feminism

The 7 Deadly Sins of the Wild Woman: Flawed to Perfection.

 

Lustful, she is, for her sensual nature has irrevocably bound her to Holy Desire.

What evangelists condemn as sloth is her reclamation of sacred solitude and her right to rest. Her greed and her gluttony are but guiltless consumption of life’s succulent marrow, and her envy is fuel for self-transformation. Her wrath is like none other, for the wild woman has had her divine birthright stolen.

She has been born into a world where her venerable sex is blamed and burdened, and she has learned to harness the pulsing, painful power of her scabbed-over wounds as fuel for social change. Yes, she takes pride in her skill as a shadow-walker, and she will make no apologies for committing these life-giving, generative sins.

The deadliest sins of the wild woman are far more loathsome than those committed against any external deity, for they are those she commits against herself. These are the subtle acts of soul-denial that are fully sanctioned by New Age mandates, and for which she will find easy redemption in the arms of priests and priestesses who prey on the spiritually starved.

The seven deadly sins of the wild woman are those we have all committed in the name of ascension, and they have all been equally integral to the excruciating rerouting of the divine quest away from the light and downward into the fertile dark.

Bless us, Mother, for we have sinned. This is our first confession, and these unholy sins have led us to you.

1. The Sin of Spirit-Centrism

Faced with the spiritual poverty that affects every woman alive today, born under patriarchal dominion and robbed of the Feminine Divine, the wild one may easily commit the sin of spirit-centrism. This is the sacred fool’s first step on her wild heroine’s journey, and it is inevitable because the diamond light of spirit promises complete absolution. It is irresistible in its seeming brilliance.

The white-robed ones say Come into the light, young one, transcend all that you are, and we will swaddle you in the warm blankets of detachment. No need to trouble yourself with the evils of this world, for it is all an illusion. Let us slice into your ego and use the pieces to fortify our own arrogance. Don’t look down, wild one! We are so high above the unenlightened, and we cannot risk lowering our vibrations. Forsake the ones you love, for they are not on your frequency.

Lured by these glittery promises, the wild woman severs ties to her body, her sex, and her Creatrix-nature. She becomes spirit-centered rather than soul-centered, and she considers herself raptured by the light.

Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned against my wild soul and looked outward for my own divinity. Grant me the strength to descend, and let me know my worth as a mud-caked She-God who needs no external validation.

2. The Sin of Shadow Rejection

Blinded by the dazzle, the wild woman succumbs to shadow rejection. There is no room for the most sacred and wounded parts of her soul in the spiritual cage, the traits she detests so emphatically in others but denies as integral to her own nature, so she digs a deeper hole for them.

The wild woman commits the sin of shadow rejection when she insists she is not vulnerable, emotionally volatile, sexually vibrant, and all that roots her bare feet firmly in muddy ground. She loathes those her gurus would label asleep, for the bright light of spirit must have decided they are unworthy of awakening.

She rejects her shadow and, with it, her love of the luscious body and hedonistic hunger for sensual nourishment. She binds and buries her right to rage, feel, and bleed, and her shadow weeps like an orphaned child hoping to be heard.

Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned against my primal right to feel sensuously and rage unabashedly. Be with me when I harvest my shadows and integrate these psychic prisoners back into the terrain of my wild feminine world.

3. The Sin of Complacency

In the absence of her righteous anger and emotional integrity, the wild woman commits the sin of complacency. She has been told her power lies only in universal compassion and blind empathy. She has been told the evil-doings of others are but a projection of her own self-loathing, that she has handcrafted and attracted every sword that has ever cut her flesh.

She has been faulted for seeing demons, and she has had her trauma neatly boxed and relabeled as a learning experience. Her will has been snuffed out, and her birthright as a change-agent has been forgotten. She is a woman whose hands have been severed; after all, in the spotlight of spirit, there is no need to affect change. She is complacent, a holy victim of the new age.

If the global landscape is perfect as it is and the universe is unfolding as it would independent of her presence, there is no pressing need to keep the fire burning. Passion and purpose mean little, and the wild one’s skin grows cold.

Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned against the holy healers whose hearts still beat beneath the ground; they cry out to me to raise my voice, my sword, my fist, in the name of the Witch’s justice, and I will sit back no longer and watch as the uninitiated masculine ego runs roughshod over our Earth. Walk with me, Mother, when I seek out the Holy Wild, and reassure me when I feel dismayed at the slow-to-shift nature of our outmoded society.

4. The Sin of Dark Goddess Phobia

Taught to shun her shadows, the wild one begins to fear death, blood, and the divine Feminine Dark. She equates the fearsome Goddesses with evil, and she forgets the merit of letting parts of her world die. She unlearns the skill of sacrifice, and her psyche is bogged down by layers upon layers of futile and irrelevant knowledge.

The wild one forgets how to change and evolve, digging her claws deeply into supposed-tos and tried-and-true roles. In fearing the Feminine Dark, she fears half of who she is as a woman, and she clings to shortsightedness.

