Kerstin Zettmar
The Goddess takes many forms. It is said that She has 10,000 faces. While patriarchal religions would have us believe that these forms are 'maya' or illusion, the Goddess gives meaning to all of Life. The life of the body is spiritual -- we are the ones who have forgotten that truth, because our patriarchal religions have vilified the Earth, the body and women.
But
the Goddess has returned to our consciousness again and is opening
women and men up to a deeper spirituality that encompasses not just
the heavens but the Earth.
So
here is one way the Goddess is manifesting now in our world. The
August 21st, 2017 total solar eclipse occurred on the royal star
Regulus, which until recently symbolized The King. Because of
the Earth's wobble on her axis, which causes the precession of the
astrological ages, Regulus has moved into Virgo, the sign of the
Virgin. Now Regulus, at the 'heart of the Lion' symbolizes the
Queen.
The
symbol for the degree of the eclipse, 28* Leo is: A
mermaid emerges from the ocean waves ready for rebirth in human
form. She symbolizes an
unconscious content, an intuitive feeling archetype, which is ready
to become conscious. That is ready to take on human form.
Here's
what I wrote about the mermaid in my book, Wisdom's
Daughters: How Women Can Change the World.
An
aspect of the Goddess that reflects Her watery nature is the mermaid.
The goddess Atargatis was a Goddess with
a fishtail. The earliest mermaid myth appeared in Assyria in 1000
b.c. and told the story of how Atargatis became
a mermaid. Atargatis was in love with a human shepherd but
accidentally killed him. Out of guilt, the goddess flung
herself into the ocean hoping to become a fish. But her beauty
was so great she never could fully become a fish. Instead
she became half goddess, half fish, with a tail below the waist and
human body above the waist. She was the goddess of the fertility of both land and sea.
All
countries and all times have tales of mermaids. We’ve all been
fascinated by the mermaid - her eternal youth, her strange beauty,
her allure and power of seduction. She combs her long tresses, mirror
in hand, sending her wondrous, sweet voice stealing across the
waters, often luring men to their doom, drawing them down to the
watery realms.
John William Waterhouse
The
image of the mermaid has changed, transforming from the dangerous
seductress of antiquity to the sweetness and innocence of Ariel in
the Disney movie. In some fairy tales, she is the Water Nixie who
will marry a mortal but will only stay with him as long as he keeps a
promise that she demands of him. Usually, out of carelessness, he
does not keep it, and the nixie returns to the watery depths. Then in
the tale of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson, the
mermaid falls in love with a prince she rescues, and exchanges her
beautiful voice for human legs. But in the end, she forfeits her life
when the prince marries another woman. But because she will not kill
the prince in exchange for her own life, she becomes a spirit of the
air instead of sea-foam. Finally, in the movie Splash!, the
mermaid and the man go back to her own watery realm.
Linda Olsen
These
developments show the gradual acceptance of the mermaid's uncanny
wisdom and nature, and their integration into our collective
consciousness. We can accept some of her qualities - her strange
sexual allure, her beauty, her innocence and sweetness, and her
perception. Like the mermaid, Aphrodite's allure is that She calls
men to the feeling depths of the deep oceanic unconscious, and thus
awakens them to the creative potential of their humanity.
The
mermaid is also symbolic of a feminine, feeling aspect which can draw
us into a watery unconsciousness - the allure of too many beautiful
fantasies drawing us away from everyday reality. But she is much more
than this, for as an aspect of the Goddess, she is also a feminine
consciousness which knows through intuition, through feelings and
through the sensuality of the body. This consciousness is reflective,
like the moon, for we are called to the depths to understand what the
feelings and images mean. The mermaid is often depicted brushing her
hair and holding a mirror. Hair symbolizes our thoughts and our
strengths, for hair is often seen as a repository of at least part of
the soul.
Susan Seddon Boulet ~ Isis and Osiris
When
the Egyptian goddess Isis mourned for her dead husband, Osiris, she
cut a lock of her hair to preserve his soul. Then when Isis
eventually restored vitality to Osiris, she created his new life with
her hair, made his heart beat again and made his penis move so that
she could conceive his reincarnation, their son Horus. Thereafter,
Isis protected her Child by 'shaking out her hair over him'. Hair is
believed to be magical, and the binding or unbinding of a woman's
hair activates the cosmic powers of creation and destruction.
The mermaid, in combing
her hair, is taking this power into her own hands. And yet, it is not
a reckless use of power, as she always holds a mirror up to what she
is doing. Since the mirror denotes self-recognition, a process of
becoming conscious, the mermaid aspect of Feminine Spirit is a potent
way of becoming conscious of the natural powers of the Unconscious.
So dive deep and explore this feeling realm through the language of
feelings, images and fantasy. If you take your problems to the realm
of the unconscious, in creative visualizations, you can use the
imaginative processes to uncover your own answers.
Melusina ~ Alchemical Mermaid
Carl
Jung points out that in alchemy, the figure of the mermaid is
represented by Melusina, a figure which 'prods and persuades to
knowledge'. The alchemical mermaid can share with us her watery
wisdom, a deep wisdom of feeling values which, far from drowning us,
gives us a fluid, flowing perspective on things, subjective in terms
of our feelings, yet objective in the fact that we see things from a
distance, from a whole other realm of being. It is very much like the
objectivity of dreams, something not quite conscious expressed
through feminine consciousness and images.
So embrace your Inner Mermaid. She wants to take on human form. She wants you to incarnate her wisdom, her sexuality, her love and her vision.
