Hallowmas and Three Circles in L.A.
Oh, how my heart jumps when I drive by the old neighborhood! Hollywood Blvd, Whitley Hill , up the the hill and there is my old apartment, number 1972, like the year I lived and loved there. Everything was such a miracle. The jasmine tree that had a branch reaching into my first lover’s apartment, and bloomed, we never closed the door. The jasmine caressed us as we made love in her bed on the floor. Nobody slept on real beds back then, mattresses on the floor was the way to go. I had become a woman there in that little apartment, a feminist in the first Women’s Center on Crenshaw, and a practicing witch with a coven. Ten years of solid service, 21 holydays a year, solstices and equinoxes and the high points in between plus the full moons. Every six weeks there was a universal holyday to celebrate, to dance to, to climb the Big Rock mountain in Malibu.
Now it’s 30 years later.
The sweetness remains.
Visiting my legacy in Topanga Community center was bitter sweet too. The sage scented the air, wide open skies greeted me, and the women, strong and dedicated celebrated their “mother”. Me.
I felt honored.
Their current High Priestess has just resigned. Never mind, they shared the leadership harmoniously. Sitting on the floor, about 25 of them, had already prepped the sacred space, installed a labyrinth which they used for meditation, set up four different altars, each for an other purpose, one for the Fates, where they could ask a question and receive an answer. A throne for Hecate, splendidly decorated with owl wings and a fine antique chair, where the she sat solemnly. Many elements I didn’t invent, but they were created after I left them, and the ritual gained in nuances. A communal altar where they have lit candles remembering the Burning Times and the women killed today in the name of Islamic gods. Prayers were offered to the ancestors.
The ritual was more introspective and solemn then joyous, after all this is the holyday of the dead.
Before this ritual we had a gathering in the Magdalene Center (Magdalene was Jesus’ partner suppressed by the sexist Christians and called a prostitute). My spiritual daughter Miri has started with a partner, but now she too stepped aside, and let the partner run it. Here they had a fine Goddess art show, they had musical events, and sold some stuff. The store front was a year old; a good reason to celebrate.
Here I talked for about an hour about the good old days, when the goddess movement just started. There were some old friends in the audience who knew me back when. The young ones celebrated the fact that they didn’t have to start from scratch. We took pictures with the old friends and their daughters. Much praise was heaped on me, and I received them gratefully.
The third circle was my own at the Goddess temple in Irvine O.C.
This was “The healing power of a woman’s hug.” I had been impressed by Amma, the living hugging saint, who comes here to Oakland often and gives Darshan. We should have called it a Women’s Darshan, because many women thought hugging should be free.
Oh, but the hug I was experimenting with is set up quite differently. Not just a plain hug. Not an air hug, not a petting hug, nor a boa constrictor hug.
It’s a non-sexual committed hug, when two women embrace each other with heart-on-heart and entrain with each others breathing. This is easy. But when you breathe together, past a minute, old tapes begin to play. Break it off … enough … the urge to stop is great. But if you stay past 2 minutes in this hug magical things begin to happen.
After about two minutes a great crumbling of the walls begins, the warmth of the human heart transcends the personality, you no longer think of this other person as an individual. You stop thinking. Sinking deeper into the hug, I felt a total peace descended on me. A peace so happy, I wanted to hold it for a long time.
The second partner was an older woman, who was a hung up a bit emotionally, and I couldn’t find her outgoing breath. So my breathing was not quite “entrained” with hers. But suddenly after the 2 minutes, I felt I was hugging my own grandmother, my ancestors were all there in her hug. This too also evoked in me a great sense of peace, and a sense of love. Being loved by my own beloved dead.
My third partner was an experienced darshan receiver. She had many Amma hugs already. But this was not hugging like Ammas. She hugs several people briefly, sometimes two at a time. My darshan execersize takes time and sharing the rhythm of breath.
A very different feeling emerged. Her center was like a hot point, like a heart oven, radiating heat and love to me. I fell into a bliss in her arms, just warming all my loneliness, warming the very center of my heart and all my memories.
Tears came into my eyes.
I looked and saw others tearing up as well.
How this unconditional love that was so close, so available, was making us all realize how the divine spark, was in all of us if we could stand it past the 2 minutes. Total strangers could transmit to us the unconditional love of the goddess and create a great peace in our hearts.
When we leaned against each other back-to-back, still breathing together, we asked each other “What is your heart’s desire?” Both of us answered “I want to feel like this all the time. I want to be this blissfully happy.”
I don’t even know the names of these women. They have given me a certainty, not a promise, that we are all One, and any of us can hold us and transmit the unconditional divine love of the Goddess.
