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Bone Woman: Conscious Eldering
Articles by Yia
Excerpt from She Rises: Why Goddess Feminism, Activism and Sprituality?
Hwang, H.H., & Cargill, K. (eds). 2015, Mago Books
Why Goddess: A response from a disciple of the Hearth
Ancient Archetypes: A modern perspective.
Below are some snippets from The New Initiates, a book I am currently writing on contemporary rituals, rites of passage and their on going effects within a modern cultural setting.
Persephone awakens and finds herself in the rubble. A landscape littered with the remnants of all unhealed relationship. She associates Love with shadow, pain, grief and shame, she yearns to participate with her Artemis sisters, maidens of spontaneous freedom. She feels like a fake.
The Persephones I have met, have highly sensitive natures, they are tuned in to the unspoken dynamics that occur in relationship and community. The young ones I see through my counselling work have wounds that don't seem to heal, cutting, anorexia, depression, some diagnosed with schizophrenia and most, unnecessarily medicated. They are flung into initiatory depths without process, holding or validation from community.
Family violence, minimisation, sexual interference, peer pressure, accident or traumatic event has made them very raw. This very rawness gives them an amazing capacity to sense the inauthentic and patronising. Their emotions can fluctuate from very high to levelling out into the lonely lands of dissociation and depression. They are mistrustful on one hand and want to please on the other. They are well and truly in the realm of Hades, cut off from the nurturing warmth of the Mother energies.
There is Hope for these early initiates, with ongoing validation and support these wounded maidens can heal. As their experience becomes integrated, rawness matures into healthy intuition and becomes a great asset.
The many journeys of descent and ascent through the cycles of life enable her to see more clearly in the dark. Transformed by facing her fears, she sees the rubble is the treasure. She becomes the wounded healer, a mentor to others in the dark journey.
So Why Goddess, Feminism, Activism or Spirituality? Why begin with Persephone Goddess of the Underworld?
Our present paradigm is ruled by an overculture that prioritises wealth and power. In the Persephone myth, Hades/Wealth and Zeus/Power collaborate in the abduction of Persephone/ Innocence.
In the west, we are supposedly living in the wealthiest period of the human experience, and yet we are living in time poor societies. Beauty/Nature/ Woman/ Children/Other are exploited, families are stressed trying to survive in synthetic systems built on Greed.
Our children are experiencing the hardening forces of a money- driven culture, and our daughters are entering into premature darkness when they should have Artemis, Goddess of the Wild Soul, as their ally.
We need a feminism that can actively retrieve the trapped Persephones from the shadow lands for a healthy society to thrive. I don't mean to take away the necessary initiatory portals that descent brings, but many are stuck and cannot find their way out.
Most Persephones become mothers. A mother is a child's first teacher, which is Why I start with Persephone in these writings. If she doesn't transform her story, she passes on her wounds. Intergenerational wounding can be healed within a Demetrian consciousness, and women-centred circles and activities can offer sanctuaries of support to guide women back into the light of community.
Tragically at present in this country, Women's refuges are being closed down by the unhealthy alliance of the Hades/Zeusian political structures.
A Spiritual Groundswell
Feminism and Activism are needed more than ever now, but the question is how? I have observed the minimisation of the term Feminism, and Activists are looked down on as they rock the boat of the consensus status quo. They are seen as getting in the way of Wealth/Hades and Power/Zeus.
It is extraordinary to me that the desire to treat each other and our planet with respect should be an issue at all. I have great respect for the first waves of feminism whose activism laid the foundations for equality and created languaging such as Domestic Violence and much more, to reveal the harsh inequities within our culture. It allowed women to be visible in the male dominated arena. These pioneers have created the conditions, a kind of sanctuary, which has enabled women to journey deeply into the landscape of the collective wound. To connect with ancient stories
of Goddess and Myth, to reclaim Women's Mystery Teachings, to engage in cyclic consciousness and to honour the thresholds moments. To Heal. This is How we start.
She is the Modern Shamana!
I am deeply grateful for the Women who have brought the language of Goddess, her myths and stories into the light. Such valuable tools through which to recraft and birth new myths/stories upon the foundations of the old. I am grateful also to the feminists who make women visible and respected in this world and to all the acts of activism the large and small which are in service to the wisdom of the heart. And for all women who have ever lived back through veils of time; we are all connected through the divine mystery of our gender!
These are exciting times as the collective Persephone is awakening to who we really are, Love embodied.
