SpiritMaa

A cultural priestess, channeling prophetic information for the mission of her organization, for her staff, for those she has taken under her wing - and who takes SO much of the burden upon her shoulders she sometimes forgets to hold space for other's perspectives, and forgets about Self care. 
  

A young wizard woman who wants to open an esoteric school, who has her own spiritual gifts, but has limited organizational and people skills and shoots herself in the foot trying to be top dog, I mean wizard. 

A Voudou priestess, who holds powerful public rituals, educating the community and the world about the healing aspects of the Voudou tradition, is respectful, humble and open - but who is 'ridden by the spirit' so much she has maybe aged before her time? And sometimes manages her group of initiates in a way that challenges boundaries?... 

Another Voudou priestess, whose personal Loa and her own financial acumen enable an extremely successful business and high levels of prosperity - who doesn't pay her staff their wages unless she is chased down, and has trouble trusting her employees.... 

A third priestess who is alchemically and psychicly gifted, manages a successful business - but who is obsequious in front of clients while putting them down behind the scenes.  Who throws a hurricane of energy around, and micromanages her staff to the n'th degree...

A witch who is bubbly, full of positive energy and seemingly a good friend - but is she making spiritually questionable deals with daemons? And why does her friendship disappear when one doesn't want to put their doctorate to work for her at minimum wage?

The Priest of the Dead who channels the Ghede Loa and who spits rum while he's being ridden by the Spirit. But is he dead-infected? 

It's what I came for.  I wanted to learn about women and power, I wanted to meet Priestesses of the African Traditional Religions (and even priests!).  But wow.  Can I just say that the lesson has been reinforced for what seems like the 20th time? Just because someone is on a spiritual path does NOT mean they have done their own emotional healing work.  SPIRITUAL BY-PASSING is alive and well in New Orleans!  

BUT THEN there is the meditation priestess whose energy calms just by entering a room.  Who speaks so deeply from the heart whenever she speaks. 

-And two well known priestesses who make me shake when they lay hands on me. 

-The spiritual brother who offers hands-on energy healing to everyone who asks. 

-A cultural priestess who looks and acts like a cultural Queen - and whose shared words generate spiritual power. 

-The priestesses who welcome all to the trance dance that is a Voudou ritual.
-The Voudou priest so powerful that one can feel it in every drum he touches, every dance he generates and the way his initiate group moves the energy.

-The Black Indian chiefs whose beauty, chanting and drumming call down the ancestors in the streets of the city. 

-The Brass band musical priests who call forth the people in neighborhood second-line parades all around...

Oh my, city of New Orleans.  City of trauma, city of power. City of beauty, city of pain. City of spiritual paradox, city of polarity!

So many pics of him and articles about his terrible nominees - I am feeling overwhelmed and drawn into his game of fear. I am wondering how we stay focused on LOVE trumps hate without giving so much attention to the hate part of the equation? How do we stay alert but not feed into the fear that continues to be generated? How do we stay grounded and focused, take action as we are called, but avoid getting permanently drawn in to the dance of anger?

I believe that NOW is the time to hold steady to OUR world vision, to lift each other up (and all the beautiful actions being taken - protests, sanctuary cities, vets apologizing - YES!), and to stay connected to our inner wisdom. This is the time to stay heart centered. Have our emotions, dance our anger, yes - and then come back to the heart. Stay centered in the heart. Love ourselves and love each other, ask our Guides and Angels to Love on us, and somehow love this moment we find ourselves in. This is the challenge teachers from the high Andes gave us if we want to move into 5th dimensional consciousness. That time is now, and this scary and messy moment - to call LOVE into this moment - this is what we came for!

Kali comes when the demons of greed, war and oppression are out of control on the planet. When neither the male gods, nor the fighting calm of her sister warrior goddess Durga are enough, a force of anger so huge arises that out of it Ma Kali appears and slays ALL the bleedin' demons. Women, might it be time to bow to the primal power, call forth our inner Kali and dance patriarchy into the ground once and for all?

I bow to the primal power.

I bow to the all encompassing power and energy.

I bow to that through which Goddess creates.

I bow to that through which Goddess destroys.

I bow to the Power of the Divine Mother.

Join us as we gather to ask that the human community wake-up; that the old spirits come back, that our ancient practices be renewed, and that the endangered species return. We will together make a LOUD noise to vibrate throughout the worlds. We will lift our faces to the SKY and project our prayers into the clouds. We will ask the Sky Spirits to cleanse our minds, hearts, and bodies; to let the rain come down and wash away the stench of fear, hatred, and violence, and the scars those leave upon our Earth. We will shake our rattles and drum our drums, and let our liquid bodies become one with the rain!

Join this multi-faith effort as we ask Spirit to clear the energy of those who would do harm, to replenish the earth, and to wash away the tears of those who have lost loves ones.

