Seeking Mother's Healing with Art

“Let My worship be in the

heart that rejoices, for behold,

all acts of love and pleasure

are My rituals.” 

― Doreen Valiente

We are are a planet desperately seeking mother. The Great Mother has been tossed out of religion and power by the patriarchal takeover, but not out of our DNA. All of us come from a mother. As newborns, recognizing the mother is our first order of business in this life.  

The spot in our cultural mind where the mother is missing is often exploited by people trying to sell you something. Everyone wants to look at pictures of the the mother, so we find them everywhere. Pictures of women's bodies fill art galleries, advertisements, on down to sexually explicit materials. The oldest human sculpture is of the mother. The great mother is an archetype of deep power. Even in its most gross forms. 

Reclaiming this lost feminine is a journey of healing, individually and culturally. To us as yogis, it means integrating the more yin and yang sides of ourselves, and so becoming more whole as souls. Most gentle new age beings of any gender I know are Goddess worshipers.

In the world, this rebalance pictures as an elevation of the status of women and girls, and also protecting the "Mother Earth". This includes everyone, the children, the poor, the forest and oceans, the animals, (and the men too!)

The beauty of the mother, with qualities like nurturing and caring for all of the children, and the beauty and diversity and interdependence of nature, can be our guide. The world is round, and the great mother is on YOUR side.

When we humans make art, we can also transmit this healing beauty, whether it be through music, or visual art, movies, poetry, or stories. Perhaps in the future, maybe even now, when we feel bad, we will have a way to go to art and receive healing.We can give each other healing prescriptions of art and music as medicine, as we even do now, when we forward interesting things we have found in cyberspace. Together we are rewriting the Great Mother back into our cultural stories, and reweaving our inner being into wholeness.

Today the Great Mother is enjoying a resurgence:

“Now hear a new truth. The Great Mother Herself will be forced to hide from those who are coming. She will seem to disappear while they grow strong, but someday She will return. Although our children and their children, perhaps to the thousandth generation, must live in the new world that has forgotten Her, they must never forget. She will return.”- Barbara Ardinger