A Clarion Call to the Wild Masculine from the Wild Feminine on this All Soul’s Day
(An Excerpt from Cara’s forthcoming book, “Omen”)
All Soul’s Day is upon us.
What does it mean to be — and to have — a Soul?
As well, is this day simply about remembering our ancestors and the paths they plotted so that we could be here, now? Is it about keeping alive the memory of our dearly departed so that their Souls are not banished to the land of the forgotten, fated to roam in the wayward misery of the underworld for eons?
Yes, and….
It is also a time for remembering who we have also been — in lifetimes past, over the past thousands of years.
I remember…
Hands bound by thick rope behind my stooped back. Ashes and tears smudging my face. A church tupelo towering above. White and dome shaped, the bell inside remaining mute and stationary. Village masses below chanting, “Mors diaboli” (Death to the Devil) and “Sit laus Deo” (Praise be to God). Backs turned, I cower in the shadows. In the other direction lay a tree line.
“I can do it,” my mind thinks. Stealthily yet stumbling away from the death and the massacre, I escape the village square. Like a flash, I bolt. My feet never think twice, always moving forward — pushing on, towards greater heights and farther falls. This brown eyed girl never looking back.
Thick, red frock gathers around my pumping legs. My heart thunders, my pulse races. Fear and survival fueling me on, faster, further, finally free. Long, brown locks flowing behind me.
Steadfastly, I plunge deeper into the forest and beyond the flat plains where the anguished screams of women burning fall. A hushed, heavy sky filled with gray clouds has gathered overhead. The knotted pine trees, dense ivy and soft soil surrounding me wordlessly speak. “This way, dear One.” “Keep going,” they quietly cheer. My brain doesn’t know which way to turn, but I am only listening to the cadence and an ancient wisdom within. This one Earth body. It will not be silenced.
A grass clearing up ahead where a rock outcropping stoically sits. I hide amongst the boulders and catch my breath there. Gazing upward, a small part in the clouds and a brilliant flicker of light. Not just a star, but Jupiter beaming down his luck and prosperity on my shivering shoulders. An omen, indeed.
Trained in the art of astronomy, I plot my path based on that planet’s rotation overhead. An echo of baritone voices rings out in the near distance, disrupting my thoughts. I shrink back, bending my shape like that of the large stone in front of me as I inwardly pray for protection.
Footfalls grow nearer, my pulse quickening once more. “In a minute,” a younger male voice calls out in a language I understand but rarely speak. Then, I sense him standing above where I am hiding. My skin crawls; he is staring right at me. Turning my head but not betraying my position, I look into his sturdy yet softened gaze. A momentary beat and all of time unfolds between us — pyramids rising, boats sailing, armies falling, religion marching.
Motioning to my hands with his chin, I respond by stretching them towards his towering countenance. Glinting in the muted light, a dagger now in his large hand. A quick swipe, and the rope falls to the barren Earth. Rubbing my wrists, I glance one last time into his shining face. Noticing a familiar marker there — a freckle below his left eye that mirrors my own — my breath catches. A shudder of deep resonance within.
“Run!” he mouths as he turns and strides back to where his comrade impatiently paces, thirsting for blood, hungry to return to the mayhem and destruction found in the center of the stone village. His own heart not quite yet blackened by the soot found on the bottom of the boot on patriarchy’s heel. I watch as the sharp lines of his gray uniform, denoting a newly entrenched operating system between church and state, recedes in the distance. My heart falls. Pushing myself from the cool ground, dusting off my knees and centering with another deep breath, I dart for the dank, dark forest once more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Startled by the ping of my cell phone, I awake in my bed alone. Kicking at the thick comforter now gathered around my legs, I recall that I was just running in my dream. But where was I going, and what was I fleeing? Squinting my eyes in the dark, I notice the gray of dawn rising outside the bedroom window. Rolling to the north, I reach for where my phone sleeps on a shelf, hidden in a pile of clean clothes. There, a text I had been expecting from a peer I had recently reconnected with.
Spelled out in black, bold letters, those three, little letters repeated. “R-u-n!” After engaging in acts of intimacy, both physical and emotional, he continually pushes me away. “I am no good,” he says. “I am broken.” “I know,” I lament, with sad face emojis crying copious tears. After all this time, he still wants to protect me.
But the burning times have long passed. A modern woman today, I live alone as a wealthy widow, in a country that is not my own, raising my child as I deem fit. Pitchforks having been replaced by anonymous faces yelling from behind the safety of computer screens. Mollified by media and convenience, a populace now too comfortable to come out of their homes. The Wizard of Oz oddly alive in this gilded age.
Meanwhile, my sisters and I are again — after hundreds of years of struggle and resistance — free to gather herbs, sit in ceremony, and pray to the Earth just as we once did. We are also expected to run multi-million dollar companies, manage every minute detail within our own houses and families and use our sex to garner more and more economic power.
The times they have a-changed.
But for Him, the fallout of patriarchy’s war on his own soul has been near total devastation. After thousands of years of powering over all that which has been deemed inferior and to be controlled — including his own emotional body — he has become depraved. Mind over matter his mantra, costing him most of his humanity along the way.
The light in his eyes often clouded by fear and anger, defenses and delusion. A caged, wild animal attempting to bite the hand that feeds it, he lashes out with little to no provocation. Pain so thick, like a wide moat around a castle made of sand, he can no longer see beyond it. Feeding his inner beast, his Soul nears obsolescence.
Addictions, untreated trauma, mental health disease and mood disorders. Lying, denial, gaslighting and cheating. He has forgotten the necessity of his other crucial needs, for trust and innocence, purity and true beauty. Instead, he unconsciously tries to fill a vacant hole, emptied by his own fist over thousands of years. Both a victim and a slave here, he has too long mistakenly thought that he was free. An oppressor of his own making, that invisible and imaginary God.
After all this time, I owe him nothing. His valiant deed instinctively performed as repayment for my once having gathered his strewn parts — dismembered and littered across the desert by our rage-filled brother, Set — when, as Isis, I worked tirelessly to bring him, Osiris, back to life. Even, fair and square, I could simply walk away, leaving him to incinerate within his own destructive flames.
More than two separate entities however, his soul my own, bumping into each other again and again, lifetime after lifetime. Most of the time though, we forget how we are acquainted as we erroneously believe that this is all just a personal, sleight of hand. Yet, all along the way, my love for him untarnished — deep, passionate, reverent.
His wildness is as essential and divine as my own. My unwavering commitment to helping him remember this intact. Equal part brother and lover, I will not forsake him to the burning inferno of oblivion. So I write and I reflect, I pray and I share. And I hope against all odds that all of my words — both those spoken aloud, and those harbored in the deep recesses of my sacred Feminine body — will no longer fall on deaf ears. Striking the chords of deep resonance within his near comatose Body Mind Soul Spirit, awakening His remembering.
I love you, Brother Lover Friend.
Come home.