(By Yeye Luisah Teish and paraphrased by Mari Z)

The lower nine were not fine. I had just driven to the 9th ward to attend a wreath laying ceremony in honor of those lost during the levee breaches 10 years ago. I wondered where everyone was, why there was only a smattering of people in room where Obama had spoken just two days previous about ‘recovery’ and ‘resilience.’ And why they were mostly white. I listened to the messages of the politicos – the mayor, the previous state senator, and the former speaker of the house. I walked behind them as we marched down the street to lay the wreath. This was supposed to be a second line. I wondered why the band walking behind us was so silent. And why was there only a handful of people in this march? Where was everybody? And why, when I had just driven by empty lots and houses still in disrepair 10 years later, had Nancy Pelosi chanted on stage – the lower 9 are fine, the lower 9 are fine?

Later at a block party, my suspicions were confirmed. There had been another gathering in the Lower 9. Thousands – maybe 4 or 5 - including culture bearers and ritualists, drummers and Mardi Gras Indians, had gathered at the place where the levees had first breached. Thousands. To pray for those who died in the flood waters. To send out a call to bring the rest home. To speak up for community based – not economic (only) recovery. Oh. That’s where everyone was.

I wanted to see what I had missed, so I watched a local news channel that night. Nothing. The politicos in the almost empty rooms were covered, but the people’s march was not. Then I went online to see what I could find. No online New Orleans news source covered the biggest gathering of the day - maybe of the week. The only place I found photos? In a California based online newspaper. (Thanks San Francisco Bay area for helping cover the real story here in New Orleans!) When I saw the stats later – that 85% of the Lower 9th ward was still vacant, I wished my spoken response to Nancy Pelosi’s chant had been louder, much louder. No Nancy, the LOWER 9 IS NOT FINE!

Pounding the Pavement – a book about being out of work in your twenties, dumbing down your resume, flubbing interviews, wondering if you will find something before your unemployment runs out. Not wanting to settle for something – is that crazy – waiting for something that feels right?… Sounds the same as looking for a job in your 40’s, ahem… Only there doesn’t seem to be so much time left to wait/waste. Although maybe for a 20 something in this market it feels almost as scary as it does to me with a PhD!

Same goes for dating, and looking for a man – it all seems so much more urgent in your 40’s than it ever did before. Ok, let’s be real.  Even if you can pass for 10 years younger, really, who ever thinks they would be playing the dating game at this point in life???? On the other hand, I could say thank God/dess I’m playing the dating game – because I SURE wasn’t playing anything of the sort until I left the west coast and came to this second lining, brass banding, river delta gumbo mix of a place .

Not completely surprised about the job hunting thing because it’s been the price of following my bliss… Finding a job after my 2 years of volunteering in south Texas only took 4 months. Finding a job when I came back from Guatemala only took 3 months. Those were the 90’s though… Finding a job after I got my Ph.D. took two YEARS! Never mind that my dad was sick and I was free to go back and forth visiting him. Still, here I am again, 11 months after leaving the west coast, wondering, wondering… Identifying with the out of work twenty somethings (!), distracting myself with dating, but in the back of my mind hoping all this education and experience will count for something!

I can even identify with the 18 year old who wants to go to mortuary school instead of college in the book Putting Makeup on Dead People. See that title already makes you want to read it, doesn’t it? The loss of her father at a younger age makes her oddly comfortable with all things death related… Everyone around her Catholic family thinks there is something wrong, but in my mind it was easy to see she was just a budding Tantric death priestess (maybe because I’m a Goddess worshiper myself?) Not much to my surprise, there is an eccentric witchy New Age aunt, as well as a Grandpa- like funeral home director (the one who presided over her father’s departure) - who both support her in her quest. The witchy aunt tells her that her future is right in front of her...

Could it be that easy? To see what is right in front of us? It sure seems fuzzy to me right now – I’ve in fact been told to get more clarity on what I want – but it’s one of my strategies to leave my ‘happy match’ job up to the universe. Because I’ve found that in the past, what I thought would really suit me turned into something I didn’t like at all… So what is right in front of me now? Reading thought provoking novels and going out to the lake to meditate and hitting festivals for yummy food and funky brass bands… Is there a job that pays you to do that? 

And Dirty Girls (Sucias) on Top bring us back to the issue of self esteem, size and relationships. Listen to this ‘My body is mad hypnotic, right? Five four, a size twenty curved up in all the right places, 33 years old and men still be begging me for a piece, okay? You know I got it like that, girl…’ And ‘They say the average woman is bombarded from the minute she gets up to the second she goes to sleep with images of skinny women in this country, nena, and… most of us are plenty messed up in the head as a result. You gotta have some psychological armor up to get past all that starving nonsense, okay?’

