PaGaian Cosmology

This article is actually a whole workshop that you may plunge into if you wish: it is based on the pre-conference workshop by this title for the 2019 Wise Women Gathering (NSW Australia), where I (Glenys Livingstone) was a keynote presenter. The article (as was the workshop) is a contemplation and invocation of each self as an embodiment of three qualities of Cosmic Creativity, the omnipresent Creative Dynamic Unfolding the Cosmos, as Goddess may be understood; and sometimes expressed as Triple Goddess. I have named these qualities of Hers as She Who Creates the Space to be (Old One), She Who is the Urge to Be (Young One), and She Who is this Place of Being (Mother).

This has been essentially my quest, where it began consciously almost decades ago (1979): that is, the quest to find that I was such a Place, as each being is, a place of the Cosmological Unfolding, a place with that integrity, knowing original presence in my being. This seemed especially important to a female person growing within a culture that excluded her subjectivity and autonomy. Thus I studied Her, immersed myself in Her, celebrated Her, to take my part in the re-making of Her world.

To begin:

You may like to have a small altar with three candles in centre, and some objects that may represent these three cosmic creative qualities for you (as you recognize them at this point – they can change), and you may light each candle as you proceed. It is good to have one candle in the South-West (the darkest quarter of the year in the Southern Hemisphere), one in the South-East/East region (the early light quarter of the year in the Southern Hemisphere), and one in the North/North-West region (the fullness of light and beginning of harvest in the Southern Hemisphere).

The invocation and contemplation begins with She Who Creates Space to Be, the Dark Old One: that is where all begins, in Her darkness. She is not necessarily simply the “Old One”: that is only one of Her manifestations. Indeed all three qualities are complex in their expression.

Images of She Who Creates the Space to Be – Dark/Old One/Crone

Old Dark One/Makes Space to Be/Crone Slideshow

You may choose to replay the slideshow as many times as you wish, and/or to pause the slideshow at each image, to receive it, and also something of the brief story offered.

“She is about resistance, loss, the emptying out. She is deep Wisdom, and deep Creativity – Transformation beyond our knowing.”

“She is about Love of All-That-Is. She returns All to the sentient Source, to the All-Nourishing Abyss. She is Compassionate Receiver.”

“There is a time for the waxing and there is a time for the waning. She is the Dark Sentience within, to whom you belong – from whence you emerge and to whom you return.”

BRIEF STORY ON EACH IMAGE

• Kali 1700 C.E. India … an image of the Awesome Universe. (Austen p. 79)
• Coatlique 1400 C.E. Aztec – personifies the forces of Nature, destroys individual forms of life that they might be reborn(Austen p. 87).
• Aditi 1800 C.E. India – “the Hindu Goddess of the Void. Her name means “abundance” and “creative power” in Sanskrit. Aditi is the primordial space, the womb from which all creation arises. Perhaps like the quantum vacum, out of which all comes – the fertile Emptiness(Austen p.66).
• Medusa – Contemporary 2000 C.E. Serpent Goddess of the Libyan Amazons representing “female wisdom” and a lot more. (Walker p.628). To recognize her is to change our minds (Livingstone, 2017).
• Ceres – a grain Goddess. Source of sustenance and Reaper, a Goddess “of the night” (Neumann, Pl 60).
• Selket 1400 B.C.E. Egypt. Both scorpion and swallow … chthonic and celestial. Goddess of transformation, death & rebirth – she both protects birthing and nursing mothers and escorts the dead to the underworld and instructs them in its customs (p.88 Austen).
• Persephone (Durdin-Robertson p. 161) … both Daughter and Wise One, on a journey seeking wisdom and to restore beauty: a redeemer. To restore Persephone to dignity of Redeemer is to change our minds.
• Chamunda 1000 C.E. India: praised with: “only terrifying to those who oppose Her, for Her devotees She is a powerful vigilant guardian. Chamunda belongs to the group of ‘matrikas’ – the powerful Mothers who ensure universal order.”(Getty, p. 85).

 You may like to light the candle in the South-West– in the name of She Who Creates the Space to Be, She Who Creatively returns us to All.

For reading: refer to PaGaian Cosmology, p.99-106 or see Restoring Her as Creative Triplicity: She Who Creates the Space to Be 

Contemplate:

Visualize a waning crescent Moon, curving to the right – in the dark Eastern sky. See Her there in your mind’s eye … Her light decreasing, Her darkness waxing. Feel the comfort of Her darkness as it grows, beckoning rest, beckoning deeper Knowledge.

