Lamp of the Goddess E-Book

Rae Beth

• Herausgeber: Robert Hale Non Fiction
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

At the dawn of a new era we are drawn to modern Goddess spirituality. Rae Beth feels the world can change by sharing our personal spiritual experiences with each other. She has gone within herself for this book of recollections, inner guidance and ancient teachings (which was originally published as Reincarnation and the Dark Goddess). She explains individual reincarnation as a microcosm of Earth's great cycles of existence and as a means of developing the love and wisdom needed to manifest the true beauty of the spirit realm. Along with instructions for recalling past lives and developing psychic skills, she gives descriptions of the Otherworld (where we go between lives) as the land of the Dark Goddess - the Queen of the Dead. This is not a fearsome place, but a joyful spirit land where healing flows, whether we approach it from its peripheries in dreams, in meditation, or between incarnations. Rae Beth also includes thoughtful interpretations of various myths of the Goddess in her many aspects - Isis, Kali, Mary Magdalene, Persephone and Tiamat - to name but a few. Lamp of the Goddess looks at reincarnation from the viewpoint of a present-day priestess who honours the Deep Feminine, or the Goddess, as Mother of Souls, as well as the Earth Mother of physical existence. This sharing vision is relevant to us all, in our process of discovery and rebirth.

Leseprobe

LAMP

OF THE

GODDESS

RAE BETH

ROBERT HALE

First published as Reincarnation and the Dark Goddess in

1994 by Robert Hale, an imprint of

The Crowood Press Ltd, Ramsbury,

Marlborough, Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

© Rae Beth 1994

ISBN 978 0 71982 688 7

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

The right of Rae Beth to be identified as author of this

work has been asserted by her in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

• Contents •

Introduction

1The Great Matrix

2First Life and a Spirit Journey

3The Linking of Love and Prophecy

4Sea Mother of the World, Dark Queen of the Dead

5The Last Days

6Going To and From the Sacred Island

7Spell, Shrine and Continuing Story

8Rebirth and Wisdom

Appendix A

Appendix B

Bibliography

As it was,

As it is,

As it shall be

Evermore,

O Thou Triune

Of Grace!

With the ebb,

With the flow,

O Thou Triune

Of Grace!

With the ebb,

With the flow.

Anon

(collected by Alexander Carmichael)

Introduction

One of the tragedies of the age which is now drawing to a close has been the loss to communities in Europe and the West of all those who had the temperament and skill for the priesthood, but were disqualified in some way by the Church. For a start, no priestesses were permitted to work, since all women were ruled out by reason of their supposed spiritual and intellectual inferiority. Some men, also, have been excluded, either for social or political reasons, or because of their non-Christian or heretical beliefs. But now, there are signs that this situation is changing. A new Goddess-worshipping tradition is establishing itself, a new Pagan faith, alongside and even blended with a new expression of other faiths, including (in some circles) a redefined Christianity. People are having new thoughts about what makes a priestly or priestessly life, and deciding it has to do with mediation of the Spirit (however we choose to name this) and not always with tradition and formality. It is also about counselling and advising, or facilitating, when people are going through rites of passage, like birth, puberty, marriage, spiritual initiation or death. This is based in celebration of the cycles of nature, in respect of their subtle and psychic effect upon us, as well as in terms of the old agricultural year. But it is not about laying down the law nor assuming a moral superiority over people whose beliefs or experiences differ from our own. Instead, it is unassuming and gentle and exploratory.

From this, it will be seen that many are already doing the work, who perhaps would not lay claim to the title. And there are many more who could be doing it and, as they may sense, have often done so in past incarnations. This book is for them, the priestesses who are unknown (and the priests, too) because it is about my own past lives and present day knowledge. None of it is vindicated or affirmed by the culture that we live in (yet) but is nevertheless of interest, I hope, and a potential encouragement to others on the same path.

This book is also for all those who acknowledge the new priestesses, and ‘alternative’ priests, without necessarily wanting to be amongst them. For in rethinking what we mean by or expect of the priesthood, we can free our own spiritual selves to choose our direction.

Since it is my belief that, to do this work, we must first reclaim words like ‘spirit’ and ‘holy’ and ‘psychic’ from the land of hypocrisy and cliché, and because my own ministry concerns word-magic and the mysteries of divination and prophecy, and because of my ordination, I have here written about the Dark Goddess of Spirit Realms, rather than about Mother Goddess as nature’s wisdom, in the concrete and physical sense. This is a dimension where personal experience counts for everything - or should, if we are not to establish another kind of dogma! It has been, in its unconventional manifestations, relegated to the ‘lunatic fringe’ of mediums and fortune tellers - seen like that and despised for it! But what treasure is hidden in the world of our individual psychic experiences and inner senses? These are things that most people don’t usually talk about, yet they are sacred and can contain deep knowledge. If we all started to share our experiences with each other, not to try and impress or pull ‘spiritual rank’, but humanly and sympathetically, the world might begin to change. At the very least, our collective feeling about ‘the meaning in it all’ could become enhanced. But first, we need to uncover our buried knowledge that the Deep Feminine is not a realm or a quality of dubious morality nor of superstition. We need to reapproach the Dark Goddess, knowing She’s the Presence of the Otherworld and spirit communications and all visionary and psychic experience and neither fearing Her nor misunderstanding Her. I offer this book as a contribution to the sharing of inwardness, by which we can help each other along this exciting and challenging path.

Blessed Be

Rae Beth

Summer Solstice - 1993

Bath

1

The Great Matrix

The feminine has been defined as the personal and associated with an undue attachment to personal experience, one’s own history. That which is feminine has been aligned with subjectivity and an intuitive manner of relating to life, then consigned to the rubbish heap, labelled ‘trivia and superstition’ by the dominant culture and therefore by patriarchy. This has been the way of things for many thousand years. But life is beginning to change, everywhere. There is a tremendous growth of modern Goddess spirituality, for both women and men (in the West, anyway, where it has been most suppressed) and an upsurge of feminist consciousness throughout the world. We still have a long way to go. But the signs are all there that the day when men and women can stand equal in friendship, and when the Mother of all Life and the All-Father can be honoured equally as deities, could dawn now.

The impetus for this change is coming from the Feminine - from the return to the Goddess as divinity within all, in all created things and in Earth Herself - as much as from feminist political consciousness. And it is true that this is personal. An early feminist catchphrase was ‘the personal is political’. In the realm of Goddess spirituality, the personal is also spiritual, or rather the spiritual is experienced personally. This brings all our spirituality right back home into our innermost selves, at the core of our being on Earth with each other. A living and felt essence, beyond dogma, and ours to nurture and develop and also to commune from with others and with whom or whatsoever we worship. Autonomous and true and subject to no-one’s authority but our own inner sense of what is true and right. All this is a very long way from established Church teachings, as these have formed present-day Western culture and still inform it, and it is also as far as you can get from patriarchal attitudes.