By Tara Beth
The moment I heard my first love story, I went looking for you. —Rumi.
I awoke in my first breath with a deep yen in my heart. My soul’s purpose and mission on earth was to know the nature of the feminine and to find myself constantly in love with love and being loved. I searched for her, the face of the feminine divine, everywhere. I looked under stones, oh how I worshipped the woods. I dipped curious fingers into streams filled with crawfish because water was my solace. I leaned on trees and listened for her. In the night sky with winking stars and shining moon I would gaze, wishing to see a glimmering reflection of that which is in me. I devoured the power of femininity in women’s narratives and every book my young fingers could grip. In the sanctuary of a church, and the ritual of song and word, I wished to feel her. My young soul was a deep well of wanting to know her. Our deepest desires are non-negotiable.
Desires will keep coming back. Like the shadow-self lurking in the recesses of your psyche, desire is a powerful force, and it will push until the whispers or screams are heard. My soul knew what I yearned for, but my conscious mind did not. I was searching blindly. I’ve always loved a good story of females who are strong, courageous, loved, and loving.
I asked questions yet received answers that felt false. My favorite question was when my nine-year old self dropped a Bible at catechism class and the nun told me that I needed to say a number of Hail Mary prayers to atone. I curiously asked her if we weren’t to worship anyone but God as the father, and as it was his book, why I would need to pray to her? Was she God the mother because she was his mother? Her answer spoke of reverence for the way that Mary served her God but nothing of her being holy or a vessel. You can imagine the reaction that I received from that interaction. I had a yearning for something deep, feminine, and spiritual that wasn’t being met in the masculine, Christian, western society. Where was she?
She was elusive. In my awkward pre-teen years, I stumbled into a witch’s store. The energy in that store drew me like a moth to a flame, I picked up a book. It was titled Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham. I chose it because inside the light pink cover, it contained the word GODDESS. It felt so radical to my teenage soul. It made me smile as though I had discovered some secret ancient wisdom. I remembered the joke on a mug my father was gifted with. It said, “When God Created Man, She Was Joking.” Was She joking? Could God be a woman? It was there, in black and white on the pages. According to this book there was both a God and a Goddess and I could not have been more thrilled. I peeled page after page open and devoured it. I ate the book in its entirety. I took it so seriously and I have my original copy with all the highlighted passages to prove it. I set up an altar in my room. This had to be it for me; this had to be what was calling me!
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Being a woodsy creature, I was no stranger to alone time in the forest. I went deep into the woods, and I intuitively built a giant stone circle, sweeping it clean and readying myself and the space. I needed to feel full in my spirituality—desperately needed to feel like my life in this human feminine form was just as godly as any man. I built the stone circle. I spoke the words. I called a rudimentary half-learned circle casting from the book and I demanded to meet God. Laying down on the soft earth of the woods, I closed my eyes and waited, but God did not come.
I thought, God did not love me enough to find me. I was so sad. My young brain couldn’t process it fully, but I know I stored another layer of “I am not good enough,” another layer of “I am not worthy,” another layer of “I am just a girl.” She who wasn’t a reflection of holiness. She who was innately flawed by original sin. I tucked the book away and headed into adolescence. I know in retrospect that I was not as ready to meet God that day as I had believed. I wasn’t paying attention to the signs of She, even if she had shown up. I did not hear a change in the wind, a subtle shift in the call of the birds, or perhaps she really had not come to me after all on that day. Either way, I was lost, deflated, and without the spark that the maybe She as God had ignited in me. I dove headlong into the wave of societal norms and learned how to operate in a Goddess-lacking society.
Packing for college, on a whim of “maybe,” I tucked that book into my suitcase and stole away with it. The irony of which is that I brought a witch’s book right into the heart of my catholic institution. I used it to help write some feminist English language arts papers about the persecution of women in my favorite teacher’s class. It got me a good talking to by a Catholic priest about how only a pagan believes in the duality of nature during a discussion of the origins of the devil. There are moments in life where one could’ve taken a faster route to happiness (like following my heart toward the Women and Gender Studies minor I asked about), however, I was still in the flood of societal norms and my Doctor of Pharmacy program had no space for the likes of her. By the time I graduated, I was so mixed up and lost that I felt outside of myself. I had married quickly, taken a job away from family, and I hated where I landed—away from family and unhappy in my profession. I sifted in and out of churches—looking for a woman’s truth in spirit, a woman’s place amongst the organs and frankincense—yet, I still could not find it. Even the most liberal of Episcopal churches spouted from the Bible words that never felt right to me. I tried so hard to be a good girl—a good Christian. I spent another decade stuck in the moment of a little girl who wasn’t good enough to meet God on her own—a little girl who never felt right when she touched the supposedly sacred words of God the father.
I was broken. Miserable. Sometimes it takes a descent into darkness to finally see the light. My life had hit a valley and I was fully sitting in what I now coin “the existential crisis of a woman unfulfilled.” I spiraled out of control. I was using alcohol and yoga as a spiritual band-aid, but it wasn’t working anymore. I remembered myself as an unencumbered young girl, who always dressed like a witch, made magic potions from wildflowers, and prayed every night to the moon. One day I searched for the term “yoga and witchcraft” and that’s when I found her—my teacher, Danielle Dulsky. She is, was, and always will be, the everything that I ever needed in that moment.
Dulsky stood in the shoes of the goddess that I sought. I went to study with her at the Moon House, her temple in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, and we descended. We did not search for the light but went intentionally into the dark. That space of shadow and sadness that I had been trapped in for years. She performed a ritual called Inanna’s Descent, a ritual that I now use in my circles when I teach, and it rocked me so hard that the fractal cracks it created began to let the energy of feminine divine flood in. The feminine divine is mysterious, and I could not even begin to tell you exactly what magic took place that week in the Moon House, but as I studied books like Awakening Shakti, a yogic text centered around liberating yogic goddesses, something began to awaken inside me. It was the She-Ki, inside of me, not outside of me! Not an external force. To find the flame of the divine feminine, I had to look inside of my own flesh and bones. There she was the whole time waiting for me to discover her.
The energy that exploded within me has no words to describe it, but it is akin to joy. I drove home feeling as though I had taken a hit of some substance that drives all of the feel-good stuff into you. I was ecstatic and filled with transcendence. I’d found the secret sauce—She is lying dormant within our every cell and all we have to do is seek inward to find her.
The flame of the divine feminine lives within me. She, the female face of God, comes regularly to teach me. I’ve become a tender of the flame. I am a catalyst and holder of the SHE-KI, a form of reiki revealed to me by the spirit of Sophia, the holy feminine energies. The divine flame of Sophia is Christ’s counterpart, a dancing flame that mirrors his healing flame (she reflects healing inward, and he reflects healing outward) and together they form the union of divine love for self and others. The imagery I have been shown is that of the lotus flower as it spins above and below the chakra centers. I have no words to describe the gratitude that is in my heart for her, the epic love I feel for her, and for all of those that I love. I am in love with love. I have found what I so yearned for.
Tara Beth is a pillar of light for the divine feminine. She has dedicated her life to tending the flames of healing for herself and for others. You can find her at her sanctuary, Ghidrah’s Mystic She Ways, an apothecary and yoga sanctuary in Adrian, Michigan, and online at MysticSheWays.com. Visit Ghidrah’s at 120 East Maumee Street in Adrian, MI. For hours, check online at ghidrahs.com. Read more about Gidrah’s in the feature from Issue #7, Our Southern Neighbors, at https://bit.ly/3CpzNBE.
