Once upon a time there was a magical island, pulsating with sensual wisdom, lush and green, and surrounded by turquoise healing waters.  

Women from different corners of the world would gather there, just before the hot season, to worship the Goddess, to awaken Her peace and wisdom in every cell of their bodies, and to guard Goddess wisdom for the generations to come.

They flocked to this sacred land during a time when the human race had been infected with the most severe illusion making them believe they were superior and separate from the Great story, and they had created a parallel story, one of competition and lack, that began to cover everything tender and beautiful, like toxic tar.

Humans had become harmful to the sacred One who fed them, held them, loved them; they were destroying Mother Earth Herself. Power-hungry men created division everywhere they could, starting violent wars, torturing animals in “factory farms”, destroying soil and air with “efficiency” and “profit”, using women as commodities, and hoarding obscene amounts of resources, while many had nothing. The people had forgotten the Greater Story—the perfect dance of reciprocity they were part of—they had forgotten the Goddess.

The women came from the forest, from the desert, and from the mountains. The northern clan, and the river people showed up every year, and from the rugged coastlines, beaches and lakes they came, and from the cities, too. They came from many different walks of lives, different ages, shapes and forms, and what they all had in common was that they had felt something like a soft breeze through their heart: a calling. They knew that even if it often felt very vague and hard to put into words, it was important. And so they came.

The gathering was a ceremony of deep remembering. The women prayed and summoned sanity and joy with their whole body, with their longing hearts and luminous souls; shiny eyes, sweat, awe, swaying hips, belly roars; shaking off the illusion, retrieving their ecstasy, and the power and wisdom of their holy bodies, made of earth, water and magic.

Into the misty mornings, and at sunset too, they chanted the sacred names of the Goddess with their mighty hearts, and planted seeds of holy nourishment for the generations to come.

They listened again and again to the ancient stories, from where they would receive codes and keys for how to birth a more beautiful story for the aching world; a story of a human presence rooted in reverence, dignity and reciprocity with all life; awake from the trance of superiority, and at home in the Way of the Sacred One.

And once upon a time, just like this time now, someone, like you, read the story about the magical island, and the gathering of wisdom keepers, and you would remember as well.

And you would know that you are yourself a living, breathing myth, a ceremony unfurling and evolving, and that when you read about the gathering with a little smile in your heart, celebrating, remembering, re-committing to partake in the birth of a beautiful tomorrow, in your unique way, you are part of the story too.

And you would know that the story you will pass on to your great grandchildren about this time, will not only be about destruction. The gathering of wild-hearted women, on a magical island, singing the holy names of the Goddess, happened too.

That story will probably not make it into the history books, that is how it usually goes, but nevertheless this was also the story of this time. This also happened.

And once upon a time, far into the future, the great grandchild’s child, a grown woman now, pregnant with a little one of her own, lights a candle in the chilly morning.

As she’s gazing into the eternal flame, she feels the softest breeze rush through her heart, as the aunties on the island, long ago, start their day dancing their prayers for her.

And her hips begin to move…
She can’t help it…
She remembers…

~ ~ ~

I sit listening as the wind asks its eternal questions:
What will our generation of women pass on to our daughters?
What will be our legacy 
to the daughters of our great-granddaughters?
And the earth sings her response:
Offer yourself … yourself.
~ Judith Duerk

~ ~ ~ 

From your spiritual auntie,
Chameli

P.S. Read more about the island gathering here.