Once, long ago, in the realms before Time had settled
itself down, there lived a beautiful maiden and her loving mother.
They lived in a land where it was always summer, for this mother was
the goddess herself, the bountiful Demeter. Wherever she went the
trees burst with flower and fruit both, the grains in the fields ripened
beneath her gaze and everything was plentiful. And her daughter Persephone
went everywhere with her mother and listened to her in all things.
For me the Dark Goddess is the child-slayer, she is
famine and rape and the woman who steals my lover, she is despair
and loneliness and madness. And I know that she needs my friendship,
desperately needs it, but it is mainly a formal friendship that I
am able to offer her; respect, honour, empathy, compassion, service.
Maybe the world’s problems would be solved if I could fling
my arms around her and kiss her on the cheek and laugh with her and
settle down for a good chat. It sounds great, but I know that those
seconds of grace where such a thing is possible are rare. Compared
with the other times.
Last night I lay on the sand at Broken Head Beach near
my home in Australia, and looked up at the stream of the milky way
across the sky. It’s the time of the dark moon and the stars
are torrents of light. They are the drops of milk from her breasts,
as she sustains and nourishes us in this fragment of time on the earth.
And she is the Dark Goddess, her body wrought from the night sky,
more vast than the universe, cradling within herself the infinite
spirals of light and dark, time and space.
At the Summer Solstice the Goddess in her fullness
meets the God at the height of his powers and they join together in
the Sacred Marriage.....
Dying or dead he falls from the tree into Her arms.
Or his blood soaks into Her land, as an offering. He walks onto the
battlefield, knowing that in death he will meet Her embrace. This
is the sacred marriage.....
As the leaves fall from the trees and the Goddess descends
into her yearly retreat of the Underworld, the energy of the dark
god is stirred into rising and, hidden from all, they perform the
rite of the Sacred Marriage.....
It is the moment of the Winter Solstice, when the age-old
goddess gives birth to the god of the new year and as he passes through
the gate of her flesh the possibility of sacred marriage is born.....
Light is one of the passwords of the New Age. Light,
synonymous with love, with life, with all good things. Light as in
white light for protection and safety, light as in that which we are
all composed of, light which is the best part of our natures and light
that we are all reaching towards and becoming. Light, as in the sun,
stars or moon that we look to for celestial inspiration. What about
the dark?
The waves crash against me as I stand in the edge of the surf. The sun is hot, though it is still early morning. The water is cold and filled with the churning of millions of tiny pieces of seaweed, big clumps of which lie washed up in the tide. The salt in the water sticks to my skin, the sand under my feet shifts and shapes itself. As the waves rush out, I see a tiny, rounded shell exposed for a moment, it burrows quickly downwards. Is this goddess? This shell creature, this tide, this body of mine? I think so.
