Pink Moon...

Day 177 of Bound Lotus is done...I met a man on Monday at the Saint Louis Bread Co. who turned out to be a Catholic on the surface, but an intrigueing Christian mystic beneath. We talked for two hours. We talked about every religion. We talked about how one of the things that causes inappropriate behavior on the part of men toward me is NOT that I think about it all the time and therefore draw it to me, BUT that a lot of men would consider me rather pretty, and it makes me stand out. That and my spiritual light is visible beneath the outer beauty, and some men, men who might not like women, let alone women developing their own power, would see this and want to quash it. Sexual harassment is a very traditionally easy way for a woman's power to be usurped. Funny that later that day I watched the movie that was, in it's original Swedish title, called: "Men Who Hate Women". I now know why I was drawn to pick up Phyllis Curott's "Book of Shadows", that I had read in 1998 while with the man who tortured me. I speculate that I did not draw him to me so much through the thoughts I had at the time, as that he is an 'old soul' who has followed me through the centuries of incarnations, and he had found me in this one too. I'm sure we met in Auschwitz. I'm sure he tortured me. I'm sure we met hundreds of years ago, and have often wondered if I was a 'wise woman', an herbalist or mystic back then who was tortured during the Witch Hunts. I think my breathing problems aren't just from this lifetime. I think that is why it feels so intractable. I don't doubt that there is a lot of truth to what Sat Inder says, but this wound in my lungs, and in my heart is centuries old. I don't care if it sounds crazy. It isn't.

I opened Phyllis Curott's book at random and my eyes fell on the words: 'Malleus Maleficarum'. This is the book, published by two Dominican inquisitors in 1486, and prefaced with the papal bull of Pope Innocent VIII from 1484, which has still not been rescinded, that brands Witches as worshippers of Satan. This book: 'The Hammer of the Witches', authorized the use of torture to secure confessions in the Witch Hunts that spanned centuries. This book was a bestseller, outselling everything except the Bible. It was a response to the growing power in the hands of women after the Crusades, when much of the wealth of Europe devolved into the hands of women who had been left to run the estates and trades while the men were at war.

The medical profession was also developing at this time, and it usurped the roll of village herbalists and midwives who were primarily women, making it illegal for them to practice by classifying their healing herbs as anything but, and "wiping out the competition by force".

'Malleus Maleficarum' was written by Men Who Hate Women...by misogynists. It's methods delineated to secure confessions were grisly and horrific. It IS S&M. It IS B&D. It IS what I saw in the above-mentioned movie. It WAS hatred of women mixed up with religion. As the result of a small faction of men in the Catholic Church in the 1500s, the Women's Holocaust came into being and spanned several hundred years. Hundreds of thousands of women were murdered all across Europe and Russia. And I'm sure I was one of them. I'm sure I was Russian once, and I am sure it was more than once. I was born angry. I was born livid with rage, and an axe to bury. I was a bearer of the labrys.

It is no wonder this is so hard to let go. The wounds are Old. Very Old. Most women were tortured into confessing and then murdered. They were raped, sodomized, sexually tortured with pins, needles and hot molten metal rods poked into orifices, including the eyes. Iron Maidens were used. The "witch's chair", an invention of a metal chair heated by fire beneath; the "scold's bridle", an iron cage that drove spikes through the victim's tongue (basically getting the 'nag' to shut up); and much worse were used.

One woman, Walpurga Hausmanin, a midwife in Dillingen, Germany, had her breasts and arms torn off with heated irons, her right hand was cut off, and she was burned at the stake. This was sanctioned by the bishop of Augsburg, who received all her property. Fear of women's power and repressed sexuality were the likely culprits. I feel like I understand now, why, ever since I was very little, before grandma ever touched me, before anyone else ever did, that I lived in fear of having my breasts bit off, or other things bitten off. I was afraid of fire, and born into a family who loved to build fires in the evening and sit by them to read. I was already letting go of fear back then.

I was learning about the goddess energies, about "Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna. Goddess of a thousand names." (p. 41) The Thousand Names of Divine Mother. The Lalita Sahasranama. Do you know that the so-called demon Astaroth in the Goetia, was really the benevolent goddess Astarte? Many of the so-called demons in the Goetia were pagan women goddesses demonized by the Catholic Church. Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, has been metaphorically coming to save her angry sister Erishkegal in the underworld. With her flies and loyal Ninshibur as helpers, just as Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. describes in her book: "Close to the Bone". I found this book after my mother died. The goddess was leading me. I'd found the words of one of many Wise Women, and one who I am sure is a closet Witch, like me, if her later book, "The Millionth Circle" is any indication. A woman doctor. Then a high-powered, honest and good woman lawyer named Phyllis Curott, who wrote her "Book of Shadows" for me and others to read later...a woman of truth.

And then I met an old nemesis in my 29th year, and had the old wounds renewed. I've been healing those too now, and then this lawyer came along, making me uncomfortable for months until I stood up for myself, and almost lost my job because of it. But I look at the statue I have the Egyptian goddess with the head of a lion. Sekmet. The Egyptian goddess of destruction and rebirth (much like the Hindu Kali). "She's the sister of Maat, the goddess of truth, and she helps Maat by eating liars".