Castles

As civility was conquering magic, my great ancestress witches lost their places as the wise medicine women of their villages. Lords amassed small kingdoms supported by the blood of their knights and the sweat of their surfs. Maidens were raped by the noblemen. Princesses were locked in towers. Dragons were slain.  The fair folk were driven into hiding deep underground.  The hillsides became the domain of men whose divinity was male and warlike.

It was at this time that the divine feminine presence indigenous to Northern Europe was finally raped and dissected. Her flesh bound by roads and stone monuments to the men with power and wealth. Her wisdom, hidden in the plants and stones, was never again uttered on the lips of the people. Her beauty dominated and subjugated.  Her spirit burned at stakes and chased from the hearts of all those who remained.

Over the generations She stirred in the hearts of the maidens, mothers, and crones. Children again told tales of fairies and wee folk who live in the forest. Mothers tended the gardens and had special ways of knowing things. Crones listened to the plants and remembered the old medicines. They followed the will of God and lived close to Mother Nature. 

One age led way to another and the powerful and wealthy men moved their empires to the cities.  Families huddled, coughing in hovels until the factory whistle blew. The wild was forgotten ever more. The powerful ones shuffled the masses through one technical advance after another until one day the descendants voted to give the workers a holiday. Seeking a reprieve from the grime of the city, they wandered slowly into the woods.

And what was there, to greet their weary eyes?  Nature Herself had slowly, gently grown up again our of the ruin of man's pride. Her succulent vines gripped the rain savaged walls. Her powerful roots pushed through the foundation. Her majestic branches towered over the cathedral walls. Her torrents of stormy tears rotting the roofs.

No matter how many times SHE is raped, forgotten, forsaken... SHE rises again. In believing that She can be conquered, man is only destroying himself.