The Stages of Cronedom

I've been working on my event for women on aging and the crone archetype (there are still a few spaces - see my previous posts or Facebook event called Going to Hel: Aging and the Crone Archetype), and I've discovered a few poems I'd forgotten that I'd written.  One of the reasons I started blogging was to put these poems out so that they wouldn't get lost in deep storage.  So, here is one I dug out:

First,

you are a novice elder.

Monthly bleeding 

finally ends, 

bringing both relief 

and sadness.

If you are fortunate,

you receive

a crone initiation,

and a welcoming.

You begin to look

at older friends

in a new way.

You study

how they move,

how they rest,

how they persist

in their arts.

Then,

you move into

early cronehood.

You stop coloring

your hair.

You grandparent.

If you are lucky,

you retire from

your day job.

Because you live

within youth culture,

you become invisible

to many.

You wince

at your image

in the mirror,

hating the new lines

etched into your face and

your sagging skin.

Then,

you breathe deeply

and promise yourself

to accept it all.

Next,

you discover

that there is  

a middle-elder phase.

You begin

to identify yourself

as old. 

Sometimes.

Weaknesses in the body

begin to clarify themselves

into symptoms.

It is easy

to get lost and

discouraged now.

You realize

that you will never

go backpacking again.

You visit

your acupuncturist and

chiropractor. 

Often.

If you are even

a little wise,

you turn inward

and to whatever gods or spirits

tug at your soul.

You allow

your gifts

to flow

unobstructed.

You care

less and less

what others

think of you.

You begin

to lose (or lose more)

people.

You understand

how much grief

there will be

from now on .

You wonder

how you will manage

to bless and serve

the young.

Later,

you move into

true old age.

Not yet having 

arrived there, 

I cannot speak of it 

with any authority.

I suspect

that the work

will be to learn more

about acceptance

and about staying

open-hearted.

That opening

to the life-force

and also the death-force

will be

what is required.

I hope

that I live long enough

to hold all things –

to love my beloveds -

to bless the youngers –

and to meld

into the earth.

Maya Spector

Going to Hel: Aging and the Crone Archetype

Because aging and mortality issues have been so much on my mind, I’ve thought for quite a while about putting on an evening event for women exploring the theme.  I've finally collected a story, some poems and my thoughts enough to give it a shot.  The email should go out within the next few days (but info is below).

Here is a rough draft of a new poem.  It, too, is called Going to Hel.

There is a choice now

(Perhaps there is always a choice).

This culture nonchalantly tosses

its old ones cloaks or masks of invisibility.

What it doesn’t know

is that these are Hel’s tokens,

allowing elders access to her dark realm.

What do the young know

of Her fiery cauldron of rebirth?

Some think to banish

their elders to oblivion,

to lonely houses of isolation

or the sour halls of old age homes,

warehousing the seemingly weak

and irrelevant.

Out of sight, out of mind.

But if we old ones 

do not despair,

we can disappear down

into the shamanic school

of the underworld goddess.

Hey, let’s go trickster all the way!

Let’s refuse to choose oblivion.

We can use the disguise

to our own advantage.

Most of them will never find out

that their curse has become our gift.

At least, not until the mantle

falls on them.

And we know how fast that happens.

Going to Hel:

Aging and the Crone Archetype

Hel by Susan Seddon Boulet

An evening of story, poetry, conversation

and ritual for women entering, in,

or interested in the elder phase of life

Saturday, February 27th, 7:30 P.M.,

685 ½ Fairmount Avenue, Oakland

Pre-registration required mayaspector@hotmail.com

$20 donation in advance

(by check or Paypal to barry@madnessatthegates.com)

$25 at the door

The Gesture: Part 2

            Here is another revelation.  I believe that I turn from Spirit, ignore it, forget it, don’t trust in its existence.  I believe that I am fundamentally alone in the universe – no help, no hope. 

            These beliefs are lies.

            My writing itself exposes the lies; it is infused with Spirit.  Every morning I light candles and sage and make the call.  Even when I think I am writing garbage, it is all done in Spirit.

            The gesture becomes the mudra of my elder years, acknowledging shame and love, pain and compassion. 

            This is how I know:

            She speaks to me, and I listen.  I have learned over time to do this, and it has taken both the strength of Her reaching out to me and also a certain surprising willingness on my part to entertain the possibility that the communication is real.

            In Malta, in the mother temple of Ggigantija, my back leaning into Her ancient stone body and feeling a hand on my head, I heard Her say, “You love Persephone because she is one of my forms.”

            In the Arizona desert, I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the words, “Go out and pay homage to the night.”  I dragged myself out of bed and walked outside, looked up, and saw a shooting star that swam across the sea of the dark sky more slowly than I had ever seen before or have seen since.

            At Eleusis, I had a vision of Demeter and Persephone, and I trembled seeing offerings left for them by other devotees.

            A few months ago I dreamed an aardvark crossed my path. In waking reality, I had recently written a piece called Walking through Walls.  The morning after the dream, I googled “Aardvark” (after searching for pictures of squat animals with snouts, not even recognizing what the animal I had dreamed about was).  I read how magicians in Africa use aardvark parts to walk through walls.

            These are just a few episodes of spirit presence in my life.  There are others.  I have sat with Persephone in my meditation, and She has told me She would walk with me through life and into death.

            Persephone’s path to the underworld is a downward spiral into the center of my heart.  She appeared just this morning as I uncovered the shame I had buried as a child, perhaps my first journey into her realm.  Here is the revelation – the underworld is at the core of the heart.  Only kindness and love can lead me out.  It was, after all, my mother’s misguided but well-intentioned love that led me in.

