The radical difference between learning and remembering
2024 a year of sacred memory, dreaming dragons, and original prayer
Week 28--in which we ponder the difference between learning and remembering
Friends, soul writers, mystics, witches, and lovers of prayer,
I’ve been pondering what it means to remember—in contrast to the patriarchal command to learn and use what you learn for profit. Although I didn’t know it, this exploration began a long time ago. Twenty-seven years to be precise!
It began as I made my initial discoveries on the page in deep soul writing. As I wrote, often full speed ahead, words would surface on the page that surprised—even shocked—me. I knew—and I knew that I knew—that those words, those ideas, those instructions were not coming from me. They were not orthodox in any way. They did not conform to anything I’d been taught about life, happiness, success, psychology, purpose, or divinity.
I was in new—sometimes delicious, sometimes frightening—territory. And I’ve been swimming and dancing and writing and creating in that territory ever since.
The word territory here is important. It is a place. A field. A field of memory.
I see now that everything I’ve been led to create has been birthed out of that endlessly rich field of memory. And nothing I’ve created has come from anything I’ve been taught in school.
Deep soul writing, for example, gave birth to:
- Writing Down Your Soul—the book that altered journaling forever
- The Lotus and the Lily—the book that upended our understanding of manifestation
- Soul Vows—a whole new way to discover and commit to your highest personal values
- Find Your Soul’s Purpose—a wild spiral walk back in time to birth, conception, and beyond
And then, with the arrival of prayer artist:
- I began to write a whole new genre of prayer as love songs
- found the courage to redefine prayer altogether, freeing it from the constraints of religion
- created dozens of radical prayer intensives
Then witch arrived and plunged me into a deep magnificent memory field.
I know this dance will continue till I die, but here are a few things witch is birthing through me:
- see what patriarchy has done and name it: the wasteland
- listen to the wise pre-patriarchal voices of revered and holy witches
- redefine witch, restore her to her original sacramental leadership role
- commit to embody our seven original WitchArt gifts
- notice what happens when we touch a 7-circuit labyrinth
All of this and more has morphed into The Witch Sequence, a way to slowly and gently develop a loving relationship with the seven-circuit labyrinth and our seven original WitchArt gifts.
The fourth gifts is anointing. Myrrhophore Anointing. There aren't many resources to learn about anointing. The dictionary just defines it as daubing or smearing with oil. It then names a few Catholic sacraments and states that anointing is used to declare someone a king or high priest. There’s not a lot there.
And there’s nothing on the pre-patriarchal practices of Myrrhophore Anointing. The books that might have held original information on who the Myrrhophores were and how they anointed were destroyed when the Library at Alexandria burned two thousand years ago. Centuries later whatever gnostic texts remained were destroyed by the Catholic church in the genocide of the Cathars, Templars, and other so-called heretics.
So if book learning is not an option, what can we do? We can explore what our hearts and souls and bodies remember about Myrrhophore Anointing.
Thanks to my love for Mary Magdalene, I’ve been longing to know more about anointing for over a decade. I have a small library of books about the Magdalene and none of them answer my questions on what oils she used or when and why, where she learned to anoint, or what she was intending when she anointed. And—of great interest to me—did she teach her beloved how to anoint? If so, and my gut says yes, what role did anointing play in his many healings.
Oh, and here’s another question stirring in my heart right now: If Magdalen taught Yeshua anointing, and anointing facilitates healing, and she was always present when he healed…, what role did she play in all those healings?
These are just some of the questions we’re going to explore in the upcoming prayer intensive on Myrrhophore Anointing as we walk this fourth path, the green path of the heart chakra.
Labyrinth map and all graphics for The Witch Sequence are by Cathy Stevens Pratt
But, if there are no written answers, how can we learn about anointing?
The answer is, we can’t. Not in the patriarchal, linear, true-false knowledge kind of way.
What we can and will do is experiment with possibilities, experience what happens in our bodies, minds, hearts, and in the energy fields around us and those we anoint, and explore.
Experiment, experience, explore.
Answers—your personal answers—will arrive naturally and surprisingly. They will surface in your heart, your dreams, your body, your soul writing. They will surface as you make and walk paper labyrinths, cradling a question or pondering as you go.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, you will know—and know that you know—something you never learned.
Knowing will arrive on its own wings at its own time.
And there will be no doubt. Because this kind of knowing isn’t linear book learning; it is spiral memory. It is ancient memory surfacing in the moment you are ready to remember.
These kinds of rememberings happen all the time as we walk the 7-circuit labyrinth. Why? Because the labyrinth is old. So old. She predates all writing, all history, all empires, all gods and their patriarchal religions and cultures.
The labyrinth is, to use Rupert Sheldrake’s brilliant term, a morphic field.
That means all that has ever happened on or around or through the labyrinth is present. The past is present. That means not only is the greatest Myrrhophore, Mary Magdalen, present, but so are all the Myrrhophores. This most ancient witch lineage is present and talking to us on the labyrinth. We have only to open our hearts and listen. And remember.
I had a personal experience of hearing the ancient voice of the Myrrhophores several months ago. I was deep soul writing and beginning to ponder the meaning of anointing, when the words “anointing is the sacrament of remembering” surfaced on the page. And in that moment, although I’ve never heard anyone define anointing that way, I knew—and I knew that I knew—that anointing is both a sacrament (let’s talk about that loaded word) and specifically, the sacrament of remembering.
I cannot tell you exactly what you will remember about the Myrrhophores, or anointing, or the labyrinth as you walk this fourth path, the path of the heart chakra. But I can do this: I can invite you to step into the living morphic field of the womb of our Mother. And I can play with you as together, we experiment, experience and explore.
And I can promise you one thing: you will know—and you will know that you know—that you were once and can be again a living Myrrhophore. A weaver of the sacred mysteries of the heart.
to remembering what your heart has never really forgotten
Janet
PS: This afternoon, I am recording a live conversation about ART 4 and Myyrhophore Anointing with my sister-witches and collaborators, Emma Kupu Mitchell and Cathy Stevens Pratt. It will end with the unveiling of the first ever portrait of Mary Magdalen as an ARCHETYPE!
I invited members of previous witch events. I couldn't open the call to everyone on this list. There are a few thousand of you!
But it is being recorded and will be posted on the page for ART 4 right under the existing intro video. So watch it starting Monday afternoon!
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