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The Path of She: A Modern Goddess Tale – From Lost Daughter to Goddess Queen

The Path of She: A Modern Goddess Tale – From Lost Daughter to Goddess Queen

Last updated on: November 26, 2016 at 4:00 pm by Karen Clark

The Path of She: A Modern Goddess Tale – From Lost Daughter to Goddess Queen 2016-11-13T22:32:11+00:00 Karen Clark

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Two dreams, thirty years apart — a modern Goddess tale for these times.

Konstantin Kopachinsky / unsplash.com

The Dream of the Lost Daughter

I’m in my mid-twenties, with a business degree and a promising career in a blue chip company. My desires are purely materialistic — I want power and success in a man’s world. I don’t know any better, and I’ve no idea how immensely unhappy I am.

I have a dream that I don’t remember until many years later, yet my life is changed forever.

It’s a Winter Solstice eve, in the darkest hours of the night. Outside my apartment window, the world nestles down under a crystalline blanket of fresh-fallen snow. I dream of a silver shining path, as if hewn of moonlight, that leads me down, down, down to Hecate’s realm — the Goddess who is the Mistress of the crossroads, and guardian of our human destiny.

I’m a lost daughter, profoundly wounded, cut-off from the true power and presence of the Goddess, my womanhood, and the sacred feminine of human nature. But something is stirring within me, and within the Mysteries. I dream of the Goddess, and the Goddess dreams me.

Deep in the belly of the Earth, Hecate directs me to Her magic cauldron and shows me the raw, naked truth of my life story — the beauty and the wounding — all that I’ve forgotten and denied, the very things I’ve been running hard from, and undreamed of possibilities sleeping just below the veneer of my waking reality.

Hecate gifts me with this crossroads moment, with my life laid bare before me, and asks me to choose how I will live for the rest of my days. I make a vow: to wake up, to remember, and to find my way home to my Self, my womanhood, and Her sacred ways.

By my choice, my destiny is woven.

The Dream of the Goddess Queen

Now, thirty years later, I’m lost no more. I’ve found my way home to my Self and the Goddess. I live nestled in the forest on a magical island with my beloved family and community, writing and teaching the life-changing ways of the Goddess that are now as natural to me as breathing.

I have another dream, within days of co-priestessing a community Samhain ritual to honor the beloved dead and the blessed newborn.

In my dream, I witness a millennia-old ceremony where the new King chooses a bride who then becomes Queen of the realm. Everyone knows what will happen; he will kneel before she who will be his puppet queen, a pretender to the ancient throne of woman’s power, who hands over the land and the people to the men and maleness that have dominated this patriarchal world from time immemorial.

Instead, to the shock of everyone present, the new King approaches the forgotten princess — the one who is belittled, diminished, and yet the true heir to this ancient throne. He tenderly lifts her chin, kisses her and chooses her as his Queen.

The forgotten princess in my dream is the Goddess: She whose laws are love and the nurturance of life — She who is wild and untameable, connecting us to Earth, body, sensuality, joy — She who wields magic and mystery — She, the missing half of the Divine, our human nature, our true Self.

With a gentle kiss, everything changes. The forgotten princess becomes the Queen reborn as Goddess, once more ensconced on Her sovereign throne. What has been lost is restored to the world, the land, the people, mending a primal wound in the deepest roots of humanity.

The land stirs and sends forth a mighty tree, thrumming with primordial, unseen forces. The Goddess Queen remakes the roles and rules of Her leadership with the King, a puppet queen no more. Her indomitable presence emanates outward dismantling the old order, and transforming and renewing everything and everyone She touches. And in this death-birth moment, balance returns and the world is made anew.

What is chosen cannot be undone.

A Modern Goddess Tale

These dreams are the makings of a modern Goddess tale, a story for these times.

We are the lost daughters and lost sons of the Goddess.

We have rejected and forgotten something essential in our lives and collective humanity: the life-centered ways and mysteries of the Goddess, womankind and our sacred feminine nature.

