of the subtle hints and cosmic winks she is receiving from nature, her body, and the unmapped terrain of her psyche. Perhaps the first chill autumn wind becomes an invitation to wander long toward the sinking sun, or the swelling, in-the-heart joy sparked by the songs of night birds in a spring woodland elicits a permanent and unquenchable thirst for the wilds. The lived experience of the earth element is unique to every woman, but it is always marked by a persistent beckoning to come home to a more ancient version of herself, to escape from the overnarrowed and conventional life she had been living, and to seek authenticity more than approval.
There is a part of you, my love, that remembers not only your own hands in the dirt during childhood but the knowing hands of your grandmothers and their grandmothers as they planted their own seeds and connected to their own lands. There is a part of you that is in a relationship with the earth element that most certainly mirrors an intimacy shared with someone else in your bloodline; the kinship she felt with the ground, the wounds of her roots, the way she kept her home, her underworld fears, and the shape of her body are all very like yours. You may not know who she was, but her story is your story. The bond a woman feels with earth runs in the blood, and to rekindle the intimacy with the land is her birthright, her wild inheritance, and her destined mandate.
In this chapter of Earth Verses, I ask you to envision yourself encircled by your ancestors as you read. Consider how the themes of women’s rebellion against injustice, tasting the forbidden fruit, sacred solitude in nature, and coming home to the wilds may have been suppressed throughout his-story, and consider how these forces have ebbed and flowed in your own personal myth of awakening. Know your story as fluid and shape-shifting, and honor the shadowy parts of your soul that may have been called wicked or shameful as precious gifts, holy in their own right and divine in their darkness, that now allow you to become the woman you needed when you were younger.
THE PRIESTESS OF THE WILD EARTH ARCHETYPE: MEETING THE SOVEREIGN MAIDEN
In our personal epic stories of wounding and healing, wandering and homecoming, confinement and escape, there is always a pivotal moment when a choice that seems to determine our destiny is made. In tales that reflect aspects of the Priestess of the Wild Earth archetype, that choice is often to flee, to break free from the ties that bind the body and soul to someone else’s expectations and seek out a truer, wilder home. In that moment within the everyday life of a woman, a fleeting glimpse of infinite possibility is often offered up straight from the Holy Wild herself, a sacred and earthly nod that seems to answer the very question that has been twisting in her gut for a time: What do I believe my soul truly desires, knowing all that I know of myself now, in this moment of initiation? The answer is always authenticity, the chance to freely live out the most genuine version of herself she can.
We are all of the Earth, and she will always be calling us home to our cyclical nature and our genuine feminine power. The budding Witch may have grown weary of adhering rigidly to a loved one’s notions of acceptable spirituality, and, on one fateful evening, a milk-white moonbeam melts her fear of being seen. She is the Priestess of the Wild Earth. The young artist holds and examines a scarred rose petal, suddenly finding the encouragement to pursue a more rebellious dream than that which her parents held for her. She is the Priestess of the Wild Earth. The fragile lover decides to leave a relationship that crushes her spirit every day, having been granted permission by a low-rumbling thunderstorm. She is the Priestess of the Wild Earth. She is Lilith, and so are you.
Lilith’s story, in all its many variations, distortions, and interpretations, is a tale of the too-small life outgrown and a more soulful selfhood embraced. We begin here, with her, not because she is the embodiment of the grounded, enduring feminine and not because she is a beacon of warmth, grace, and solace. By contrast, Lilith is the rootless Maiden, the one whose very identity is defined not by who she knows she is but by who she knows she is not. We begin with Lilith because her myths are those of resistance to all that cages, all that separates us from our heathen nature and unmasked individuality. The earth element is where we stand firm in nothing but our authenticity, having ascended from the underworld of other people’s expectations, and Lilith is the ancient embodiment of feminist rebellion and radical sovereignty.
Lilith’s story begins in Sumerian myth, where she is handmaiden to Inanna, a supportive force to the great Goddess of sexual mysteries and underworld initiation. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, inscribed as early as 2000 BCE, Lilith has taken up residence in a willow tree, refusing to leave even when her mistress, Inanna, asks her to do so in order to harvest the tree’s wood. The hero in the tale directs his men to cut down the tree, and Lilith flees into the wilds. In later Hebrew texts, Lilith is the demoness, the first wife of Adam who refused to “lie below” her husband and was consequently sent into exile from the Garden of Eden. Lilith is the rebel queen without a king, sovereign and whole unto herself but rejected for her independence. In Mysteries of the Dark Moon, Demetra George writes that Lilith “chose a lifetime of exile in a desert cave on the shores of the Red Sea rather than one of subjugation.” Lilith is punished, shamed for desiring equality and recognizing the injustices of the garden, and becomes the licentious succubus in later texts, her name used as a twisted teaching tool to denigrate disobedient, sinful women who did not abide by the laws that would confine them.
Lilith’s liberation from the garden can be compared to Inanna’s return journey from the underworld in Sumerian mythology or the ascent of Persephone-Kore in ancient Greek lore. The holy feminine longs for liberation and willingly risks much in the name of freedom, with Dark Goddess mythology commonly illustrating the feminine’s ability to destroy all worlds too small for her. Energetic embodiment of the Priestess of the Wild Earth means acknowledging the parts of your story similar to those of other divine feminine archetypes who were necessarily trapped for a time, sought liberation, and eventually freed themselves from seemingly inescapable cages. In effect, the garden is a particular hell disguised as a utopia, an Eden of masks and half-truths, but the wild woman can endure only so much illusion before her soul’s howled demands for truth grow too loud to be ignored.
Like Lilith, both Persephone-Kore and Inanna have had their stories appropriated by patriarchy. Just as Lilith’s story becomes one of empowerment and liberation in its feminist interpretation, Persephone-Kore, often conventionally cast as the victimized, vulnerable daughter who was abducted by Hades with her mother’s permission and forced to remain in the underworld for six months out of every year, can be viewed as a wise underworld guide. In prepatriarchal versions of her myth, Persephone-Kore is an empowered Maiden who, having been to the depths of hell, now descends and ascends willingly and regularly in order to move in rhythm with the natural world and receive the spirits of the dead. Inanna’s mythic journey, plunging into the depths of the underworld and stripping herself of all her protections so she may face her psychic beasts, is really a tale of shadow integration, of the agonizing process of descent and soul retrieval that is the very essence of spiritual growth. All three Goddesses have been initiated into the soulful wilds through a great wounding, a severance from all they had been, and all three Goddesses understand the merit of both rebellion and sacrifice in the name of autonomy.
The Priestess of the Wild Earth archetype embodies the empowered energies of Lilith, Persephone-Kore, and Inanna. She is entirely free from the story that caged her. She does not define herself any longer by her too-small life. She has been to hell and back again, and she has brewed her own salve for the wounds she acquired during those dark nights of the soul. She owns her scars without overidentifying with these past hurts, without needing absolution from any sky-housed deity who does not care to truly know her. In Aphrodite’s Daughters, Jalaja Bonheim writes that “the resurrected goddess does not ascend to heaven, but triumphantly returns to her people, very much physically alive, and laden with precious gifts of insight, vision, power, and compassion.” She is made more authentic for her ability to sit with her unsettled her-story, and she is so whole unto herself that she carries her own wild home with her, regardless of what pitfalls may lie ahead on her journey away from Eden.
