• Home
  • A PATH TO FEMININE POWER
    • Past Workshops
  • WORK WITH DR. MARILYN
    • About
    • WORK WITH DR. MARILYN
    • Testimonials
    • Schedule Here
  • Blog
  • WAYFINDER GIFTS
    • Wild Cards

The Wild Feminine

~ Workshops, Wisdom, and Creativity with Dr. Marilyn Steele

The Wild Feminine

Category Archives: Book

SEEING IN THE DARK: FIND YOUR WILD MEDICINE

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by marilynsteele in Book, DIVINE FEMININE, Eco-feminism, Ecopsychology, Jungian psychology, spiritual ecology, Uncategorized, Women and Leadership

≈ Leave a comment

51cB6aIq8AL._AC_US218_

Yesterday I visited a favorite “soul’s place of resurrection”, hiking the Tennessee Valley trail in Marin County to the beach. Author Sharon Blackie defines such a place as one where a soul is happiest on earth and, at the same time, most in touch with all that is eternal. It was a magical, breathtaking clear sky day where I watched a blue heron stand poised, present, patient at the edge of the blackwater pond spotted with bright green islands of plants. The water broke and rippled as an otter, sleek and shiny, playfully surfaced and dove over and over again in joy. At the beach, strings of brown pelicans streamed across the water along with smaller black seabirds and sharp winged white birds which just skimmed the waves, chittering and chirping. On the way back, a black snake slithered across my path and into the grass. What gifts did I carry home with me? Peace and joy, certainly. Hope. The example of dignity, determination, grace, balance, standing steady as heron waited for just the right opportunity to plunge. The reminder to play, have fun, be curious like otter. And of course Snake. Ancient wisdom, transformation, the weaving path of the wild and sacred Feminine. So many messengers on the path showing “This way, this way.”

As I continue to write on the theme of seeing in the dark, finding your wild medicine, I want to begin sending you resources – books and teachers, mostly – which give such beautiful and profound stories of reclaiming feminine wisdom and power.

Sharon Blackie, a psychologist, storyteller and writer, has written a mythic, poetic and revolutionary book If Women Rose Rooted: The Power of Celtic Women (2016) September Publishing. Click here Winner of a Nautilus award, it is a eco-heroine’s journey and a reclaiming of the power of women rooted in the land, their own indigenous wild wisdom, their forgotten stories. Although Dr. Blackie is Scottish and Irish, the stories much like Clarissa Pinkola Estes stories will resonate with women across many cultures. It is also a call to every woman to reclaim the powerful stories from her own ancestors, and the land to which she belongs, so that she might revision the world. She is singing to the creators of a new myth by telling the rocky truths about her own weaving journey to find her place of belonging. She accurately and painfully names the wasteland we now live in and passionately resurrects the moral and spiritual authority women have always had and must now reclaim if we are to regenerate this planet and our own wild souls.

Before we can change the world we need to change the stories we tell to ourselves, about ourselves, about who we are. The stories we live. My eye tends to be on the collective dreams that are emerging from women weaving a new myth, a shared dream, and these Celtic stories of “the wise, the powerful, the strong, the brave” do the same.

“If women remember that once upon a time we sang with the tongues of seals and flew with the wings of swans, that we forged our own paths through the dark forest while creating a community of its many inhabitants, then we will rise up rooted, like trees…well then, women might indeed save not only ourselves but the world.” 

Blackie quotes Okanagan writer Jeanette Armstrong who explains the word for ourselves is actually “ones who are dream and land together”. Before anything else, we are living, dreaming Earth pieces. When we stand in our feminine power, we are reclaiming the power of the Earth speaking.

“If there is to be a change, it will come from us. Right here, where we stand. Women were always the story-givers, the memory keepers, the dreamers. Listen now to the land’s long dreaming. Do you see what it is dreaming? It’s dreaming you.” (Blackie)

What do you see in the world right now that needs your unique wild medicine?

What  dreams, synchronicities, sightings, seem to be calling you into a new story?

How does fear stop you at the threshold?

Are you ready to accept help, from allies and mentors, animal, spirits, ancestors, to reclaim your feminine power?

To become Elder, as Blackie describes,  is to become strong- strong as the old white bones of the earth, strong enough to endure and persevere. To become Elder is to hold the power, stay the course. Above all to become Elder is “to become the the wise woman: the one who knows the secrets and speaks the languages of the land, who speaks with the moral authority of the Otherworld, who weaves the dreaming of the world.”

