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.

The constant interpenetration of the dream life into reality, and vice versa, should successfully teach us that they are one and the same experience, with only a slightly different texture.

The Mapuche women shamans who live in Chile at the very southern tip of the Southern Hemisphere still practice their ancient lunar rites of healing.

Robert Graves’s White Goddess;

Pregnancy and the birthing of children took a central place in the religious observances. The whole community might sing and chant when a woman gave birth or when someone needed healing or when it was that time when all the women bled together. In the course of these religious celebrations and ceremonies

So what kind of a world might it have been when we were in touch through our bodies with the universal currents? What might a kinship with the animals, the moon, and the stars have felt like, as we bled and birthed with other women in the community in a sacred way? What if, like the Cherokee today, you were able to know and believe that you came

Ancient images of women giving birth have been replaced by the specter of a male doctor “delivering” the woman of her child, and C-section has become a norm in birthing practices in this country.

The person who is ill needs to generate enough will or force to throw off the invading force and return to a state of balance

Men’s relationship to sex in general became deeply tied to their sense of ownership of women and children, and in Egypt the newly invented word that meant “slave” also meant “wife.”