The Storytellers Goddess Part 8

Kali is the G.o.ddess who dances at funerals and sometimes stops babies from being born. Kali still rides with Her servant, Time. Since that first trip, though, Time has carried his own presents. Time gives people the gift of white hairs, and he wraps them carefully in the gold paper of wisdom and acceptance.

Changing Woman (Navajo People) Introduction The Navajo People of southwest North America think of the processes of Nature as Woman.

Estsan Atlehi, Woman Changing, they call Her. In the person of Changing Woman, the Navajo anthropomorphize Nature and remind us, in turn, that the tick of our human natures resembles none other than Earth's endless fluctuations. The Navajo people see Her, as do the Arunta people of Australia (see story of Sun Woman), as able to metamorphose, endlessly, becoming both young and old again and again.

Embedded in the wisdom of Changing Woman is also the truth that She cannot be defied. To the people who taught us this way of seeing Earth, Euroamericans owe a great debt they are just beginning to realize. For despite vast differences in language and social structure, the peoples we today call Native Americans, who migrated to North America at least twelve thousand years ago, revere the living world. They use night dreams as sources of wisdom and respect plants and animals as teaching spirits. Their tradition can show us the ways of walking lightly on the Trail of Beauty called life on Earth.

Changing Woman's story is a retelling of Her traditional myth as related by Merlin Stone in Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood. Changing Woman's power and comfort is the unrelenting constancy of Her s.h.i.+fts. I have invoked Her by placing a ring or hoop on my altar. Sweeping and mundane, Her presence works in my life. I have tried to convey Her dependable as a bathrobe wrapped around me while the hotcakes steam.

Between Things That Are Different Has the question Why? ever split you like a bent fork and left you s.h.i.+ny and pointed with pain? Perhaps the phone rang then or the laundry needed drying, and the pulse of the world pushed the why behind you.

Has the why returned later, but this time flat and quiet, still with you, but not twisted in the same way now?

There is a very small pocket of time between the sharp question and the event that makes you forget. Into that small pocket of time the G.o.ddess Changing Woman flies. Changing Woman flies in, and She fills up the pocket.

Changing Woman comes to stay in s.p.a.ces of time between things that are different. She is there between the clock-time start of the weekend and the body-time start. She is there between the time you choose your trip's destination and the moment the seat belt fastens about you for your journey home. Changing Woman fills up the time after the fitful, sobbing nights and before your cactus soul bursts into pink blossom again.

Changing Woman is hard to see. The pockets of time She lives in are small and fleeting, and She is always moving. Sometimes She's beside you, sometimes She's underneath you, and sometimes She's inside your heart. Sometimes She's in yesterday, and sometimes She's a few minutes from now. Sometimes She is Girl, other times Teenager. Sometimes She's big and strong. Other times Her hair is snow white and She walks with a turquoise cane.

Changing Woman lay kicking and gurgling at the beginning of the world.

In the pocket of time at the beginning, before the mountains heaved themselves out of the mist, Baby Changing Woman laughed and clapped Her hands in a basket of red flowers. When the mountains humped up high, Baby Changing Woman shouted and changed from Baby to Child. She climbed out of Her basket and the winds came to play with Her, then the rains. Child Changing Woman sang, and gra.s.ses blew in the valleys.

Trees popped from the hills.

In the pocket of time before the Sun came out, Changing Woman turned into Girl. She kicked over the basket of red flowers and scattered the petals. Everywhere a petal landed, an animal grew. The petals on the land became beaver, buffalo, squirrel, and gra.s.shopper. The petals on the breeze grew into birds. The petals in the water dove into fish.

While the animals turned into parents of eggs and fluff, Changing Woman became Woman and walked a Trail of Beauty in the World. She turned Her neck this way and that.

"I see Ten Thousand Things," said Woman Changing Woman.

"They are beautiful and I am glad."

Changing Woman grew hungry in the next pocket of time. She killed a buffalo and cooked the soft red meat for Her meal. She made a brown bed of buffalo's fur. She slept on Her buffalo bed for many nights and days.

Changing Woman soaked Herself in a side pool of the sunlit river when She awoke. In the pocket of time between scrubbing and rubbing Her dark skin with buffalo's fat, She turned into Mother. Men and women slipped from between Mother Changing Woman's thighs. Children sprang from Her belly. Mother Changing Woman turned Her neck back and forth and watched Her people build homes and make families.

Changing Woman's skin wrinkled while She watched. Wrinkled Changing Woman taught the people how to plant kernels of corn, how to pick the sweet yellow ears, and how to grind the dried corn into meal for cooking. Wrinkled Changing Woman gave the people songs for being born, songs for growing up, and other songs for dying. Wrinkled Changing Woman gave the Earth the Time of Hot and the Time of Cold. When the people see Changing Woman in the Time of Hot, they call Her Mother and say Her muscles are hard while She pounds the laundry white at the edge of the river. When they see Her in the Time of Cold, they call Her Grandmother and say She looks thin and frail as She walks oh so slowly across the snow.

