2018 MoonTimer Calendar - Postcards from the Moon

They've landed! We are shipping! 

Designed by a health educator, this calendar guides women and girls in the use of the moon as a  clock: the elegantly simple system, practiced by our ancestral Grandmothers, for regulating the cycle. Their non-toxic, nature-based system has been approved for 25,000 years or more. 

It can also be enjoyed by those who have no such needs! Multi-cultural illustrations explore the qualities of the eternal Feminine reflected in the circumstances of women, whose images become energetic placeholders and speak to the archetypal conditions of our time.

The MoonTimer Calendar empowers women with respect for the cycle, and encourages teens, who are learning to manage this new and unpredictable aspect of their lives.

It also conveys a positive expectation to tweens, those coming next to the threshold of adolescence. Some studies have shown that expectations given by adults are reflected in the experience of girls, and may even influence health outcomes.

The MoonTimer Calendar is inter-generational: suitable for the Goddesses of All Ages in your family!

A word to the gentlemen: Impress the special women in your life. They'll see you as Sensitive and Insightful - which, you are. You've proved it by reading this far.

It's the turn of the year. Everyone needs a calendar, 

Christmas is solved! 
.

We have upgraded to a better grade of paper this year. Each calendar comes spiral bound and individually shrink-wrapped with a chipboard insert to ensure stability during shipping. 

 Price for one calendar is $19.95; 10% off when you buy two or more, 20% off on orders of 5 or more. Order at the bottom of this page. 

Here are a few images from the 2018 calendar.  Click to enlarge.
Thank you, my friends!

An Uzbeki woman expresses her self reliance,

supported by the spirit horses of her ancestors. 

Our senses exalt in the verdant exuberance of May

Kahina, the warrior queen of the Berbers, was the guiding light and
protectress of the tribal families of North Africa in the 7th century. 

The MotherShip: a collection of Madonna figures from diverse sources, including
Our Lady of the Aborigines. 

Our printer is a green company, a member of the Forest Stewardship Council.  http://www.publicationprinters.com/green.html

Thank you for your order!

An account is not needed to use the Paypal shopping cart as a guest. Alternate payment arrangements can be made with an email to RubiconMoon@gmail.com; or by voicemail at 303.351.3962. Thanks!

Discounts for quantities

1 Calendar $19.95 USD 2 or more Calendars $18.00 USD 5 or more $15.00 USD

March 2017 - Calculating Women

Of course Nature is our first teacher. How could it be otherwise? We copy her handiwork, infusing it with our own human aesthetics, and this fuels the matrix we call 'culture'.

It has been the provenance of women to apply decorative arts to ordinary objects used in daily life, because we love and require beauty. If I have to look at the same clay pot everyday, by golly, it needs to be beautiful. Anything mundane can be elevated by decoration, applied to bring harmony and self-expression into the standard tasks of survival. 

Beyond the basics of food, clothes, and shelter, we expand into the cosmological function of design, the sacred patterns used ceremonially to honor specific milestones in human life, to identify one's rank or function (whether Queen, Midwife, Cook, or Shaman), or to honor the Divine.

Do you knit? Do you crochet, or do bead work? Are you a weaver? If you do any of these, you know the importance of math in the protocols of fabric. All the stitches must be counted to maintain the integrity of the pattern. Spider Grandmother seems a perfect mentor for these skills, as she is simultaneously an architect, an engineer, and an artist.

She knows how to catch her own dinner, which is occasionally just some poor suitor attempting to impress her. Cannibalism is an unfortunate potential by-product of courtship in the spider dating scene.

Still, Grandmother Spider retains her popularity in many cultures. Hopi, Navajo, Choctaw, the Ojibway, the Zuni - all have specific cultural gifts that are said to have come from her. She is described as a helper of the people. The style of her webs inspired the female relatives to weave Dream-catchers, to catch and filter out the bad dreams of infants, so that only good thoughts are allowed to enter.

Spider Grandmother is honored in the Nazca lines of Peru. 

