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Kitchen Table Alchemy

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Calling Up The Mother

4/28/2017

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​As above, so below.  As within, so without.

The way of The Divine is the way of Justice.  Of Peace that Passeth Understanding.  Of Inclusion.  Of Love.  Knowing this has taken me into deep questioning of the religion I was raised with- and brought me onto a path searching for the truly “Old Time Religion”—that of the Goddess, The Great Mother.  Of the time when we recognized that all life on this planet begins with the female.

It’s been a long and winding road, but there have been some significant landmarks, and in this time where the moon is empty and waits to be filled, some connections fell into place for me that I think give us a way to set right what’s been wrong for so long. 
​Last summer, I read The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. Told from the perspective of Dinah, the daughter of Judah, it fully unleashed something inside of me that had been stirring for quite some time.  In it, Diamant, an ancient Hebrew scholar, lays out a world before Patriarchy has fully taken hold.  A world where women have their practices and men have theirs.  A world where the menstrual blood is sacred, and the bleeding time is holy.  This understanding begins to lose footing during the course of the novel, and I’ve come to understand that women ceasing to give their blood to the Earth is the reason we are living in the out of balance, war-mongering, planet-destroying, woman-hating world we find ourselves in today.  But we’ll need to take a pass through Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for me to explain what I mean here.

First, though, come walk with me through a garden I’ve been working on for a while…

In Diamant’s Red Tent world, the original blood sacrifice was that of a woman giving her menstrual blood back to the earth.  When we understand this, we can see that our present idea of blood sacrifice is so perverted as to be almost unrecognizable.

I’ve been working with my relationship with my menstrual cycle and my blood for a while now.  Even amongst those seeking full body acceptance and promoting body positivity, dogging on our periods is still the norm.  Women have been taught nothing other than an antagonistic relationship with their periods.  Period blood is seen by both men and women as being completely disgusting.  We literally call our periods “The Curse”.  We totally freak out about it—so much so that even pad commercials show some blue dishwashing detergent to demonstrate their product’s effectiveness.  Because red liquid in that context is just SO GROSS.

Not because we as a culture hate the sight of blood, mind you.  We love blood.  The bloodier, the better.  Splash it on the camera if you can—but only the blood of death.  The blood of slashing and shooting and hacking is welcomed, relished, craved.  It is only the blood of life that makes us recoil in horror.

About a decade ago, I realized that I wore tampons as a way to not have to deal with my blood at all.  To close my eyes to the messiness that is Life.  I went for a while without tampons, only using pads, in order to face my blood.  To have to deal with it.  To quit hiding.  I ruined a lot of clothes and eventually learned to only wear black on my heaviest days, but I didn’t go back to tampons until I had moved from horror at the sight of my blood to it just being a part of my life.

In the last several months, I’ve started doing a free-bleeding ritual on the little patch of grass in my back yard.  I go outside, under the moon, and sit on my grass with no undies or protection and meditate for a while.  As I’ve been doing this, I keep getting this image of the Earth and me sharing a circulatory system.  In the grounding mediation that I do to start, I breathe out of the bottom of my spine into roots that go into the ground.  I breathe deeper and deeper into those roots.  Deep enough to reach the pulsing red core of the earth.  Then I breathe that ruby-red pulsing energy back up into my heart space before breathing branches out of the top of my head that reach into the heavens.  As I was doing this, I saw and felt the connection between the pulsing red core of the Earth and the pulsing red core of me—the seat of my power and intuition, the gateway to all human life on the planet: the womb.
It’s been incredibly powerful. 
Last month, I had one of the most painful and heaviest periods I’ve had in years and years. I had to go buy another heating pad so I could have one behind me and one wrapped around my belly.  Two days into it, and realizing it was nowhere ready to be done, I remembered a thread I’d read on a homesteading site about using cups instead of tampons and diluting the blood to water the plants with and how the plants had responded.  I figured if I’m going to bleed this much and it be so painful, I don’t want it to be for nothing, so I started collecting my blood and then giving it to the plants every night.  
Having something for the plants every night made the day worth it somehow.  I was almost sad when I didn’t have anything more for my little green babies.  I ordered a FemmyCycle cup to make collection easier next month (I’ve had no luck with other cups I’ve tried).


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This week, candidates that are anti-choice are running on Democratic tickets, and the Patron Saint of Progressives not only endorsed them, but told those upset about it that they needed to put their issues aside in the name of progress.  The Handmaid’s Tale came out on Hulu yesterday.  In order for Atwood’s Gilead to happen, both the left and the right need to agree that women’s rights are negotiable.  Apparently, they now are.  

As I’m left to ponder how we keep ending up in this space- how we keep having these movements that seem to push society forward only to be pulled back further than we were when we started, an ad for Neil Gaiman’s American Gods goes across my screen. I listened to the book this last year as well.  In the book, as devotees come to America, they make a blood sacrifice to their god and it brings the god to the New World.  Only America is a fickle country, and it’s hard for gods to survive as we tend to shift the object of our devotion so very often. The final battle scene in the book has made me wonder as I wander about the machinations of our current political and media climate--- but that’s another discussion for another day (and I don’t want to give any spoilers here).

Yet, one thing that happens in that battle is different gods getting folks to do some act at the beginning of the battle to dedicate it to them.  That way, any energy mustered, any blood spilled will contribute to that particular god’s strength and energy.

Any blood spilled will contribute to that god’s strength and energy…

And suddenly, I get this flash of understanding and the rolling through millennia of history that comes with such flashes and I see so very clearly how the only blood that’s been spilled on the Earth for such a very long time is the blood of death, destruction, chaos and domination.  These are the forces that have been consistently fed.  The blood of Life, creation, communion, community has been largely absent here -in the Western World anyway.  We are not feeding The Great Mother.  We are not feeding Life.  Women in the West (and many other places) stopped giving their blood back to the earth a long time ago.  Is it any wonder that the spirit of the Feminine has been so weak? 

To give that blood back, we’ve got to change our own relationship to it.

It’s time for us to return to the Knowing we’ve lost.  It’s time for us to renew our relationship with the Earth.  It’s time for us to quit hating our blood – quit cursing it- and recognize the power that it has.  It’s time for us to claim our blood, and dedicate it to the Earth.  Give it to Life.  Bless it in the name of The Great Mother. 

So however you handle your menstrual blood, when you dispose of it, dedicate it to The Great Mother.  Honor it in the name of the Divine Feminine.  Bleed for Life.  Bless your womb. 

And if your womb no longer bleeds, yet this idea stirs something inside of you, find a space somewhere on the earth, under a tree perhaps, and take off your shoes and sit for a while.  Breathe deep into The Mother, and ask what you can do for her.  How you can make her stronger. What you can do to reclaim the Divine Feminine within and bring us back in to balance. 
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Values for Security

2/16/2017

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Hate and fear always seem to get their full line budget.  How does that happen, and what values of ours end up being sacrificed on the altar to security?  What can we do about that?  In this episode, we discuss the volatility of our time and where security is to be found.  In the last segment, we begin working through the book Spiritual Activism by Claudia Horowitz. Listen here.

For more on cultivating calmness, see this article from Bri Saussy - complete with audio files for a guided experience!


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Inaugurate Your Life

1/18/2017

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Bring How can you harness your energy on Inauguration Day towards something good, even when you're not feeling good about where the new leadership is taking us? We discuss ways to usher in a new age of powerful intentions and actions in your life regardless - or perhaps because of - what's going on externally. Plus, some simple tips on how to interpret your dreams!  Listen here

Here are links to the authors and resources we mentioned in this episode:

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations  by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom

​Inaugurate creative community into your life at Creation Station in Central Phoenix.  Bring that half-finished project, that thing you bought everything for but never started on, that idea you wanted to brainstorm with someone, or your stuff to make signs for the march on the 21rst to this event in a private home.  Going forward in 2017, Creation Stations will be held on or near the new moon every month. 


United We Stand Ceremony - Weaving a Future of Inclusion and Civil Justice is a free community ceremony and will be held at a private home in Central Phoenix.  Saturday, January 21rst at 4:00pm.


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New Year, Same Ol, Same Ol?

1/4/2017

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 What do you do when you're uncertain about what goals you want to set for the new year?  Especially during tumultuous times, a new approach on how to envision a new year may be necessary.

Here are links to the authors and resources we mentioned in this episode:

​Notes from the Universe's Mike Dooley's Love Your Life 30 Day Project

Neil Gaiman American Gods

Amanda Palmer The Art of Asking and the TED Talk by the same name.

Jacqueline Freeman (not me!) The Song of Increase: 
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Nature of Reality and the Next Stage of Evolution

12/17/2016

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We take a deep look at the nature of reality, our perceptions of what is real, what’s really going on under the surface, and how our understanding of quantum physics must change the way we think about brain science and what is real. Then we explore the topic of how evolution in the 21st century and beyond may be about psychological evolution rather than physical evolution, and how we as individuals can embrace this change without getting bowled over by it.  Listen here.

Here are links to the authors and resources we mentioned in this episode:
The initial discussion was sparked off this article: The Case Against Reality

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nicolas Taleb

Darwin's Theory of Evolution via Mate Selection

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Life is Beautiful

The Mastery of Self
by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr
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Moving to another world: Agency vs Punishment

12/6/2016

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Randomly picking a story from Spider Woman's Web by Susan Hazen-Hammond, we read "First Woman Brings the People to the 3rd World", a Dine' tale of moving from one world into the next where coyote convinces the people to ignore First Woman's advice and take his easy way.  

The discussion to follow covers the difference moving in agency or moving in punishment makes on our perceptions and choices. Listen here. 
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Bullies on the Playground

11/29/2016

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Special guest Kathleen Gramzay's recent trip to Greece sparks a discussion on multi-dimensional experiences, the beginning of patriarchy, the roots of democracy, and facing the bullies on the playgrounds of our lives.  Recorded on 11/18/16. Listen in here
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22- Walking With the Ancestors

11/2/2016

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Recorded on Dia de los Muertos, artist and writer Paige Sullivan guest hosts a conversation about releasing ancestor angst and its relationship to creative process.  Listen here.

Debbie Ford Dark Side of the Light Chasers

​Bri Saussy's Rumpelstiltskin from Spinning Gold 
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21-#YesAllWomen

10/8/2016

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Trump's latest scandal involves him bragging about sexually assaulting a married woman.  While there is so much going on that we have no idea how to shift, this is one where we know how to move.  Rape culture requires shame and silence to thrive.  In this episode, we're giving you a template to hold a community sharing ritual that gives a space for women to share their stories of sexual assault with supportive men that hold silent witness.

The ritual comes after an initial track.  Listen to each section, and pause at the stir & twinkle to do the activities with your community.

Please share your experiences here or on the Kitchen Table Alchemy group on Facebook. 
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20 - Clearing Our Mental Closets

9/24/2016

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What’s blocking you from creating your art or simply living a more tranquil and fulfilling life? We discuss strategies for clearing out the physical, mental, and emotional clutter that is keeping your life small.  Listen here

Here are links to the authors and resources we mentioned in this episode:
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Thoughts on Thorns by Jim McDonald 
Kali and the Burning of the Old Self from Rebelle Society
Why Am I So Fat? by Sara Benincasa

The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford

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