feminism

To Muck up a Pristine Priestess: Racism, Activism and the Dark-Moon Crucible of Goddess-Loss.

 

Forgive my low vibrations and bitter indulgence, but let’s not be so quick to send only our healing light and ethereal, pity-filled prayers before going about our boring business.

Last night, I dreamt of a faceless Witch who wandered through the misty woods, waking sleeping Priestesses by conjuring up the long-limbed and far-reaching pulse of dark destructive will that had long lain dormant inside their fleshy bellies. One by one, she brushed their pristine hair from their ears and whispered to the cunning demonesses resting inside their ribcages to set fire to their host’s agency.

Body by resting body, this ancient Witch hissed to the over-hushed wild ones to thaw out their immobile, icy frames, and permit these seething entities to rise up and rise out against both blatant and subtle racism, deafening and silent hate, political and social xenophobia, visible and too-hidden hierarchies, and the soul-damaging indoctrination of bigotry worming its way into the hearts of the young.

I see you, this Witch whispered to one bleary-eyed and terrified face as she only just began to feel the Dark Feminine twist and wriggle against her slow-warming guts and fast-beating heart. I see you, a quivering heap of soft, wet skin streaked bloody by lips bitten hard and nails dug deep into fists shaped by a most rigid and as yet unreleased rage.

 I hear you, she affirmed to another who pursed her lips so tightly they all but disappeared. I hear your whimpering weeps choked by a particular and wicked ire and strangled by the still-strong weeds of demure, feminine grace.

I know you, she howled to them all. I know you, many-armed Priestesses blessed by certain privilege and fervently pushing the edges of acceptable activism. In the name of all you consider holy, stand the fuck up.

I can smell you, too, for you reek of the salty rust of red-stained thighs and sweaty crevices where you’ve buried the rawest incarnations of your power. Stand the fuck up. Don’t brush the dirt from your knees or smooth your hair. Clear your throat and hock some spit onto your sleeping sisters. Wake them so they can see the scaled and beauteous horror that is you.

Open your mouth, and arch your stony spine so the long-toothed, fork-tongued She-God that has slept wrapped around your bones these last long years can finally crawl out and speak out against the insidious racists and condemn the orchestrated inequities shaping this land you still call home.

You are pregnant with Dark Feminine justice. You are in the final, thousand-year trimester of gestating the foretold eruption that will irrevocably shake down these unholy systems and slice through the ignorant armor-skin of prejudice that is our wounded world’s curable birth defect.

She won’t romance it for you, sweet Priestess, and there is no drug strong enough to numb the labor pains heralding her ascent from the hell-bowels where she was cast.

I beg you not to swallow the willful wails and impolite curses that want to spew from your painted lips; they are hers, they are ours, and they are remembered, ancestral incantations emblazoned on the molten centers of the very stars that gifted us the elemental matter of which we are made.

Don’t shrink now, Priestess. You’ve been waxing poetic about new worlds and warrior women this whole time. Don’t you dare push your face into the warm solace of moss and dirt. Not now, not at the eleventh hour. Open those scrying-mirror eyes of yours to those stark and tangible faces of white-power-seekers and use all the magick you have to bind those thin-spined beasts.

Uncover your ears so you can hear what you’re up against, and open your mouth wide so the fem-fire inside you can climb your tongue and ride your breath straight into the rooms where attack-plans are made and signs painted with slurs are hand-crafted out of thick, religion-validated and institutionalized racism and politically sanctioned, xenophobic sludge.

I want to hear you! the Witch screamed, and the sea of tormented Priestesses stood on shaky legs and bellowed forth vitriolic prayers spoken in a collective mother-tongue. I want to know you really mean what you say when you speak of power and passion! She snaked through the crowed with a curled finger beckoning forth every Goddess of Destruction from every culture and every time.

I want to taste the musk of transmuted, righteous rage as it wafts from your deepest, most fertile parts, and I want to watch while it shocks and overtakes those who want only to dilute the sheer force that is our wildest and most wicked will. Trade your tears for fury and muck up your silken robes, for there can be no permanent sanctuary, no forest temple of ongoing retreat, for the Witch who longs for justice.

As if called by name, the opaque and sparking smoke of Her curled moonward from the mouths of the most timid Priestesses who now stood on a holy birthing bed for She who would be most feared by the powers-that-be. This ceremonial reckoning moved their sure-footed bodies and newly born shadow-creatures to circle not in soft and handheld grace but in strong-boned ferocity.

Theirs was not an ephemeral sisterhood marked merely by shared biology and mutual disgust for the ways of the world; theirs was a timeless bond forged in the dark-moon crucible of Goddess-loss.

Theirs was not a coven of selfish and silent magick; theirs was a loud-mouthed and wide-hipped Craft that rallied and raged against senseless privilege and pinched the pink skin of those who failed to practice the very Priestess-power they preached. Theirs was the truest majesty of Dark Feminine destruction, and the Witch led each wild one, backed by her gruesome demoness, out of the mist and into the world.

***

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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