We find Spider-Lore among the Greeks too. Ariadne, the Cretan lass who couldn't catch a break, eventually ended up married to Dionysus, the town drunk of Mount Olympus. But she also had the spidery strategy to help Theseus, giving him a thread to unroll as he entered the labyrinth, so he could find his way out after slaying the Minotaur. She then ran off with him, but Theseus abandoned her on the island of Naxos. At that point we might say he went from Cretan to cretin.

image by Thalia Took

And anyway, 'Naxos' sounds like the name of a designer pharmaceutical drug that you can 'ask your doctor about' and, next year, join the class action lawsuit for damages suffered, if you're not dead.

Then there is the tale of Arachne, a weaver so renowned that a whole class of anthropoids is named after her.

Haeckel Arichnida, Wikipedia

Her consummate mastery of the loom aroused the attention of Athena, the favorite daughter of Zeus. So sure of herself was Arachne that she vowed her willingness to compete in a contest of skill with this immortal competitor.

Athena, you may remember, sprang fully grown from her father's forehead (signaling the predominance of intellect over the intelligence of the heart). Like Sekhmet, who was sent by her father Ra to extract revenge for human offenses, these goddess patterns have personas that are actually more male than female. They are the 'Daddy's girl', their "father's daughters", competitive by nature.

And, yes, even though Arachne's work was impeccable, her waft and weave described as "sheer magic and a sight to behold", her arrogance had to be answered. To correct this, Athena turned her into a spider.

Hardly a level playing field. It's so annoying the way some people exploit their super powers just because they can.

from The Digital Renaissance by Carlyn Beccia

I hope, at least, that Arachne earned enough points to be transformed into a Peacock Spider. View this remarkable video of the male courtship ritual with your speakers on. Spiders have no ears, so their special language is a love song of drumming. And woe to the male who is not a good drummer. In spider marriages, 'consummation' takes on a whole new meaning.     

The only male version I have seen of Spider energy exists among the Lakota, who perceive him as a shapeshifter called Iktomi. Similar to the Hopi Clown Kachinas, he dispenses moral lessons, particularly to youth, in ways that may be shocking or embarrassing. As a trickster figure, his behavior hovers somewhere in the ambiguous zone between right and wrong.

Getting back to our subject, let me declare that our skills with numbers are legend. Drawing on the mythological records, we find a plethora of goddess credited with having created mathematics. To support that, here are the entries from a few celestial pantheons:

Sarasvati: She is said to have invented all the arts of civilization: music, mathematics, calendars, magic, letters, and all other branches of learning.

Mensa - Goddess of Measurement, numbers, calendars, calculations, tables and record keeping.

Seshat - Egyptian Mistress of the House of Books, the Goddess of writing, history, measurements, calculation, record keeping and architecture. Goddess of Hieroglyphics. Lady of the Builder's Measure.

Savitri - Hindu Mother of Civilization, She Who brought forth music and literature, rhythm, time, measurements, day and night, memory, conquest, victory and yoga. 

Unelanuhi: In indigenous cultures, spirits exist in all phenomenon of nature, such as the wind, the storm, the clouds. All can be called upon for aid.
In Cherokee culture we find Nuda Unelanuhi  (Apportioner/Sun), and Nuda Geyaguga (Woman Measurer /Moon), functioning as both messengers and helper spirits.

The Cherokee word for Calendar -- nv-do di-se-s-di -- translates as "moon counter". Unelanuhi's name means 'Apportioner', for she is responsible for having divided time into units. 

This is no coincidence. This is how our history was kept. It's not for nothing we became known as Calculating Women. We earned it.

And while we learnt a great deal from Grandmother Spider, her abacus was not our only source. The moon also taught us math. It was from watching her that we became Unelanuhi.  

For instance, this girl has her calendar in her hand. On that crescent horn, 13 notches are carved, indicating the naturally occurring lunations in a year. A lunation = one complete cycle of moon phases = the synodic month (29.5 days) rather than the sidereal month (27.3 days).
 

