There is a little gem of a book called The Elements of the Goddess by Caitlin Matthews that was published in 1989. At the end of the first chapter, she asks what kind of myth they will tell about our time, which she feels is revolutionary. Then she challenges the reader to pretend that several hundreds or thousands of years have passed and to write that myth. I could not resist the call to put into words what I've witnessed of the women's spirituality movement in my own lifetime and what I imagine it could become. This is a Goddess myth for our time that I have woven for you...
In that time when the Goddess walked among them, Her footsteps were like a distant drumbeat. But it was loud enough to reawaken the first priestesses who began to remember the knowledge that had been hidden and repressed for more than a thousand years. They had returned, and they knew what must be done to restore balance.
The Goddess gave her priestesses strength, vision, and power. They could feel Her rising and flowing like an underground river. Soon, women began to gather in places where they could speak freely about their burdens and their longings. They began to imagine a different world for themselves and their daughters and all the generations to come, a world of equality, a world of options.
And the Goddess held the hands of the women who marched with liberation on their tongues. She held them up when their voices shook and their legs trembled as they spoke truth to power and dared to take up space. She helped them dig through the layers of sand and stone to uncover more of Her images, and the women saw that the Goddess had many sizes, shapes and forms, all of them beautiful and unique.
And the women began to appreciate their own bodies and their own kind of beauty. She guided their brushes onto the canvas and their threads into tapestries. She gave them words to write the books that had been missing, volumes that spoke of women’s mysteries, lunar rites, sacred union, and healing gardens. Little altars sprang up everywhere. New hymns were being sung. Daughters were born to mothers who were beginning to know their own worth.
As the Age of Aquarius took root, information began to spread rapidly and indiscriminately through interconnected devices that brought people together and simultaneously divided them. And so the river of the Goddess grew with many creeks and tributaries spreading far and wide. But the flood of incoming data to be processed was more than the human body was designed to handle, and the devices became addictive and destructive.
The Goddess guided her priestesses to teach and practice embodiment, to connect more deeply with the earth, with their bodies, and with others. As technology pushed humankind more into their headspace, the Goddess reminded women of the wombspace, the heartspace, and the importance of presence and touch.
While the lies of the old world were being uncovered—lies that had maintained the cycles of war, hunger, greed, fear, and strife—the people began to envision more kindness and reciprocity. They began to believe that a new world was possible if they could heal from the past and move forward with grace.
And so there was a great collective healing and a shift in consciousness there at the crossroads between the two worlds. The seeds that had been planted by the priestesses started to grow and, though it did not happen easily or quickly, the sacred garden was restored a little at a time. The Divine Mother finally stood at her rightful place with the Divine Father. And the children were happy and free.
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