Great Lady Under Earth :: hidden records

The cave, in its relation to the mountain that unites the character of vessel, belly, and earth, also belongs to the dark territory of the underworld. Rock and stone have the same significance as mountain and earth. Accordingly, it is not only the mountain that is worshiped as the Great Mother but also rocks representing it— and her.

Erich Neumann’s The Great Mother, p. 44

She is the snarling stray animal
And the wary urban crow
And the frenzied midroad squirrel
Her hordes are the living animals and their wrathful ancestors who protest their species’ mistreatment
She is the venomous snake and the rattling tobacco pod
The shrine is erected where the scorpions built their fire
She is an obelisk, round and gyrating, stony and lizard-like
Her shoulders give way to nothing,
Just limb and organ, flesh and blood,
Many-breasted, adorned with stalactitic phallus in cavernous vulva
What if I identified the sensation of gravity and kept going that direction?
What I let my awareness get pulled down?

I begin by lying in child’s pose facing toward at the floor. Immediately, the sensation of gravity feels heightened, like I am supposed to notice it, and I bask in its immense pull. Facing downward seems a good way to feel consciously engaged with her; often we are lying on Earth looking outward at Sky, but we should spend some time facing Her, on our hands and knees, or pressed to the ground in child’s pose.

I wait until I feel my body totally relax into the gravitational pull, and my muscles loosen. I pull myself up, grab the Votive Stone, and lie down on my back with the stone nestled on my solar plexus, on my sternum. I feel myself expand and become stony, wide, rotund. I break in half along the vertical midline. I feel my right hand drawn to touch the stone; in doing so, I feel my heart beat crystal clear through the stone. Through it, my hand feels every tiny movement, rush and release of my heartbeat, which is beating quickly. I investigate the anxiety I percieve, and discover something shocking and revelatory: that it is terrifying to be alive. I feel a release of energy at the realization.

Shortly after, as I lay sandwiched between the votive stone above and the floor below, I spend some serious time considering the implications of all of this—the stone, the worship, the descent. As I begin to practice what is asked of me, I am sensitized to the planet. I am acting more intuitively. I feel guided. I feel engaged with. That engagement is the planet’s intelligence. Shortly after the first realization of terror, the second: that it is terrifying to come into awareness of Earth’s gigantic conscious intelligence.

I felt a deep yearning for connection, for interaction with Her. Humans generally are desperate for a feeling of belonging to the Earth, because we no longer feel as though we belong. We have forgotten how to interface with Her.

Imaginally, I try to crack open the votive stone, having symbolically likened it to an egg, but that did not happen. I was corrected: the votive stone is not an egg, but something more like a clitoris. The stone is a pleasure center, because its purpose is touch and intimacy. It is not the fertility of the Earth you are bringing to the Altar, but the potential for pleasure—which is the underlying property of love and, subsequently, fertility and kinship.

Goddess at the crossroads, enthroned at the threshold of the Upper and Underworld,
It is thy hand which shapes the Fates of all Living Creatures.
Monarch of Nightfall and crawling things,
It is thee who is the terror of the storm and the mercy of the rainbow
Queen of the Vengeful and Unjustly Dead,
It is thee who sends forth the restless ghosts of the Earth
Great Lady of the Changing Earth,
Hear our devotions and be merciful unto us.