fundamentally are rather than what we are told we must be. Let me distinguish here between Heathenry, a polytheistic neo-Pagan religion for which I have much reverence but to which I do not belong, and the eclectic pre-Christian landscape of our ancestors. To be heathen is to remember the rawest essence of our worth, what is most authentically human about this flesh-and-blood body we find ourselves in, and what is left when our most carefully constructed psychic temples, those long-held belief systems that once served us so well, crumble into dust. Every one of our bloodlines is rooted in an Earth-based tradition if we only follow our lineage back far enough, and every one of our souls longs to come home to the wilds.
FIND HER IN THE DARK: THE FERTILE SHADOWS OF THE FEMININE PATH
Heathen Priestess, your bejeweled crown is the same size as mine. I am neither above nor below you, and the round table of the Holy Wild has no structured hierarchy. I have no authority mandated by any great spiritual institution, and my truest church has long been the forest-covered mountains of my childhood, where no one has ever called me master or queen. Resistant am I, however, to the dilution of the diversity of the feminine spiritual experience. A lack of hierarchy does not demand sameness, and it is the living, breathing variety in our her-stories, in our ever-broadening relationship with Her, that must be nourished and protected.
My story is no more significant than yours, and my hope is that you drink in the poetry, feel nourished by the ceremonies, and complete the myths I begin here while constantly affirming your own authority and your own spiritual agency. The Holy Wild is a feminist terrain that you autonomously walk, standing at innumerable crossroads along the way and wielding your discernment like a sharp-edged weapon against the would-be predatory mentors, elite abusers, apparent beacons of manipulation masked as wise ones, and salacious gurus who claim to know better than you. This is your wild home, and you decide who is worthy of being your guest, who has earned the privilege of hearing your heroine’s tale of the wild feminine lost and the wild feminine regained.
You are flawed to perfection, and, regardless of the precise nature of your wounds or your identity, you know Her. Whatever you have been told of your body’s value or the merit of your art and work, your mud-caked soul is no less beauteous than your bright spirit light, and I will stand arm in arm with you while we reclaim our wild worth as divine beings who are of this Earth as much as we are of any ethereal heaven. She is still beating out Her rhythm for us, my love, and She will not be trapped in any pink, glittery, ineffectual shape, even one we may call Goddess. It is not the soft and passive feminine that has been socially suppressed, after all, for this form of the sacred is easily molded, controlled, and commodified. Sister, we do not always find Her in the light. Sometimes, we find Her in the dark.
Sometimes, we find Her in the dark.
We find Her in the places that terrify us, and we find Her in the places they told us not to look.
WALKING A WILDER PATH: SEEKING OUT THE FRINGES
You have many names, my love. In this book, I will call you a Priestess to validate your authority over your own spiritual journey. A Priestess looks within for direction and listens to the whispers, whimpers, and guttural groans of her inner wise woman. A Priestess is an elder. A Priestess is a woman who, regardless of linear age, has done the work and earned the right to say who she is and what she believes. She bows to no one except her own raw soul, and, while she is unquestionably an eternal student, she does not need external approval for her spiritual progress.
I will call you a Witch to affirm your birthright as a holy healer, to vindicate those socially rejected women who were hunted — who still are hunted in many parts of the world — in the name of not only patriarchy but also institutionalized racism, classism, and persistent imperialism. I will call you Witch to give a fierce nod to our stolen feminine spirituality and to give your wisdom a real name. Witches live on the edges of what is permissible, continually seeking out the fringes and brewing up the secret recipes of the Holy Wild, as have countless Earth-based religions and nonsystematic spiritual traditions. Your inner Witch remembers how to get home to those liminal places between honored guest and social outcast, between queen and freak.
This path is wild because we cannot possibly predict where it will lead us. We cannot know, amid the chaos, precisely where the global collective’s evolution is leading. We can assure ourselves that we are doing our part, living our purpose, and honoring our human birthright as complex, sensual, creative, loving, and spiritual beings. We can repeatedly examine the extent to which we are truly working to achieve the vision of equality we say we seek. Here and now, with the body, skills, and other resources we have been given, we are charged to embody Her, in all Her light-and-shadow majesty, as fully as possible in the time we have been given. In these pages, I will call this wild path the Red Road, the always-spiraling, unmapped route toward a woman’s spiritual home.
READ WILDLY: OURS IS NOT A ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL PATH
This heathens’ bible offers you verses, rituals, and magick framed within five books and rooted within a wild and untamed spirituality. The Book of Earth will call you toward the underground world of soul, revisioning the story of Lilith and honoring the merit of necessary rebellion. The Book of Water begs you to swim in the wild waters of erotic sensuality, emotional ebbs and flows, and joyous creativity, revisioning the story of Salome and highlighting our right to feel deeply. In the Book of Fire, we explore righteous rage, radical hope, and feminine ire as change agents, working with the Mother of Babylon’s transformational energies and honoring women’s collective strength as a powerful fuel for social justice and communal activism. Revisioning the story of Mary Magdalene and working with the Mother-Healer archetype, the Book of Air focuses on our most meaningful relationships, our partnerships, and our generative work as alchemical teachers housing the greatest lessons of this life of ours. Finally, the Book of Ether honors our inner Crones, revisioning Queen Jezebel’s story and exploring the many-layered teachings of the Dark Goddess archetypes, the long-lost wisdom of our grandmothers.
All five elements are integral to the Holy Wild, and I will hold space for you not only to discover, explore, and integrate them all in a personally relevant, soul-true spiritual craft but to own how they are already embodied by the heathen Priestess that is you. The verses chapters highlight the her-stories of historically shunned women; personal mythwork for you, the reader, to write your own sacred tales of feminine wisdom; and prayers and incantations for working with that particular aspect of the Holy Wild. The rituals chapters offer ceremonies and practices for invoking the elemental power and honoring our most pivotal past experiences, and the magick chapters contain spellwork and pathworking meditations for moving forward, enacting change, and divining our feminine futures.
Set aside all you know about scholarly study, my love, and read wildly. Wander through this book as you would explore the shadows of a haunted fairy-tale forest — curiously, cautiously, and sensually. Walk with bare feet, and be open to new ways of knowing yourself and your world. Scribble your own poetic verses on these pages as you would scrawl your name in the mud to keep from getting lost in the midst of the ’twixt and ’tween. Move in spirals if you are called, and feel no need to read linearly. Be a curious scout in this majestic wilderness you have discovered; then be the stealthy, aged guide who knows the secrets of the land and knows them well. This spiritual terrain is yours, and you alone know the route your soul has taken or where it might be headed.
Wild spirituality is a wily shape-shifter, just like nature and the divine feminine Herself. I ask you to consider each element to be a paint color on your sacred palette; you may be drawn to the red and ruddy earth much more than the blazing yellows of fire, and the aesthetic of the painting you might birth tomorrow may diverge significantly from the one you create today. Ours is not a one-size-fits-all path.
Ours is not a one-size-fits-all path.
This book asks you to handcraft your own spirituality not just from the inspiration offered here
