Rose petal Yoni

This nature offering was the very first one I made. Because of Covid-19 we are all semi quarantined to our homes. With a lot less distractions and a lot more time on our hands we are each finding our own ways of coping with an extremely stressful and traumatic situation, as a deadly virus is all around us and taking countless lives. I have decided that spending time in nature, creating, and demonstrating reverence/ respect for the sacredness of life are my sanity tools. Therefore I came up with a way of combining all three. By building my nature shrines or offerings.

Early on in the virus scare I was awakened in the middle of the night. I felt as though spirit was speaking directly to me with a message. Mother Earth was having trouble breathing, therefore she started to produce an anti-body, fighting against the cells in her body that have gotten out of control; human beings, we are the virus, or the cancer. The Corona virus, the anti-bodies that Earth produced to heal herself, is chasing us all back to where we belong, back in our “place,” closer to home, back to a simpler, slower paced way of life. In doing so Earth’s lungs and airways have opened up considerably, and she is able to breath much better, even in the same amount of time we have been going through this. It just goes to show us that every small thing we do to help the environment DOES help, tremendously. Natures natural instinct is to survive and to thrive. Given even the slightest chance she will make motions back toward balance and growth. It is the wild way of organic life. I’d also like to point out that she is being very gentle about this. She could after all have instead created natural disasters that would devastate us all, and even the wild life. She has clearly targeted the source of the problem (humans.) I notice that this illness doesn’t effect the children as much, again a sign that she is trying to be compassionate about this.

My first shrine was dedicated to the Earth Mother herself, who is the one who is ill and fighting for her life. I wanted to know that I heard her, and I am thankful for all she has given us and continues to give to us. A lot of us have been/ are praying for humanity at this time. I understand that, yet the source of true imbalance begins in another place, the very planet we walk on. So I decided to turn my attention to her. There are two wise, old trees near the Well where I walk. There is something magical about them, and I often hug them. The shrine wanted to be between them and I found this flat rock to place there. I carefully outlined its shape with pine and then roses petals. I was really just using the stone’s natural shape as my template.

When I was finished I realised how very vaginal this image was! I had made a rose petal Yoni without even realising it. But it somehow felt appropriate since I was dedicating this to our Earth Mother. The feminine is so often over looked and repressed in our society. Women, like Earth herself, are often taken for granted in their roles as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, lovers. Women tend to be always giving and nurturing. They are wired to be much more compassionate than men, and with far less ego. Because of this it is easy for their acts of service to go completely unnoticed and under appreciated. This is a sweeping generalisation, and I’m not saying that all women are kind and loving. I’m also not saying that all men take women for granted. However, this occurs much more often then vice versa. We can’t ignore that much worse in fact also happens, in the violence against women through all cultures and times. This is a symptom of the underlying imbalance in our society, and it is directly correlated to what is happening on our planet right now. I have much more to say on this topic, but that’s a story for another time.

I want to be sure to also acknowledge that the feminine aspect of males is also painfully repressed in our society. Both sexes have a feminine and a masculine aspect of themselves. Carl Jung calls them the Anima (feminine) and the Animus (masculine.) As a society in recent generations we have been slowly waking up to the fact that things like sex and gender are more of a spectrum than a black and white measurement. Feminine aspects of men that tend to be repressed include feeling, being in touch with, and expressing their emotions. Their nurturing and caring tendencies can also be viewed as “weakness” by society at large. In many ways these pressures can be devastating, and have profound affects on the male psychology. I am truly happy to be a Woman and feel so blessed that I am not carrying the burden of the expectation of always having to be the “strong” one, and show no weakness.

Right now I’d like to point out the similarity between my shrine and the Yoni shape that is found around the Christian Mother Mary in many images. She was the closet thing to a Goddess or feminine aspect of spirit that was carried forth from pagan times into Christian times. I chose this image because it has pink roses around her too, just like mine!
I have a special relationship to roses, from the time I was little and my Catholic Grandmother and I discovered my ‘patroness saint’ was Saint Teresa of the roses. I have found roses randomly in all sorts of places in times of trouble especially. Even in the centre of a crowded street in a big city. I believe my Grandmother’s prayers to Saint Teresa for me started this special relationship. The power of a Mother’s prayers are a powerful thing. Later in life when Grandmother passed away she was holding a rose I had given to her.

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