Ceremony – Feminism and Religion

Navajo Mountain Way Chant : Bear as Healer – He Who Frightens Away Illness, part 2 by Sara Wright

Part 1 was posted last week. You can read it here.

The second sand painting used on the sixth night of the Mountain Way Chant is supposed to be a representation of the bears’ home in the Carrizo Mountains. In the center of this painting is a bowl of water covered with black powder. The edge of the bowl is adorned with sunbeams, and external to it are the four sunbeam rafts, on which the Nature Spirits, the Yei stand. There is a close relationship between the Yei and the bears. In the Mountain Way Chant, Talking God, Water Sprinkler (often pictured as a rainbow) Growling God (bear), and Black God are always present.

Bears and Light are related. In the first painting there is light that surrounds the bear and light is present in the form of sundogs that are positioned in each of the four directions. In the second, sunbeams are present in the center and also in each of the four directions providing places for the Yei to stand. It’s very difficult not to draw the conclusion that the light that we are speaking of is also an inner light, and this is consistent with the qualities of healing, insight, and introspection that the Navajos associate with the bear.

Navajo Mountain Way Chant : Bear as Healer – He Who Frightens Away Illness, part 1 by Sara Wright

All Navajo ceremonial practices emphasize healing human illness, emotional, mental, and physical, while restoring balance and harmony between humans and the rest of Nature. The most sacred of these ceremonies occur during the winter months. All the winter ceremonies have at their center the healing power of animals. The best known of these is probably the Night Chant that lasts nine days and nine nights and is held sometime around the winter solstice – the timing of these ceremonies is fluid. Like the Night Chant, the Mountain Way Chant probably stretches back into prehistoric times from 60,000 – 4000 B.C.E.

The Mountain Way Chant, the second and equally sacred although less well-known ceremony is also a nine-day night chant that marks a transition between the seasons of winter and spring. The Mountain Way Chant takes place in late winter before thunderstorms strike and the spring winds arrive ( any time after First Light which occurs in the beginning of February until the Spring Equinox). It’s important to know that these ceremonies are not only fluid but can occur as many times as are needed. One purpose is to call up the rains. The ceremony is led by a medicine man that addresses, in particular, the mental uneasiness and nervousness associated with transitions, helping to bring individuals and their extended families back into balance and harmony with the rest of nature (my italics).

Overnight at a Neolithic Dolmen: A Womb Healing Ceremony by Eline Kieft

In preparation for my hysterectomy, I decided to spend a night in a dolmen at Samhain last year, to seek guidance and healing. I chose Dolmen de Bajouilière in Saint-Rémy-la-Varenne, in Northern France, a site I had discovered by chance the previous year on my local explorations.

This well-preserved structure, with its spacious square divided into two rooms, felt inviting and safe for an overnight ritual. Though I am accustomed to spending nights in neolithic monuments, mostly in the UK, I felt some hesitation, partly due to my intermediate French and unfamiliarity with the local spirits.

Nevertheless, I recognized this resistance as part of the ego’s fear of the unknown, and I gave myself permission to retreat if needed. If I would feel too vulnerable, it wouldn’t serve my body and spirit ahead of the surgery. Please join me on my overnight Samhain Ceremony full of deep imagery and transformation as I shed my womb three times…

REMEMBERING THE MAGIC OF MAMA DONNA HENES: 1945-2024 by Diane Saarinen

For those who don’t know who Donna Henes was, her official bio:

Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman, spiritual teacher, award-winning author, popular speaker and workshop leader whose joyful celebrations of celestial events have introduced ancient traditional rituals and contemporary ceremonies to millions since 1972. More at her Wikipedia page here.

Donna, known affectionately to many as Mama Donna, was so in tune with the seasons (even putting out a quarterly publication for a time called Always in Season), that when her time came to leave this sparkling, stunning incarnation of hers, she left on Autumn Equinox Eve 2024, just two days after her 79^th birthday.

Sad news to those she left behind and sad news to the planet. But as we approach Samhain, Halloween and Day of the Dead, what wonderful memories my friend Donna Henes left me with! And “what is remembered, lives.” So live on, Mama Donna!

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Mourning by Beth Bartlett

Grief is the experiencing . . . Mourning is the process,
when we take the grief we have on the inside and express it outside ourselves –
writing, planting, burying, burning, rising up
ceremony, ritual, community[i]

A glimpse of our cottage as I drove away.

