Days 30 and Day 7

I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of Lebanon

Blessings to you as we reach the end of our

Thirty Days with Mary journey and as we approach

the feast day of the Immaculate Conception.

During these days we have covered so many

aspects of the Divine Feminine and who and what

Mary is to us. We have peeled away the layers
and have stared deeply into the mirror darkly.

I have offered the Thirty Days with Mary a few times
over the last few years, but this year has been
very special, thanks to all of you.
Thank you for sharing your images, your experiences,
your insights and your own resistances.
I could relate to each and every one.

Today I offer you these thoughts to ponder :

The Mysteries of Mary and the Christian mystery of the incarnation

of the Divine into earthly matter, is the ultimate sacred marriage,

the hieros gamos, the marriage of the greatest opposites,

that of heaven and earth.

We cannot fathom how does heaven and earth unite as one

and we cannot fathom that all of earthly matter is sanctified

by the divine essence that lives in all.

But we can accept the open invitation that the Soul

does exist in this body and we can accept that all is

blessed by the Presence of the Divine.

There is no separation between holy and ordinary

The Mystery of the Incarnation of the divine into the ordinary

has been told through many aeons of time and through

many cultures and traditions.  It is not only now

in the new unfolding age that we are being reminded

that woman metaphorically and in human

consciousness, represent matter (mater) and that

woman (matter) mothers the Divine.  

Preparing to greet the goddess

Do not think of her unless you are prepared
to be driven to your limits;
to rush forth from yourself
like a ritual bowl overflowing
with consecrated wine.

Do not summon her image
unless you are ready to be blinded,
to stand in the flash
of a center exploding,
yourself shattering into the landscape,
wavering bits of bark and water.

Do not speak her name
until you have said goodbye
to all your familiar trinkets -
your mirrors, your bracelets, 
your childhood adorations -
From now on you are nothing,
a ghost hovering at the window,
a voice singing under water. 

             - Dorothy Waters

Om Jai mata Mary Ma
Jai jai ma



Day 7 of the Nine day Art Novena to Lady of Lourdes

The Ace of Vessels
Mysteries of Mary tarot deck

“We are now, I believe, on the threshold of a third stage which I call the stage of the sacred marriage. This is the only position we could possibly take and still survive. This is a stage beyond both matriarchy and patriarchy. It involves the restoration to human respect of all of the rejected powers of the feminine. But it is absolutely essential that this restoration should be accomplished in the deep spirit of the sacred feminine. Not only should we invoke the sacred feminine, restore the sacred feminine, but this union between the matriarchal and the patriarchal, the sacred marriage, must be accomplished in the spirit of the sacred feminine for it to be real, effective, rich, and fecund. It must occur in her spirit of unconditional love, in her spirit of tolerance, forgiveness, all-embracing and all-harmonizing balance, and not, in any sense, involve a swing in the other direction.”

― Andrew Harvey, The Return of the Mother

She who Priestesses the Holy in the Ordinary;
The Vessel of the new age of humanity.
The High Priestess is in complete balance,
carrying the two sacred vessels of the living waters
of consciousness.  She is the vehicle for the inner
sacred marriage; the coming together of
masculine and feminine, spirit and matter,
the holy and the ordinary.

We awaken to the Inner Presence by discovering the story that

lives within each one of us.
 Here in this shrine, 

she has stepped off the wheel of fate (usually symbolised by your

astrology chart which has fixed your destiny in time and space) and

she has also stepped off the half-moon.  Often the High Priestess,

the Virgin Goddess, the Queen of Heaven, stands on the half-moon,

a symbol amongst other things, of the influence of the hidden

world of emotions.

The Soul within you is priestessing the healing balm for your own

personal story.

The Ace of Vessels

Mysteries of Mary tarot deck

Prayer for today :

I open myself to the spirit of the sacred feminine as embodied

and demonstrated by Blessed Mary and Bernadette Soubirous and the temenos
of Lourdes.  I invoke the sacred feminine

presence to cultivate the inner garden for the hieros gamos, 

the sacred marriage within myself and my world 

Blessings to you

Hettienne