Goddess Companion

She is a woman whose yellow hair falls down
in thick twisted braids and whose green-irised eyes
are of uncommon beauty and whose cheeks
when flushed resemble the rosy foxglove.
Snow is never as white as her teeth, nor
the leather Parthia as red as her full lips.
When high queens see her, they ache with envy
at those re lips opening over those white teeth.
They ache to see such beauty, such perfection.
~Maeve, As described in the Tain bo Cuailnge

In ancient Irish literature, we find a powerful and vibrant character named
Maeve, a woman who may have been a Goddess, or a queen, or a queen named for
a Goddess. She was strong, and competitive, clear-headed and self-reliant,
full of energy and vitality. The Irish epics describe her so vividly that
she almost breathes through the lines of the text.

Where, today, do we find such queens and Goddesses? It is International
Women's Day, dedicated to the role women play in the world today. For even
though most nations - as well as most corporations, even most families - are
headed by men, they could not survive without the industrious and dedicated
work of women. Even when our strength and our work are invisible, they are
still vital. Honoring our own efforts, and demanding that others acknowledge
them as well, should be part of our daily discipline. Would Maeve have let
her magnificence go unnoticed? Why should we?
)0(
By Patricia Monaghan - From "
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Goddess Companion" and GrannyMoon's Morning Feast 1-800-THE-MOON

Goddess Companion

How does the goddess clothe herself?
Her handmaidens have woven her a cloak
from all the flowers of springtime:
larkspur and crocus, violets and rose,
narcissus sweet as honey, nectar lilies.
She needs no perfume, for her robes
are as fragrant as her very self.
When we inhale the springtime,
we are breathing in her beauty.

~The Cyprian Lays, Greek, eighth century b.c.e.

Springtime is, of all seasons, the one in which love blooms most freely. For
many animals, it is a time of mating. Sparrows begin to fly about, courting
with their small noises. Geese honk from the night sky, wheeling in to
paddle together with their mates on small even lakes. Our pets disappear for
nights out, ignoring our calls to stay home.

We are part of this world. energies rise within us, too. We may put these to
creative use, or we may find new energies within relationships. Just as the
new pussywillow draws our eye with its delightful shape and teases our
fingers with its softness, we find our senses animated as well in our
interactions with others. We laugh more readily, delighted at our common
humanity. As spring approaches, we will fall more and more under her
sensuous spell.
.
)0(
By Patricia Monaghan - From "
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Goddess Companion" and GrannyMoon's Morning Feast 1-800-THE-MOON

Goddess Companion

Before you were born, when you were a spirit,
Nut, sky goddess, dark body with its mighty heart,
you grew strong in the belly of your mother Tefnut.
Somewhere within you, even then, was perfect knowledge
of your selfhood. Somehow you recognized your perfect name.
You stirred in your mother's womb when that name was spoken,
Nut, daughter more powerful than your powerful mother,
Nut, great goddess who became the sky, the arching sky,
Nut, goddess so beautiful your beauty fills the earth
which you embrace with your powerful arms,
which you hold
like a mother, like a queen, like a woman in love.
~Egyptian Song To The Sky Goddess

It is commonplace now to speak of Mother Earth, but many ancient cultures
saw the sky as part of the maternal presence of the goddess. It is common
for us to think of the sky as "above" the earth, but from space it is clear
that the atmosphere is a kind of skin around the earth, like a breathe she
exhales.

Earlier cultures recognized the mysteries of the earth's great airy
envelope. The goddess is praised, in songs like this Egyptian one, for
providing her children with this marvelous atmosphere which, however
invisible, is still vital for our survival. As we once did in the amniotic
fluid of our bodily mothers, we swim in the air of our mother the earth.

)0(
By Patricia Monaghan - From "
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Goddess Companion

We kneel before her, because she is kind and terrible.
We raise our arms to her, because she is gentle and fierce.
We call out to her, again and again: Kali, mother, O Goddess,
we know it is you who holds up this world, we know
it is you we see shining forth in every being, we know
it is you who is awareness, you who is hunger, you
who is power and peace and faith and beauty and compassion
and contentment and sleep itself and all life, we know
it is you who is our mother, the mother of all forms, and that
you bring love and joy to all who sing your praises.
~Indian Poet Chandi

