In Honour of The Great Mother

A few weeks ago, I attended an online event for a creative art exercise with Alexis Cohen, a visionary artist and shamanic healer in the States. The exercise was to connect deeply with the essence behind our businesses and to create a strong foundation for them to be built upon.

Alexis guided us through beautiful visualisations and meditations. My blank piece of large paper turned into an amazing drawing that I had no idea was going to come out of this exercise – amazing not in skill or look, but in the messages that I received and keep on receiving from contemplating the images in the drawing.

It is now hanging on a wall at home where I can easily see it. Every day I get more and more insight into elements of my business, Devi Living, that I will build on.

One of the main messages I got was that the foundation for Devi Living is The Great Mother herself. Well fancy that! I felt a bit stunned that on some level I had totally forgotten that The Great Mama Devi was what inspired me in the first place to begin Devi Living. As it says on the website –

‘Devi is the Mother Goddess, the feminine principle of creation. Devi is also in all of us, the divine feminine part of ourselves. Devi is the benevolent Universal feminine energy, the Great Divine Mother, the one whose wisdom and love can penetrate our lives if we are willing to let it in’

In between writing blogs and interviewing women and doing so many other things, Mama Devi herself got a bit neglected.

In this blog I want to honour Her by placing Her in her rightful place – both as the foundation for Devi Living and, for me, to reinforce and remember Her as the source of all Life. I would of course love it if this resonates with you as well!

In the early earth cultures, the Great Mother was revered, worshiped, and deeply connected to as the One who gave life to everything and without whom there was no life.

The whole cosmos was her womb from where she gave birth to all life. Not only did She give life to everything, but Her presence was also felt in all things manifest.

Her pulse was felt in the rhythms of nature. Everything She created was her children, for She was the Mother of All. She was the one who returned her children back to her after death and then gave birth to new life.

The Life-Death-Life, Life-Death-Rebirth, Life-Death-Regeneration cycle was Her cyclical energy that was moving through all Her creations.

She was said to be encompassing three dimensions – Nature, Earth, and Soul/Spirit. The Great Mother of All was revered as all things in nature and as the stars, moons, and planets in the sky. She was the rhythm of nature, the seed that produced the harvest and the clouds that brought the rain. She was the invisible force behind all of creation and the powerful energy source that wove the web of life. She created and She destroyed only to give life again, in cycles.

The earlier humans were deeply connected to these cycles and lived as in the embrace of the Great Mother. Her immense powers of destruction were feared. Rituals were created both to honour Her and to be protected from her devastating ability to destroy.

Humans began building shrines and temples to worship Her. They created exquisite art, like the abundance of sculptures symbolising Her that have been found at many sites around the planet. Most of those sculptures show Her with large and full breasts and a huge belly, a Life-giving Mother who provided sustenance to the people. She was seen and felt as the Mother who deeply cared for what She gave life to.

At the beginning of the Iron Age, the Great Mother was pushed to the side to give way for patriarchal religions. A stern male god whose dominion was the sky showed up. The disconnection from the Earth began.

Somewhere deep in our memory though, we still know and remember that Earth and Nature are sacred and that the Earth is our mother. To this day, people journey to sacred places on the planet where Her powers are said to be extra potent and where communication with Her is easier to access.

The connection the First Nation’s people have with Earth, Nature and the Cosmos has maintained strong even though powerful forces have tried to severe that bond. The Indigenous people speak for Her with their message to care for the Earth, for She is our Mother. If we treat Her as a resource to be exploited, we disconnect with the source that gives us life.

I don’t know about you, but I have felt the connection with Earth and Nature strongly since I was a child. I relate easier to a life-giving Great Mother than to a stern male God in the sky. I long to live in a culture and a society that reveres Nature and all She offers. A society that never takes Nature for granted or believes it is above it. A culture that knows that, as David R Kinsley wrote is his book Hindu Goddesses – ‘She is Life, and to the extent that life is cherished and revered, She is cherished and revered’.

It seems of massive importance to reconnect now with Nature as a Great Mother that we revere. She who gives us everything we need to thrive. It is easy to see that the treatment of Indigenous people, the land and women correlate with our treatment of Nature.

So as far as Devi Living goes, the foundation is The Great Mother, the Divine Feminine. A deep respect for Her and a hope for Her healing, revival, and for Her continued offerings of abundance, now and for the future. A prayer for us to wake up to Her. Nature and life are sacred.

And as Devi Living is dedicated to this sacred Feminine force it is also dedicated to remember the gifts that the Great Mother can bestow on us, particularly as women, that the world needs more of right now –

Strength, Creativity and the Fierce Nature of the feminine force, Ingenuity,  Power to destroy what is no longer serving, Capacity to embrace all of life, Desire to give freely of our gifts, Ability to create new life and a new story, Living life from an embodied presence, Deep wisdom to nurture and sustain, Interconnection, Interdependence, Capacity for change, Living in tune with nature’s cycles, Deep love and care for life and the planet and Trust in the power of regeneration. And so much more.

If She is in everything then She is in us – how would She express Herself through you? How would the world and our reality transform if we reclaimed this worldview? If She returned?

To me – To live on the Planet in Love, With Purpose and in Joy – would be to express and live these gifts.

I am really glad I did the art exercise with Alexis! I feel re-connected and reignited with love for this loving, great being – the Divine Feminine as our Ancient and Ever present Mama. I couldn’t wish for a greater foundation for Devi Living.

Did you resonate with this? Leave a comment below!

(The theme picture of this post is a rock the size of my hand that I found many moons ago – it reminds me so of the sculptures on the other two photos of Her in the blog – stone figurines that have been found by archaeologists. I could not find any references to where they were found or who the photographers were.)

 Share this blog post with a woman you love! If you want to receive notifications about upcoming interviews and blog posts I invite you to subscribe by clicking the Subscribe button at the top of the page and/or follow Devi Living on Instagram or Facebook.

u