Recovering our Wisdom
Traditions
Because we have lost touch with our
Wisdom traditions, I did not realize that Lady Wisdom was calling to me. But my generation began to explore and search
for Wisdom in the 60s and we continue to explore still. We sometimes use other words like
consciousness and spiritual awakening to explain an experience of Wisdom. Perhaps we realize the root cause of a psychological
complex: why we are insecure, or rebellious, or even why we are too comfortable
in our discomfort. Or we suddenly
understand the meaning of a relationship or a conflict, and finally know what
to do. How do we explain those elusive
times when we momentarily understand the meaning of life? Like my dream of the baby Sphinx, the riddle
of Life demands that we dance with life.
All of these awakenings are Wisdom experiences. When we chose to look for meaning in life, we
are gifted with the Wisdom to understand what is really going on and to make
the life-giving choice. Wisdom attunes
us to our deepest Self, so we make the right choices.
When women’s intuitive, feeling way of
knowing is respected and valued by the male establishment, the changes are, and
will continue to be, remarkable. Give a
woman equal say in how to manage the world, and we’ll work with men to come up
with solutions to our many problems.
When women and our feminine wisdom are respected and valued by men and
their masculine know-how, decision-making takes on a whole new dimension. Once we learn to balance masculine and
feminine consciousness, we can engage in vast new possibilities that will let
us consciously co-create a peaceful, loving world. We need a new vision of Life, and it is this
image of Lady Wisdom as the Woman Clothed
with the Sun, who is giving birth to that new vision, that can guide us
into the future.
People have been working with this new
feminine consciousness since the 60s, especially women who are getting in touch
with many aspects of the ancient goddesses.
But why has the Goddess returned right now in our history? Is it just so women can regain our powers of
feeling and imagination so we can imagine ourselves into health, love, money
and happiness? If this is the only
reason women search for the Goddess, then how does that differ from men’s goals
and who we were in the Father’s House?
Are we really only here to make use of everything – even spiritual
powers - to gain material and personal possessions?
Lady Wisdom wants us to discover
meaning in life, and if there is a meaning for the return of the Goddess, it is
this: Women need to reclaim our
connection to Wisdom so that we can give this gift to the world. The Goddess, through women, has returned to
transform the world during this shift in world ages. Lady Wisdom is needed if we are to dis-mantle
the Patriarchy and give birth to a world of partnership, compassion and peace.
The Path to Wisdom
Of course, the problem is how do we
open ourselves to hear the voice of Lady Wisdom? By opening the four levels of
awareness: the physical, the psychological, the imaginal and the spiritual. As we integrate these four aspects of our
life, Wisdom’s voice will become clearer and clearer, until we speak with
Wisdom’s Voice.
To begin to understand how to ask for
Wisdom, first we need to know about the many different stories of the ending of
the Age, for whether we acknowledge it consciously or not, these stories are alive
and well and gestating in our collective Unconscious. Everyone is feeling the
pressure of change. While many people
live in fear that the challenges facing us will kill us, I believe that’s just
a lack of imagination.
The image of the Woman clothed with the Sun found in the Christian Book of
Revelation shows us the key to
understanding how to bring about this great collective transformation. And so we look next at the importance of
understanding symbolic language, which opens us to the Creative Imagination,
the realm of inspiration and co-creation.
For Wisdom speaks in symbolic language and understanding how the
imagination works is of primary importance. By learning to understand symbolic language,
which is the feminine language of the soul, we have access to the rich storehouse
of Wisdom within the Collective Unconscious.
Then we’ll discover how to reclaim our
true feminine standpoint. Since it is so
important to learn how to interpret symbolic language, I’m going to take you
through a full interpretation of the Grimm’s fairy tale Allerleirauh, a fairy tale about the Father’s Daughter who got away
and became a wise woman. Then, working
with images from this story as well as the image of the Cosmic Woman, we will
explore the archetypal realms of Earth, Sun, Moon and Stars. The Earth is the womb of our becoming; the
Sun, which is both life-giving and death-dealing, is our conscious awareness;
the Moon, whose beauty and mystery calls to us, provides the timing rhythm of
unfolding our unique life and purpose, while the Stars reflect the spiritual
and archetypal principles that guide us on our journey through life.
After our imaginations are comfortable
with the mysteries of these symbolic realms, we’ll discover that there is a
beautiful, earthy goddess who best personifies this Cosmic Woman - Aphrodite,
the goddess of sexuality, love and beauty who tests Psyche, our soul, to bring us to consciousness. Aphrodite, or Venus as the Romans called her,
is the energy of Divine Love, which is at root what Wisdom is.
I have deliberately filled this book
with images and stories that can awaken you to your own knowledge of symbolic
language, the language of the Creative Imagination. If you want to learn a new
language, you have to practice. The
stories, dreams, and concepts I fill the chapters with are intended to help you
understand symbolic language.
Then we have to go beyond understanding
what this image of the Cosmic Woman means and embody Her. We have to work with the energies contained
in the images to expand our awareness of ourselves, our life’s purpose and our
society. To this end, the last chapter
of the book provides exercises for developing the four levels of awareness that
this image speaks to: the physical (Earth), the psychological (Sun), the
imaginal (Moon) and the spiritual (Stars).
Once we re-connect with these realms
of being, we will see that Lady Wisdom is indeed still calling out to us to
come and claim our heritage, which is to make a paradise of our world. In the past, we have called that a Utopian
ideal, implying that it’s pie-in-the-sky
and won’t work. But we live in a society
with the consciousness, intelligence and resources to finally create a
peaceful, prosperous world. However,
first we must develop the Wisdom and the Will to do it.
The truth is, the Kingdom of Heaven is
here, within us and within our reach.
But our Mother Earth is waiting for us to wake up. It is our choice. We need to understand what it means to be a Woman clothed with the Sun, how to
incarnate these energies and share them with the each other and with the
world. So let us all become lovers of
Wisdom like Solomon, and learn to use our creativity to re-create our world. This is our destiny and our responsibility at
this time in Earth’s history.
Are you ready to answer Lady Wisdom’s
call?
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