Artemis helps girls to build a healthy Will function through the physicality of the body and connection to nature. This enables them to build resilience and strength through climbing trees, sport, swimming and running. I believe that girls should be given the opportunity to experience a relationship with wild nature. It helps them build self- confidence, to establish boundaries where necessary and activates a free and independent spirit. Sadly what is often projected onto them is either the unmet wishes of the mother or projections of prettiness, and what I find sad - a mean competitiveness, a reflection of corporate driven desire.
Our beautiful young girls, rich in potential, are being constantly barraged by sexualised images of the feminine as the norm. The Aphrodite impulse of beauty, sensuality and creativity is abused and used as a marketing tool for corporate gain. The other rich archetypes/allies of a woman's psychic life diminish in importance and growth is inhibited.
The home, once the sacred hearth, becomes a breeding ground of dysfunction, the consequence of living in a constant state of over-production. Friends don't pop in to visit any more, relatives are seen more and more infrequently, the warmth of extended family is replaced by connecting on social media; connections become disembodied, Love, a 'Like' on FB.
Demeter: Goddess of Gracious Generosity,
tending the pure seed.
I am a first generation Greek Australian woman. My journey with the idea of Goddess, first spoke to meover 40 years ago with my discovery of Jung's exploration and analysis of symbols, dreams, myths andarchetypes. Having this 'language system' informed my experience of life, giving it meaning and relevance.Into this framework I heard whispers of the wonderful work of Marija Gimbutas; the idea of womencentred societies made me very excited and fuelled my curiosity to discover more. And then I came uponJean Shinoda Bolen's Goddesses in Every Woman in the late eighties. This wonderful work spoke loudly tomy core; my Hellenic DNA woke up from its deep amnesia and connected me to something ancient, potent, abundant and exquisite.
Persphone: Queen of the Underworld.
Transmutes the wound and illuminates the dark path.
A spiritual groundswell can be felt within the collective feminine, through the rapid growth of theRed Tent movement in many countries around the world. This new wave of spirituality, birthingthrough the women's mystery circles, answers a deep soul need to be in communion. Toinitiate our girls within frameworks of safety, to honour our fertility, sexuality, to honourour elders, to reclaim self respect.
Reverence for all Life
What I see as the common thread and motivating force of Goddess, Feminism and Activism isReverence for All Life. Reverence for All Life becomes our common Spirituality.As the Persephone within us all is awakening, she becomes an effective agent of Change, aConsciously Evolving Woman. She becomes Queen of her own Underworld experience andtakes responsibilty for herself, her choices and her emotions. She becomes “Boss of Self” as Minmia, Wiradjuri senior Law/lore woman, names it.
This Consciously Evolving woman can liberate the dismembered soul bits of not only her ownhereditary patterns but the inherited cultural belief systems of limitation. She is the forerunnerof a shift in the global collective consciousness. Symbolically I see her as The Sacred Hearth,whose radiance has the power to heal and inspire. She has the ability to birth new ideas, newconcepts and becomes a visionary for a future that is unfolding with every breath.
Excerpt from She Rises: How Goddess Feminism,
Activism and Spirituality? Volume 2
Hye-Sook Hang, H., Beavis, M.A., & Shaw, N. (eds). 2017, Mago Books.
Sacred Engagement
Nature as mirror/metaphor/personal reflection
To stop, be still, to allow the Present Moment to commune with me is HOW I experience the ever present divinity of Creation/Goddess. A gentle breeze caresses in this moment, a few leaves gracefully fall the long distance to the ground. Insects are going about their work, an ant walks over my foot and the tin roof creaks as the sun expands its surface. Now, I hear the wind move the high branches and the breeze is stronger, awakening the wind chime with a gentle sound. I feel a call now, to stop writing, and go down to the creek. The movement of the air has called me to visit the water. I return after a quick dip and drink from the bubbly little creek.
Recently this creek was a powerful being, swollen with flood waters, transforming the landscape, both in its wake and along its journey. I contemplated the power, the flood of emotions that happened in our lives at that time. The landscape of our lives was transformed by unexpected crises that have now settled. In flow again, but moving differently like the creek, I allow the sound of water gently moving to wash through me ... This is a fragment of HOW I relate/listen to Creation Creating itself. The following is a brief description of HOW Goddess, triggered a transpersonal awakening that altered my engagement with Life.
Goddess Persephone and the Hadian Journey
Reading Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Goddesses in Every Woman in the late 80s awoke such a recognition in my Psyche, that life was never the same again. I awoke. I became conscious of the psychological/hereditary/mythological patterns that held me so strongly. I could see that I was caught within the power of an ancient myth. The myth of Persephone, the version that many of us are familiar with, the journey of loss, descent, dismemberment and alienation.