The Goddess is all contradictions: loving and terrifying at once, both
kindly and fear-invoking. This is because, as the great Hindu poet Chandi
reminds us, the goddess is all that is. And life includes both pain and
pleasure, hunger and the satisfaction of hunger.
The Goddess path is not always an easy one. There is some tragedy, as well
as some joy, in every life. To praise Kali, the dark mother, is to begin to
heal ourselves of the falsity of wishing to embrace only life's pleasures.
We are deeply alive when we suffer. Suffering connects us not only to each
other - for all humans suffer - but also to the goddess in her darkest
aspects. Without pain, we would not treasure the marvelous delights of life
as deeply. Learning to accept Kali is the most intense challenge of the
Goddess path.
)0(
By Patricia Monaghan - From "
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Goddess Companion" and GrannyMoon's Morning Feast 1-800-THE-MOON

The
Goddess Companion (May 1)

O Mary we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the angels, Queen of May.
O Mary we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the angels, Queen of May.
~Catholic Song To The Virgin on May Day

Through hundreds of years, this day was celebrated by the ancient Celts as
the feast of Beltane, the renewal of earth's reproductive energy in
springtime. Revelers danced around trees that represented the phallic energy
of the season, and everywhere lovers enjoyed dalliances to encourage and
participate in the earth's renewal.

With the coming of Christianity, the old festival was discouraged,
especially in light of its highly sexual content. In its place, the church
offered a chaste processional to honor the virgin mother of god, with girls
singing songs like that above. But the ancient symbolism held fast, though
hidden: the virgin was crowned with wreaths of flowers, the sexual organs of
plants. Thus, even when the outer meaning was changed, the inner meaning of
the season remained a celebration of nature's fertility and fecundity.
)0(
By Patricia Monaghan - From "
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Goddess Companion" and GrannyMoon's Morning Feast 1-800-THE-MOON

The Goddess Companion

At this hour, the mountain glow
fades in the tender heavens.
At this hour, the hills themselves
join in conversation.
At this hour, the mountains
talk softly together,
the firs lean into each other
having conversation,
and willow bends to willow
whispering secrets.
Clouds too are drawn to each other
and then apart, at this hour.
~Song From The Siberian Yokut People

Nature is not dumb and wordless. Our forebears spoke of nature as alive, of
trees as communicating one with the next, of the spirits of valleys and of
oceans speaking to each other and to their human cousins.

Science is now finding language that affirms some of these insights into our
planetary connections. Trees attacked by pests emit chemical signals to
other trees, warning them of the danger; the receiving trees then have time
to produce chemicals noxious to the invader. Thus the song of the Siberian
Yokut people is not only poetic, but deeply true, for the forest trees
communicate with each other in ways that we are only now beginning to
rediscover. Perhaps we will also find that stones and clouds, which we
believe inanimate but which earlier peoples saw as alive, communicate as the
song suggests.


)0(

By Patricia Monaghan -

The Goddess Companion

She weeps for a great river where willows will not grow.
She weeps for a field where grain and herbs will not grow.
She weeps for a pool where fishes cannot live.
She weeps for a waterside where reeds cannot live.
She weeps for a woodland where trees do not grow.
She weeps for a garden where honey and wine are not found.
She weeps for a place where life is not found.
~Babylonian Lament Of The Goddess

In ancient times, winter was imagined as a time when the Goddess wept for
the death of her lover, the god of
vegetation. Her tears watered the ground, preparing it for the god's rebirth
in springtime. The more intense her
lamentation, the more the following season would be fruitful, the grains
plentiful. Thus the rains and snows of winter
were acknowledged to be, however inconvenient and even dangerous, necessary
for the life of the planet to continue.

Today the winter of extinction has come to entire species, and even the
laments of the Goddess cannot bring them
back. Rivers have died, lakes are in danger. What has been our part in it?
We do not ask. Instead we reap the benefits
of the death of nature, consuming more and more, discarding more and more.

The Goddess weeps, but she cannot weep enough to bring back all that has
been lost. It is up to each of us, to
help revitalize our earth.
)0(
By Patricia Monaghan

The Goddess
Companion

At first there was nothing. The there was a void, which
was more than nothing. Then there was the earth our
home, like a woman with ample breasts, solid and deep.
Then there came love, which is among all things the
most beautiful, for it softens all of us and leads us into
dalliance and play and joy where otherwise would be all
prudent work and somber labor. Then earth surrounded
herself with sky and labored to produce high mountains
and the surging sea, while the void gave birth to darkness
and night. And the void fell in love with night and they,
together, conceived. Their children: light and day,
children of the dark.
~Greek Poet Hesiod, Theogony

After the void comes to life, and life comes with love. So the ancients tell us, in myth
after myth. Much wisdom resides in these ancient stories, which employ magnificent images
to show us the realities of our world.