So here it is, the original 'app' for tracking a pregnancy to term.
Not available on I-Tunes.

Given the name, "The Venus of Laussel", she was discovered in a cave in southwestern France in 1911, but she'd already been standing there for 25,000 years, still bearing traces of the red ochre with which she was painted. That she is tracking her pregnancy is fairly obvious, and this IS the urgent survival need that engendered the lunar/menstrual calendar. Even in the Stone Age, one wants to be prepared, for birth is a life or death proposition.

Animal mothers, just like human beings, may die in the process of birthing their young. But because they do not know of this possible outcome, they have no need for courage. Courage can only be summoned in response to a clear danger. Of all animals who labor in birth, only the human woman approaches the birthing process with the consciousness that her own death may be required.


A woman about to give birth stands at the gateway between death and life. She peers into the death realm, not knowing for certain if she will come out alive, and she reaches over there to bring through another new soul.

                                              -- Vicki Noble, Shakti Woman

My first encounter with this image described it as the Aztec goddess Tlazolteotl
giving birth to CORN, which is considered to be the Mother of the People.
The true origins of this sculpture are disputed among scholars. Tlazo displayed at Dumbarton Oaks.  

The Aztecs accorded special respect to women who died in childbirth, honoring them as warriors. They went to a special heaven. It is said that in battle, Aztec leaders would exhort their men to aspire to the courage of a birthing woman.

Some of our moon-counting tools are even older than Ms. Laussel. The Lebombo bone is estimated at 35,000 - 37,000 years old, and was found in the mountains between South Africa and Swaziland.

Its 29 notches confirm it as a menstrual calendar, because these indicate the duration of one complete lunation. In other words, this calculates for you the time to begin packing for the Moon Lodge every month.

It was necessary to prepare: we would be gone for close to a week. We had to bring enough food to last us the journey, including preparing food to leave behind for the elders who were watching the children.

Almost sounds like a nice monthly vacation, doesn't it? Maybe we should seriously consider reinstating that practice!

But, you might ask, why did we go away to the Lodge?
There were at least 3 good reasons. 

One is simply hygienic. This is a messy business and we don't want that all over the house. Who do you think has to clean it up? Give us a moment to invent indoor plumbing.

'Domestic Goddess' by Edith Vonnegut.
One thing I love about goddesses: they are not Gods. I think of them as snapshots of the Feminine, expressing a portion of the spectrum of the female psyche. They're metaphoric and archetypal. As patterns of behavior, and they demonstrate how to behave, how not to behave, and how to NOT BEHAVE when that's what's called for.

We can be certain that this practice of timing the cycle was in place before we began our migrations, because even today, throughout the world, the phrase 'moon time' persists. We took the knowledge with us to everywhere, even though it was later suppressed, repressed, and oppressed. But back in the day, when the Rift Valley was home, there were dangerous neighbors - like lions, tigers, and hyenas, oh my - and all of them attracted by the scent of our blood! The compelling strategy was to remove ourselves to a distance, protecting the village by drawing those animals away.

But, hey, after surviving childbirth, we aren't to be scared off by a few hyenas. I imagine that a cave was the perfect Lodge, easily defend-able with our superior technology, which we call fire. 

So that is the second reason: we transfer the danger to ourselves for the safety of others, which remains a courage characteristic to women. Men are also capable of this. 

The female DNA commands our primary mission, which is to Keep Life Alive. This applies whether it's an ailing house plant, a baby bird that fell from the nest, or an orphaned child of any species. If it is alive, we try to keep it that way. This is our inherent genetic obligation to life. 

Only men need worry about being 'pro-life' -- we're already hard-wired for that. I'd advise them to go practice their drumming, as it is my duty to point out that in the model demonstrated by our animal relatives, the needs of the living outweigh those of the unborn. Animals do not reproduce another baby until the first one can fend for itself. That's just the way it is. Nature knows more than we do.

