crystalline air, intensity colors the atmosphere
dragon stands guard
reblooming lavender iris, scarlet sage, shadows
Author: Juliana Lightle
Inanna’s Autumn Gift: Fearless Spirituality by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Take the time to read all the way, especially the last few paragraphs.
Fall, the time of the Day of the Dead and All Souls Day, is a perfect season for us to contemplate “fearless spirituality” as we face our most essential fear, that of death. Though humans have celebrated these days for millennia, fear with a religious veneer pervades our culture, whether in hate towards women and the LGBTQ community, lies that demonize followers of other religions, terror of eternal punishment and spiritual unworthiness, and more.
When I seek guidance for cultivating spiritual fearlessness, I look to ancient Sumer’s Inanna and her willing descent into death. Her story cycle begins in fear of the Sky and Air gods and her desire to destroy her huluppu-tree, Earth’s first life. Gilgamesh hacks it apart to rid it of a serpent, a bird, and Lilith. The tree’s remains are made into Inanna’s throne and bed. In the next story she takes all the divine powers…
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Sunday Haiku
Geese honking, V flying in an azure sky
Vermillion leaves drift
Monarch butterfly flutters on milkweed
Is it harmful to assign positive qualities to women? by Oxana Poberejnaia
Another take on how male dominated society affects women and men.
I have recently learnt about features assigned to women and men by a Tibetan Lama. Women are seen as having better access to qualities of space and therefore holding special kinds of wisdom that lead to Enlightenment. Men, on the other hand are better suited to create and act within space, and this they are rightful owners of the actions that lead to Enlightenment.
In popular Goddess spirituality it is also normal to find distinction between women and men’s core traits. The properties assigned to the “feminine” and the “masculine” usually follow the same pattern: Goddess stands for interconnectedness, and thus relations and caring for others. God (if there is a place for him) is about protection and action.
I am afraid to say that to me, this approach only embeds patriarchal order by putting women firmly in the sphere of domesticity, even if in the elevated role of “Domestic…
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Sunday Haiku
Juniper, sage, grandfather’s cultivators
rain soaked
staccato rhythm on a green steel roof
E Pluribus Unum: The Woman From Africa by Stuart Dean
Source: E Pluribus Unum: The Woman From Africa by Stuart Dean I am sharing both this post and also where I found it because both are filled with fascinating information about ancient history and how so much applies to our lives now.
Sunday Haiku
Gentle wind whispers through junipers
Golden leaves fall
Red tail hawk swoops across canyon
Sunday Haiku
Watching sunset and storm clouds
Great Cosmic Mother
Weeping for lost and lonely women
The Acid Attack on WomanPriest Alexandra Dyer: The Cancelation of Evil with the Face of God/ess by Cynthia Garrity-Bond
Why Is Pizza Round? The Black Goddess of Rome by Stuart Dean
This astonishes and enlightens me. I am sharing it hoping at the very least you will be able to say you learned something new today. Juliana
The remains of an ancient Roman bread pie from Pompeii,
carbonized in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE
The poem Moretum (discussed in my last post) narrates the preparation of a meal that can be characterized in modern English as ‘pizza.’ Round flatbread is baked; to go on it, a cheese spread is mixed. The details of the narration are such as to create a recipe of its ingredients and related cooking instructions.
The most important ingredient, however, is not an ‘ingredient’ as such, but a shape. The bread, the cheese, and the cheese spread are all round. That by itself might not seem remarkable, but the Latin terminology (words from which ‘orbit’ and ‘globe’ derive) is identical to then contemporary astrological terminology. The bread is even scored into quadrants, symbolizing, among other things, the four elements and the quadrants of an astrological observer’s circle.
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writingontherim 