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Feeling Our Fire,Healing Our World The New Female Shamanism
author: Vicki Noble
Shakti Woman is, quite frankly, Vicki Noble's journey toward expressing the feminine in her own life, in all ways. Part of her journey was the birth of the Motherpeace Tarot deck and book, and the later, related Motherpeace Tarot Playbook. However, it is way to simplistic to classify her as a feminist and let it go. In Shakti Woman she takes us on a journey to the beginnings of feminine shamanism, through the forced change to a more paternalistic worldview, and how women the world over are having to fight to put the Goddess back into their lives.
The primary force behind this book is the gathering together of the pieces of the Goddess energy and placing them back into our lives. I say *our* lives, because my belief is that men as well as women will benefit from this paradigm shift. The work of women - that nurturing, healing energy - is needed now to heal ourselves and heal our planet. The truly amazing thing to me is that this book is ten years old - and as women we are still fighting the good fight!
Shakti energy is about the Dark Goddess - the Goddess at the center of the earth that see's death as a necessity for forming new life. She is not a gentle Goddess - but she is a necessary one. The first connection that Noble makes is that between female shamanism and women's natural cycles. She goes deeply into history, into the lives of female shaman's, and how connected they were to each other and to the Goddess through these cycles. It is interesting to note that one of the first things that happens to women of today who are learning to take back their own power is that they reconnect with the cycles of the earth by reconnecting with the cycles of the moon through ritual and ceremony.
Noble goes on to say that as women, through our very being we represent the Goddess. And that our power over ourselves has very much been taken away by the male dominated medical establishment. As you read her words, and allow yourself to set aside any judgments about her feminist agenda, you begin to see her point. As we connect with the Goddess within, we gain power as individuals and as shamanic healers.
Noble then discusses the eight earth centered ritual days: the Spring Equinox, May Eve, the Summer Solstice, Lammas, the Autumn Equinox, Hallomas and the Winter Solstice. In recognizing these sacred holidays we begin to recognize their structure within our own lives - as mother earth cycles through life and death, only to be reborn, so do we as individuals.
From there, we move on to astrology, and the cycle of the planets. Shamanism and astrology were seen as originally being closely connected. Noble asks that anyone who wants to study astrology should do so for a year and a day - to follow all of the thirteen moon cycles and apply this to what is going on in our individual lives.
Noble touches base with two more concepts that I can relate to - the power of dreaming and the power of art. When we dream, we open ourselves to higher knowledge. When we dream as shamans, we learn to heal ourselves and the world around us. We open ourselves to the archetypal Goddess knowledge that makes us whole again as women.
She draws some very good distinctions about shamanic art. To start with - all art is shamanic. Rather - all art is capable of being shamanic. If we lay aside preconceived notions of what art should be - in any venue - and allow the muse to flow through us, we open ourselves as channels. We reflect the roots of the culture of our time - and how to heal it.
Aside from a very heavy layer of feminism, Shakti Woman is a very coherent, good book that flows as well ten years after it was written as it did the day it was written. For that reason alone this is an important book - it means the world has not healed. The fact that women today are fighting the same fights, the same stereotypes, the same wars on all fronts means that we all need to act as support for each other. We can heal ourselves, facilitate healing in each other, and act as catalysts for world healing.
July 2001
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