However, we do have an advantage peculiar only to humans: elders. In contrast to other animals, we live long past our ability to reproduce. This means we needn't wait for baby #1 to graduate college before we have another. Grandma will babysit while we go to work.

And the third reason: from out of the Lodge came The Council of Women. In that gender camp, business got handled. The needs of the community were sorted. Societal balance was maintained.

So we return at last to Africa, where Grandmother Spider is known as Anansi. One story goes that she took a web she had spun, laced it with dew, threw it into the sky and the dew became the stars. Her web construction illustrates how, as humans, we should be linked together to build our society.

What if we would truly see ourselves as balls of light-reflecting water, connected to each other by a web of flexible filaments? 

photo by Brian Valentine

This might be the most important lesson we could take from Grandmother Spider. We would then access the World Wide Web from the inside. No need for a computer.

Who taught Grandmother Spider how to weave this silken thread that rivals the tensile strength of steel?

I hear she studied at the Uni Verse City of Fibonacci,

learning that perfect math by which
the organic universe is spun into existence. 

May all your dreams be protected.

Ms. Kiva's Mom

February 2017: Magdalene at the Casbah

"Take me to the Casbah!"
I always associated this euphemism, expressing a woman's wish to escape to exotic environs (hopefully to be well ravished there), with a popular 1938 film starring Hedy Lamar and Charles Boyer, called "Algiers." Having reviewed that movie, the phrase is nowhere within it, so I don't know who made it famous. The soundtrack has some sinister passages that can only be described as highly suspicious music.

I must have seen this film sometime during my childhood, home sick from school, stationed on the couch to imbibe the hypnotic distraction of TV. I expect this is the source of my impression of the Casbah as an tropical emporium of ill repute - where rascals, spies, and international scoundrels spin their schemes and scams, while refined gentlemen with aristocratic bloodlines risk blackmail and scandal to obtain the companionship of sophisticated courtesans. Similar to the Chinese Geisha, these ladies of the night may be skilled in the entertainments of dance, music, games, or conversation, and certainly more intimate services. I thought of the Casbah as a high-end brothel, with attached casino.

But in fact (rather than in my imagination), the Casbah was a citadel: an ancient walled fortress, around which a cultural district of its own - a 'medina quarter' - gradually accumulated. Wikipedia says that in Turkish and Urdu, the word "kasaba" refers to a settlement that is larger than a village but smaller than a city; Serbo-Croatian linguistics confirm it as a small town, provincial in temperament.

Casbah Caïd Ali, Asslim near Agdz, Morocco

There were many of these Kasabas throughout North Africa, and they were fought over, defended, and conquered by successive waves of challengers. 

France colonized Algeria in the mid-1800's. The movement to wrest it back began as long ago as WWI, was quashed by betrayals of the French during WWII, and was finally accomplished in 1962. Interestingly, the Casbah became an epicenter for the resistance in the battle for Algeria's independence. The insurgency, led by the National Liberation Front (FLN), strategized from the Casbah.

It was famously immortalized by the Clash in their worldwide hit, Rock the Casbah. 

For whatever reason, I find myself deeply drawn to North Africa, and inexplicably fond of Algeria. The region's influence shows up multiple times this year - in February, May, June, September, and even on the front cover. Somehow this became a recurrent theme without my noticing.

Every panel is begun with the discovery of an intriguing portrait of a woman. She anchors the month, and excavations of energetic material (images that speak to my intuition) uncover the story that this woman wants to tell about the feminine experience. 

Locating resonant images often occurs through the agency of The Happy Accident. Like Colette's Vagabond, I rely upon Chance, finding things I wasn't looking for, that unexpectedly pull a thread in the curtain. The images have to work on many levels. Apart from considerations of color, shape, scale, and overall aesthetic, they have to carry the story.

