feminism

The Bloody Wound of the Too-Wild Child: Healing Communion with the Maiden and Hunter.

The weather turned warmer, so I dove deep into my Witch’s psyche to see what mayhem I might find.

The Quickening Moon was calling me skyward to the numinous infinite, but my wild beckoned me to dig down into the primal muck of my holy desire and bloody wound. I met them both there, the lustful Maiden and virile Hunter, and they showed me the scarred-over source of my rawest ache. They bid me be fearless and feel deeply, and, when the time came, they held me still so I could not look away.

***

The wild Maiden met me on the overgrown path just as I entered the haunted, fairy-tale forest of my childhood. There was something of the amorous temptress about her, and I recognized her erotic innocence as my own.

She held my hand and spoke of sacred things, dripping cosmic wisdom from her youthful lips as if she were an Ancient, and I willed myself to focus on her words alone lest I be broken by fear of what lay ahead:

I am not the only one who lives here, my love. You know I share this holy ground with the Mother-Healer and Crone-Priestess, but the Masculine lives here, too. The old Sage spiral-dances at the edge of death with his Crone consort, and the competitive, Protector Father makes love with the Mother-Healer under the fullest of moons.

Gender is an illusion here, for your psychic terrain blooms bright with the many colors of the Sacred Masculine and Divine Feminine at once.

A raven cawed to affirm the truth of her words, but I opened my mouth to question the Maiden’s wisdom just the same. Before I could speak, a piercing pain like none I had ever felt burst through my heart and vibrated down all my fragile limbs. I coughed blood and fell face-down in the mud, pushing the arrow deeper. It broke the skin at the back of my heart, then I grew too numb to feel anymore.

He was standing over me then, the ever-passionate Hunter, the part of me that thrives on instinct, nature, and lust, and he took the Maiden into his arms. Together, these two were at once pure feeling and emotional reactivity, unbridled sensuality and sweat-stained virility, nature’s wide-hipped temple dancer, carved god with horns, and everything in between.

They were the wildest parts of my soul, and my weakening heart was bleeding all over the ground just for them.

The Maiden rolled me to side, whispered some brief words of comfort I barely heard, then snapped the feathered end of the arrow. I groaned with all the primal pain of a mother in labor, and she smeared my blood on her face.

This wound is as old as you are the Hunter spoke without compassion. Look at it now with your eyes wide open, see the blood pulse from its edges. Feel your breathlessness, and know your agony as real. You are not imagining it. Suppress nothing, for this beast demands acknowledgment.

The Maiden cradled my head, and I looked into the gushing fountain of red to scry my fate. I thought I would see my body dead and my soul flying into the ether, but instead I saw my past. There was no nostalgia there, for my blood divination showed me a lost little girl wanting her parents to come home. I saw my fat, freckled cheeks stained with tears, and I felt a longing so visceral my bones buzzed with it.

My wound was that of the lonely child who craved the root-nourishment of protection and peace; in its shredded skin and soft tissue I saw a little girl hiding in the corner, willing the screaming to stop, and I saw shotguns and unholy men. I saw churches full of villains, gruesome nightmares, locked doors, and dark basements.

I saw innocence die, and I saw a wild one tame herself too early. I saw fierce, self-imposed discipline, and a small voice. I saw a soulful fire extinguished, and I saw quiet, feigned perfection as the young’s universal solution to being ignored. There, in my own blood, I saw the wound of the Maiden and the Hunter, a vile ache claimed by many, the wound that drives judgment, rage, and greed.

When left untreated, the wounds of the Maiden and Hunter will fester and breed the grossest injustices this world has seen. In my own torn skin, I saw institutionalized racism, soul-denial, spiritual oppression, and ego-born corruption, the sins of the wounded children collective. I saw grown, sentient beings throwing stones like children at those they called foreign, and I saw a government-wide temper tantrum.

I saw hurt children sitting in chairs too big for them, and I saw streams of thick blood running over desks and gavels.

The Maiden pulled the pointed stone from my back without warning, and I let loose a moonward wail before all went white. The last memory I have of the haunted forest is my final promise to the wild ones, for I vowed to liberate their nature-lusting, trance-dancing, and loud-mouthed ways:

I will own my inner Hunter and set him free to move through the world like the horned creature he is. May he handcraft me something beauteous from a hard wood, and may I sense his fierce presence by being wholly in my body and reveling in the orgasmic truth of Spring.

I will own my inner Maiden and set her free to smell the melting rot of the warmer Earth, to weep as she likes and run her soft fingertips over the hard edges of sealed lacerations. I will honor you both by cradling the inner child like a babe left too long in the cold. I will promise her solace and safety, and I will offer her all the soft-breasted comfort I have.

***

I woke warm in my late-Winter bed and took to the page, willing myself to write these words as a ritual of remembrance. Blessed be the Maiden, blessed be the Hunter, blessed be the wild salvation in us all.

***

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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