The Goddess Alive

by Tarwe Hrossdottir

Hi, my name is Tarwe Hrossdottir and I am the founder and priestess of Hermandad de la Diosa Blanca (The White Goddess Fellowship) in Mexico City.

I am very grateful to be in this World Goddess Day and to share this forum with all my brothers and sisters, from all the world in order to celebrate the feminine energy and of course, our beloved Goddess.

It is a wonderful time for us pagans, to enhance all the values that the Goddess share with us, because this planet needs it more than ever.

My lecture is called The Goddess Alive, and it is about the difference between the Goddess as a concept, versus as a living being in our everyday life.

Long time ago, in the ancient ages our ancestors named the Goddess after Mother Nature. They see the feminine energy in the land they walked.

Later on, they discover other aspects of the goddess also in the winter, in war, in wisdom and so on. But the very first encounter with she, was her fertility and giving archetype.

They see the female through the eyes of the women who give birth, and through the amazing cycles of the moon and the menstruation and the rut in animals. She was in the milk of the mothers and in the warm embrace of her arms and bodies.

For them, the Goddess was an unconditional presence that make their lives plenty, secure and cyclic.

They have no name for her, because they don’t need to. Because when you feel something so vast, it is impossible to verbalize that feeling.

Then, the time goes on and the Goddess was confined to our minds. She lost her power when we took her control over his lands and reduce the wild life of herds into stocks. Suddenly, the human was the owner of her creatures and therefore, they can do whatever they want over them.

Hence, the Goddess was an old, nor ancient, but old object. She was no more a living being, she transforms into something obsolete and rudimentary. The statues that represents her, were their only memory and they remain as a shameful period of time when we, the almighty humans, give their power to her. Our vanity and speciesism, creates a shameful shadow in this people that gave her their prayers in a cave or in the fields.

The Goddess home was now a shelf in a museum, a reference in some archaeological book or a sarcastic laugh in a men club.

The Goddess survives in some families, and clans and personal altars. They kept her energy alive waiting for an era of more oppeness.

We would have to wait until the 60’s and 70’s revolutions, in order to see her shining like in old days.

This is the Goddess Alive again.

In the James Lovelock work about the Gaia Hypothesis, or in the United Nations’ International Earth Mother Day.

We see her now in alternative schools, and as an important figure in the women rights movement or the revival of the ancient pagan cults throughout the world.

She shines again, even brighter than before.

So, I took five of her principal qualities in order to elaborate this lecture.

The first one is Fertility.

Fertility is the power to create, to give life, to nurture it. It’s something that lays within us, not outside of us.

Many people today want more money, more properties, more incomes, and to obtain it, the make offerings and prayers, we spend huge amounts of money trying to get more money. But fertility, like the goddess teach us, is abundance, is inside us. It is not a thing or a faculty that we can grab it from outside. It is a power that everyone born with.

The goddess teaches us this, because we see this inner quality in her, all the time. Mother Nature doesn’t grab from around in order to create, her fertility power lies inside the seed. It only requires the conditions to bloom to give more seeds.

Fertility is a spiral, an infinite circle that never stops, once it has found its way.

We see the fertility of the goddess in many ways. In the weather, in our own lives when we gave birth, from child to projects or business.

The second quality is Generosity.

Generosity is the value of sharing. Once we have the ability of create and recognize the power of fertility, then we must share the benefits of this abundance with others.

The Goddess is the most generous being that we can find.

She gives her in totality. She wants no emptiness, wherever she stays she gives her away.

It is so generous that has share this power with all her creatures. From the little insects that pollinate the plants to the wind around the planet.

In order to live the Goddess, we must externalize our own generosity values to all the creation.

We see the goddess generosity in three hundred and sixty degrees around. In the roof that we have above our heads, in the ground that we stay, in the creation of our hands and minds and spirits.

The third one is Interdependence.

Interdependence is the ability to work with each other, to recognize the importance of others in the living concepts of ecosystem or community.

But in order to work with others we must dignified them.

We dignified a living being, when we treat them with the same respect that I ask for myself. This is the first and the minimum thing that I must do. Because when I recognize and dignifies others, I recognized and dignifies myself.

Interdependence is only possible in a same basis, in equity. Because if I think that I am more important than a bee or a flower, I am hierarchizing the Goddess creation.