In one of the most ancient Greek stories of creation, light is born of darkness and the
void. The void is sister of the earth, which supports and sustains us. The earth can
produce without assistance, so fertile is she. But the void must first express its
darkest side and accept that with love. Only then can light burst forth.

There are lessons in the dark times as well as in those filled with light. What darkness
within does winter make you fear? Why not embrace all the parts of yourself, the
apparently negative as well as the beaming goodness? Why can you not love yourself, just
as you are?

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By Patricia Monaghan - From "
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Companion" and GrannyMoon's Morning Feast 1-800-THE-MOON

The Goddess
Companion

Before the earth, before the sky,
was there nothing?
No. There was something.
Something like a cloud
or a nebula, a mist with no source.
It was all silence and distance.
But it moved, like a great silent
wheel, in its great solitude.
This was the source of all,
the mother of creation.
If you were forced to name it,
I will call it The Great Tao,
the way itself, endless and eternal.
~Chinese Tao Te Ching

During the slow days as winter relaxes its grip upon us, we feel the stirrings of new
life, new thoughts, new dreams. In many myths, new life rises out of the void, a place
such as that in which we find ourselves in late winter. However dry and sterile it may
seem, that void is the source of all growth and change. In this paradox is the greatest
wisdom.

It is difficult to love the void. Sometimes, it is even difficult to accept it. But
without periods of apparent sterility in our lives, we would not grow into our finest
selves. Study the void, even if you cannot yet embrace it. Look upon its great emptiness
without flinching. There is nothing to fear. There is, in fact, sublime hope to be found
in the depths of emptiness, for from the void emerges the path.

)0(

By Patricia Monaghan - From "
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Companion" and GrannyMoon's Morning Feast 1-800-THE-MOON

The Goddess
Companion

Imagine this: the maiden Goddess playing in a flowery

meadow, together with the full-bodied daughters of the
ocean. They were gathering flowers: just-open roses,
crocuses, and dark violets from the soft grass, and lilies and hyacinths.
And then they saw a newer flower, voluptuous and fragrant.
It was narcissus, that wonder, sending forth a hundred
blooms from a dingle bulb, making the very earth laugh
with delight at its heady fragrance ~ the earth, and
the blue sky also, and the ocean water, all amazed and
laughing at this new creature, this marvel of a flower,
which the goddess reached out her hand to pick.
~Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Today was the ancient Greek feast of flowers, the Anthesteria. Our own land may be far
from those Mediterranean shores. Spring may seem, as well, to be in another country. But
somewhere, flowers are blooming. Somewhere, a soft rain falls. Somewhere, a warm breeze
wafts through the budding trees.

Hope can be hard to locate during the wintry seasons of our live. Yet spring offers the
greatest hope possible, for it reminds us that nothing goes on forever. The most
beautiful of days will end, but so will the most painful. Life can be gray and dull at
times, but change is inevitable. A new day will dawn, a new spring come around, a new
generation grow up. Hope is sometimes just recognition of the inevitability of change.

)0(

By Patricia Monaghan - From "
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Companion" and GrannyMoon's Morning Feast 1-800-THE-MOON

Lady ...

Your dance on hilltops in

eternal disarray,

Springtime entangles in

Your hair, eyes sapphire ice

glowing to soft rain.

Like birdsong Your voice or

crystal's silver song;

Your laughter shakes the trees--

the earth gladdens.

Meditation

Morning is just another face of night;if morning was a part of you, what would it look
like? Feel?

We carry our morning within us--let them out.

<http://www.amazon. com/Book- Hours-Galen- Gillotte/ dp/1567182739/ ref=pd_bbs_ 2?ie=UTF8& s=boo
ks&qid=1200362180& sr=8-2> The Book Of Hours: Prayers to the Goddess

By Galen Gillotte

Lady ...

Your eyes are full of the sun,

are full of the wings of morning.

With glory and grace You

greet the dawn -

become the dawn...

Emerging from the embrace of darkness

You bless the day's beginning

with Your presence.

Hail to The Star of The Morning.

Meditation

Listen to the morning sounds: bird's songs; wind in the tree; the roar of traffic;
children's voices.