The Dark One in you is wise, infinitely old. Feel your own age, the age of the elements that form you … they go all the way back to the beginning. You go all the way back. The wisdom of evolution, of the story, the Transformation of the Ages – the Cosmic Unfolding – is stored in every cell of your body-mind. You are She – dark and ancient Wise One. You are Old, so old – your bodymind infinitely wise.

Make some brief notes – a single word, a phrase or image – so that you may come back to this if you wish.

Invocation of Young One – She Who is the Urge to Be

Images of She Who is the Urge to Be – Young One/Virgin

Young One/Urge to Be/Virgin Slideshow 

You may choose to replay the slideshow as many times as you wish, and/or to pause the slideshow at each image, to receive it, and also something of the brief story offered.

“She knows Creative Lust for Being. Virgin Goddesses of many cultures have guarded perpetual flames representing this purity of purpose and passion.”

“Her arrow flies true and on centre.”

“She is Passionate and Exuberant about Life – about bringing forth the new, midwifing the particular self and its expression.”

“This Urge to Be is determined, focused, a warrior of spirit.

She is born only now, new – capable of all invention.”

“She admires her own Beauty, and the Beauty of All.”

BRIEF STORY ON EACH IMAGE

• Aphrodite 300 B.C.E. (p.132 Austen) – She who holds all things in form – embodying holy Allurement: essential attraction at core of the entire Cosmos, which the ancients recognised.
• Sacred Flame
• Diana – Rome (Neumann Pl. 161) … She carries the Flame – classically Her own person.
• Artemis 4th Cent.B.C.E. Greece (p.52 Austen) – Goddess of untamed nature. She is a hunter/archer, protector, midwife, nurturing the new and pure essence (the “wild”).
• Brigid/Brigantia 300 C.E. (p. 38 Durdin-Robertson)– warrior-like, with spear – spiritual warrior.
• Eurynome 4000 B.C.E. Africa (Austen p.8). An image of a self-expressive Universe. Austen stories Her as Eurynome, Goddess of All Things who danced upon the waves in the beginning and laid the Universal Egg. Integration of animal and human, earth and sky, before dualism … an image of integrity and ecstatic self-expression.
• Radha – deep self love is where manifestation begins.

 You may like to light the candle in the South-East/East– in the name of She Who is the Urge to Be, She Who Will Be.

For reading: refer to PaGaian Cosmology, p. 89-94 or see: Restoring Her as Creative Triplicity: the Urge to Be

Contemplate:

Visualize a shining crescent moon, curving to the left in the Western sky.  See that beautiful sliver in your mind’s eye. She is the power of beginning, of growth and generation. She is undomesticated and untamed … She is possibility/promise within you … feel your power to begin and to grow, to start something new. Feel this courageous One within you. Feel love for your self – perhaps as you might see a beloved child … see yourself with these eyes: and imagine tending your particular self like a holy Flame within. Allow and receive all that is you, the particular unique self that you are … right now, with deep reverence and compassion.

Make some brief notes – a single word, a phrase or image – so that you may come back to if you wish.

Invocation of Mother – Dynamic Place of Being.

Images of She Who is this Place of Being – Mother/Creator

Mother/Creator/Place of Being Slideshow

You may choose to replay the slideshow as many times as you wish, and/or to pause the slideshow at each image, to receive it, and also something of the brief story offered.

“She births, She attends. She sustains the web of Life. She is Creator.

“She is about love of Other.”

“She unravels from Herself the Net sustaining us. She is the Net.”

“She is deep Reciprocity – both receiving and giving at once, the Dynamic Place of Being – the Interchange.”

“She is the Weaver and the Web, the web of manifest being, THIS moment and place.”

“She is the meal, the communion, the nourishment, the fullness of being.”

 You may like to light the candle in the North/North-West – in the name of She Who is this Dynamic Place of Being, She Who Is.

BRIEF STORY ON EACH IMAGE

• Tlazolteotl 1400 C.E. Aztec. The quintessential shamanic act. (p.18 Austen).
• Tiamat 4000 – 3500 B.C.E. Babylon (Iraq). The Mother and Child of Old – expressing the essential relational nature of Creativity, the essential urge to bring forth the New. She was a Mesopotamian primordial sea Goddess, regarded originally as Creator. (p. 32 Getty).
• Kunapipi – the Aboriginal mother of all living things, came from a land across the sea to establish her clan in Northern Australia. (cf Gobekli Tepe Sheela, a similar image, Turkey 9600 B.C.E.)
• Birth of Goddess 480–450 B.C.E, Italy – as we may do for each other, self and all. (Neumann, Pl.155).
• Ixchel 800 C.E. Central America. She weaves the Fabric of Life. (p.10 Austen.).
• Inanna/Ishtar Mesopotamia 400 B.C.E. – holding Her breasts, displaying her potency, which is Her power to give life. She is a superpower who feeds the world, nourishes it with Her being. (Getty p.39). She is “offering to all the elixir of Life”, “the milk of wisdom”, “a reminder of the generous nature of the Goddess” – her abilities to provide and sustain the world. She is food: Adele Getty (p.39) calls this offering of breasts to the world “a timeless sacred gesture”. It recurs in cultures around the globe.

