In the Beginning was Lilith

We begin our journey before our journey begins. In the Northeast. As Lilith. 

We are born here in a kind of mastery.

We are made of the secrets of the universe, but we cannot unlock the codes that course through our veins. 

We are untrained. Left to our own devices. No wise elders to pass on long-retired truths. 

In truth, we were meant to be born with instructions; the Ancestors, traditionally, they left instructions. 

In story.

Art.

On the pottery that carried for them life: water and grain and other sustenance – history as the words of God, patterned into now-incomprehensible symbols of ancient truths we’ve long forgotten. 

Even the dances we learned as small children were imbued with the laws and rhythms of the land, and these we knew were necessary knowings for a well-lived life. A long life. A life in alignment with all of the forces of which we are a part, not fighting against ourselves, and not fighting against nature. 

Oh, but these are necessary knowings for a well-lived life. Still today.

And yet, we have forgotten them; our mothers have forgotten them, as have our grandmothers before them. Such richness lost, burned, flushed . . . but not inaccessible – for our very cells are infused with these knowings! Still!

You see, my dear, it is true they can manipulate our minds, and even the innocence of cultural adaptation can make us forget the most sacred of skills and talents, but what they can never take away from us is the memory stored within our bodies! 

The Ancestors knew: our bodies remember! As long as we are living, breathing, organic beings, we are storing these memories, this information, this wisdom, in the cells that make us breathe and eat and fuck and all that good stuff. 

So Lilith . . .  Lilith’s story, her journey, has been disrupted. To put it kindly. It has been corrupted, degraded, downright demonized. She is the promise of Sophia. Disrupted. She knows. She is magic. She is Goddess. She is High Priestess. 

Robbed of her crown of roses. 

And this, Sistars, is how we begin our journey as Western women around the Lunar Wheel – in this deep, dark, FELT place of the Bleeding Times at the Dark Moon. As Lilith. In all her feels. On her denatured American diet. Drained from her work week and hamster-wheel life chores, especially when she tries to mix them with wine on the weekends to take the edge off. All work and no play makes Bleeding Lilith a fucking bitch, you know. 

And well she should be, for this is no way for a Goddess to exist. As a slave. As a servant. As a martyr. Unappreciated and unseen but as a piece of meat to perform for his delight. Used to sell everything but the kitchen sink – no wait, that too – while also restricting her access to the cash flow her sexy sells . . . unless she’s really dishing it out the way they like. And you know what they like, sis – they’ve drilled it into us all along, so grease up those teeth and assume the position! 

Or not. 

Or fuck that.

If there are any ways you’re betraying yourself at this time – no matter how subtle – you will feel them during your Bleeding Times. This is when you go down to the deep dark place where you normally cannot see. Here lies the truths you may not want to face, you may not want to feel or deal with or address. But that’s what you’ve got here, sistar: Night Vision. You are in the Realm of the Seeress, and when you’re here, you see all the things you can’t see during the other times of the Cycle. 

So you’ve got this bittersweet superpower and it’s meant to be wielded for good. Not to torture you, I promise.

The feels are so intense at this time and the body so heavy that it can be easy to want to just hide away, or to give into the intensity of emotion and do drastic things to make your point, to show your passion, to get even, to just start over from scratch, damnit . . . !

But just say no, Sis. Go take a bath. Go take a nap. Go give yourself something your body needs. You’re feeling everything super intensely and that can make you feel driven to ACT, but your best bet is to redirect this urge toward creatively loving on yourself. You may even find that, rather than “hiding away,” you can simply carve out a bit of extra solo time so that you are more at ease and connected when you do socialize, or when you’re with the loved ones around you every day. 

The Bleeding Times are for magic – especially sex magic! They’re for divining and drawing up from the depths, from the Akashic-quantum-Cosmic Womb Realm – the Ocean of everything, to bring back goodies for your life – for your own healing and growth, for the health of your family and “clan,” and for the health of your entire community, near and far. 

It is also a great time for harvesting your Moon Blood for healing tonics and health potions. How about a night of staying in and baking some spell cookies instead of sending that angry email you’re definitely going to regret?

Look, don’t get me wrong. You do not need to hole up during your Bleeding Times, but you may find that your energy at this time lends itself well to nesty things, calmer things, not a lot of stimulation things, etc etc. You get the idea, but of course, as always, you know yourself best! Trust your inner knowing. Ask your body! Baath . . . angry email? Baaath . . . angry email? What does your body say?

To look at this another way, this is a time to connect with your inner child and give her what she needs. In many ways, Lilith represents our child selves as individual women and as a culture of women. Her story is disrupted right at the cusp of womanhood, and she is stuck there, in that fiercely reactive state of defensiveness, just as the inner child is for many of us. What does your inner child need today? If you are so inclined, this is the perfect time for working with your Moon Blood for inner child magic. 

Now, on the other hand, this insightful time may in fact show you places where you need to advocate for yourself, and maybe that does look like a very passionate discussion or email. There will never be a time along this journey for suppressing your feels or your inner voice – your inner child – so don’t mistake encouragement to redirect reactivity as advice to stifle yourself where you need to speak up.

