There was an old woman lived under a hill,
and if she’s not gone, she lives there still.

I’ve been thinking again about the poem about the old woman who lives under the hill, the woman who is the Goddess, sleeping, still there, always there, as she has been through these many hundreds of years of patriarchy. Thinking about how I can feel her Awakening again. How I want my prayers to awaken her.

Thinking about the maidens in Faerie Tales who fall asleep for a hundred years. Thinking about Mother Mary in her Dormition, falling into sacred sleep as she is transported to heaven.

And then as I was howling in my prayer this week, it struck me again how we do magic for our selves. How are prayers and our desires have to begin in the work we do in ourselves. And so waking up the Goddess means waking myself up. And waking myself up again. And waking and waking and waking and waking myself again and again and again and staying awake.

And now, when I pray the Glorious Mysteries, and I reach the Mystery of the Dormition, I am calling it the Mystery of the Awakening, and I am Mary, and Mary is the Goddess, and we are all the Earth. And we are howling ourselves Awake.

And we are shaking off the patriarchy with the circles we are building, the baskets and the bowls, the linked hands and arms–where we protect the children and the elderly, the vulnerable, those who need respite. We are setting the captives free. We are raging in the streets. We are howling at our sister the moon. We are waking and waking and waking and waking.