So many of our stories, our journeys are like Sharon Blackies: losing and rediscovering our feminine powers, then finding way to use it in service to what we care about most. We bring a different kind of power: Relational. Collaborative. Connecting. Embodied. Magical. Including our intuition, our dreams, navigating by synchronicity. This unique form and expression of power is the deep feminine. It has to do with womb power, creativity, birth giving, connecting to and being devoted to the Earth, the cycle of seasons, spiritual guidance from the Otherworld. As Marion Woodman said of the crone, contradicting the cultural myth of an older woman’s invisibility: “She is not withdrawn. She is alarmingly present. Like a tuning fork her truth shatters hypocrisy. Others in her presence are released into what’s true in themselves…or flee.”

How do we attune to the new myth? It is very difficult being between stories, carrying a piece of “what is to come.”  Because we are not only Earth of course but cosmos. We belong to the stars. What might be coming? We are living through a time of extreme contrast, when the dying and death dealing old story is for a moment all around us. But we are dreaming our way to a new story. Drawing a map that begins in our hearts, and takes us to the bones of a new foundation.

“The things that women reclaim are often their own voice, their own values, their imagination, their clairvoyance, their stories, their ancient memories. If we go for the deeper and the darker, the less known, we will touch the bones.” Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Have you found your way to the bones, the bedrock of your soul truth? Are you standing rooted in the dream of your wild heart?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aside

Tell a New, Wild Story – Map a New, Wild World

20 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by marilynsteele in Book, Women and Leadership

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

feminine power, PrimeTime women, women's leadership

 

We live and create, ourselves and our world, by the stories we tell. We need the true stories of women and the deep dreams of the wild and sacred Feminine to orient and guide us. It is time to recapture history and reclaim a stolen legacy.We are looking for new lands.

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.                                               Ursula le Guin

As we come to the summer solstice, we gather the power of fire, the courage of the lion, the energies of transformation, the magic of Pele who creates new lands.The most important focus is to strengthen our inner authority, to be the authors of our own lives.

Pele as an archetype is the passionate, creative and transformative force that rebuilds the landscapes of our lives and makes a new map of the world. At the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, we are called to step into our power. Fire brings renewal, the bounty of the earth, clarity, focus, and the ability to move forward and take action. Last year around this time I dreamed of a great lion with bright red hibiscus flowers behind her ears, seated on my front porch. In the dream, a writer friend told me the lion had many stories to tell. I enjoy revisiting this image often, as the lion is such a powerful animal, symbol of courage, royalty, wisdom, strength, who is also the keeper and protector of alchemical secrets. These secrets are the stories of women’s lives, long exiled to the underworld, but now emerging to map a new world.

Time for you, dear reader, to blaze a trail. Illuminate the path you have found, as a wayfinder. Be a beacon in leadership, leading with sparks of inspiration, the fire in your heart. Fire transforms situations, conditions, living and nonliving beings. Envision your new ways of being and actualizing. Ignite the visions aligned with your soul assignment. Fire is a sign of action. Entertain the possibilities that give you a tingle of energy, and take aim. Be willing to be a fool for the emerging self. You may only have a glimpse of the new big picture for yourself, for the world.The summer solstice brings power to you. It is also the time to enjoy the warmth and bounty of the season. To have fun, to play.

What does your own personal myth look like? Your soul story is your medicine. What is the work your deeper life is calling you to? What makes your heart sing? Find your myth. Reconnect to source. Bring this new story to life. “Carry your heart into the world like a life giving sun” (Hafiz) When we women tell our own stories we are creating the world, the cultural myths through which power is defined and maintained.

The map of the psyche and the map of the world are reflections of the same story. Right now, much of the world is living the deeply rooted myth of a separate self. This is changing, as the ancient indigenous wisdom and the new revelations in science reunite through the emerging wild feminine. Her stories return the missing piece of wholeness to the self and soul to the world. With our wild hearts and soul wisdom we can be wayfinders, explorers, pilgrims and discoverers. We use the wisest map which begins in the heart.

We move with the rumblings and tumblings of the waves of the future calling to us. When we work in collaboration with the energies of nature, and connect to our spiritual source, we can pull islands out of the sea.

“If you can see the island in your mind, you will never get lost” said Mau, master navigator in The Wayfinders by Wade Davis(2009)…

Can you see the image of your desired island?

Here is a short version of a manifestation practice to bring a new dream into being:

Haipule- . Hai is a root word meaning “desire or need”, “to present an offering”, and “to pursue”. Pule is a prayer, blessing, also a magical spell. When we look more deeply into the roots of this word, we find pua – to appear, pu’u – to desire, lele – to burst forth, and le’a – to succeed. In addition to the meanings of words, we are guided to the process of how manifestation happens, and is blessed. You can do this short process throughout the day.