For instance, I so love this cathedral from Algiers and wanted it in the panel. But it made no sense until I 'chanced upon' the painting of Magdalene. 

by Carlo Dolci, 1665

The narration of the story began to whisper. The message was one of irony, of the fickle mercy dispensed by the Church, served out only to those it deems deserving. Turning its back on the dirty laundry of the Casbah, it sniffs and looks away. There is scant accommodation or compassion for those who have no access to alternative occupations, who land in the lowliest of stations by economics rather than by choice, and must make the best of what is possibly the world's worst job. I imagine that even beggars are better thought of than prostitutes.

Witches await their inhumane punishments at the
hands of the Christians (I'd call them the Fake Christians,
out of deference to those who are Real). Prior to the
acceptance of the Gregorian calendar, there was already
an ongoing conflict in Europe between the sun-based
Julian calendar and the ancient lunar calendar of 13 months
 (moons) per year. As the Church's campaign to eradicate
witches progressed, the number 13 became very unlucky
indeed.
The murdered women were actually herbalists, healers, and
midwives who refused to give up their lunar calendars,
which they had used since time unwritten to track
pregnancies to term, to be properly prepared to assist
mother & baby in the death defying experience of birth.

There seems to be an over-abundance of judgement towards women generally, from the traditions whose God is made in the male image. Even women in those faiths may be harsh to others of their gender. All I can imagine is that if god was a mother, she'd be less likely to reject any child than these male Gods. I wouldn't be surprised if They're in arrears on Their child support payments.  

(Fortunately the Avatars are not limited by anyone's idea of God. Who would Jesus hate?)

Recurring themes tend to emerge while the panels are under construction, but I have no conscious clue as to how these come by their prominence. They 'self-select', apparently. A repeating example in 2017 is the lady bug. She appears in January and again in September. Why is she there? I didn't question her presence at all, while 'under construction'. But now, I can investigate her power as a totem, and learn about her medicine. 

Beautifully rendered animal totems and their meanings
Wisdom of the Animals

A recurrent theme in 2016 was the appearance of the ancestors of the women whose portraits 'anchor' the panels. It was as if the Grandmothers showed up, demanding acknowledgement. I was happy to meet them, actually. This year, I see a prevalence of prostitutes (similar to a gaggle of geese, a school of fish, a flock of birds, etc). Now, why are they there? What do they want?

I came to find that their choices and circumstances weren't always as dis-empowering as (once again) I imagined. In some cases, the occupation of the courtesan, when controlled by the women themselves, was a strategy that insured their sovereignty. We'll look more deeply into that when May gets here! 

Mary Magdalene is depicted ambiguously,
 with her girdle below her abdomen
rather than round her waist.
Could she be pregnant?
Kilmore Church, village of Dervaig, Scotland.

Meanwhile, who would Jesus love? 

Magdalene wipes blood from the Crown of Thorns, and such devotion causes rivers of roses to bloom; her story is about nothing if not the transforming power of what we call an Epiphany. From the ranks of the unworthy, the untouchable and most abused class of women, now she is pristine, radiant, beyond reproach - no less if indeed she was the literal Bride of Christ (yes, I mean in the Biblical sense)! In any case, she holds the place of the intimate counterpart of the Master, she whose being loves him with every cell, every breath.

This pure lover is part of the archetypal pattern, and in the lives of the Avatars, there is often a soul who fills this position as consort, companion, confidant. All that befalls him, she too suffers. 

The Lamentations of Mary Magdalene
on the Body of Christ
by Arnold Böcklin, 1868

It is worth noting that the early life of St. Francis followed a path of disrepute parallel to Magdalene's.

He was a drunken delinquent, an undisciplined public nuisance, until the Divine Whisper hit him.
His father then built a special cell in the house, where he imprisoned Francis for a year, in hopes of dissuading him from what was perceived as a temporary infatuation with Christ, never suspecting that the fire of this intoxication burns so hot that it smelts dross into gold.

Francis had a female counterpart, a partner in his crime of devotion:
St. Clare. 

