Warrior Wisdom from the Dark Goddess on Thanksgiving

Six years ago, Thanksgiving Day was also on November 28. I found this account of a ceremony I created for myself on that day. It was a dark time in my life, the beginning of my second Saturn return. I was recovering from a season that felt like failure, multiple failures.

Here is a solid truth about me: no matter how hard I fail, I never quit. This ceremony in solitude was my teacher. I did not know at the time, but Thanksgiving Day one year later, I would begin my relationship with Charlie. It is necessary in our darkest hours to feel the promise, to know we are held in Love.

That day, I read the signs that signified the death of my old life~

On Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 2013, I was given the task to remain in solitude and hold ceremony. I created a solo sweat lodge to help me integrate the teachings of the Dark Goddess these past several weeks. Everything surrounding a ceremony has significance and imparts meaning and energy. A ceremony is for the individual, and it is simultaneously for the collective. I will tell you the story of the Thanksgiving Day sweat lodge, as it may carry a message for you too.

All day Wednesday we had a soaking rain and big wind howling, so fierce that it blew open skylights. I was glad I had decided not to travel. That night, I went to bed to begin the dreaming phase of ceremony. A wasp joined me in my bed. I recognized her as one who had a nest in the bathroom skylight. Her home was blown away, and she had been blown indoors. She was not aggressive, and I let her be. She’s part of the ceremony. Brown-colored paper Wasps like this one have appeared at sweat lodges all during 2013. Is there a message I’ve missed?

In the morning, I am carrying some blankets downstairs to take out to the small sweat lodge that I just rebuilt this fall. This Thanksgiving lodge will be the initiating ceremony for the new lodge, significant in itself. I hear the wasp buzzing in my ear. She is in the blankets, though I can’t find her.

Wasp is female warrior energy, sisterhood, and female society. She is also a master builder, and can be about the building structures: to house people or to support dreams manifesting. Rachel Creager Ireland of Veronica’s Garden suggests that wasps have limited resourcefulness, and their medicine can be about letting go of strategies that do not work, retracing our steps and finding out how we got here, in order to build that new foundation. Another writer says: Wasp may show up around the time of a birth or death, a life-affirming transformation, or a personal healing crisis. She comes to teach humility to ones who wield power.

Part of my lodge preparation was to commune with the Dark Goddess. I acknowledged the Four who’ve been guiding me on this retreat. I invoked my principle guide, Grandmother Spider. I made prayer ties and smoked prayers and went to the Dark Goddess Tarot deck to invite a new avatar of the Dark Goddess to specifically support my work in this sweat lodge. As I was shuffling the deck and infusing my request, I glanced down to see the wasp. She was crawling at the crack in the mudroom door, which was slightly ajar. She was in danger of being crushed. I opened the door to let her out, but instead she came in. I closed the door and went back to the Tarot and my prayers.

I selected the card for the sweat lodge and turned it over. It was the “Hag of Air”, represented here by Dhumavati, the “smoky goddess”, whose smoke is of the cremation fires. She is ugly, old, dried up, and gray, the perpetual widow goddess, standing for all that is inauspicious, unlucky, and deprived. She is hunger, thirst, perpetual unmet needs and lustful, voracious, unsatisfied desires. Her worship is performed in the graveyard, naked, at the time when when the moon is dying. She is accompanied by a crow, who transmutes garbage to food. The goddess herself is the Void, the smoke of destruction, and the empty time before Creation. For her devotees, who can face the illusion of death, deprivation, ugliness, and a life without dreams or prospect, Dhumavati is the boon granter, bringing special powers, abundance, and wisdom. The Dark Goddess Tarot distills her medicine into this phrase: “What appears unlucky becomes something sacred.”

Just as I read these words, I look out the window. The wasp has flown toward the sunlight, and got caught in a spiderweb. I go to help, though I know there is no help for an insect once even one thread of silk has caught her. She escapes and is retrapped several times, until two spiders, one full grown and a smaller one, double team her. She has sacrificed. Her medicine will be absorbed by my medicine teacher, Grandmother Spider. The creatrix of the world feeds upon and makes the Web of Life out of Wasp: fearless female warrior, sisterhood, master builder and foundational structures. She will give me the determination to let go of strategies that do not work, and going back to the beginning: Beginner’s Mind. I know nothing. Teach me. What appears unlucky is Sacred.

Truly Dhumavati, as the Hag of Air, was guiding this Thanksgiving Day Lodge ceremony. The wind was cold and lashing, though the sun shone brightly. The work of moving wood and blankets was hard and long. I was pushed physically to prepare, becoming unaware of my physical state as I was carried by the ceremony. With the fire set up, I tried to start it in the East, as is our practice. The wind would not let me light a match, and the butane lighter wands produced no flame. I walked away in frustration, and walked back to the fire. I followed my impulse to use the lighter in the west. I got a flick of flame that ignited the newspaper. Within 5 seconds the west wind had set the whole sacred fire ablaze.

Dark descended quickly, and my lamp batteries were dead. I had to bail the pit in the lodge at least 6 times as the saturated soil released her water. I dressed the lodge in the dark, with only the fire and Venus to light my work. The stone people were ready long before the lodge was ready. At last I brought them in, 12 stone people, and I entered the lodge alone, in the company of many avatars of the Dark Goddess.

I prayed mostly in silence. In the West healing round, I called many of your names out loud. As I have spoken to so many of you, my readers, these past few months, I know some of your challenges. Who needs physical healing, who needs to manifest money or freedom from other limitation, who is making a difficult decision about a relationship, who is walking with a parent or beloved through the transition of death.

When I emerged from the lodge, with a burn on my leg, and a restructured heart, I lay under a blanket of stars in the darkness. Then I walked barefoot over frozen ground, back to the house, feeling the lightness as I truly released so many burdens I had been carrying. Burdens that were not mine, ancestral burdens, and many heavy layers of armor around my heart. I feasted in solitude and gratitude on abundant and delicious food from local farms and gardens.

In this day of work is worship, I received the healing I requested for myself. It was so intense that I am having to rest for a couple of days, alternating lying down with gentle movement and hot baths. I received medicine that will take me a while to understand and express. I acknowledge knowing without knowing, as my Spider guide assimilates the Wasp wisdom.

I offer this ceremony and its symbols to you, that you may take what you need and be blessed.