The Holy Wild. Danielle Dulsky

one who truly wants to come, for the decisions we make now are our proclamation of the principles on which we want our children’s world to be based. She, despite the pronoun I have chosen to use to designate the feminine, is positively and irrefutably pan-gender. Eventually, yes, we will all sit at this table together. For now, the untamed woman is tasked with digging up her psychic dirt, igniting her shame on a funeral pyre, facing her most gruesome shadows, and enacting within the microcosm of her own spiritual journey all that she hopes to see accepted and empowered in greater society.

      Consider this holy book an ode to your coronation. You may have called yourself Witch, Priestess, or wild woman for some time now — but, in these pages, I ask you to claim your heathen crown, to know yourself as an embodiment of not only the feminine divine light but also the feminine divine dark. I am placing it on your head now, Priestess. Can you feel the weight of it? You are She who is returned, and this is your sacred text because much of it will be written by you. These verses call you to burn your fear at the stake and build your own temple of the Holy Wild out of mud and stones, tended by your ancestors and named sacred by you. Keep a fire burning for Her there, as She has always kept one softly crackling for you. Arch your back and listen closely for Her drumbeat, for it grows louder with every Priestess who joins you, who spits on the instruments of spiritual oppression, continually examines whether her beliefs are truly her own, and reclaims her hard-earned, holy heathen crown. This temple is ours, built by the hands of the heathen and attended by the countless Priestesses of the Holy Wild.

* Please see the Additional Resources section for books written by women of color about the Goddesses Kali, Lalita, Oshun, and Oya.

       The Book of Earth

      The earth element is our ground, the place from which we rise. Here, our greatest lessons are those sourced straight from our souls’ hard-won liberation. Earth calls us to dig deep, to uncover the blood-soaked treasure embedded in our wounds, to harvest our most ancient underworld wisdom, and to remember the way back to our wild home. Here, we stand firm in our sovereignty and our selfhood, howling incantations our hearts have always remembered. Here, all that is uniquely ours serves to nourish our roots and remind us of the immutable truths tattooed on our bones.

       Wild Feminine Archetype: The Priestess of the Wild Earth

       Themes in Her-story: Rightful rebellion, tasting the forbidden, spiritual initiation, sacred solitude in nature, coming home to the wilds

       Come home to the wilds, heathen. Let’s speak of stone circles and forbidden fruit. Share your ancient medicine with me, and I will show you the overgrown, untamed places where you belong.

       Chapter 1

       Earth Verses

      Long before the holy feminine’s voice arises from the depths of a woman’s soft belly and demands to be heard — before she claims the name Witch, wild woman, fire-keeper, or any other designation that speaks to her spiritual autonomy — she side-eyes the parts of her world that no longer suit the truth-telling Priestess she is becoming. She outgrows her too-small life. She takes an ongoing inventory of the subtle hints and cosmic winks she is receiving from nature, her body, and the unmapped terrain of her psyche. Perhaps the first chill autumn wind becomes an invitation to wander long toward the sinking sun, or the swelling, in-the-heart joy sparked by the songs of night birds in a spring woodland elicits a permanent and unquenchable thirst for the wilds. The lived experience of the earth element is unique to every woman, but it is always marked by a persistent beckoning to come home to a more ancient version of herself, to escape from the overnarrowed and conventional life she had been living, and to seek authenticity more than approval.

      There is a part of you, my love, that remembers not only your own hands in the dirt during childhood but the knowing hands of your grandmothers and their grandmothers as they planted their own seeds and connected to their own lands. There is a part of you that is in a relationship with the earth element that most certainly mirrors an intimacy shared with someone else in your bloodline; the kinship she felt with the ground, the wounds of her roots, the way she kept her home, her underworld fears, and the shape of her body are all very like yours. You may not know who she was, but her story is your story. The bond a woman feels with earth runs in the blood, and to rekindle the intimacy with the land is her birthright, her wild inheritance, and her destined mandate.

      In this chapter of Earth Verses, I ask you to envision yourself encircled by your ancestors as you read. Consider how the themes of women’s rebellion against injustice, tasting the forbidden fruit, sacred solitude in nature, and coming home to the wilds may have been suppressed throughout his-story, and consider how these forces have ebbed and flowed in your own personal myth of awakening. Know your story as fluid and shape-shifting, and honor the shadowy parts of your soul that may have been called wicked or shameful as precious gifts, holy in their own right and divine in their darkness, that now allow you to become the woman you needed when you were younger.

THE PRIESTESS OF THE WILD EARTH ARCHETYPE: MEETING THE SOVEREIGN MAIDEN

      In our personal epic stories of wounding and healing, wandering and homecoming, confinement and escape, there is always a pivotal moment when a choice that seems to determine our destiny is made. In tales that reflect aspects of the Priestess of the Wild Earth archetype, that choice is often to flee, to break free from the ties that bind the body and soul to someone else’s expectations and seek out a truer, wilder home. In that moment within the everyday life of a woman, a fleeting glimpse of infinite possibility is often offered up straight from the Holy Wild herself, a sacred and earthly nod that seems to answer the very question that has been twisting in her gut for a time: What do I believe my soul truly desires, knowing all that I know of myself now, in this moment of initiation? The answer is always authenticity, the chance to freely live out the most genuine version of herself she can.

      We are all of the Earth, and she will always be calling us home to our cyclical nature and our genuine feminine power. The budding Witch may have grown weary of adhering rigidly to a loved one’s notions of acceptable spirituality, and, on one fateful evening, a milk-white moonbeam melts her fear of being seen. She is the Priestess of the Wild Earth. The young artist holds and examines a scarred rose petal, suddenly finding the encouragement to pursue a more rebellious dream than that which her parents held for her. She is the Priestess of the Wild Earth. The fragile lover decides to leave a relationship that crushes her spirit every day, having been granted permission by a low-rumbling thunderstorm. She is the Priestess of the Wild Earth. She is Lilith, and so are you.

      Lilith’s story, in all its many variations, distortions, and interpretations, is a tale of the too-small life outgrown and a more soulful selfhood embraced. We begin here, with her, not because she is the embodiment of the grounded, enduring feminine and not because she is a beacon of warmth, grace, and solace. By contrast, Lilith is the rootless Maiden, the one whose very identity is defined not by who she knows she is but by who she knows she is not. We begin with Lilith because her myths are those of resistance to all that cages, all that separates us from our heathen nature and unmasked individuality. The earth element is where we stand firm in nothing but our authenticity, having ascended from the underworld of other people’s expectations, and Lilith is the ancient embodiment of feminist rebellion and radical sovereignty.

      Lilith’s story begins in Sumerian myth, where she is handmaiden to Inanna, a supportive force to the great Goddess of sexual mysteries and underworld initiation. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, inscribed as early as 2000 BCE, Lilith has taken up residence in a willow tree, refusing to leave even when her mistress, Inanna,