Most images of her are so stern that she begins to resemble that famous internet meme, Grumpy Cat. When on pilgrimage in Italy, I mentioned this to my friend while we perused souvenirs in a shop near Clare's Basilica in Assisi. A forbidden giggle erupted from the sales clerk (the perennial sin of laughing in church). 

Sainthood isn't all it's cracked up to be.  First, there's the vow of poverty, then everything pleasurable is renounced. Who wouldn't be grumpy?

This is not the coin in the panel.
I just happened to like this one too.

On the subject of gold, money recurs as a theme this year as well (must be my own issues peeking in, lol). In February, there is only one real coin, a 20 franc piece minted in Morocco (we'll visit there in June). 

It can happen that for sheer survival's sake, we get stuck in a profession lacking joy, self-expression, or passion, turned into prostitutes for that paycheck, pimping to earn our portion of sand dollars. We could call it Fake Money: it pays the rent, with no further satisfaction for one's precious time traded so cheaply. Casbahs made of sand dollars fall in the sea, eventually, as Hendrix almost said. 

So, what OF the Casbah today? In 2008, Reuters reported that due to poor governance, age, and neglect, this historic cultural icon has fallen into serious disrepair, with some areas threatening to collapse. Population density is causal as well, because at that time, the census of the district was estimated at 40,000 - 70,000. The variance in the estimate was due to the uncountable squatters occupying vacant buildings! 

Preservationists would like to salvage and restore it - an expensive and delicate endeavor that would require vacating the district  -  while the government has regarded it as a hideout for criminals and terrorists. The New York Times called attention to its decrepit conditions in 2006. And this is why we see, in February's panel, the unattractive array of neglected structures wanting fresh paint, and the graceful arches of the verandas overrun with vegetation.

We cannot leave this inquiry without consulting the infallible Rumi, who says: 

“If you want money more than anything, you will be bought and sold.
If you have a greed for food, you will become a loaf of bread.
This is a subtle truth. Whatever you love, you are.” 

If we get the chance, and if we TAKE that chance, we choose our own joy to live, and follow it to wherever our Casbah may be. We still need real money, of course; but if we don't have to endanger ourselves in liaisons with unknown men to get it, we can count ourselves fortunate.

So, please, take me to the Casbah, anytime. I've fallen in love with Algeria.

MoonTimer 2017 Calendars now only $15

Price is now reduced to $15!
Scroll down for a preview of all the panels. A 'block' of four images will pop out if you click them.

Moontimer 2017

1 - 3 calendars (ea) $15.00 USD 4 - 6 (ea) $12.00 USD 7+ (ea) $10.00 USD

Please email us at rubiconmoon@gmail.com with any questions. We will do our best to accommodate other payment arrangements if Paypal is not a good option for you.


Blessings,
Mrs. Kiva's Mom

Understanding the Waxing and Waning moon

Here's a gorgeous model demonstrating the way that visually, from our position in the Northern Hemisphere, both light and darkness cover the moon's face starting from the right edge and proceeding to the left, as she moves through her pattern of "faces" (phases). 

In the southern Hemisphere, the orientation reverses and these changes move across the moon's face from left to right.

The phases ("faces") tell us when the moon is waxing (gaining light) or waning (losing light). To employ the system of Moon-Timing to synchronize your cycle, it helps immensely to actually LOOK at the moon regularly and begin to familiarize yourself with this pattern (of course, The MoonTimer calendar is designed to help with this process of pattern recognition)! 

The procession of the moon through all her phases is called a Lunation, and is an example of periodicity: a pattern of change that is constant. This same pattern repeats continually in the sky. 

The Full Moon (the 'wedding moon' - because in the traditional model, it is the moon for ovulation) and the New Moon (the invisible 'no moon' - the moon for menstruation) are separated by an interval of two weeks, and our own bodies can easily resonate to this same pattern of fullness (Full Moon) and emptiness (New Moon). It is the light of the full moon that stimulates ovulation through its effect on the pineal gland.  

Thanks to: https://watchers.news for the models and text below. 