Death is the inevitable end to her body’s dance on this planet, and by denying her right to small deaths at the end of every physical, emotional, and spiritual cycle, she stays blind to the fertile void, the dark moon, and the source of all. We are impermanent, and those who fear the dark easily lose sight of the temporary nature of this present incarnation. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, but they do not grow on clouds.

Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned against what I know to be true. The Dark Feminine Divine is the great exhale, the blood on the birthing bed, and She is coming for us all. Be with me when I look into Her red eyes and see my future there. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for Her black wings will wrap around me like a blessed death shroud before I sink deep into the warm depths of the afterlife.

5. The Sin of Subtle Feminine Loathing

The reclamation of the wild is a spiritually agonizing process during which a woman’s deeply indoctrinated beliefs about the Feminine Divine emerge. Upon her first venture into the dark, often following a dark and seemingly endless night of the soul, the wild woman reaches out to hold hands with the Goddess.

The sin of subtle feminine loathing is committed when the wild woman frames Her as fluffy, inconsequential, or a tool to be wielded. Just as often, it comes from the cultural appropriation of deity for one’s own; in the absence of a profound respect for the true She-God nature of the feminine divine, such actions are akin to patriarchal imperialism.

In doing so, the wild woman sins against herself by at once identifying as Goddess and encaging Her. In awakening to her divinity, the wild woman is in danger of shackling the Goddess to the same immutable stones that bound her own shadows.

We must not forget that we have been raised in a world where the Feminine’s denigration is pervasive, and oppression will nose its way into any new belief system if we are not vigilant.

Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned against my own divinity and that of all human beings by failing to closely examine my notions of Goddess. Be with me when I do not recognize all aspects of Her as me, and nudge me when I become apathetic about my holiness. Help me to keep every cage they built for Her wide open, and remind me where I put the keys should I misplace them.

6. The Sin of Guilt

An immense and many-waved guilt washes over and through a woman when she begins to authentically know herself as the Wild Divine. She feels guilty for denying her holiness for so many years, and though she claims to have no regrets, a deep-seated yearning to have that youthful time returned to her overcomes her in the quiet moments.

She lights candles for the loss of her Maidenhood, and she writes forgiveness letters to those she wronged before she reclaimed her shadows. Alone in the dark, the wild woman chants mournful dirges for resources wasted and the misinvestment of her precious love.

Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned against my newfound, cosmic worth. I am God-Goddess-All Things Holy, but I am not infallible. Relieve me of my guilt and my shame, for my childhood ghosts still know where I sleep.

7. The Sin of Immutable Truth

So beauteous is the Holy Wild, so majestic in its perfection and she-magick, that once a woman finds it, she will hold steadfast to everything she now knows to be true. She will unwittingly place the same expectations on her wild spirituality that she did on her outmoded belief systems, refusing to let the cosmic infinite wax and wane.

The wild truth is a shapeshifter, and a woman can become disappointed, often to the point of feeling betrayed, when she wakes up a different woman she put to bed. The sin of immutable truth is committed when she forgets the multi-phased nature of our world, when she burdens herself with lofty expectations of always, supposed to, and never again.

She will begin to frame her own belief system as the one true way, rationalizing this assumption by asserting its accessibility and soul-affirming nature; and yet, the notion of the one true way has been responsible for the most vile and egregious acts ever committed by human beings in the name of spirituality.

Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned against nature. Remind me that I am ever changing, as are you. Remind me that anything I know in my bones to be true has been tasked to do its wild work on me; when it is finished, it may self-destruct. Stay with me while my sacred work rolls forth to start revolutions and then gets stuck in a ditch.

Stay with me when my soul is on fire, and when it is frozen in an ice-block of loneliness and depression. Stay with me, my Mother, my love, my She-King, when I forget that everything and everyone in my world is here to affect me and be affected by me, and that this sacred chaos cannot be accurately predicted by any oracle. I was born to ever-change, and there is no utopian plateau I can reach that will halt my evolution.

The soul-sanctioned mandate I have been given is something I will both unconditionally trust and inevitably question, for this is the way of the Wild Woman.

In the name of the Mother, the daughter, and the Holy Wild, I pray. All blessings be.

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Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky

Danielle Dulsky is a heathen visionary, Aquarian mischief-maker, and word-witch. Author of 'Seasons of Moon and Flame: The Wild Dreamer’s Epic Journey of Becoming', 'The Holy Wild: A Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman' and 'Woman Most Wild' (New World Library 2020, 2018, 2017), Danielle teaches internationally and has facilitated embodiment trainings, wild circles, communal spell-work, and seasonal rituals since 2007. She is the founder of The Hag School and the lead teacher for the school’s Flame-Tender Facilitator Training and online coven, The Hag Ways Collective, an E-RYT 500 and YACEP, a Fire-Keeper for Ord Brighideach, and a dedicant to Irish-Celtic spirituality. She believes in the power of wild collectives and sudden circles of curious dreamers, cunning witches, and rebellious artists as well as the importance of ancestral healing, embodiment, and animism in fracturing the longstanding systems supporting environmental unconsciousness and social injustice. Parent to two beloved wildings and partner to a potter, Danielle fills her world with nature, family, art-making, poetry, and intentional awe.
Danielle Dulsky