In my case, it was sexual violation, a literal abduction when I was only seven. The women that came before me also experienced the abduction of their innocence before it was ready to offer. Layered over this was a holocaust witnessed by my mother, that destroyed the foundation and fabric of a thriving village that lived for centuries in tune with a sacred engagement with the seasons.
I was living this story through my life and relationships. I inherited it through my bloodline. The oceans of migration could not wash away what was deeply embedded pre utero. To access my Original Soul became a task that I had to consciously dedicate my life to.
Art as Activism: The Bride Stripped Bare
I have had the opportunity to create large installations in warehouse galleries and it is here, in the public arena, that I have been able to bring together Goddess, Feminism, Activism and Spirituality as an act of social comment. The Bride Stripped Bare was the name of a piece that depicted Nature as Bride/Persephone. I created a large shop window. Within, and spilling out from this structure was a bridal gown, trapped in the hem and the train was rubbish, collected from the city streets. On the back wall, attached with band aids, were images of pollution and the clearing of old growth forests. Also behind the gown were pictures of land degradation, a consequence of the overproduction of agricultural lands. Demeter’s Gifts exploited!
Hanging from the ceiling were plastic roses with ‘Made in China’ labels tied off with bandages. In one corner a smouldering bridal bouquet rested on pictures of the devastation of Tibet after China's invasion. All around the circumference of this installation were shattered mirrors; these represented shattered lives, not only for those who died, who were wounded and homeless, but also mirroring the collective loss and helplessness we experience as cultural extinction unfolds before us. This piece linked the violation of The Female with the violation and exploitation of nature and a sacred culture. To see a wedding gown, a potent symbol in itself, with garbage gathered in its hem, and dragging on the fabric of the train, evoked a felt response in observers. The smouldering bridal bouquet laid over images of environmental ravages of Tibet, was like a wedding gone ‘wrong’. Nothing to celebrate here, where inequality between People and Nations leaves a smouldering aftermath. For me, Feminism is to see all people as deserving of equal rights that are sustaining; to revere and advocate for Nature, Children and Animals; to honour our Original peoples; to do no harm.
The Bride Stripped Bare was my public expression of activism. The aim, to trigger a gut reaction as opposed to an intellectual concept. Above was a snippet of HOW, Activism wove into my creative, spiritual expression of Goddess. The first description was a personal piece, the second public, but both reflected my reaction to the culture of Oppression that affects us as women daily and it is a task to stay focused, in the Heart, and not be minimized by the over culture and its machine of capitalism.
Goddess Tara and Bone Woman
Thirty years or so have passed since this piece, and many altars have been created and dismantled. The Goddess’s allies continued to guide and enabled the development of many aspects of myself. The Eastern Goddesses entered my life and I became a White Tara initiate. This enabled me to face shadow aspects through a tantric engagement with life, which fast tracked my journey to my Original Soul. It was intense and grueling and left me so Bare at times, I could feel my Bones scraping. This Goddess heralded in my perimenopause, and revealed the karmic unfolding of everything in my life. The story is too long to share in this writing, but I wanted to share that a new creative piece was born out of this experience. I call her Bone Woman. And she danced me into a new expression of self, where I performed her publicly after stripping myself down to bone, shaving my hair, revealing my post mothering body. Bone Woman demanded that I shed the illusions of Beauty that society finds acceptable. I felt a storehouse of universal grief pour out, powerful forces surged through me to cleanse and purify.
I was stripped bare of all illusions and the safety that illusion brings.
Observe and Serve
Goddess, Feminism, Activism and Spirituality are all interwoven elements that are essential for my life. They have at their core, Respect, Reverence, and a Recognition of the sacRED connection of All Life upon this Earth and her place in the vast mystery. The exquisite journey with Goddess has acted as a bridge, calling my Soul home to a place of Gratitude, Humility and Beauty. Persephone, now matured from many descents, observes with open eyes, and consciously journeys to the Core at the Heart/Hearth of Self to listen to the spirit of the Earth herself, Gaia. This is the place where the Sacred Witness resides, the Inner Wise One that tends and awaits patiently until she has an audience with Us.
This is HOW I serve.
Altar Consciousness
I began to create sacred art installations – altars. Altars to the archetypes, the Goddesses of my Greek heritage. This is how I began the journey to my conscious evolution. This process enabled me to alter the patterns that held me captive. One of the first altars was called Metamorphosis. This one was dedicated to Artemis, Goddess of Wild Nature and the Moon, Medicine Woman, Feminist, Defender and Protector of the Vulnerable.
