compelled to answer…

 

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