How’s that for knowing the power of your body and throwing off the dominant cultural forces of female disempowerment!... About someone she is having an affair with, and the complexity of the heart ‘now I’ve discovered that just because one man goes in your heart it doesn’t necessarily mean that the other one is going to get his ass up and leave.‘ Love this – because aren’t I having the same experience, that I can care for more than one man at a time? Maybe that’s just normal (!) - and what ISN’T normal is the thought that women should be monogamous!...

And the sex blog for gringos written by her, a plus size Latina . Who, btw, spent most of her 20’s deconstructing the Catholic guilt thing before she could come into her own sexually! Sound familiar? I’m still doing it in my, ahem, 40’s! How damn long does it take for a woman to feel free to be sexual on her own terms?... And one of her friends, making love to a woman for the first time, and likely only time, says ‘with men, it’s simple, in out, up down, and do it enough times and they get to where they need to go, pop off. But with women – the dance of it is so beautiful. The tensing and releasing, the circular motions, the eternal connection to the creative forces of the universe…..Women are intrinsically holy. We are sacred. We are holier, and more sacred than men. The universe made us like that, and men know it. That’s why they work so hard to contain our power… ‘ Well put, girl!

Of men sharing in a single parent group – ‘they always seem to want to take over every group they participate in, and far too many women allow them to. Men seem to think everything they have to say is more important than what a woman might have to say, and I find the way in which most women simply let them take over to be incredibly frustrating…’ Well, there you have it. The reason why I didn’t want to have men attend my recent dark goddess class. Named in a pop culture chick lit novel – gotta love it!

Want a reminder about how much freedom women DIDN’T have in the last century? Read Girls at the Kingfisher Club. Set in the roaring 20’s, 12 sisters kept in prison in their own home all their lives, and you know something’s gotta give! The oldest takes charge, with their own mother dead after birthing no male heir, and figures out how to secret them out, a few at a time, for a night on the town, dancing all the latest dances they have taught themselves. Though they dance in illegal speakeasy clubs, dancing is what saves them, literally – keeps them from going crazy or from running away...  At some point their father, who knows only a couple of his daughters by sight, sees something in print about a group of beautiful dancing girls that only go out at night.  Suspicious, he decides to marry them off to ogres like himself before they can ‘besmirch’ his good name.  When all hell breaks loose and it becomes apparent that instead the father is going to send them all to the mental hospital, the eldest gives the signal to run. And run they do, separating and spreading out over the city. A bit worse for wear, in the end they find each other, and they are all together again, dancing for their lives…

How dare men treat women like property?? How dare men treat women like slaves?? How dare men treat any human being like a slave?? You see how this conversation devolves into a discussion of gender, race, class, and misuse of power? It’s all related!

And what about On the Right Side of a Dream, where a woman in her 40’s steps out of the Mother role she has had for so many years, moves from the east coast to Montana, makes a new life for herself AND goes exploring around the country? Yes, this book seems to be saying, you can have adventure – you can choose freedom and adventure - at any age! She demonstrates that women in their 40’s can be romance heroines of their own lives. They can be sexy, attractive, and smart, just like their younger romance heroine sisters. And she recommends they also be flexible. In fact Juanita says ‘you have to be able to change course quickly. You never know when the road will get rocky or the flying carpet will change direction… life may turn out the way you’ve planned, just be ready to change the plan a few times along the way!… This is good food for thought right now for me, who just made a huge life change moving to a new city, and is sitting here almost a year later wondering where her job is…

And Juanita asks some interesting questions for a romance heroine. She says living with the rough spots in life is the hardest part. They fester , they scratch, they rub… They stick with us; it’s a test. Can we still smile and love and rejoice even though we have a sore rubbing against the back of our foot? Can we?

Then we have the jewel of the group – Amy Falls Down – a wonderful book about a ‘washed up’ reclusive writer in her 60’s who trips in her yard, hits her head on a birdbath, gives a wild off-the-cuff interview while she’s concussed to the first reporter who’s been interested in talking to her in 25 years, and well, hold on for the ride . It’s not what you think. Her old agent, still alive – barely - gets in touch, people are curious, radio stations want interviews, the buzz begins to grow, she finds herself being witty and no-nonsense without trying, people actually leave comments on her website, and she starts writing again! And we the readers get to see, from the inside out, how one plot device, as Amy would call it – one accident can make all the difference in our lives. Fascinating!

While sharing our experiences of meeting Kali, another of her initiates asked me when my Kundalini got activated, and here is my response:

Kundalini - I think it started getting activated in the middle 90's after I had been meditating for a few years. I started to have kriyas and sexual energy during meditation - at that time I ondered what the hell was going on, and it triggered further exploration into earth based traditions that honored sexuality... (It was also around that time I started doing some meditative exercises from the Native American sacred sexual tradition - Chuluquai Quodoshka)... The last few years on the Tex/Mex border (late 90s) I started to see a red semi circle at my third eye during meditation, and once I met Kali (after moving to SF), this turned into a snake with two heads, and then Kali's eyes (illustrations in my book Fierce Shakti/Fierce Love)...

