Death Mother/Creation Mother
“The Creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what is around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die. Our work is to apprehend the timing of both; to allow what must die to die, and what must live to live.” - Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves
Maiden/Crone - SoulCollage®
This is what I love about studying the goddesses. I love seeing all that primal stuff just laid out there for us. For every young, beautiful maiden and light goddess there is an ugly, old one, a dark goddess, saying, “Don’t get too caught up in all that loveliness, Sister, there’s more to the story. Life ain’t no bed of roses all the time. You better smell the flowers while you can, cuz there’s some decay a comin’.”
The Graiae
And at the same time, just when you think life is a big, steaming pile of shit, the goddess of love and life comes waltzin’ in saying, “Hey, that ain’t all there is, Sister. Get your head out of your ass and start living cuz there’s beauty all around you. Life’s too short. And what is it you want to be doing anyway? Get to it! You better be loving yourself. Look in the mirror, Sister. You got it going on!
Venus at the Mirror - Rubens
For every Persephone, there’s a Hecate. For every Bast, there’s a Sekhmet. For every Athena, there’s a Medusa. For every Kali, a Lakshmi; for Rhiannon, there’s Cerridwyn; Cinderella/wicked stepmother; Snow White/Dark Queen, Vasilisa/Baba Yaga. You get it: Birth and Death. The endless cycle. Two sides of the same coin.
Athena by Klimt - that's Medusa's face on her aegis
But, wait! The wisdom of the divine feminine is that it’s not just black and white, either/or, crazy-ass, patriarchal dualistic thinking. There’s a triple goddess to be found here. She is life, itself. She is the in-between. She is the one who travels the bridge to both worlds: the conscious and the unconscious, the upper and the lower, the internal and external, masculine and feminine, and understands that it’s not one or the other, it’s both/and. She knows the third way that moves betwixt the worlds and doesn’t get stuck in the extremes. She is the wisdom that comes from living and knowing that birth follows death and death follows birth, but in between there is a life to be lived.
So don’t be fooled by those old hags, or that stone cold evil eye of the Medusa. She contains the beautiful, wise goddess Athena. And don’t be thinking that little girl don’t know nothing. She’s hiding the wise old hag within her very bones. Remember to live, Sisters, live it all. Remember to cherish the dark days as much as the glory days for they portend something else is coming. Nothing stays the same. And we can either wallow in the shit, complaining about the stink, or we can stand up and walk through it until we get to the other side, smelling like roses again.
And in case you forget, just walk outside and look up into the night sky. And there she is. Shining a little or a lot, for all to see. The Death Mother becomes the Creation Mother becomes the Death Mother becomes the Creation Mother and everything in between.
The Goddess Temple e-course on the Alchemical Goddesses starts in one month. We will be exploring the Death Mother when we meet Kali and the Creation Mother when we meet Yemaya and Aphrodite, that Great Mother Goddess of Love and Beauty, will be leading the way. What are you waiting for, Sister? Don’t miss the boat. Life’s too short.
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Thanks for sharing again Stephanie! Funny this came in just as I have been looking at Medusa images.
Yes, Medusa started out as a beautiful Amazon warrior but was reduced to the ugly Gorgon when she transgressed with a god. Some myths say Athena did that to her out of rage, but other myths say Athena was Medusa’s daughter and they were deeply intertwined. Priestesses used to wear serpent-haired masks during sexual rites, and later people who tried to disavow the power and sexuality of the goddess, cast the Medusa head as a symbol of women’s sexual nature, equating it with something evil, like Eve and the snake. In ancient times, the snake was the chthonic symbol of the goddess, representing her connection to the earth and transformation through shedding the skin.
Wonderful post. And do not forget about the link between kundalini and the serpent – Kundalini is Kali Ma, the Goddess Herself! blessings