Also important, it is that this behaviour has to be applied in a daily basis. It not has to be only in our rituals or prayers.

She is not selective, she is inclusive. For her, all her daughters and sons are equally important and all of them deserves respect and a decent place in the creation.

The fourth is Defense.

Defense is the courage of stand for myself and my brothers and sisters. Again, all of them. Not the human ones, not the animal ones, not of my religion, or my family. But all.

Mother Nature does not revenge. Because she works in a cause and effect system. She is not vengeful, but just.

She gives us the power to maintain our health with an immune system that defends us.

The planet, the plants and animals, all we have it.

The Goddess is protective about her creation. She wants a healthy life for her beloved ones. Therefore, she complements her fertility with her defense power.

The fifth quality of the Goddess is Detachment.

Detachment is the wisdom to accept that all start has an ending.

The full contains the empty. Life contains death.

This quality of her, give us peace in the loss. Plants release their seeds, animals abandon the herd to start another one, and people must flow with the old in order to construct the new.

Detachment is a process, it is not an absolute. As all her characteristics, this one is within a living cycle that needs to flow in harmony.

As you can see, I did not talk about the Goddess in terms of life and death, because she is not a dual being. She is an holistic being. All in her is cyclical, and growing and breathing.

Said that, I want to explain the three main aspects that I myself feel the Goddess alive in me.

My pagan practice is not only spiritual. It is not restricted to rituals, or classes, or the wheel of year. My pagan practice is a twenty four hours mindfulness life within the God and the Goddess, but not as archetypal beings, but a living ones.

I can’t define my own practice without thinking in my daily life habits.

Therefore, I think that we, as pagans, must (at least) think or consider to bring in our life the next considerations in order to be congruent with the Goddess qualities, values and principles.

The first one is Speciesism. Our practice and life today it is not the same of our ancestors. We are maintaining the Abrahamic system of thinking that all that we have is created for us, for our pleasure and sadly, for our abuse.

In many pagans cosmovisions, if not all of them, the Gods creates the world in totality. The distinctions they make, are not in a hierarchy way, but in a functional way.

Every living being is here to collaborate in a dynamic equilibrium.

Therefore, we must think about dignity, and respect and justice for all living beings, not just the humans. I see the grieving Goddess alive in the mother that is suffering because her son is taken away. I don’t feel any distinction even if she is an animal or a human.

This is why I am vegetarian, because I can’t live in a world where I pray the goddess and later consume the meat of some of her child, and even more when this food chain was in torture, abuse and unjust conditions.

If we think in terms of pagans of the XXI century, we must rethink our way of treat other living beings every time that we talk about “rights”, “justice” and “dignity”. And furthermore, when we link those concepts to the Goddess.

Other way that I feel the Goddess alive inside me, is in my ecology practice.

I went to so many rituals when we talk about the Goddess unceasingly, and later they gave us plastic containers and cutlery to eat. I sadly see, how our community it is not committed with reforestation, or with a more conscious efforts, like zero waste, less water use, recycling and simplicity versus consumerism.

If we pray and especially, live the Goddess, we must be congruent with our selves, and respect her fertility, her creation, her resources, because we are not the only ones in this planet and we must share it with others in equity.

And the last way that I want to talk, is about Appreciation.

Every time I study anatomy and physiology, I amaze for what the Goddess gives to us.

If I want really honour her, I must provide and guarantee good quality food, health, activities and education to everyone. I offend her perfect creation when I eat junk food, when I give it to others or encourage them to eat it.

Is the same when I smoke, or when I read gossip or promote a hateful speech.

As a conclusion, I want to include all of this in the important concept of Community.

In a community, the actions of one affects the totality. And I am talking to free will, too. Free will comes with responsibility.

The Goddess gives us these amazing teachings, not in a book, nor in revelation. She gave us through her example, her living example.

Everything in her, in nature is perfect, and balanced.

She teaches us lively, actively.

But also, her generosity is such that she gave us one more gift.

Maybe the most loving of all.

The gift of free will. The option of even dishonour her and her creation.

Is this really what we want?

We are pagans, we must feel the Goddess alive in our everyday life, not only in our ritual practice.

We, as a twenty one century pagans, must reflect in a very serious way about our congruence in our own lives, and in our communities.

Thank you.