Artemis, Goddess of the Moon and Wild Nature, Protector of the Virgin Soul This piece was created within a glass cabinet. In this cabinet was a Goddess figure arising out of shards of token mirrors. Above the cabinet was a large mirror, with the word ‘Metamorphosis’ written around its perimeter. The idea was to shatter an old perception of self, to allow the birthing of something new. I needed a new operating system, to shift from the shadow lands of an abducted Persephone. I wanted to craft myself an Artemisian consciousness, to find the path to my Original Soul. This figure had no head, I lived a life where I overthought everything. She had spears, a symbol of focused direction. She was naked, shedding of projections and inherited accoutrements. On the back wall was a collage of many Goddesses, allies in waiting ...
Artemis: Goddess of the Moon and Wild
Nature, protector of the virgin soul.
Hestia, Keeper of the Sacred Hearth.
Enter Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth
“Begin at the beginning. Begin with Hestia.” An old Greek saying. I became a Disciple of the Hearth. I tended, sorted and became a community weaver, with a strong emphasis on women's business. I studied counselling and shamanic practice. Slowly I refleshed the Bones, slowly, slowly reCreating, reCrafting meaning.
Hestia’s sacred tasks of Clearing and Creating enabled maintenance and connection to myoriginal Soul. Living a rhythmic life, rich in the atmosphere of a day, a moon cycle, a seasonalcycle and connecting to the portals of potential that are always there, connects me to theweather within. I now stand at the centre of my Life as a Sacred Witness and when I strayinto judgement, intolerance and negativity, the discomfort I feel alerts me back to a sacredengagement and connection to everything. This Hestian consciousness affects so many choicesat so many levels.
One of them is to make sure that my bank is not investing in harmful practice. I choose asustainable energy provider. My superannuation supports ethical projects. I minimise purchasesfrom super market chains. These are some of the ways I continue to be 'Active', it is not perfectbut it is a start to keep the sacred Hearth clean. All of this personal journey and more is HOW Ifreed myself from inherited dynamics, from family patterns, to the marginalization of being achild of migrants to the hypocrisy of the overculture. I do this to free my daughter and her futureprogeny from carrying these dynamics into the future.
Today, I am writing from an old open shed in the Australian bush, on the property that has claimed me as custodian, HearthGround. Surrounded by giant blue gums, rocky hills, the sound of lyrebirds and cicadas, I can just hear the movement of the creek through the trees. And now a gentle breeze. I acknowledge the spirits of the first peoples of this Blessed area, the Darug and the Darkinjung, and I offer my Deep Respect.
Excerpt from She Rises: What....Goddess Feminism,
Activism, and Spirituality?
Quarrie, D., Min, D., Hirsch, C.C., & Hwang, H.H. (eds),
2019, Mago Books.
Bone Woman Calls
I will not have my sacred time on this beautiful planet gobbled up by banality and the constancy of striving beyond the flow of a day, a season. My activism expresses itself like this: to hold a conversation with full presence and respect, to feel the trees, to allow my heart to flow into the beauty of nature, to enjoy the sounds of a fresh flowing creek after the rain. To BE in communion with myself, family, nature and community is my inheritance and I treasure this dearly. It hasn’t been easy to arrive and claim this inheritance. I had to journey so many times to the Underworld, descent after descent into the shadow lands of Bone Woman. Scraping away layer upon layer of cultural and genetic patterning. Journeys enriched with tears of heart break, the toil of overcompensating, anguish at not belonging and heart racing moments of ecstasy when the wonder of being an evolving human within an infinite system of creation creating itself, revealed itself to me.
I see Bone Woman at the place of transition, she is the ancient one, the voice of the Earth herself. Though she will express differently to each of us, she strips one down to what is essential, what is authentic, she is the true lover at the core of your being who pulls you apart til only love is left.
Out of the Borderlands
The border lands of our psyche are transitional thresholds that contain opportunity for renewal and reinvention. They also contain inherited loops/operating systems from family and the values of the over- culture that have influenced us in our formative years. In my work as a transpersonal counsellor and women’s mystery teacher, I journey with women to their own borderlands and act as witness as these default settings start to fracture.
