Theme: Magicians Reporting for Duty

Week 14: in which we consider the first and foundational crime of patriarchy--theft of birthright dignity--and speak the Goddess prayer that heals it

Beautiful Magicians,

Thank you for your profound and thoughtful responses to last Sunday’s Notes from the Field. It really got a lot of you thinking about how sky-god religions with their demands for hierarchy and hunger for power—on horrific display today—demolished the gentle, reverential, and communal ways we lived for tens of thousands of years.

If you missed it, you might wish to read it because it lays the foundation for today’s letter and for the next four.

For six decades I tried to be an obedient daughter of patriarchy. I played the game. I got the grades. I obeyed my father and suffered his anger. I got the accolades, promotions, titles, degrees. I worked hard. Until everything patriarchy demanded of me began to sicken me. My life crumbled, my marriage imploded, my house drifted away on a river of tears.

I wouldn’t wish my story on anyone. And yet. And yet. With everything and everyone gone—husband, house, career, savings, friends, beliefs, religion—I could finally ask myself what I wanted, what I believed, how I wanted to live.

When you ask questions like that—not questions that help you keep going, not questions that band aid the scars, or try to staunch the wounds. But questions that rip off the band aids. Questions that demand you see what wants to be seen and hear what wants to be heard. Ask kinds of questions and the doors start to fly open and strange knowings arrive.

After years of asking those kinds of questions, years of being willing to sit with the uncomfortable answers, the doors in my soul were flung wide enough to let prayer artist in. Prayer Artist brought the requirement to offer prayer intensives. And, as I shared last Sunday, in the midst of a particularly raw prayer intensive in the summer of 2018 on Ho`oponopono to heal sexual abuse, I was awakened in the night and clearly heard:

“It wasn’t a power structure; it was a reverence structure.”

I have been exploring what a “reverence structure” might feel or look like ever since. My first major teaching on the radical difference between patriarchal power structures and matrifocal, matrilineal reverence structures, came a few months later in 2019.

I had just read The Way of the Rose, uncovering the ancient Goddess mantra of the rosary, and became curious to pray the rosary in this new way. Growing up catholic, I had said countless standard issue rosaries on my knees and swore I’d never ever touch a rosary again. But here was a totally different and more reverential way to pray the beads.

BUT. And this is a massive but. The way the book presents the rosary, you have to pray the three sets of mysteries: Joyful, Glorious, and Sorrowful. My catholic girl self knew these mysteries all too well. With a few adjustments to bring the deeper meanings alive, I became content with the joyful and the glorious mysteries, but the sorrowful were an insurmountable roadblock.

One morning, I was standing in my living room, holding my mother’s crystal rosary, and trying to pray the sorrowful mysteries. If you are unfamiliar—and be grateful you are—the five mysteries ask us to witness and ponder the arrest, torture, and execution of Jesus.

As I stood there, I began to shout. “I will NOT. I will NOT. I will NOT pray this way!”

But I still wanted to pray the rosary. So I sat down in my writing chair, grabbed my journal, and asked a question I had never asked before. A question the priests and nuns never asked. A question that is not even plausible to ask in any catholic circles I’m aware of.

I asked: What would I see if I pulled the camera back, widened the image in the viewfinder, away from one man being executed by one empire in one place. I kept pulling the camera back, until I could see thousands of years of empiric abuse. All the way to the beginning when violent tribes worshiping bloodthirsty sky gods came pouring down over the Steppes onto the matriarchal communities below. Communities that had no sense of hierarchy. No weapons. And no history of war.

I knew a wee bit about this radical shift in history from reading Marija Gimbutas, Merlin Stone, Carol P Christ and other authors who devoted their lives to unearthing anthropological, mythological, and biological evidence of the arrival of the patriarchal wasteland.

I asked: What are the crimes of patriarchy?

Not the crimes that condemned one man, but the crimes that condemned all of humanity.

I was startled by the answer. It came almost instantly. I stared at the five crimes on the page and knew—and knew that I knew—that these are the five crimes of patriarchy:

1. Theft of our birthright dignity
2. Being silenced
3. Rape
4. Greed
5. Murder

The moment I finished, my body opened and I had to rush to the bathroom. Where I sat for forty-five minutes until my body had flushed out this horrific truth.

My body always confirms painful truths this way. It doesn’t have to be your body’s way. I hope it isn’t! But, it’s smart to notice how your body detoxifies. Once you know the pattern, you can  trust and honor the wisdom your body is revealing. Thanks to my body’s incontrovertible confirmation, I can stand with confidence and say that these are the five crimes of patriarchy.

So, now I was ready to pray to heal those crimes. And I felt I knew how to do that.

The rosary, as catholics pray it, is a medieval evolution of the ancient mantras to the Maiden, Mother, and Crone—the three faces of the Goddess.

photo by Deasy Yusuf Achmad Unsplash

I do not recommend finding the catholic Hail Mary because it’s full of theological statements that demean women and all of humanity and narrow attention down to one woman, as opposed to all women.

So, here’s my version of a Goddess prayer.

I recommend playing with the language to develop your own. That way you are speaking words you crafted and totally believe. Here’s the outline I follow.

Maiden
Hail sweet maidens, full of graces,
our________________
(This line changes for each of the five crimes)

Mother
Blessed are we among witches and women
and blessed are the fruits of our wombs

Crone
Holy First Crone, Queen of the Living and the Dead,
pray us, dream us, sing us, anoint us
now and at the hour we lay our beautiful bodies down in your beautiful body to be received, renewed, and returned once more

With that prayer outline in mind, let’s look at a brief description of the first crime of theft of dignity and the companion prayer that restores dignity.

First Crime: Theft of Our Birthright Dignity

In the tens of thousands of years before patriarchy, women created and ran businesses, managed production of food, handled money, and left inheritances to our daughters. We chose our relationships and ended them when we wished. We never changed our names. As sovereign leaders in the community, we led rituals and ceremonies. We were revered as healers serving the mysteries of life, death, and return.

There is massive proof of the esteem in which women were held in the archeological review of graves and grave goods and in the structure and layout of pre-patriarchal communities and homes. Patriarchal culture is theft culture.

The Goddess prayer that heals theft of dignity.

Insert this line in the opening section:

Hail sweet maidens, full of graces
our birthright dignity is ours once more

Then speak the rest of the prayer as I have written it or as you craft it.

Notice how it feels to say “our birthright dignity is ours once more.” Notice how it feels in your body, the images it conjures in your mind, and the expansion—including sorrow—it generates in your heart.

If you’re praying a Goddess rosary, you might say this Maiden-Mother-Crone prayer ten times, holding prayer beads, counting on your fingers, taking ten steps in a large circle, or any other way you like. The point is to make it personal and so real that it radiates the kind of love that heals the wasteland.

One more thought: I wrote these prayers to heal the wounds patriarchy has inflicted on women.

BUT, all five crimes are true for the ways patriarchy has abused all people it views as weak, or less, or useful only to extract profit. Witness what is happening right now in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Ukraine, and so many other places around the world.

The crimes of patriarchy are real and they affect everyone. But the prayers are real too. And so are the hearts of everyone who commits to live in reverence.

Next week I’ll write about the second crime, being silenced.

Life is Fragile, Handle with Reverence. And hold fast to your and everyone's Birthright Dignity.

Janet
website: janetconner.com

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