 These 4K visualizations show the Moon's phases and libration at hourly intervals throughout 2017, as viewed from both hemispheres. In addition, they show the Moon's orbit position, sub-Earth and subsolar points, distance from the Earth at true scale, and labels of craters near the terminator. Each frame represents one hour.


Northern Hemisphere


Southern Hemisphere

 The Moon always keeps the same face to us, but not exactly the same face. Because of the tilt and shape of its orbit, we see the Moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month. When a month is compressed into 24 seconds, as it is in this animation, our changing view of the Moon makes it look like it's wobbling. This wobble is called libration. The word comes from the Latin for "balance scale" (as does the name of the zodiac constellation Libra) and refers to the way such a scale tips up and down on alternating sides. The sub-Earth point gives the amount of libration in longitude and latitude. The sub-Earth point is also the apparent center of the Moon's disk and the location on the Moon where the Earth is directly overhead. The Moon is subject to other motions as well. It appears to roll back and forth around the sub-Earth point. The roll angle is given by the position angle of the axis, which is the angle of the Moon's north pole relative to celestial north. The Moon also approaches and recedes from us, appearing to grow and shrink. The two extremes, called perigee (near) and apogee (far), differ by about 14%.

 The most noticed monthly variation in the Moon's appearance is the cycle of phases, caused by the changing angle of the Sun as the Moon orbits the Earth. The cycle begins with the waxing (growing) crescent Moon visible in the west just after sunset. By the first quarter, the Moon is high in the sky at sunset and sets around midnight. The full Moon rises at sunset and is high in the sky at midnight. The third quarter Moon is often surprisingly conspicuous in the daylit western sky long after sunrise.

 Video credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/David Ladd

January 2017 - I Am Water

Lady bug, lady bug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, your children will burn.

In 2016, we witnessed an epic confrontation between the Humans and The Machine, a battle for the Earth itself. The epicenter was at Standing Rock, North Dakota. We saw the Humans, armed only with consciousness, with prayer, songs, and reverence, honoring their ancestors by standing against the Machine to protect our most delicate, endangered, and precious element - water.

N.C. Wyeth

Without living water uncontaminated by pollutants, nothing else CAN live. Essentially, if we do not secure our water, we are committing genocide on our own forthcoming generations.

From all corners of the world, the Humans heard this call and responded with support for the Water Protectors. Like lost relatives, people poured in from the Four Directions to express the awareness that has organically grown within so many of us, that our most urgent mission is to save our planet. Water is the bottom line. The need to protect the water arises from its undeniable, irrevocable foundation of our life here.

photo taken during 2010 pilgrimage to India

 with Beads on One String

The responsibility to care for the Earth is a deeply felt obligation within the traditional ways of indigenous people. Thank god that regardless of all we have done to annihilate them, they are still here. Thank you, 'ignorant savages', for enduring beyond our ignorance and outsmarting us for 500 years. Oh, excuse me, I had the "ignorant savages" part backwards --- that was us, the newcomers, the colonists, dedicated to religious freedom - except yours, which we outlawed.

The 7th Generation foretold in the days of Black Elk and Sitting Bull has arrived, and they - the youth - are leading the charge, adhering to the principles of civil disobedience as demonstrated by Dr. King and Ghandi. Non-violent, grounded in prayer and ceremony, they have the authority to lead this charge against the Machine; no one can question the authenticity of their position.

Black Elk 

At the dangerous intersection where we now find ourselves, we begin to listen, to SEE them; in their pure intention, we recognize something ancient and beautiful in ourselves, a fundamental unity shared by all the Humans, which is great love for the beauty and generosity of our sparkling planet.

Earth has always been thought of, metaphorically, as Feminine. By the Humans, she is spoken of, with great affection, as Our Mother. The treatment of women (our mothers and grandmothers) over the last few centuries has mirrored the prevailing perception of Earth as a resource to be dominated and exploited, with little regard.

