| ||||
| ||||
| Soul-Power
| Authentic Voice | Archaic
Knowing | Labyrinth | Inner
Guidance | Connection to the Mother | Origin
of Dreams | ||||
| Resonance with the earth. | ||||
|
The blood in our bodies carries iron. Woman's body center is rich in blood: the blood coursing down from the heart through the abdominal aorta, the blood rising up to the heart through the vena cava, the blood spiraling through the intestines, the blood infusing the womb of the uterus—its lining entirely blood-rich before the flow of menses. Blood-rich, the belly is iron-rich. Iron answers the call of magnetism. Iron, when heated and hammered within a magnetic field, itself becomes magnetic. When we dance within the field of the earth's magnetic attraction (and where on earth can we otherwise be?), when we move in rhythm and breathe in ways that compress and heat the body's iron-rich center, we activate our body's center as the center of our magnetic field, strengthen that field, enhance our magnetism, feel the kinship, the connection, between our body and earth's body all the more keenly. We feel kinship with the earth and all her creatures. Rocks, stones, plants, animals: every creature dwells within the magnetic field radiating from its center. When we energize our bellies, enliven them, we magnify our sensitivity to the flux in the magnetic fields all around us. We receive a sense of place, a sense of community with all of life; we receive knowing that is immediate, direct—knowing that bears names such as intuition, prophesy, insight, precognition, telepathy, vision, wisdom. And we know we are connected.
In Voices of the First Day, for example, Robert Lawlor writes of the aboriginal Australians: “Magnetic fields of influence integrate the universe, earth, and every living creature so that each communicates its rhythmic essence in resonance with all the others…. In Aboriginal terms…magnetism is the voice of the earth's Dreaming…, a voice to which the Aborigines listen with great care—a voice to which our civilization has become completely deaf.” The rituals of tribal women in Australia, India, Old Europe, and elsewhere have beckoned us to enter states of being in which we resonate with the flux of the earth's magnetic field, refreshing ourselves in that alignment, that attunement, as the iron molecules in our very blood align our cell bodies with the magnetic lines of force emanating from the earth. Rolling upon the earth, rubbing against stones, climbing through holes piercing rocks; applying blood, ocher, henna, feathers; belly dancing: these are ways our ancestors have immersed themselves in their magnetic response to, their resonance with, the earth. The strength of the earth's magnetic field rises and falls in cycles: should we be surprised? Woman's blood fills and flows, the flow begins and ends; the moon circles, the galaxies spiral, civilizations come and go. Lawlor suggests that we are now approaching the end of a long interval of stability in the earth's magnetic field. As this period of stability draws to a close, the earth's magnetism gradually diminishes. “Recent measurements of the average strength of the natural magnetic field,” he writes, “show a gradual decline over the past several decades, which is consistent with archeological evidence of an overall decline over the past 10,000 years or more.” The evidence suggests that the change in the strength of the earth's magnetic field occurring millennia ago coincided with the dissolution of woman-centered, goddess-revering cultures. Now the field's changing intensity appears to coincide with the derangement of patriarchal culture and our impulse to reclaim the Sacred Feminine. A vision, a knowing occurs to me. When the earth's magnetic field is strong she feeds us, mother to daughters. When, in time, her field declines, we are called to feed her. We do so by strengthening our bellies, enlivening them, making them all the more magnetic with our breath, song, movement, dance.
Our culture no longer attends to the voice of the earth's Dreaming. What I believe: This voice now craves to speak through women. The voice of the earth emerges from us, presses through us, when we speak directly from our deep selves, from the bellies we have magnetized, energized, and attuned through dance, movement, breath. What I picture: women encircling the globe, belly-strong, belly-proud. Our magnetic fields merge, forging a container in which we hold, stabilize, nourish the planet who has nourished us so tenderly. We hold her through this period of waning that is prelude to her waxing strong once again. We dance, we honor the mother planet's energy in ourselves, we share that energy with her once again, with our love. Reference: Lawlor, Robert. Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime, Inner Traditions, Rochester, VT, 1991.
| ||||
|
Soul-Power
| Authentic Voice | Archaic
Knowing | Labyrinth | Inner
Guidance | Connection to the Mother | Origin
of Dreams | ||||
