God Giving Birth

God Giving Birth by Monica Sjoo

Birth is not easy. It's not clean. It's messy, it's smelly, it's sticky. Women are in pain. They scream, they cry, they shit and pee.

Birthing is chaotic, can never be controlled. Even the doctors who try to do so from fear (with their surgeries, pills, forceps, sonograms, monitors, etc.) cannot control it because it's about life. I learned in a very personal way that no procedure or intervention can stop a complication or sad outcome that is not going to happen.

When you start attending births, you learn very quickly that there's a force present that is a part of you. You tap into it but it's not about you. This birth is about the family. A midwife does not "deliver" a baby. She assists the Mother to open and deliver this soul in this body in this plane of existence. The baby and the mother are who and what's in control. From our broader perspective and experience it's our job to watch the signs, see where things might be off either physically or emotionally then make suggestions to assist the two to work together in this transition. Our job is to be an invisible watcher, a vehicle, a conduit for soul entry.

The energy in control here is not a tidy glowing long bearded man up in the sky. It's not logical. The only rule it has is that there are no rules, no commandments, no scriptures, nothing to hold onto. Birth energy smells like Earth. It's dark and damp and musky, like the Autum. It's light and airy and joyous like a Spring day. It's about feeling and sex and the possibility of death at any moment.

In order to give birth vaginally, a woman has to let go of all she knows. She has to give her body entirely over to the raw energy of Life flowing through her. At births, and soon everywhere in my life, this energy expressed itself to me/in me as Divine Feminine. She wasn't the airy Mary of my youth.

She was Sheela Na Gig

Kali

The MotherPeace Tarot Priestess of Wands

Gaia

When I was 27, I remember becoming obessessed with this Earth energy I was feeling, trying to find out what it was and what it meant for me, why it drew me. I had no one to talk to, nowhere to go. So I did what I always did, being the scientist I was: I studied. I remember going to a bookstore and going to the religion section. There on the bottom shelf was a small section on Women's Spirituality. It turns out I intuitively ended up choosing some of what were to become "classics" that day:


The Motherpeace Tarot Book by Vickie Noble and Karen Vogel. (I had no idea what Tarot was, didn't "get" that I was supposed to also have cards to go along with it, but loved the text and images so bought it...then got the cards when I figured it all out later).

Spiral Dance by Starhawk- a definitive work on Wicca and The Goddess.

When God Was A Woman by Merlin Stone. Amazing book on history of The Goddess in the Fertile Crescent.


Another which is not so popular but is still one of my favorites called Earth Magic by Francis Hitching. This is a wonderful book on Ley Lines, Menhirs, Stonehenge, Glatonbury Tor and other standing stones. There is tons of really interesting information in here on history, maps, readings of energy patterns that have been done on the stones. The information in this one blew me away.

Because I lived in a small town and was busy with three kids, being a midwife and starting another business, I had no access to the women who were doing all this in the big city. All I had were books. And desires. I started doing ritual, or what I thought was ritual. Some books would describe what the basic elements were and I would just put them all together in a way that felt right for me. The more I studied, the more resources I found. Soon, I found two close womenfriends who had some of the same interests. We began doing Tarot, exploring channelling, ritual, ceremony, we found other women and began women's groups. Eventually I joined an out of town group that celebrated the Wiccan Wheel Of The Year so got to learn more from those outside my circle.

Throughout this all, I kept asking to learn the earliest form of Spirituality on the Earth. My thinking was that the earlier the Path, the more pure it was because less logic and layering had been added on. I thought that people who were closer to our animal natures were more in touch with the Earth energies so had more of what I wanted to experience because they had more direct access to God. Lots happened during this time but it was during my twenties that the basis of my Inner Theology and Spirit Path began to take shape, even if in rudimentary form.

The core is:

I create my world in its entirety.

Law of Attraction creates.

Everything is connected.

Everything is God/Goddess/All That Is

Life is the Path

Every Mystery of Life can be explained in the breath.

And most importantly for me: the only reason is For The Dance.
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Art:

Kali by Thalia Took
Sheela Na Gig by Monica Sjoo
Gaia Shrine by Lauren Raine
MotherPeace Tarot image by Vicki Noble and Karen Vogel