“As long as I stayed there, I could keep you with me. . . .” Those words kept repeating in my mind throughout my long drive home from my sister, Jeannie’s, “Celebration of Life” service. I’d stopped midway on my thousand-mile journey at the cabin our family has shared for sixty years. There I could still feel her presence — on the hillside where we so often sat with our morning cups of tea, or watching the sunset, or chatting away the afternoon; on the dock where we’d lie in the sun or sit late at night and watch the stars come out, or cuddle up in blankets on windy, fall days; in the circle of couches and chairs where we played telephone Pictionary, charades, and CatchPhrase; in the kitchen where we’d cooked and eaten and played card games together; in the bedroom we often shared with a dog between our beds; the road where we’d go for family walks – eight, ten, twelve of us all together, and always two, three, or four dogs; even the driveway where we’d greet and hold each other with great gladness after months of separation, and where we’d hug and say goodbye, and then hug once more because in the back of our minds we’d be wondering if this was the last time. . . .

The Circle of Giving and Receiving by Sara Wright

Yesterday my Vet and I created our version of the Indigenous Tewa Seed Ceremony, something I have not done since living in New Mexico (except to honor the Seed Moon). We didn’t plan to make an exchange of plants and seeds on earth day because neither of us believe or thought about it – (either do Indigenous peoples) – every day is earth day – so it just ‘happened’ on the day before the Seed Moon becomes full.

After giving Gary a very special heirloom scarlet runner bean sprout of mine (and seeds) along with the rest of ‘his’ plants that I had been nurturing for months, we also split up a sedum to share, one that he had given me in the hospital last fall, closing another circle of giving and receiving.

It wasn’t until after we parted that I was struck by lightning. Visceral memories surfaced as I relived the Tewa Sacred Seed Ceremonies I had attended in NM, gradually coming to the realization that we had unwittingly participated in an ancient ceremonial exchange that may have originally extended back to Neolithic times.

Faith’s First Light by Sara Wright

Faith was full of a sorrow so deep that she was drowning. Threatening forces swirled inside and outside her creating an impenetrable cloud that conjured up frightening dreams.

Faith loved animals, especially dogs, birds, and trees. The dogs and birds comforted her on a regular basis. Lately, even the earth beneath her feet seemed to be rising to embrace her, an intricate crocheted net that sometimes pulsed with lights, so why was she so numb? Faith shared her grief with her mother. Otherwise, she remained mute.

For the Children by Sara Wright

“What you make from a tree should be just as miraculous as what you cut down”.

Richard Powers

November is the month of endings and beginnings – I am keenly aware of all trees as they prepare for winter sleep, and this is the season during which I begin to celebrate evergreens. Most deciduous trees are a tangle of sleepy gray branches, but the conifers are still breathing life. Herein lies the Deep Forest Green Religion of Hope. Many trees, both thin barked deciduous trees and conifers are still photosynthesizing.

I love gazing into the woods beyond my brook lush with balsam, fir and hemlock knowing that the animals and birds that are left will soon be nestled in thick undercover finding nourishment and protection from winter winds and snow.

The Advocate by Sara Wright

Recently I had a serious accident and ended up in a nursing home after the surgery. My experience in this house of horrors was terrifying. Without any family support I was left to a health system that is hopelessly broken.

Drugged on my arrival it was a few days before I realized that the 17 drugs were making me sicker than I already was. I take only one regular medication and it wasn’t until I refused all but my one medication for PTSD/anxiety that my head began to clear. I was left alone under bright lights for my entire stay, and it remains to be seen whether I have suffered permanent eye damage as a result because I am so photophobic. The noise was unbearable making it impossible to sleep. No one bathed me or cleaned the filthy room. Ringing for help brought no one to my aid most of the time. It is important to state that there were exceptions, a couple of dedicated aides and three nurses, but no one was reliable on a daily basis. Because I was unable to eat the fatty unpalatable food, I lost pounds every few days. I was slowly starving. I remember thinking that I was going to die in this place, and it was this dawning realization that brought be back to the edge of life.

Emerging from the Underworld: a book review by Eline Kieft

Desperately Seeking Persephone: A Shamanic Journey Through the Underworld by Janet Rudolph weaves together a healing journey from abuse and rape, a deep personal connection with the goddesses Inanna and Persephone, and the ups and downs of a long-term shamanic apprenticeship. These strands could have easily filled three separate books, but Janet masterfully crafts an integrated tapestry of personal and mythical strands. She integrates everyday life experiences, liminal space and the archetypal realms until something new emerges that is more than personal story, more than myth, and more than a description of discovering a shamanic path.