All my life I’ve been called a Warrior, and I am a Warrior. It’s got its upside and its downside. In these days of chaos I have heard and read so much about spread the Love, spread the Light. It is okay to give in to your sadness and basically do nothing. That simply isn’t possible for me. I don’t ride around on a Unicorn who vomits glitter and shits rainbows. The Love I feel is a Fierce Love. This type of Love doesn’t come from a soft and gentle place. Fierce Love begins with Anger. We have been told so much that Anger is a bad thing and if you make your existence all about being angry, then it is bad. However, it is Anger that can spark a person into action, if the Anger is properly used. Anger becomes Fierce Love, the Love that is willing to kill or die to protect that which is deemed worthy.
That gets me to the Divine Feminine, specifically Lilith. Many people have heard the story of Lilith, but I am often surprised at how many people assume She’s discussed in the Old Testament. Nope, She is never mentioned in that book. Her story appears in the Babylonian Talmud, which dates to the 3rd– 5thcentury AD. The Talmud is the book that contains Judaic Law. After about 700–1000 AD Lilith appears as Adam’s first wife, created at the same time and from the same clay as Adam. That’s when the trouble started. Lilith considered Herself and equal to Adam. Adam and Yahweh didn’t see it that way. Lilith was told that She had to obey Adam’s commands to be a dutiful wife, even in the act of sex. She was told she always had to be subservient in that act. Lilith said not just no, but hell no, and left the Garden of Her own accord. She was replaced with Eve. Eve was a much gentler woman and she tried to be subservient, but she failed. We all know the story from there.
Both of these women have gotten a lot of bad press. Eve because she tried to bring knowledge to humankind. Lilith because She embraced her own identity from a place of Fierce Love and proceeded to teach many how to love fiercely. All these events took place in the Fertile Crescent where patriarchal/monotheistic religions were born and began to dominate. What were once cultures that worshipped goddesses became cultures that honored male deities over those goddesses. What were once seen as givers of life became the downfall of mankind, and I do mean mankind because women were relegated to a lesser status. The male dominated religions travelled from the Fertile Crescent to the Greeks to the Romans. The Romans took that religious style into Western Europe as they adopted the Roman Catholic Church. Patriarchy became the rule and women were subjected to male dominance all the way into our modern times.
The rise of the Divine Feminine is changing that and Lilith may well be leading charge from a place of Fierce Love. Her anger at how the patriarchy has messed up things, including our current state of medical martial law, is a palpable energy. I am following Lilith’s lead and embracing the Fierce Love inside my Warrior self. My days of going full steam ahead into the fray are past, but I can still wield the powerful weapon of a pen. Never underestimate a Witch with an Athame in one hand and a Pen in the other, especially not if that Witch is a Warrior who has learned to use Fierce Love.
Merlin Stone. When God Was a Woman. 1976.