From this half-existence, we’ve made a mess of our world — from the dire threat of climate change, to the dysfunction, injustice and destructive roots of our political, social and economic systems, to the heavy burden of personal pain and stress most of us carry.

We’re not doomed to follow this path. There’s another way. The Goddess is awakening and calling us home. What has been lost can be refound. We just have to choose it so. And by our choice, our destiny is woven.

To descend into the Goddess’s realm; to brave Her magical cauldron and bear witness to the raw, naked truth of our life and our world; to choose, in the face of this beauty and wounding, to wake up, remember and reclaim what has been lost — the Goddess and our true Self: this isn’t just the work of one magical evening, but of a lifetime.

It’s a stepping off of one path — the destructive path of humanity — and onto another — the path of the Goddess, what I’ve come to know and write about as the Path of She.

On this path, step by step, healing moment by healing moment, we make our way home to the Goddess and our Self. This is a journey for the courageous and steadfast, because it’s no easy road to travel. Whatever we see in the Goddess’s cauldron, the beauty and the wounding, is our work of soul, to own, reclaim, heal and transform.

Yet the journey is so worth this hard, heartbreaking, wondrous work. The precious things we’ve lost come back to us — love, nurturance, wildness, Earth, body, sensuality, joy, magic, mystery, along with our very own beauty and best qualities, and the mended parts of our wounding and life story. Slowly, bit by bit, we gather up the pieces and put our Self back together.

Somewhere along the way, a miracle happens; we can’t plan or force this moment, we can only travel toward it, trust in it, and then one day it happens.

We arrive where we’ve been heading all along. In the core of our being, where our personal sovereignty resides, everything is irrevocably reordered.

The ways in which we’ve internalized our patriarchal world, with its dominating male ethos, and submissive and repressed feminine ways, no longer holds sway in our life. Something in us steps forward, our very own, inner “new King”, and does things differently. He returns our inner Goddess to Her rightful throne, and the forgotten princess within becomes the Goddess Queen.

With these radical transformations, a new sovereignty and balance emerge from the depth of our being — Goddess Queen and New King, and our sacred feminine and sacred masculine natures are once more beloveds and partners in our life’s journey; we become whole, holy, fully human and Divine, and deeply, powerfully our Self.

The miracle continues, emanating outward. When we heal and transform the core of our being, we mend the deepest roots of humanity. What has been lost is restored to the world, the land, the people — not only the reborn Queen as Goddess and the sacred feminine, but also the new King as God and the sacred masculine.

The old is dead, and the new is reborn. We, and our world, are forever changed. What is chosen cannot be undone.

The Path of She

The Path of She, in its deepest roots, is this journey from lost daughter to Goddess Queen — a modern Goddess tale that invites you to embrace your own life story, with its beauty and wounding, as the content and catalyst of your healing and transformation.

To walk the Path of She is a conscious choice, a vow, to wake up, to remember, and to find your way home to the Goddess and your true Self. You reclaim what you’ve lost, both your life story and experiences, and your knowing and living the ways and mysteries of the Goddess.

You never walk alone on this path. You dream the Goddess, and the Goddess dreams you. She is your guide, teacher and way-shower, gifting you generously with whatever you need to do this essential, sacred, hard, hard work of mending your soul and our world. She loves you, believes in you, and will gladly give back what you’ve forgotten.

Together, with the Goddess, with each other, we can make these dreams a reality. We can return the Goddess to Her sovereign place in our inner landscape and outer world. The old can die so something new, beautiful, powerful, whole, holy can be reborn.

The Goddess is indeed awakening, and that waking is us.

Check out Tale of the Lost Daughter, and other books and offerings from the Path of She at the Path Store.

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The Path of She is published on alternate Saturdays; follow it via RSS or e-mail! If you like Karen’s work, like her page on Facebook or maybe buy her book, Tale of the Lost Daughter, a fictional spiritual adventure into the life-changing world of magic and the sacred feminine.

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