I have found that sometime around the 42nd year, a threshold moment in the life cycle, some kind of disruption begins for women and coincides for many with the beginning of perimenopause. Bone Woman starts to stir and Rise Up, values get challenged and everything that once had meaning and relevance begins to strip away. When women maintain a silent /passive, response as a default setting within the paradigm of the over culture, the rich emotional life that acts as a wise guide, settles deeply into the archaeological layers of the psyche. Incrementally these daily compromises marginalise the untended emotional inner community and the great SHE /intelligence, connection to the Oneness, that lies beneath all the layers, becomes restless and needs expression. An anarchy of emotions can erupt when the authentic soul tries to free herself of unhealthy cultural and hereditary accoutrement.
As women start to take responsibility for their own story, they liberate dismembered soul parts, not only of their own hereditary patterns, but the inherited cultural belief systems, and in this space something new is born.” (“Bone Woman Calls: Perimenopause as Shamanic Dismemberment by Yia Alias in Womens Mystery E Journal).
It has been thirty years since the beginnings of peri menopause in my 42nd year. The year that Bone Woman called me to wake up. Her
voice echoed loudly into the core of my being, it came from deep in the ground of this ancient landscape and there was no distraction great enough to hide behind. I was unmasked, stripped down, my concepts of Beauty and the values that were enfleshed by the over culture were stripped from me. My metaphoric skin was scraped away revealing Bone. I was left bereft of identity.
It became my mission to enflesh myself with things that had meaning, that had truth, sacredness and substance. A new identity started birthing, with this birthing came aging and with aging came eldership and new responsibilities. Holding family and community in my heart.
Bone Woman Returns
Now twenty years on, synchronising with the #MeToo movement, Bone Woman has made a return. She found the cracks in my new and comfortable skin. I felt that my full identity needed to be ‘seen’, to be authentic and real. Dormant wounds that I had made peace with, were revealed publicly: abuse, abduction, violation and racism. This time she took hold of my voice and made it her own. Great shame came through at this public exposure, not the wounds themselves, but shame in speaking of them publicly. This revealed to me the collective silent shame that women endure on a daily basis. My voice cracked, I found myself struggling for breath and I literally began to speak in a voice that was deep and croaky as I became ill.
This was a powerful healing moment, one that connected me to my lineage of Greek village ancestors, women of strength, women of humour, women of resilience, women of stories and women of healing.I can feel them smile as I have found my inner authority, a voice that strives to meld truth with love and love with courage. I pay homageto these ancient Souls that bear witness. I feel that I have finally arrived.
Consciously Evolving Women
So many women are soul searching, seeking to create lives that have meaning and are hungry for growth and learnings to nourish their lives, families and community.
As each woman becomes responsible for her own journey and calls in support from her community of sisters to act as her sacred witness when she journeys with Bone Woman, she is restored. And in this restoration she becomes a forerunner in the shift of a new global, collective consciousness. She has the ability to birth and support new ideas, new concepts, and becomes a designer for a future that is unfolding with every breath. The groundswell has burst the banks and what a blessing it is to be present in these times to witness this shift.
The power of the Divine Feminine will not be held back any longer.
She is here!
Image: Kathy Sarginson
Bone Woman: A Shamanic Mystic
As I contemplate the question, “What is Goddess Feminism, Activism and Spirituality?” for me, what comesthrough the interweaving of these concepts, is a desire to live life fully, to have my experience of it uncontrolledby systems based on power, greed and inequality. For me these concepts do not stand as separate parts but flow,into each other so that each enriches, enlivens and supports each other. Activism is awakened into being, byRespect, the true foundation of Spirituality. Feminism upholds values of equality and reverence for all life. TheGoddess work connects us to our sacred heritage via our bloodlines, mythologies, stories that ignite an inner recognition of our part in the Oneness, the beautiful mystery/creation that we are embedded in.
Recently I saw an image that commanded my attention! A drawing, created by local Australian artist Kathie Sarginson. I recognised this image as a force that dwells somewhere in theborderlands, of not only my psyche but also in the collective.Artists are our visionaries, and out of the transpersonal landscape,this image has burst through the cracks in the framework that hasheld together our western capitalised lives. I recognised a femininepresence, a shamanic mystic who encompasses the wreckage inflictedover aeons, of power over and disrespect. She is a transformer, aprocessor of our dormant wounds, a truth speaker and she bearsher scars as her adornment.
She says No to the sanitising of the human experience! No to the disrespectof the planet! No to the filth of pollution! No to violation!No to rape! No to humiliation! It is no surprise to me that this imageame through at the time of the #MeToo movement.
She is no longer Rising. She is here!
Chapter 42: 'Bone Woman, Shamanic Mystic' from Unfolding Journeys: Ways to Connect
By The Universal Conscious Community (eds). 2021, Universal Energetic Healing Association.
Click here to find the bookClick
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