In fact, as a time where you have extrasensory insight power, you may see parts of your life where you need stronger or different boundaries, or where you need to stand up for yourself. 

And that brings us back to Lilith, Goddess of Darkness and Redemption. She is our (half-buried) cultural roots as Westerners, and her vibration is that which we are born into and can choose to redeem through the choices we make along our journey around the Lunar Magic Wheel. With each passing through the Seeress Realm, we face the same choices: to love or to defend our way through life’s obstacles.

It is only when we choose love that we see these obstacles are portals, choice point moments that can bring us closer to our unified cosmic Sophia form.

But first, back to Lilith.

Lilith gets a bad rap, but she comes with a purpose: Lilith will cut a muthafucka. 

But not for nothing! Lilith cuts when she’s betrayed and when she witnesses betrayal, when she’s disrespected and when she witnesses disrespect. She cuts when she’s abused or when she witnesses abuse. 

In other words, Lilith is your inner badass who will not let you just settle for getting your ass kicked, used, manipulated, or whatever else may end up of us if we didn’t have that inner fight, that inner “bitch, you-don’t-know-me!” 

Lilith became what she did because she had to. She responded to her environment and that shit looked like raping-and-pillaging. Lilith will fight for us, we fight as Lilith for us and for Lilith.

We begin our journey as Lilith because we come in with all this knowledge and history – which we can access from the oceans flowing between our legs every Cycle – and yet, most of us have no clue how to harness this magic because we’ve been cut off from our maternal lineage and the truths that were passed down from mother to daughter, like a river of information continuing its flow along Mother Earth generation after generation: disrupted.

We have also learned to be fierce because of this. Because we’ve had to. 

Take a moment now and think of a time you stood up for yourself because you fucking deserved to. 

Now thank your inner Lilith. 

Today, if we begin our journey with all this knowing, all this Remembering, then we don’t have to be so fierce. We can chill the fuck out a little. We know our Ancestors actually do have our back, even though we may not have received their stories or know the beliefs that kept them looping through the cycles over the generations before patriarchy shifted us in such drastic and mechanical ways. Regardless, they’re there watching out for us, guiding us. 

Now we can spiral up by choosing love despite it all. We can choose to make space for love in our lives – for ourselves and for others – by choosing love instead of “holing up” despite all the past shit, because now we know all of that was actually schooling for us. It was refining us into the women we have become, the advocates we have become, the medicine we have become. For this, we can surely be grateful. 

We can feel this gratitude in our hearts and in our wombspace for all the women we have stood up for because of hard lessons we’ve learned, and also for all the times we stood up for ourselves. And in seeing the badassary of it all – the magic of transforming our pain into nourishment for others – we realize we are superheroes in a funny sorta way. We are creators and we can shape our world, make choices, set boundaries, choose who we allow into our inner spaces and whom we love from afar. 

Then what the fuck do we have to be afraid of? 

When Lilith remembers her power and the mastery beneath her skirt, she realizes defenses are not necessary because she sets the access points to her personal energy sphere. She can do this now, because of her experiences, the pain and suffering and betrayal, all of it. Her history of victimization has shown her she is not a victim at all, but the power itself that drives disconnected beings to kill to drink of her. 

We find ourselves now, watching Lilith stare up at a fresh Crescent Moon, just the faintest amount of bluish light lining her jawbone, and we feel a new love for her, a new gratitude for all she has done to keep us safe in the ways we needed as small children in a big world, maybe alone, often afraid. Sometimes legitimately not safe. 

But here we are, our shadows stretched long, growing nearer the Full Moon, just over a week out now, coming into our womanhood. We are safe now, in the power we’ve recovered by choosing to remember we can choose. For this, too, we can be grateful. 

When we shower our inner Lilith with this gratitude, she is transformed within us. She takes on a glow that begins first in her sacral, gut area, and quickly moves up to encompass her heart. Within half a blink, her entire body lights up like the sun, blinding everything out of sight before dimming back out as our pupils struggle to keep up with the flash.

Slowly we watch another form take shape in the brightness, still just looking like stark darkness against the center of a star hovering just above the surface of the Earth. 

Then, a toe peeks out of the light. And now a set of sun-kissed feet punctuated with red toenails give way to an ankle adorned with a string of cowrie shells. 

Before we can make anything else out, we hear laughter, sweet, delicious laughter that seems to roll – makes you want to roll with it! We still can’t even fully make her out against the brightness of the star she’s stepping down from, but our bodies are taut and waiting at attention, pulled by an inexplicable compulsion – a need – to know the source of this laughter! 

Finally a pair of crimson lips in full smile emerges from the light, and quickly behind them follows the face of none other than Oshun, Goddess of the River herself. 

At this time we realize we have made it to the Southeast node on our Lunar journey, we look up at the First Quarter Moon, our blessed Beltane Moon – a moon for lovers, and we join Oshun to merge into the realm of the Priestess . . . 

ABOUT ASTARA