I’m preparing a ritual for Oshun, so last night I went to see her to ask what she wants for her offering.
She came with lessons, jewels, three of them.
The first went something like this:
As Oshun teaches us, BEAUTY is the thing that compels life forward. It is the thing that makes life happen and keep happening. It is the thing that makes people build, invent, innovate, move mountains. It is the thing you trade what’s at the end of the rainbow for, and the reason the hungry ones want money, power, and prestige. Beauty is everything…but if we know Oshun, we already know all this.
What she taught me last night is that it’s fine and honorable and extremely natural for the Daughters of Oshun to love our beauty, admire ourselves – our physical beauty, but also everything else magical about us. She showed herself sitting alone near a field with the village behind her, bustling. She held her mirror to her face and couldn’t be bothered for anything else. She was in her bliss.
But the bustle behind her, her village.
In this lesson, she was showing me that while it’s natural for us to be drawn to relish in our beauty, it’s important not to let our beauty become a distraction. It can feed and nourish and motivate even the biggest of causes, but it is also a slippery slope that can lure us away from all the things that matter, the things created from beauty, such as family, community, and loved ones. If we do not stay connected, this slope can quickly become a landslide into greed, envy, jealousy, obsession, self-hate, and self-abandonment.
As she held her beautiful ornate hand mirror, she said, admire your reflection, My Daughters, but when you can no longer see your family and loved ones in that reflection, you have become lost. Hold your mirror so that you see YOU and all that makes you you. Never lose sight of the context – your family and the people who love you, need you, feed you.
Beauty, at its essence, she showed me, is for connection. Beauty is glue. Magnetism. Attraction. It is meant to bring beings together, not to distract us into obsessive pathways at the expense of love.
What can this mean for Daughters of Oshun today?
Here is a question for our time: how can we as women relish in, cherish, and own our beauty and let it do all it’s magically mean to do, while also staying true to our mission, to who we are, not getting caught up in avenues of seeking perfection, flexin on one another, clout chasing, spending endless amounts of time, money, and energy trying to look different than we do upon waking. The Daughters of Oshun don’t need all that. Appreciation is the BEST beauty tonic. Gratitude is the greatest elixir of youth.
My Beautiful Sistars, it seems Oshun is telling us that our beauty is to be wielded for connection and nourishment, and to take care not to let it become a weapon or a wedge between us and what matters most in life: experiencing love.
ABOUT ASTARA
I created 13MOONS Magazine to resurrect the sacred feminine in Stories and Art. As a Seeress who’d worked directly with Oshun, Yemaya, Oya, and other earlier Goddesses, I noticed a stark difference in these energies and those of later iterations, such as Freya and Venus. It is like parts of these beings were stripped away. Whether to fit the fashion of culture or men, I’ll leave for you to decide, but this just didn’t sit right with my spirit. And so I dreamed of a platform which would amplify the real voice of the feminine – Stories and Art created by actual women from our perspective, without apology. And here we are.
I am called Astara, a name I received during meditation, meaning Little Sirius. I am here to draw down the energy of Ast, also known as Auset, Isis, and the latest: Mother Mary, truly just a hint of the Original anymore. I am here to Remember and to help Remind us of who we are as women, who we are beneath patriarchal whitewashing and power politics as religion. I am here to Remind us of the wisdom we hold within each of our cells which we have mistakenly (and blasphemously) called our meat suit. I am a Sensual Fluency Educator and Tranceworker, offering tools I’ve channeled from my own body to help you connect with yours. Reach out anytime if you’d like to hear more.
I created 13MOONS Magazine to resurrect the sacred feminine in Stories and Art. As a Seeress who'd worked directly with Oshun, Yemaya, Oya, and other earlier Goddesses, I noticed a stark difference in these energies and those of later iterations, such as Venus and Aphrodite. It is like parts of these beings were stripped away. Whether to fit the fashion of culture or men, I'll leave for you to decide, but this just didn't sit right with my spirit. And so I dreamed of a platform which would amplify the real voice of the feminine - Stories and Art created by actual women from our perspective, without apology. And here we are.I am called Astara, a name I received during meditation, meaning Little Sirius. I am here to draw down the energy of Ast, also known as Auset, Isis, and the latest: Mother Mary, truly just a hint of the Original anymore. I am here to Remember and to help Remind us of who we are as women, who we are beneath patriarchal whitewashing and power politics as religion. I am here to Remind us of the wisdom we hold within each of our cells which we have mistakenly (and blasphemously) called our meat suit. I am a Sensual Fluency Educator and Tranceworker, offering tools I've channeled from my own body to help you connect with yours. Reach out anytime if you'd like to hear more.
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