Birth is still Dirty, War is still Profitable, Eclipses and Opportunities

Art: Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder

BIRTH IS STILL DIRTY, WAR IS STILL PROFITABLE,

ECLIPSES AND OPPORTUNITIES.

I was raised as a Christian. A Member of a pretty liberal Congregational Church. With all of its progressive sensibilities, as a child, I still got the central message of Christianity; Goodness, an external orientation to the world, was the only way into heaven. All other roads lead to hell.

After my parents divorce, the rose colored glasses of faith fell away, and I began studying all of the world’s religions. There were pieces of each that appealed to me. But not having fellowship, other people to practice with, made this a lonely path, and I longed to return to the ritual and pageantry of the church.

So after getting married, I attempted a homecoming to the Church, despite the harm they caused me as a young single mother, when they were less than welcoming.

As a young pregnant person, my own congregation had pegged me as Mary Magdalene, rather than the revered Virgin Mother. I don’t know why it mattered then. It was the only place I felt unwilling to hold the projection of being a “Whore”. Everywhere else in my community, I wore my pregnancy, my fertility, my sex, with pride.

For years as a young wife, I ushered my family to church on Holiday’s as a LukeWarm Chrisitian. I went through the motions of being a “good” (externally oriented) woman.

At this point, I had three sons. 16 years on from the birth of my first son, I felt my daughter enter my field and could not wait to meet her.

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I’ll never forget the day I left the Church for good. It was within a month of my daughter's birth. My cousin-in-law and I both had daughters a mere week apart. We had decided to bring them to the Maronite Catholic Church she attended to have them Christened. We met with the priest who intercepted us in the side vestibule church entrance. He instructed us to turn around, go back out into the cold weather, and meet him in the front entrance of the church to avoid walking through the sanctuary. When I inquired as to why we weren’t permitted to enter the church, I was informed that my post natal bleeding made me unclean, and therefore unworthy to stand inside.

I stood there numb. I couldn’t make my feet follow my friend to the Christening Area. I walked back to the car, seething in anger. WTF? It’s 2011 and this is still happening? I wasn’t going to sign a holy contract on my daughter’s head with this institution. No way.

Waiting for her to finish, I cast my mind to the story of Genesis. Where, for the sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Eve and Her Daughters, were cursed for eternity. That was the moment that birth became dirty and being born was cast as the original sin. In a flash God came against Women, incarnation AND GNOSIS.

Yet he laid no such curse upon Cain for the killing of Abel. No such curse was ever made against, war, and violence, and murder. The curse was for the sin of wanting “To Know”. And more than anything, at this moment in the car, being shunned from the Church again for my sex, I wanted to know what Eve learned when she ate the fruit. And figure out how this story, that imprisoned women, and the power of birth, could play out differently?

With a story that held women in their power, and gnosis. With women recognized as the portal to the otherworld I had experienced four times already. There is no greater power, I presume, than feeling your body open to the cosmos to allow another soul to incarnate. With just the mere potential to create life, to have carried a womb, to have been imprinted with the codes, how can woman be anything less than Sacred?

Taurus season always reminds me of the Tree of Life, The Tree of Knowledge, and the Garden of Eden. It often feels like a key to reclaiming what was lost for us. Ruled by Venus, My Sky Dancing Queen of Heaven, it’s always felt like she held a secret. A clue that could help us move from patriarchy, into partnership.

With Mercury, the writer and communicator, Mr Mind, of the Zodiac, now conjunct the North Node (rahu) and the upcoming Eclipse on April 30th at 4:28 pm EST at 10 Degrees Taurus, conjunct Uranus, Planet of Higher Consciousness and Individuation, it feels like an ample time to rewrite this story of perpetual domination and imbalance.

If we remember, Eclipses are Dragon Holes, Story Nodes, places where the narrative can suddenly shift. With the North Node, that can be in the direction of where we are headed, and what we have accumulated along the way. Are we going to continue to reinforce the "War is a necessity" plotline, or look for peace, and empowerment, through gnosis, and sensual pleasure pursuits?

The happier and more fulfilled we are, the more we feel internally resourced, the less the inclination towards violence and separation.

The choice is ours.

As each of us embrace cooperation, caring, and partnership, the energy does shift. As each of us dives into the work to “Know Thyself”, to be grounded rather than good, (internal orientation) which is THE WORK of embodying Venus’ Mandala, we get closer to the more beautiful world we know is possible. And the greater the chance we can exit a paradigm that in the year 2011, still holds that birth as dirty and perpetual war as profitable. We’ve honestly not moved on much a decade later.

Get out your pencils, don your erasures. The time to make edits is now.