W. I. T. C. H.

Women In Total Control Henceforth

[gynocraticmagick]

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH 🌙

Thirteen moon cycles in a solar year.

Thirteen menstrual cycles — that is, if they‘re 28 days long.

At day 13 of the menstrual cycle, many women are in their fertile window.

The thirteenth month hides within the illogical length we‘ve given the twelve we have in our calendar — strip the two or three extra days from each month, and they‘ll add up to 29.

We could have had 13 months, mimicking the length of what they‘re called after.

We could have had 13 moons.

The number 13 is a sacred number; It‘s associated with cosmic rhythms. And female rhythms. Friday is a sacred day, associated with the Goddess — named after Freya — and this day was deliberately turned into a day of bad omens, when it should be considered a sacred day in celebration of the Goddess, the Woman, the Moon and the Womb.

If you believe it to be an unlucky day, you believe in patriarchal lies and distortions of the Divine Feminine.

[gynocraticmagick]

| Gillian Anderson as Stella Gibson is a work of art.

[gynocraticmagick]

“The body is the only direct way through which I come to know society and society comes to know me. The body is the proof of identity. The body is language.“

— Zhang Huan

Keep your disembodied ideologies to yourself; I don't want them. Let me be free to express my animal devotion, otherwise you can‘t demand anything for yourself. Respect goes both ways, you know. It‘s earned, not granted.

[gynocraticmagick]

| Patriarchal narratives claims women are less womanly if they don’t conform to feminine gender constructs.

Patriarchy decides what a woman is.

The same patriarchal narratives mocks men for expressing feminine gender characteristics.

Patriarchy decides when a man becomes a woman — thus worthy of mockery.

Gender ideology celebrates these shallow and arbitrary constructs as characteristics inherent to something so profound as innate identity.

One of feminism’s struggles has always been to combat patriarchal narratives, some of which also underpins a large part of gender ideology — so, tell me again why a feminist is not allowed to exclude people with an ideology that undermines feminism?

[gynocraticmagick]

»In the beginning... was a very female sea. For two-and-a-half billion years on earth, all life-forms floated in the womb-like environment of the planetary ocean — nourished and protected by its fluid chemicals, rocked by the lunar-tidal rhythms. Charles Darwin believed the menstrual cycle originated here, organically echoing the moon-pulse of the sea. And, because this longest period of life‘s time on earth was dominated by marine forms reproducing parthenogenetically, he concluded that the female principle was primordial. In the beginning, life did not gestate within the body of any creature, but within the ocean vomb containing all organic life. There were no specialized sex organs; rather, a generalized female existence reproduced itself within the female body of the sea.«

»In the course of evolution, the ocean — the protective and nourishing space, the amniotic fluids, even the lunar-tidal rhythm — was transferred into the individual female body.«

— Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother; Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth

[gynocraticmagick]

»My political activism always grew out of my spiritual understandings of the earth as the living Mother because the Goddess is injured wherever there is injustice, wanton cruelty, poverty, and pollution.«

— Monica Sjöö, introduction to The Great Cosmic Mother; Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, 1991 edition

[gynocraticmagick]

»I am a witch, by which I mean that I am somebody who believes that the Earth is sacred; and that women and women‘s bodies are an expression of that sacred being.«

— Starhawk

[gynocraticmagick]

»A witch is a wise woman aligned with the Earth, a healer. It‘s a word that demands destigmatization at this crucial time in the planet‘s history when we desperately need the medicine of the feminine to rise and rebalance humanity and the Earth.«

— Sarah Durham Wilson

[gynocraticmagick]

🌛🌕🌜

DIANIC WICCA; A RELIGIOUS TRADITION I CAN ABIDE BY

Dianic tradition is based on a goddess-centered cosmology and the primacy of She who is all and whole unto Herself.

Dianic tradition draws inspiration from the goddesses Diana and Artemis representing female embodiment, autonomy, and sovereignty.

Dianic practices are inspired by the awareness that Goddesses have been known throughout time, by many names, and in numerous cultures worldwide.

Dianic seasonal rituals celebrate the mythic cycle of the Goddess within the earth’s seasonal cycles of birth, death, and regeneration, and their correspondence to the female life cycle.

Dianic tradition is a Women’s Mysteries ritual tradition that celebrates female embodiment from cradle to grave.

Dianic tradition is celebrated in exclusively female-only circles.

Power is sourced through our wombs, and female embodied magic that is found in every cell of her body.

Dianics honor the female body as a manifestation of Goddess in all Her glorious diversity of color, size, and shape.

Dianic ritual and magical practices honor women’s creativity, and intuitive ways of knowing.

Dianics recognize that women’s magic is a sacred trust; therefore, Dianics do not teach their Women’s Mysteries and magic to males.

Sexuality is sacred. When lovers meet in mutual love, trust, and equality, these expressions of love and pleasure are a gift to, and from, the Goddess.

Sacred play is a form of spiritual practice.

