feminism

The Ten Commandments of the Dark Primal Feminine: Your Wild Coronation.

 

Walk with me, Moon-Child. Move through the mists with me as the veil wanes and the Ancestors’ Moon waxes.

I have fashioned you a crown out of dead leaves and shed antlers, and I have invited the ghosts of our grandmothers to speak at your coronation. Stand on the frozen mud with me and know the merit of these fallow times. Hold my hand in the fertile darkness, and let’s lick the hallowed mystery with our forked tongues.

You stitch up the cuts left by my childhood religion with threads weaved from wolf fur, and I will brew us a ceremonial drink of raw cacao and bitter moon-blood. Sit by the fire with me now, and let us burn their blasphemous texts with some sage leaves, sandalwood, and a good deal of spit.

Let us write our own sacred words, for their laws will keep us bound no longer, and let us tattoo our vows so bone-deep that the children of the future will read them on our skeletons.

Thou shalt not fear the dark, for here we are limitless. The dark is the cosmic, infinite unknown, and it holds all. We are shadow-walkers with keen night-vision, but the blessed perfection of the dark rests with the not-knowing. Here we know nothing and everything at once because here we are blissfully free of certainty, supposed-tos, and right-nows. Relish the dark as the feminine source, and know yourself as the Goddess of Destruction, the old wise Crone, and the wild woman who has poured harsh turpentine on the painted landscape of her psychic ground.

Thou shalt rest in your depths. We were not made to be ever-moving and ever-bright. Let me hold you while you drift to sleep, and I will whisper that your sacred work will wait, that your lover wants you whole, and that even the highest frequency She-God sinks into a depression every now and again. Close your eyes as the afternoon light dims to evening, and close your ears to demands for attention. Just for now, trust the cyclical nature of your energy, and know that the high-fire in your belly will rekindle when the time is right.

Thou shalt pray with your body, for your venerable flesh, your pranic breath, and your magick blood is holy. You are a living benediction. I am on the cold ground in full-body prostration to your sanctity, and now we pray for our global collective. May we all open our legs and birth the world we crave. May our children know their wild worth, and may no one claim ownership over our warm bodies or untethered spirits.

Thou shalt mourn your dead. You can hold hands with death, commune with the Reaper, but still grieve those who have passed into the ether. Build an altar with me, my love. Let us cover it in graven images of dark Goddesses and animal skulls, then sing with me our loved ones’ favorite songs. I vow not to dry your tears but let them bless the ground in a fluid funeral to our matrilineal spirits, and you hold the dead roses together for me while I wrap them in black lace.

Thou shalt honor the wolf within, for the dark Primal Feminine is hungriest on these days. Let us leave this place now and run through the forest wailing like mischievous banshees. The ghosts will not judge us if we get on all fours and unleash enraged howls at those who have wronged us, so let us become our own power animals before we remember propriety and manners. You make the most unladylike noise you can, and I will twist my face and bare my teeth. We will be feared, Woman, and all of our senses will thank us for remembering how deeply our roots grow.

Thou shalt re-envision the macabre and stroke the gravestones of strangers. Become again the strange little girl for whom they used to pray. Admit again that you really do see the misty shapes and hear the disembodied whispers. I will share my ghost stories if you share yours, then let us shield ourselves and seek out the orbs of those who have not moved on. Let us pray for them as we would the wayward living, and let us ask for their ancestors to bring them home.

Thou shalt know yourself as a dynamic, living mandala of sturdy earth, holy water, wild fire, gale-force air, and cosmic ether. You are a blessed shapeshifter, and I will expect constant change from you, nothing more and nothing less. If nature was static and immutable, would we learn as much from Her as we do? Teach me how to be many things at once and claim no sustained truth, and I will teach you how to dismantle the indoctrinated beliefs that inhibit your untamed, white-blue spirit and your majestic jewel orange sex.

Thou shalt let no one contain your magick within steadfast laws and hierarchical orders. You were born a High Priestess, and so you will remain until the day of your death. No Witch is choiceless, and feminist spirituality demands the constant validation of your agency. Use your magick to create the world in which you want your daughters to live, and I will do the same. Chant with me now, my love. Cry out to the directions and proclaim your autonomy. Raise your arms moonward and affirm you are here.

Thou shalt know the impermanence of your flesh. Dance bare-breasted with me in the cold night, and feel the soft soles of your feet pinken and grow raw on the forest floor. We are alive, my love, but not for long! Return with me to the altar we built with our own hands, and let us give our own eulogies. I will speak of your bright eyes and wild hair, for your soul will endure but your heavy body will not. You talk of my freckles and my long Witch’s nails, for I will miss these the most when I am in the ground. We have come here to affect all the change we can, Sister, we two small cells in the one, great, beating heart of the Mother, so we better get to it. Let us waste no more time in this dark forest of the undead. Put on your crown and come home with me. Let us gather all the sustenance we can before Winter consumes us all.

Thou shalt trust the ever-spiraling wheel, for what is dark now will again be light. I feel it, too, wise one; I sense the beauteous breathlessness of this dark-mooned, black-holed void. Tell me not to panic, and I will light my oil lamps in the afternoon for you. I will cook you a grand harvest feast in honor of your coronation, and we will speak of our pending rest over pumpkin pie and nettle tea. When we have fed on the most forbidden feminine tales we know, let us built a nest of blankets by the fire and warm each other while our lids grow heavy. Let us keep each other safe in the dying light, and let us breath-pray gratitude to the holy dark in our sleep.

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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