I wonder if something wasn't activated in the 90s with all my travels to sacred sites in Mexico, and my meeting of Coatlicue there (skull headed and serpent skirted sister goddess), and now that I think about it, I had a large two headed red snake batik from an artist at one of the pyramids in my window for like 3 years - not realizing at all what the symbolism was!   And it just kept progressing until everything blew open when I met Ma Kali during a Holotropic Breathwork session. after that, everything intensified... Understanding that as well as cosmic creatrix, world mother and spirit of nature, Kali is also the kundalini at the base of the spine - i started to understand that she was literally/energetically within me. AND I found a book called The Aztec Virgin that talked about the sacred sexual mystical traditions in Mexico - really, seems it is all tied together!!!

When I talk about following the energy, sometimes I wonder if it hasn't been Kundalini Ma (in whatever form) calling me all along... because in SF the teachers I was most interested in spending time with were the ones where I could feel an energetic, kundalini rising type response when I was in their presence... Part of the reason I worked with the Qeros from Peru for the last 4 years (in SF) was the heart based energy activation I felt in their presence. part of the reason I'm here in New Orleans was the energetic trancy response I had to Voudou rituals.. I'm imagining it's the Kundalini goddess leading me  And she is leading me on a merry chase for sure!  

I'm in recovery from Mardi Gras: two weeks of parades and dancing in the streets! Mythic creatures have been walking, riding and gliding down our mainstreets, including goddesses, women warriors, naked women on horseback, shapeshifters, druids, elves and fairies, not to mention Zulu warriors... Also some more patriarchal stuff, but I avoided most of that...

Now the question is, how to integrate these mythic archetypal energies into day to day life? A nice problem to have! Oh yes, I was also at two voudou ceremonies, so its been an energy packed few weeks!

lalita ma - playful goddess of ecstatic liberation - i see your red energy merge into me - i feel your eyes watching me, adoring me... durga ma - the warrior goddess, calm and certain in battle - i visualize you behind me, breathing out into your heart, breathing you back into mine.  what a shift in the ground of being to feel your protection 'at my back'... bhuvenashwari, the goddess who holds all the worlds within you - what a relief as you bridge the gap between my world and another's, as you help me understand how all worlds, even those of the oppressors, dissolve back into you... and kali ma, my ishtadevi (personal goddess), who we visualize coming out of the dark starry night behind the full moon, shining in starlight, blacklight, silverlight, with your wild hair, red tongue and necklack of skulls coming to absorb/cut away that which no longer serves.... then lakshmi ma, doe eyed and beautiful - the shining one, the one who brings abundance - seeing you as golden light, with gold shimmering from your hands - we breathed your light into our pores... sarasvati ma - goddess of wisdom, goddess of flow, riding your swan and playing your sitara with your wisdom eyes half closed in musical ecstasy - feeling white light pour from your 3rd eye to mine - bang!  sally kempton and her wisdom goddess meditations will open your heart and shift your energy!  jai mahavidya maa~! 

went out to lake ponchartrain, and suddenly i knew that the blue agate crystal needed to go into the lake.  the one i had been waiting to give away throughout my cross country journey had found it's home here in nola.  sent prayers and heart energy into the crystal, for healing of the lake and gulf waters, threw it into the water, and... looked up and saw a buffalo soldier in the cloud formations - native american pose, african american face, and after a while, an indigenous woman's face looking down at me from the clouds....

and oh the music - on frenchmen street, almost every night, getting high from the energy, jumping up and down with the band, the trumpets, the brass and everyone else!... brassaholics, soul rebels, funk and blues.... walking the french quarter and ending up at a caribbean festival instead, then following musicians playing in the street, dancing behind them (oh those second lines!)... listening to a gospel choir at a street festival - high on the energy of the music and this sensual city, again and always:)...

at a voudou festival - listening to the priestesses and priests speak about the west african tradition, feeling the energy at a banishing ritual, walking through the french quarter and feeling like i could be back in time... all the witchy ghosts and ghouly halloween decorations on the balconies.... saluting the ancestors of new orleans as i drive by the many cities of the dead (above-ground cemeteries)... having dreams of river initiations, and feeling the call of the mighty, muddy mississippi...     

road trip east to the green salt sea, jumping, falling and diving into the clear green water, heart expanding with green sea love.  watching the little fish swimming around me, diving under the breakers, absorbing the ocean energy.... white sand, green gulf, dolphins playing and manatee nosing around, spotted eagle ray swimming under the bridge, pelican that came and sat next to me, turning his head right, then straight, then left and back again... what was she looking for?  has she found it?

in new orleans, all you have to do to meet a new friend is go and run an errand or take a walk.  there are no strangers here...