The Dianic tradition is a teaching tradition.

Dianic tradition stands in accord with the Wiccan Rede, which states “An’ it harm none, do what you will.“ We honor free will, with the intention that our magical actions manifest for the greater good of all.

Our Definition of Womanhood

A woman is a person who is an adult human female (XX).

Being a woman is to be free to be herself, and express herself as a full human being. This means seeking to live her life free from the internal or external limitations of binary gender stereotypes for females dictated by the dominant culture.

Women’s Mysteries are at the center of Dianic practice. By “Mysteries“ we mean the lived experiences of the female body from birth, girlhood, into womanhood, and elderhood.

These Mysteries include our uterine blood mysteries (birth, menstruation, birthing, menopause, and death), female sexuality and spirituality, and all the ways that our female bodies inform our diverse life experiences.

Part of our work as a feminist spiritual tradition is to keep conscious of, and heal from, the insidious ways that living our lives in patriarchy affects our lives. This includes our self-perception through the misogynistic views of the dominant culture, religion, and cultural inheritance.

The commonality girls and women share based on our biological sex transcends other differences in race, ability, ethnicity, and class. For us, the exploration and celebration of Women’s Mysteries is an embodied experience that defies words, and can only be experienced by female individuals.

Dianic tradition has centered on the embodied female mysteries for over almost 50 years. We affirm our ability to be whole-unto-ourselves and as free as the goddess Artemis. We affirm our right to gather as female individuals within our female-only circles to celebrate our rites.

In the current climate where transgender activists seek to eliminate protections based on biological sex, we will not participate in our own oppression and erasure by pretending that our bodies are insignificant to what makes us female, as girls and women.

As spiritual feminists in community with women from diverse backgrounds of race, ethnicity, and class, our common threads that weave us together has been our courage and mutual support to confront our personal and collective historical experiences of physical and sexual violence, and social, political, and economic oppression — all because of our sex — and to reclaim our female bodies as sacred and as a source of divine wisdom.

We support male individuals in honoring their unique Mysteries of the male body from birth, boyhood, into manhood, and elderhood.

We encourage males who are trans identified to create their own rites of passage that address their significant life cycle events from birth into elderhood.

We welcome females who have de-transitioned and wish to reclaim their female being free of patriarchal collusion.

Text borrowed from templeofdiana.org, authored by Ruth Rhiannon Barrett.

[seaofwakinglife]

I've come to realize that the Witch is arguably the only female archetype that has power on its own terms. She is not defined by anyone else. Wife, sister, mother, virgin, whore — these archetypes draw meaning based on relationships with others. The Witch, however, is a woman who stands entirely on her own. She is more often than not an outsider, and her gift is transformation.

— Pam Grossman, foreword to Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers, 2017

[gynocraticmagick]

— “WITCH“, Lisa Lister

[digitalf0untains]

Art by Rebeca Fleur

[gynocraticmagick]

“… The term ‘virgin’ had a different meaning prior to Christianity, meaning ‘self-contained’, rather than today’s association with the breaking of the hymen. Also, ‘vir’ means strong; a Virgo then would be a strong woman — not a chaste one. Self-sufficiency is a characteristic ascribed to Virgo, who as an earth sign has an appreciation for physical pursuits of all kinds, including sex.“

— Quotes from Astrology, Volume II in the Taschen series The Library of Esoterica, written by Andrea Richards

“In many astrological traditions, the sixth sign is associated with great goddesses, especially those linked to fertility — suggesting that the virgin is a potent symbol of an emergent life force.”

“... Instead of the virgin/whore version of female sexuality perpetuated in Western patriarchal culture, astrology culls from older traditions that envision the female body as a cosmic source, full of power.”

“Virgo is, of course, always associated with the figure of the maiden (or virgin) who holds a ripe harvest. Mythology is filled with these powerful maiden goddesses: Astarte, Ashtoreth, Astraea, Dike, Demeter, Isis, Ishtar, Vesta — and, of course, Persephone, whose capture causes crops to die.”

“... At one with the earth, the maiden reaps its regenerative powers.”

[gynocraticmagick]

“In it’s most accessible definition, sensuality is how we autonomously experience the juice of life, and it is not to be confused with sexuality. A sensual woman is one who engages with her world through her body, through her skin and her tounge, using the sensory gifts she has been given in whatever way she chooses. Any societal limits on her sexual empowerment, emotional integrity, erotic innocence, or bodily autonomy are also constraints on her creative and spiritual experience. The Maiden of the Unbridled Sensual has the right to feel her feelings fully, to be a temptress to truth with slow-moving hips, to revel in the tactile, elemental sensations of chilly saltwater, subtle heat, and light wind, to taste poetry, and to drink in the heady scent that can only come from the rising dawn. She swims in the deep end, this Wild One, and she strives to be at home in her own skin, forever and always.“

— Danielle Dulsky, The Holy Wild; a Heathen Bible for the Untamed Woman