For reading refer to PaGaian Cosmology, p. 94-99 or see: Restoring Her as Creative Triplicity: Place of Being

Contemplate:

Visualize a round full moon … see her now in your mind’s eye. Remember how Her light feels as it comes into your eyes, feel her photons of light touching you, filling you. She is the Mother, the power of fruition and fullness, manifestation … the power to sculpt life, to weave it, to gestate it. Feel your own fullness as your breath peaks … your own power to create reality/life for yourself and for others … breath it in, this power – your power, to nurture, to sustain, to craft, to weave, to build and to make manifest. You are Creator, you are the Source of everything; feel that within you – All within you. Feel the need to birth it, to give it away, to express it, to pour it forth – to let the All go, as your breath peaks. Imagine yourself now with your body, with your hands, however it is you create, about to do it – to pour forth creation … creating your world the way you would have it.

Go back to the beginning of it All … the Original Ovulation – and there you are, you are Creator, you are Source. You desire to pour it from you – irrepressible, ecstatic. You are filled with desire for expression, for matter. You are She. Let it be so. Be bold, have courage … dare. What beauty do you imagine, is in you to pour forth. Pour it forth. Begin now. … first the protons, then the atoms, and the light – rushes away from you into the aeons. Feel it go from you, into the aeons. And hydrogen comes forth, helium. Now is the time for galaxies – you pour them forth, a trillion of them – you are at Centre. Now the stars, other gases and elements  … supernovas, solar systems, planets … there is Earth, feel Her now, coming into form from you … oceans, water, lightning  … then the miracle of the first cells … bacteria, small creatures – then photosynthesis – turning the Sun into food, then breathing … what miracles pouring forth from you – then plants and soft-bodied animals in the oceans

– the first eyes – form and colour seen for the first time

– the plants and animals coming on shore, across the continents.

– the first ears, the first sounds … hear them for the first time.

– the great forests, larger animals, birds, flowers

– eventually the humans … weave what it is you want … what would they become. You are the Source of everything. Sculpt the cosmos, the world, think it, birth it, dance it, enjoy it, feel its pleasure. You are She.

Imagine it, pouring forth from you, sculpt it, weave it, dance it into being.

After dancing/sculpting as you please, lie down and rest. Curl up as if in Her womb, and receive Her nourishment, as holy Child.

Make some brief notes when you are ready – a single word, a phrase or image – so that you may come back to this if you wish.

Conclusion

Gazing at your three candles, and contemplating the creative Context in which we are held and immersed: in the name of She Who Creates the Space to be, She Who is the Urge to Be, and She Who is this Dynamic Place of Being. And whom we all are.

You may choose to go back to any writing or images that you began in this process. You may like to conclude with this meditation, which also could become a daily invocation of Her Creative Triplicity:

Triple Goddess Breath Meditation

Also see the video: Triple Goddess Breath Meditation: Each Being a Creative Place of the Cosmological Unfolding

Taking the YOGA MUDRA position

• The first position at the beginning of the breath is a statement of love of self – the beginning of the light part of the cycle. It is the virgin phase – differentiated manifest beauty.
• The second position as the breath expands and the arms spread up and out, is a statement of love of other. It is the movement towards fullness, the peaking. It is the Mother phase – communion, relationship in the web of life.
• The third position as the breath releases and the torso folds over, is a statement of love of All-That-Is. It is the return to the dark. It is the Crone phase, the creative unmanifest sentient Space. It goes the other way around too – out of the fullness of darkness, at the bottom of the breath, we receive All-That-Is. Virgin/Young One and Old One/Crone are linked in that, and both give rise to the fullness of Mother/Creator.

(c) Glenys Livingstone 2019

References:

Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence. The Year of the Goddess. Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1990.

Getty, Adele. Goddess: Mother of Living Nature. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990.

Iglehart Austen, Hallie. The Heart of the Goddess. Berkeley: Wingbow Press, 1990.

Livingstone, Glenys, Hendren, Trista and Daly, Pat (editors). Re-visioning Medusa: from Monster to Divine Wisdom. a Girl God anthology, 2017.

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

Neumann, Erich.The Great Mother. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Encyclopaedia of Myths andSecrets. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983.