People come to Changing Woman for many things.

"Teach us to weave, Changing Woman. Teach us to gallop," the people beg. And in the time between the tangled skeins and the blanket, in the time between the clumsiness of two and the ripple of one running, Changing Woman is at work.

"Changing Woman, why did my dog die?" asks a girl. And between the death and the funeral she holds by planting a seed where she buries the dog, Changing Woman is there. Changing Woman lives in the time before the new dog comes. She is present when the seed sprouts into a bush.

And She is there when the new dog and the girl grow older together.

"Changing Woman, what is this life about?" ask a man and a woman.

"We don't understand." That's when Changing Woman looks like Girl.

Only Her teeth show that She is Old. When She smiles, they are full of gold.

"Come with Me," beckons Changing Woman to the woman and the man, giving each a red flower.

"Come walk with Me on the Trail of Beauty." In the pocket of time between the asking and the asking again, the woman and man walk with Changing Woman. On the Trail of Beauty with Changing Woman, the people walk. On the Trail of Beauty, the people see, hear, feel, taste, and smell all of the Ten Thousand Things.

Isis (EYE-sis) Queen of the World (Egypt) Introduction Like Freya of Scandinavia and Juno of Rome (see stories), Isis is the Greek name for the Egyptian G.o.ddess of the Thousand Names in the Completeness of Her Majesty. Queen of Healing and Magic, Mistress of the G.o.ds, Isis of Egypt was actively wors.h.i.+ped for three and a half thousand years, nearly twice as long as Christ. Pyramid texts of 3000 B.C.E. refer to the "Great Isis," and the final suppression of Her official wors.h.i.+p came not until 426 C.E." a century after Constantine had declared Christianity the acceptable religion of the Roman Empire. Her geographical range was enormous: when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 B.C.E." he began to spread the word of the Mother of Life from emperors' palaces to private homes and marketplaces, until finally Her honor reached from Egypt to the River Thames in London.

Called Au Set by the Egyptians, Isis, Separator of Heaven and Earth and Inventor of Agriculture, sheltered the pharaohs in Her winged lap. In the myth that recapitulates the death and resurrection of the annual vegetation cycle, Isis is Sister-Wife- Mother to Horus-Osiris, the male G.o.d who dies as a seed is buried in order to return again to life with the flood of Her water. (See stories of Inanna and Ereshkigal, and Demeter and Persephone.) Indeed, the overflow of the Nile is said to be Her tears of agony as Isis searches with Her Sister Nephthys of the Underworld for the pieces of Her Osiris, killed and mutilated in a rage by Set, the G.o.d of Destruction. The Sister G.o.ddesses re-member Osiris, and Isis, pregnant by the revivified G.o.d, gives birth to Son Horus, who is His Father's reborn self.

Isis, the Compa.s.sionate One, She Who has suffered, also reigns over all that is miraculous, even as the endless cycle of the harvest never ceases to bless and astonish. Present at childbirth and guide on death's journey, Isis satisfied humanity through Her humanness, and Her realm came to include even the sea as people of many languages and locations clasped Her to their hearts. Isis is the Black Madonna of today's eastern Europe and, with Her Son Horus, the prototype of all Christian Madonna-Child images.

I use feathers to remind me of the winged arms of Isis, which represent to me Her power to comfort, protect, and to soar in healing and transformation. I wrote Her story to invoke the intense personal humanity of Her presence.

The Story of Life Horus-Osiris the Land sat in the lap of His Mother, Isis, the River. Cuddled there in Her great winged arms, Horus-Osiris heard the story of life. Isis told Osiris about the stars and about the wind. She told Him about wisdom and healing. She told Him of turquoise and sailboats and the sticky brown date fruit in the desert.

"And Me, Mama?" asked Osiris.

"Tell a story about Me."

"You, Osiris," said Isis, "are the keeper of all the plants and seeds of the world."

"Like the barley and wheat?" asked Osiris.

"Like the barley and wheat," said Isis.

"Like the little barley and little wheat that must cuddle in the dark 'til they grow big enough for people to pick and eat."

"I am little now," said Osiris.

"Am I like a barley seed?"

"Yes, just like a barley seed," said Isis.

"Mama, will I get big like the barley and wheat?" asked Osiris.

"You will get big, My Son," said Isis.

"Will the people pick Me?"

"The people will pick You."

"But Mama, I will be in pieces then! And if people eat Me up, where will the new little barleys and wheats come from?"

Isis hugged Osiris very close. She kissed Him many times on the top of His head. Horus-Osiris wiggled to look at Isis.

"Mama! Why are You crying?"

"I am crying, Osiris, because You will grow big and You will go away from Me. The people will pick You, and You will be in pieces. And I will miss You ... But..."

"Mama! I don't want to go away from You!" Osiris wrapped His arms tightly around His Mother's neck.

"But, Osiris, I will pick a piece of You, too. And I will swallow You down to My lap again just like We are now."