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The Path of She: The Silver Threads of the Great Mother

The Path of She: The Silver Threads of the Great Mother

Last updated on: September 26, 2015 at 4:00 pm by Karen Clark

The Path of She: The Silver Threads of the Great Mother 2015-09-12T00:15:37+00:00 Karen Clark

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Long ago, we worshipped the Great Goddess, the Creatrix and the Dark One, the giver and the taker of the breath and sustenance of our mortal existence. Her ever-present love and life-giving ways, like shining silver threads, wove the tapestry of our human society, threads that were passed down from the Great Mother, to the priestesses and women leaders, and to the daughters who were to inherit the red cloak of feminine power.

SheBard Media Inc. 2015

So it was, for generation after generation, the silver threads of the Mother’s ways continued, shining and undiminished.

Yet nothing lasts forever and the seasons of humanity turn. As the sun overtakes the moon in the shifting of night into day, so the rule of men and their patriarchal Gods eclipsed the leadership of woman and the Great Goddess. Dominion and death overruled creation and the nurturance of life, and the silver threads of the Mother became tarnished and frayed.

Much was lost of the profound mysteries and powers of the Great She. Her stories became twisted and tainted, with Her Heavenly light glorified and Her Underworld dark reviled. Her nature, once whole and holy, was disassembled and granted to usurper Gods and their lesser Goddess consorts and companions.

Still, within this newer, distorted weaving, the silver threads remained visible for those with eyes to see and a heart to receive.

With each successive generation and in patriarchy’s quest for absolute rule and absolute suppression of the Mother’s ways, Her silver threads faded farther and farther from our human awareness. Fear and disdain replaced love and reverence.

There were no priestesses, no women leaders, and no daughters to pass on our sacred feminine lineage. Only the bravest of our ancestors, the witches and the healers and the wise women, dared to remember and speak of the remnants of the Mother’s silver threads, woven into the Old Religion of the Great Goddess. Then they too became a part of our disappearing herstory, tortured and murdered during the horrors of the Burning Times for the taint of association with She who must be purged from Her stubborn roots in the human psyche.

And so we find ourselves in these modern times, seemingly adrift in the excesses and destructive impulses of our collective humanity, disconnected from the Great Mother’s life-centered ethos of goodness and love, and headed on a collision course with ecological disaster.

Yet nothing lasts forever and the seasons of humanity turn. The sun shares the sky with the moon, just as God shares this world with the Goddess, and a male ethos with that of the sacred feminine. One may eclipse the other for a time, but what was lost will be refound and balance will return.

We, the waking daughters and sons of the Great She, stir after lifetimes of a deadening sleep. Piece by broken piece, we remember Her in the shards of pottery, crumbled sanctuaries and fragments of sacred text that have weathered the ravages of time and persecution. Somehow these silver threads, though torn, tangled and disconnected from their original holy weaving, reach through the ages and whisper their secrets to our hungry hearts.

If we listen deep and hard from our soul, She will reveal Her greatest secret of all — that we, Her human children, are woven of the very silver threads of Her mysteries. From the tiniest specks of our cellular matrix, to our streaming blood, shimmering nerves, and our miracle bodies of bone and flesh — we are made of Her shining light and sacred matter. In our most holy and profound nature, radiant still in the core of our being, we are Her natural goodness and munificent love.

And all around us, Her silver threads shimmy and shine in the outpouring of life and splendor of this planet Earth, and in the mysteries that underlie our waking reality. While we banish Her to the shadowy recesses of our minds, still She walks amongst us, gifting us always with the abundance and beauty of the green-growing world. Still, we journey by Her side in our dreams and between-the-worlds magic, receiving Her teachings and guidance on our path of soul.

In these turning times, we must begin again, collecting and weaving Her silver threads into a new tapestry of sacred texts and secular practices that return balance and Her goodness and love to our human psyche and society. While we mourn the destruction and desecration of the ancient weavings that were once the bedrock of our humanity, we must also remember that new times require a new weaving.

Each of us, individually and together, in our personal lives, families and communities, must collect and weave, collect and weave, the silver threads that are everywhere and in everything — in the laughter of children, the heat of our lover’s touch, the smile of a stranger, and the best impulses of our warm beating heart — in the crisp bite of an apple, the comforts of home and hearth in the dead of winter, the glorious scent of a summer rose, and the silver brush of moonlight on a sleeping landscape — in our dreams, intuitions, creative expression and spiritual gatherings, where the Mysteries congregate at our doorstep — and in our big and small choices and actions to right the injustices, environmental damage and human abuses of our troubled world.

In this essential work, we are going to stir up the brittle, crusted-over places and twisted, tangled threads that hold our personal wounding, and the fears and nay-saying old stories that dig their heels into the status quo in resistance to our forward movement. We will come face to face with the worst of our collective destructive impulses and the tumultuous, terrifying upheaval that mark the ending of one season of our humanity and the birth of the next. Yet we must not waiver nor let these old stories and fears stand in the way of our sacred task of co-creating the new.

In all these things and so much more, She is with us, gathering up our smaller weavings into the greater tapestry that is the template of a better, kinder, more sustainable and loving world. And in this tapestry, we will find Her shining ancient threads, the tarnished silver strands when we lost our connection to Her sacred ways, and the new golden threads of our remembering and reclaiming the love and goodness that are Her most precious gifts to us.

I reach out my hand to Her. I reach out my hand to you. We have work to do. Let us begin.

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