Sri Yantra, Sacred Sexuality, Mann and Lyle.

In the traditional PaGaian Summer Solstice ceremony, the fullness and wholeness/unity of being that is celebrated in the peaking of Sun’s light at this time, is expressed in the ceremonial invocation as a dyad poem, or “Conversation of Union” as I name it. It is my adaptation of Starhawk’s “Invocation to the Ground of Being”” in her book The Spiral Dance[1]. I understand this poetic conversation as expressing the unity of “form” and “formlessness” – of “manifestation” and “manifesting”, the power of the light and the power of the dark, both qualities present at once in this Solstice moment of interchange: like radiance and dissipation. These qualities are always present together and in union, but may be celebrated particularly at Summer Solstice, when the year’s light phase turns into the year’s dark phase.

The participants in the ceremony form two circles facing each other, and chant their lines to each other in turn[2], kind of like a conversation. I have written it in this way:

Inner circle:                                                      Outer circle:

Nameless One                                                      of many names  

Eternal                                                                 and ever changing One

Who is found nowhere                                        but appears everywhere

Beyond                                                                and within all

Timeless                                                              circle of the seasons

Unknowable Mystery                                          Known by all

Mother of all Life                                                Young One of the Dance

Engulf us with your love                                      Be radiant within us

Inner circle steps back into outer circle, forming one circle:

All (with actions): See with our eyes. Hear with our ears. Breathe with our nostrils. Kiss with our lips. Touch with our hands. Open our hearts. That we may live free, joyful in the Song of all that is.

The whole group then enters into a toning – a harmonising of voices, that may be felt as a practice and experience of relationship with self, other and All-that-is: three layers of relationship of Cosmogenesis that form the basis of this PaGaian cosmology[3]. (For an introduction to that, perhaps see “Cosmogenesis – an Introduction” in PaGaian Cosmology Chapter 2, though it is woven throughout the book.)

Joyful and deeply rich Solstice to you! (the actual Moment this year is 22:23 UT 21st December or 8:23am 22nd December EST Australia, which is where I am … for other global times see archaeoastronomy.com.

© Glenys Livingstone 2018

Image:

Sri Yantra, Sacred Sexuality, A.T. Mann and Jane Lyle, p.75.

References:

Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Lincoln, NE: 2005.

Mann A.T. and Lyle, Jane. Sacred Sexuality.ELEMENT BOOKS LTD, 1995.

Starhawk, The Spiral Dance. NY: Harper and Row, 1999 (3rd edition).

Notes:

[1] Starhawk, The Spiral Dance, p. 131. Starhawk notes in the second edition (1989) of The Spiral Dance (p.234) that this invocation was originally written in 1977 by her ex-husband and herself for their wedding.

[2] Each line is chanted three times; that way the timing for the response from the other flows easily.

[3] I explain the experience of the three qualities in PaGaian Cosmology, Appendix F, page 297: “Each is feeling for their own true expressive voice, listening for the others, and it is all coming out of and going into a Larger Self: the toning that arises is co-created and yet it is coming from the Well of Creativity itself.” See https://pagaian.org/book/appendix-f/

Summer Solstice/Litha
Meditation:
$2.80  

 (Track 1 and 2, CD 3 of PaGaian Cosmology Meditations)