feminism

She Is Risen, Just as She Said.

 

She was not publicly shamed in a thorny coronation or heralded as an ascended savior, but Her suffering has lasted longer than six hours.

She is the Hunted Feminine, the red-hooded rebel, the bride of God. For thousands of years, she has embodied and endured the collective torment of the invisible woman. She has been written out of his-story, Her holy verses torn from their sacred books and condemned under the guise of sacrilege. They poured turpentine on Her face and wiped away the rugged, resplendent beauty that was Her.

They shunned Her wisdom, scorned Her birthright as High Priestess, and Her crucified Lover wept for Her from the ether and pounded His still-bleeding fists against the stone walls of His purgatory, cursing the prophets who claimed to love Him for their green-eyed narcissism. He waited for Her there, whispering into Her ear while She slept and promising that, one day, She would rise.

Her soft body was never nailed to a cross, but She housed all the anguish of a mother who fears for the lives of Her children inside of Her ribs as She smuggled Her babes out of town and toward the sea. She bid them be nameless and to not speak of their majestic patriarch who was put to death for preaching in the language of sacred love.

She swallowed all her tears when their small voices whispered to Her in the night, wondering where He had gone and why He had been taken, and She stared long at the quiet waves after Her little ones drifted to sleep, begging the old Pagan Gods to bring them justice.

He watched His mourning Lover, standing next to Her as a truly holy ghost while She sifted through countless memories of their hand-holding, sex-prayer, and bitter bickering over whether to stay and die or run and live. He watched while She cursed His memory aloud, and He haunted Her dreams every night, vowing that one day, She would rise.

The Magdalene has no book of verses in a Bible written by men who scorned Her presence while their prophet still lived. Children do not sing Her hymns in golden cathedrals built on the bones of non-believers, their small voices crooning songs of love and innocence without irony in an unholy house built from blood money on a cracked foundation of licentiousness and power-hunger.

Her voice promised to bring balance to a religion poised for domination, its founder dead and powerless to oppose those who appropriated hHis beauteous philosophy and dipped His wisdom into tar, but She was robbed of Her right to speak and be heard.

Long years they have sought solace in each other’s spectral arms, their souls grieving for a world left scarred by their vision, a promise of purpose and unity come too soon to a species still starved for blood. She speaks to Him through sobs, kissing His forehead and promising one day soon, She will rise.

No holidays have been named for Her, but this is indeed Her holy day. She lay prostrate under the cross, blessed by the slow drip of Her lover’s blood and crying out in righteous rage against His killers. She crushed Her eyes closed against glimpses of the violence yet to come, weeping for the ones hunted, and casting futile binding spells against the crusaders, the inquisitors, and the Witch-crazed.

She has been crouching shoulder-to-shoulder with our Jezebels, Salomes, and Delilahs, Her name stolen to be used as a tool to keep wild women small, quiet, and tame. All the while, She has been waiting to rise, waiting for vindication, and embodying a particular patience only a Goddess they called Demon can possess.

She carried the body of Christ from His tomb on Her bare back with Her sisters, the weight of spiritual patriarchy on the aching shoulders of the Feminine, and She carries Him still. She is the strong-boned one crawling through the darkness and risking it all.

She is the promise of a compassionate, flourishing world that has torn up its insidious roots of consumption and planted the heirloom seeds of the Cosmic Infinite, dark and light, and blessed Mystery. She is a living insult to injustice, and She is risen, just as She said. Come, see the place where She lay; it is beneath every burning star of every age.

She feeds the fertile soil, and sparks within our very blood as it pulses in time with the drumbeat of the collective feminine heart. She is not sacrilege. She is God-memory. She is not blasphemy. She is the origin.

She is every burning woman condensed into a single incarnation of red-hooded grief. She is every mystical vision granted to an otherwise ordinary creature. She does not ask to be worshiped. She asks to be seen. Look for Her in the long-lashed eyes of the Witch, in the hips of a soft-bodied temple dancer, in the flames of funeral pyres, in the tears of crying men, and in the preservation of childhood innocence.

Look for Her, then go quickly and tell Her disciples, those wild ones who are beholden to no one. Look for Her, and know She is here.

***

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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

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