            But I do have another mother, a dark mother of heart-breaking wisdom and compassion.  If I ever know trust, if I ever take refuge, It is in Her hands that I place my soul.

It was a solitary road.

She’d seen no one

since leaving the women

at the crossroads.

All she knew was

the sound of gravel

crunching underfoot,

the wind in the Monterey pines

and the sound of the sea.

“Pacific is the wrong name,

for something so immense,

so powerful, so relentless,”

she mused.

“Maybe they named it that

as a prayer that it would prove true,

as a wish for their safety.”

She laughed aloud,

and the wheeling gulls overhead

cried out too, as if in response.

Memory was like

the ocean’s waves,

rising and falling,

touching shore and

running back

to the dark depths.

She realized

that she had now

lost her fear

of its failure,

had even relinquished

the worry about

where she was going and

when she would get there.

The wild and bitter wind

swept her mind clean

and left only

the pounding of her heart

and the rhythm of the waves.

The chopping barks of seals

called to her.

She could see distant splashes

where their sleek bodies

dove into the heaving sea,

disappearing below, below,

down into the dark, cold

depths of their home.

            Early in childhood, prior to assuming shame, I found the world to be wrapped in magic.  Things sparkled and glowed with energy, and words created images and stories.  They revealed what was true, what was real, what was sacred.  Words were a puzzle one could put together and take apart, forming and reforming, a magic that was endlessly fascinating. 

            If I root out and clear away the shame and self-doubt, I may find the old and eternal magic below it all.

            I want words to flow, falling as if over cliffs, in waterfalls of syllables that might be beautiful or clunky, or shining, or bouncing off rocks and open to the sky, the wind, the trees, the clouds, the stars.  I want to find words that will be ladders to the universe without and to the dark chambers within.  I want my magic back.  I want to be the purveyor of words and the conveyor of Spirit. Here is my (probably unsurprising but necessary) confession:  I am a mystic.  I claim it.

            My hand is on my heart.

            

The Gesture: Part 1

 

            The gesture is everything, says everything.  The hand on the heart is not a sign of protection or hiding; at least not this time.  It is an expression of grief, and the grief arises out of shame.

            My mother, coming of age during the Depression and birthing me soon after the Holocaust, wanted only to see me survive and thrive.  She saw me as willful, fiery, carrying the tempestuous temper of my father, which in her eyes would not serve me in this world.  It was not only fine but expected that I would be smart, but my task was to avoid revealing too much intelligence or too much spirit.  In that way, I would be acceptable and find a husband.  Being too much of anything – brilliant, impassioned, strong, ambitious – would be disastrous for a woman.

            My mother’s way of instructing and socializing me was shaming.  If that did not succeed, then outright sarcastic ridicule was the rod used to avoid spoiling the child.

            My humiliated and diminished heart held onto the shame, shoving it down into its deepest, remotest chambers.  There it quietly pulsed in rhythm with my heart, hidden yet present, waiting, waiting. 

            Four of us sat at a booth in a crowded coffee shop having Sunday morning breakfast: three abundant plates of omelets, crispy hash browns and biscuits, and one pathetic bowl of oatmeal.  Mine.  I was trying to heal a bout of esophageal pressure/pain that had cropped up after a series of colds and the fatigue that followed our annual Day of the Dead grief ritual.  My friend asked about how the ritual had gone, and I spoke about my regret over a small misstep I had made during the ritual. I was pleased that I had had enough maturity and awareness to admit my clumsiness and to make amends.  But it had truly been a tiny failure in large field of goodness.  It is telling that this is the story I chose to relate about the day.

            When I finished speaking, he asked if I realized that I had placed my hand over my heart as I spoke - precisely where I was experiencing my physical distress.  No. I was totally unaware of the gesture. 

            I had previously thought that the discomfort in my chest was a result both of depletion and also of taking a psychic hit that I saw as an energetic sword thrust into my heart by the one whose feelings I had disregarded.  There may be truth in that; a leader can easily become a target.  But maybe it was directing me towards my wound.  What if it were a sign like an arrow saying, “Hey, look over here!”  What if my body had responded to my shame, self-judgment and feeling of failure by tightening up my chest?

Surveying the road. 

Or roads, I should say, 

observing what is coming this way -

A limping figure, hard to see 

at this distance.

Ah, her hand is over her heart,

this girl or old woman approaching.

“What does your gesture signify?”

we ask, Hecate and I.

“This is the place, the only place,”

she responds, shaking her head.

“Good,” we say.  “That’s good.

This way or that way?”

She peers down one road, then the other.

“Does it matter?” she asks.

“Oh, yes.”

“Then I’ll go this way.”

And without hesitation, she proceeds

and quickly disappears from view.

I look at Hecate.

“Was that the right way?” I ask her.

She shrugs.

“Maybe a bit longer, but surer,

and with a view of the sea.”

I let out a sigh,

breath I did not even know

I was holding,

and notice my own hand

resting on my heart.

            How much is enough?  This is the struggle.  It is difficult to do what I am called to do.  It is even more of a challenge to notice and give myself credit for what I do accomplish.  How will the struggle change when the shame underneath everything is exposed?

            Here is what is emerging: the desire and effort to be kind.  Generally, being kind to others is not difficult.  Being kind to myself?  Another story.  The gesture of hand on heart becomes the token, the sign, the image for the new work.  It does not differentiate between working for the children and grandchildren and working to give the gift one has to give.  Seeing how all the work is intertwined is eye-opening.