Koda - Fire of the Goddess: nine paths to ignite the sacred feminine

About the Author

Katalin Koda is a passionate explorer of earth stories, womens mysteries and the mythic expression of our world. A practicing Vajrayana Buddhist, Katalin also works with indigenous wisdom and shamanism in her healing practice. She is a visionary artist, poet, and dreamer and has been teaching workshops on womens wisdom and spirituality, Reiki, shamanic journey and chakra healing for more than fifteen years. Please visit her website www.katalinkoda.com for more information.

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Fire of the Goddess: Nine Paths to Ignite the Sacred Feminine 2011 by Katalin Koda.

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First e-book edition 2011

E-book ISBN: 9780738728438

Book design by Steffani Sawyer

Cover design by Adrienne Zimiga

Cover illustration by Kathleen Edwards

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Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

For all the women and girls of the world

who dare to leap, to shine brightly,

to love and dance and sing

.

Contents

The Fire Bearer

The Initiate

The Warrioress

The Healer

The Consort

The Bodhisattva

The Weaver

The Priestess

The Crone

Exercises

: Seeking Out a Local Goddess

: Forming a Womens Circle

: Calling on Guidance and the Ancestors

: A Three-Part Process to Reclaim Initiation

: Boundary Circle

: Finding a Guardian Spirit

: Lying on Mother Earth

: Journaling a Dream

: Raising Energy

: Connecting to Your Inner Masculine

: Focusing on the Breath

: Deep Listening

: Weaving Womb, Heart, and Head

: Preparing Your Vision

: Using Nature to Develop Your Intuition

: Using Sacred Sound

: Envisioning Your Death

: Sitting with Death

Introduction

Be wild; that is how to clear the river.

Clarissa Pinkola Ests

We all come from a mother. We are born out of a woman, out of the wombthe small, dark, wet space that has no other purpose biologically but to carry life. Each one of us inhabits space: between our organs and within our lungs; in our nostrils to breathe and smell; in our ears so that we can hear the sounds of the world. Yet it is woman who holds the space to create life, to nurture it naturally for nine months, and to push it out into the world where that new life has the opportunity to grow and learn, dance and love, feel heartache and sorrow, channel spirit into form. This is an immense reality that can inspire us each and every day if we choose to pay closer attention to it. It is wondrous that every woman walks around with the great mystery of life dwelling within her.

For decades, women have been inspired to seek out new ways to relate to sacredness and honor the divine feminine. This is crucial to creating a more balanced view of the sacred, since most organized religions were originally written down by men and primarily constructed for male practice. This doesnt mean there is no wisdom in world religions, but the path of the woman, the spiritual capacity of a human that carries the creative force within, calls for a different way of approaching the sacred. Unlike traditional religious paths, contemporary womens connection to the spiritual comes in the form of ordinary reality. The number of women I know who are able to raise children in an expansive, holistic way as well as take care of the house and have a career (such as my own mother) is astonishing. We women should be applauding ourselves for our capacity to give birth, make a perfect cup of tea, and drum to the stars. We are limitless and we need to remind ourselves of that limitlessness on a daily basis.

Instead of transcending, the sacred feminine reminds us to simply be with what is, and celebrate it; to be with the messiness of birth; to celebrate each time our menses comes along; to sit quietly and respectfully with death; to honor our pregnancies, our years of breastfeeding, our times of going within and finding new aspects of the soul. The sacred feminine reminds us that even if we do not have children, we are still deeply connected to our mother and her processes; that we are a reflection of her power, her love, her wisdom. We are all a reflection of the beauty that is our earth and all her processes. Earth is our mother as much as our human mother and all things come from her and return to her, just as our bodies will one day decay in her soils.

Over and over and over again, I have read the story of the goddess: how she figured predominantly in the artwork of our ancestors for over 30,000 years. How she is the mother, weaver, dancer, lover, divine matrix, web builder, daughter, queen of heaven, queen of earth until her descent into the underworld some four to five thousand years b.c.e . The story of her loss seems to begin with Inanna/Astarte/Isis, and descend downward into the abyss beneath a patriarchal, kingdom worship of masculine divinity. Except for the phenomenon of Tantra that later arose in South India in 500 c.e. , the predominant worship of the sacred feminine and the goddess was slowly crushed out of much of the worlds religion, ideology, and philosophy and she was almost destroyed by the culture of the west.

We are now witnessing where the system of the past several thousand years has led us: rape and violence throughout the world, severe poverty, hunger and social unrest, unprecedented climate change and ecological destruction; meanwhile, we spend billions of dollars on space programs and seek to explain the mystery of the universe, often forgetting to solve our very real issues here on earth. But all of that is changing. Peoples grassroots efforts are slowly gaining ground even if the the old system would have you think otherwise; there is no question now that the goddessand all her guises of interconnectedness, immanence, and sacred feminineis returning in full force. Even with all of the darkness of our history, we see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is no stopping her. When the tide reaches critical mass, humanity will shift once again into a way of being that will be more connected with the earth. As I write this, Americans are hotly debating the need for universal health care. On the surface this may seem to be a political issue, but dig a bit deeper and youll find that the crux of the issue is the our current capitalistic, dominant way of handling our health versus a system that supports peoples well being. The anger and rage that is surfacing is a symptom of that shift. Even if the plan of universal health care fails this time, it will return, because as each of us wakes up to the immanence of the sacred feminine, we in turn affect and light the power of those around us.