Shakti Woman: Feeling Our Fire, Healing Our World

Frequently they are pregnant or giving birth. Stories behind the use of sacred medicinal herbs and plants that grow wild on the planet often include something relating to pregnancy and birth, leading me to think that the earliest uses of these plants might well have been for calming and relieving the pain of women in labor. Peyote, for example, was

When you meet an animal in a trance state, it will be deeply grounding in your life if you make an image of that animal and use it daily in some physical way.

Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade,

It is not a question of returning to the past but one of reawakening the instinctual senses and the empowerment needed to act on what our bodies know to be true.

Artist Judy Chicago, originator of the Birth Project, points out that there had been no images in Western art of women giving birth for two thousand years!

The oracular is not a rational communication but comes often as a metaphor, needing to be moved delicately from one plane of existence onto another, without losing the thread of meaning.

Western culture leaves the entire responsibility of child rearing to mothers then blames us for everything that goes wrong. In no way are we allowed to do the work of raising our children according to our own principles or ethics. We have “experts” to tell us exactly what needs to be done, in exactly what way, in order to be morally “correct.

Part of any shamanic awakening must include an opening of the dream channels and the uprushing of amazing and illuminating material from the unconscious.

Ancient images of women giving birth have been replaced by the specter of a male doctor “delivering” the woman of her child, and C-section has become a norm in birthing practices in this country.