Ha means to energize by deep breathing and remembering.

I means to affirm what you want.

Pu means to imagine what you want.

Le means to perform an action. So the process of haipule is to affirm, imagine, and act to create a new dream. When your new dream has enough energy, it becomes reality. That is, it replaces the current dream.

Longer processes of empowering Haipule engage the elements of Nature, and strengthening connection to spirit, to Source, through creative and expressive activities. (This version of haipule from shaman and author Serge Kahili King, Ph.D.)

If your dream is a collective one, like working for the protection of the environment or peace, it is most effective to do these practices in a group, in community, with collective wisdom.

Recently we lost two brilliant courageous and revolutionary women Wayfinders, Angeles Arrien and Maya Angelou. In the practice of honoring the dead by living from the example they set, we can each contribute our spark of hope, the courage of our wild hearts, our imagining the new story, the new land. This is an exciting and powerful time for wild feminine visionaries. For just a few examples: Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile, has just reversed permission for five dams which would have gravely damaged Patagonia. Martha Beck, author and mentor, has a visionary book out – Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.

There are many coaching, mentoring and online businesses which reclaim the mighty Feminine: The Essential Feminine Company (Maureen Simon), Aphrodite Academy, Goddess Academy (Elizabeth Purvis), Feminine Power (Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward). Nancy Mills and The Spirited Woman Foundation, who reminds us in her Summer Solstice post that tomorrow is a day we will have no shadows. So if you are burdened by the shadows of self doubt, of fear of owning your full and magical powers, tomorrow enjoy your freedom to create! Discover a new island. It is calling us to come to a new, wild world of connection, peace, and harmony.

“When we come to it 
We must confess that we are the possible. 
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world. 
That is when, and only when 
We come to it.

~ Maya Angelou ~ (A Brave and Startling Truth 1995, United Nations 50th anniversary)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Launch: The Wild Feminine is Here!

23 Thursday May 2013

Posted by marilynsteele in Book, Women and Leadership

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Book

Image

Last night I dreamed I was carrying a green garden hose for miles across a flat landscape of golden plains. First I had to get out of the city, wind my way around cars stuck in a traffic jam. Then a long, long walk, the hose streaming water until I get to my destination – a clinic, a conference of writers and healers. Someone helps me find a large container to collect the water.

Mary Oliver’s poem comes to mind: “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees/ For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves.”

The container is this book. It is a moment of arrival as I offer The Wild Feminine, a collection of personal essays and stories which point to not only things, people, places I personally love and learned from, but to the stream of feminine awareness, consciousness, and power which is returning to moisten a desiccated land. We live in a fragmented, conflicted world where feminine authority, wisdom and creativity are so urgently needed to restore us to wholeness, to holiness. This is my little offering. I take heart in feeling the community around me, my tribe, the many ways in which the wild feminine is returning.

I loved Arianna Huffington’s Smith commencement address Sunday. She spoke passionately of this need for women to redefine success by including “well-being, wisdom, our ability to wonder, and to give back”. This society’s narrow definition of success is not good for anyone. Certainly not for the environment, or women, or men, for that matter.

The wonders and richness of living close to nature, to our own wild souls,  are part of my stories. Opening to the magic and mysteries of being spiritual beings, to delighting in the joys of the ordinary and everyday, are experiences I hope you will share with me. Learning to reconnect to our own peaceful, knowing centers is a lifelong practice, as is dissolving the illusion of separateness from each other. Every moment we are being guided to use our capacities for love and for transformation, to know there is so much more to who we each are. My purpose in sharing this book is to embolden you to own your own inner authority, to use your feminine power to participate in creating our future, a world in which it will be easier to love. This is an exciting and hopeful time, as the wild and sacred feminine is emerging in every corner, in our dreams, in new science, in the ways we are speaking to each other.

Now I feel like we should have a song. And dance! Although that is way beyond my capacities.

Love and blessings to you all.

View The Wild Feminine: Stories to Inspire and Enbolden on Amazon

 

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent Posts

  • QUEEN KALI CORONA CALLS US TO LOVE
  • WOMEN RISING: DREAMING IN A TIME OF CORONA
  • AFTER THE APOCALYPSE: DREAMING IN THE TIME OF CORONA
  • CALL OF THE WILD (DREAM): DANCING WITH CHAOS
  • INNOVATOR CONSTRUCTION: YOU ARE ALREADY A STAR

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel