Honoring The Wild Feminine
As I was leaving a local cafe, in the Cairngorms, the owners that I’d been chatting to over breakfast, told me about a hidden Glen with a secret Monastery … and I knew that’s where I was going next …
On the way I passed an unnamed church with a statue of Mother Mary outside - unusual in Scotland even more so a remote Highland community, something I’d not seen since being in Europe. I found out later she was called ‘The Lady of Perpetual Succour’
The crows arrived as I neared the glen, which is held by a huge ring of ancient Rowans. Rowan is an indigenous tree of protection. A tree of the feminine, the deep wild feminine connected to the belly, the womb of Mother Earth. And these trees held within them a Catholic seminary - a place where priests were trained in secret, hidden from the persecution of the Reformation. Though more recently a farm, this hidden valley also hid other illicit activities such as whisky distilling.
The land told me what was not written in history, that this valley was a refuge for hundreds of years - probably longer. And that these men were ones of honour, valour and integrity for they protected and integrated the wilder sisterhood still exiled in the hills, wove them back into the everyday - gave them a way out. Those who were persecuted, regardless of outward appearances, found that they shared a common God.
And in return were gifted the protection of the Rowan and shown the ways of the Earth.
As the Equinox drew close and the balance between light and dark, sound and silence, masculine and feminine reached towards it’s equilibrium - this was just one story, of many, I was shown of how the masculine fulfilled their role as protector with a quiet purposeful strength.
And reminded of the tiny Benedictine Abbey nestled in the hills of Provence - which I eventually found one morning, at 3am, in the middle of a remote vineyard. For these monks honored the Magdelene in the very hills where she once lived and taught - her presence still so visceral - enhanced by the dedication, veneration and vigil of the monks.
For it is in the womb where spirit is made to manifest into the physicality, the miracle of life.
Though in time to attend Vigils at 4.30am, the monastery didn’t open to the public until 10.30, so I left an offering of sisterhood at the gate and continued on my way.
During my Unexpected Pilgrimage of the summer, both Mary Magdalene and Mother Mary called for my attention. Their journey’s echo throughout the Alps, in Cathar precense, churches in their honor, cultural recognition of the Goddess, a shrine on the Croatian Coast, so many tiny ways and finally France where I camped on her ‘collar’.
Yet something felt incomplete about this encounter with them and so unexpectedly in this Highland Glen it finally was - complete.
Along with a reminder that as women we are not separate from men - our brothers, fathers, sons, lovers, partners. For to truely unify we need to acknowledge both principles in their purest, divine essence, within our ownselves and in the physical realms.
Honouring the Wild Feminine, regardless of gender, is a good place to start.
with much Love
from my Heart to yours
Tania Aurora White Crow