Celebrating the three qualities of Cosmogenesis

– differentiation … each unique being: to be is to be unique

– communion … the related web: to be is to be related

– autopoiesis/subjectivity … the sentience of the Creative Cosmos: to be is to be a centre of creativity.[1]

oOo

We may say in the Winter Solstice ceremony:

“Let us celebrate this Sacredness, Her eternal Cosmogenesis, in the Dance”.

The “Sacredness” is invoked and recognised in the sacred space, known as present within each participant. In Winter Solstice ceremony the sacredness is imagined by the story being told as of Old: that on this night “the Great Mother gives birth to the Divine Child”, and that “the Divine Child is the new being in you, in me … is the bringer of hope, the evergreen tree, the return of warmth and light, the centre which is also the circumference – All of Manifestation. The Divine Child being born is the Miracle of Being, and the Unimaginable More that we are becoming.”[2] We, the celebrants, recognise then that we are each Creator and Created – one cannot be birthed without birthing at the same time. We each participate in Her eternal Cosmogenesis – as “Mother” and “Child”, a “whole Universe” – “Thou art That” is the blessing each gives to another around the circle. Then we dance this eternal Creativity in The Cosmogenesis Dance.[3]

The dance has three layers, which is understood to represent the three aspects of Goddess, the Creative Triplicate Dynamic that the ancients were aware of – imagined in so many different ways across the globe. As Triple Spiral She is a dynamic that was apparently understood as essential to on-going Cosmic Creativity, as it is the ancient motif lit up by the Winter Solstice dawn at Bru-na-Boinne (known as Newgrange) in Ireland. The three aspects poetically understood as Goddess celebrate Virgin/Young One – Urge to Be as I have named this quality – the ever new differentiated being, Mother – the deeply related interwoven web – Dynamic Place of Being as I have named this quality – the communion that this place is, and Crone – the eternal creative return to All-That-Is – She who Creates the Space to Be as I have named this quality. The three layers of the dance may be understood to embody these. The Dance represents the flow and balance of these three – a flow and balance of Self, Other and All-That-Is. It may be experienced like a breath, that we breathe together – as we do co-create the Cosmos: at Winter Solstice we each specifically light a candle for the new being coming forth in us this year, and we join together in expressing the “flame in our hearts” with which we may re-generate the world, as the Sun has always done.

The Cosmogenesis Dance that we do in the ceremony expresses the whole Creative Process we are in. It is one of complete reciprocity, a flow of Creator and Created, like a breath. There is dynamic exchange in every moment – that is the nature of the Place we inhabit. The dance may help us to get it, and to invoke it. Every year when we do this Dance, we want to do it again soon!

See The Cosmogenesis Dance on YouTube

NOTES:

Re featured image: Triple Spiral of Bru-na-Boinne in Ireland, which I understand to express the multivalent qualities of Cosmogenesis, as well as the triple Goddess as She was known in that Place, Eire-Fodla-Banba.

[1] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry name these three qualities in The Universe Story, p. 71 and describe their nature pp 71-79. I have identified these qualities with the Triple Goddess, and the Triple Spiral in the synthesis of PaGaian Cosmology: see particularly Chapter 4.

[2] from the traditional PaGaian Winter Solstice ceremonial script offered in Chapter 7 PaGaian Cosmology, and acknowledged there as inspired by Starhawk, in The Spiral Dance.

[3] This dance has been known as the Stillpoint Dance. I first learned it by that name from Jean Houston. It took years of dancing it before I recognised the Cosmic Triplicity present in its form, whereupon I re-named it for PaGaian ritual purposes.