The Earth is responding, in Her own language. The vocabulary of floods, droughts, fires, ice storms, dust storms, toxic algal blooms, species extinctions, tornadoes, volcanoes and earthquakes, are communicating to us the Earth's distress.

Since 2005, the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers have traveled the world conducting ceremonies for the safety of our water, and speaking for the relatives who have no voice (or at least, they don't speak English; they speak bird chatter, fish talk, and the language of the trees); or whose voice cannot be heard by those whose hearts have disconnected from the Earth, those to whom the Earth is not a living being, but merely a repository of materials for us to burn through and discard, creating a level of pollution unsurpassed in its wastefulness and toxicity.

 

Winona LaDuke of Honor the Earth

It is critical that we continue to shift perception so that women - who, for the most part, naturally demonstrate the empathy, cooperation, and connection that characterize the Feminine - are more highly valued, as they were in many ancient cultures, and achieve greater independence and self-sovereignty. With advances made in this arena, we will see a corresponding reflection in the collective attitude to nurturing and sustaining Earth herself. What must be realized is that the conditions under which women live inherently accrue as well to the children, and greatly impact the well being of the men.

"If we build a society based on honoring the earth, we build a society which is sustainable, and has the capacity to support all life forms."
-- Winona LaDuke

Within the Feminine, all are valued and nurtured, from the youngest to the eldest; the impeccable uniqueness of each one is cherished. So it is not a far reach to say that protecting our Earth requires that we also defend the qualities of the Feminine; indeed, these are intimately and inextricably intertwined.

Iroquois writer Doug George-Kanentiio: "Nature has given women the ability to create, therefore is it only natural to have women in positions of power to protect this function. To us it made sense to have the women control the land since they were far more sensitive to the rhythms of Mother Earth." 

Saving our irreplaceable, magnificent planet requires restoring the Divine Feminine to its rightful position as the voice of the heart. The Heart, restored, will take its place in influencing the decisions of our clever, facile minds, inspiring us to invent technologies that enhance survival for the diverse relatives who inhabit our world.

Grandmother Aggie

The woman praying for our water in this month's panel is Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrim, from the Takelma Siletz tribes of the northwest coast, a member of the International Council.

The synchronistic story of how the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers came together from multiple continents is told in the book, Grandmothers Counsel the World, by Carol Schaeffer, with a foreword by Winona LaDuke.

Such a gathering could never have happened until the age of modern communications and transportation. That it had to wait until this crucial moment arrived is confirmed, in the book, by a prophetic gift. One of the Grandmothers, when she was only a child, was given a gift of 13 stones by her own Grandmother, who told her that she would know who they were for when the time came (some 50+ years in the future).

Learn more about them here: 2013 International Pfeffer Peace Prize Recipients ~ The Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers 

International Council of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers

My father, an attorney, was also an ardent geologist. He was not religious in the least, but he used to emphatically state, "The Earth is ALIVE" - with much passion and enthusiasm for what was likely his greatest love. If you have never had a geologist show you photos of a recent field trip, here's a sample of what you have missed:

I know -  it looks like just a hill, but it's an IGNEOUS INTRUSION.
Please express adequate excitement over this fine portrait.

We each arrive here through the portal of our biological mother. We get, in this world, only one of those. We have, at the moment, only one planet. When I recently read, on some or other cosmic blog, that the Earth is not only alive but that She knows each of us and that She loves us -- with whatever consciousness a planet may possess - I felt deeply touched to know that our love for HER is reciprocated. 

I would bet that she loved my father.

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So to welcome 2017, let us say Thank you, Grandmothers. Thank you, Water Protectors. Thank you, Humans. Thank you, sparkling planet, Mother who provides everything to us.



Hecel Lena Oyate Ki Nipi Kte  (Lakota: That the People May Live) ~

Ms. Kiva's Mom,
Kathryn Harris

photo credit: Super Moon Over Standing Rock, courtesy of Mary Beth Lord, a dedicated Grandmother and a colleague in the Global Mission of Peace. 

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