What do these sounds convey to you?

<http://www.amazon. com/Book- Hours-Galen- Gillotte/ dp/1567182739/ ref=pd_bbs_ 2?ie=UTF8& s=boo
ks&qid=1200362180& sr=8-2> The Book Of Hours: Prayers to the Goddess

By Galen Gillotte

The Goddess
Companion

She is mad, her lover is mad, and I am mad for loving her!

This world is bewitched by the lovely Goddess.

No one can describe how lovely she is, how glorious,

how perfect her gestures, how sudden her moods.

Her lover, poisoned with love for her, calls out her name

endlessly, singing Kali's name over and over and over.

Life has its currents, cycles, tides which ebb and flow.

She looks upon them all with equanimity.

Nothing is opposite in her mind: not life, not death;

not love, not hate; not the self, not the void.

Your raft, the poet said, floats upon the sea of life.

It drifts up with the tide, and down with the ebb.

But the goddess is there. The Goddess is always there.

~Indian Poet Ramakrishna

On this day, when light and darkness are briefly equal, before the light grows and swells
and carries the world into summer, it is good to meditate upon the ultimate falsity of
all divisions. Kali, the fierce Hindu goddess, reminds us of that truth: that existence
is not bound by our false dualities. There is no light, no darkness in Kali's world. What
she offers us is not a gray mixture of black and white, but a paradoxical world in which
both exists in all moments, at all points, in all ways. Life is both pain and pleasure,
love and hate. Kali is beyond both, but includes both.

Meditating upon Kali is one of the great traditions of Hindu India. The paradoxes and
mysteries she expresses are almost beyond words, though great poets like Ramakrishna have
spent lifetimes trying. As the sun dances briefly in her perfect balance, let us join the
poet in marveling at the power of the Goddess.

)0(

By Patricia Monaghan - From "
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Companion" and GrannyMoon's Morning Feast 1-800-THE-MOON

 The Goddess
Companion

In a red-gold chair sat a woman. To stare directly into the

sun would be less difficult than to stare at her brilliance.

A white silk gown clothed her, fastened with red gold.

On her shoulders sat a mantle of such brocade as cannot

be described, all woven with gold and jewels fastened

with a brooch of gold. Her hair was dressed with rubies

and pearls and gold. And all of this was just a reflection

of her inner brilliance.

~The Dream of Maxen, in the Welsh Mabinogian

Today the light has outstripped the darkness inn its annual race. Energy pours into our
bodies as we begin to feel again the power and grace of light-filled movement. During the
coming season. we will honor the sun and the light, feeling its power and rejoicing in
its beauty.

We do not need to deny the night to celebrate the day. Both have their special glories.
Relish the delight of warm air on skin. Let your eyes rest with joy on the yellow-green
of new leaves. Touch the tender catkins and the fragile crocus petals, feeling the wonder
of pleasure. We are born into bodies that sense and respond to our world. Let yourself
become a vessel of the power of the goddess, acknowledging the beauty she has created.

.)0(

By Patricia Monaghan - From "
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Companion" and GrannyMoon's Morning Feast 1-800-THE-MOON

The Goddess Companion
By: Patricia Monaghan

Holy goddess, comforter, your abundant grace
feeds the world, your abundant heart consoles us
all when we suffer. You do not rest, night or day;
you are everywhere, on land and on sea, aiding us.
My tongue is not equal to your praise,
nor my voice to your beauty, nor my wealth
to the sacrifices I owe you. A thousand tongues
in a thousand mouths would not be enough.
So I can only lock away your image in my heart
and make eveyr action a prayer of thanks to you.
---Apuleius, The Golden Ass
Today marks the ancient Egyptian Feast of Lamentations, one of those
festivals that unfolded the story of the goddess�?loss of her brother-lover, and of
his resurrection at her hands. Such death-and-rebirth stories tell, in human
terms, the story of the year’s cycle. Now, as we look about and see the
falling leaves, the darkening skies, we feel the same mournfulness Isis felt
when she looked upon the dismembered body of her beloved Osiris.
How can we learn to embrace all of life? It is easy to love the times of
peace and plenty, time when love is new and the living is easy. But our lives
are as cyclical as our planet’s years. Times of pain alternate with times of
joy; times of loss with times of comfort; times of growth with times of
stagnation. There is no greater spiritual challenge than learning to accept all
as part of life, as part of the goddess.