|Aspects of Women's Spirituality in Tending to the Dying |
|By Leslene della-Madre |
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|For many of us, death is something we would rather not think about. Why is this? Why do we not want to understand the deepest mystery of |
|life? Why are we so afraid to die? These are some of the questions that beckoned me on a journey to learn about the true nature of death, |
|resulting in a recently published book, Midwifing Death: Returning to the Arms of the Ancient Mother, weaving together knowledge about how|
|our pre-patriarchal ancestors viewed life and death with modem stories telling how the sacred passage of death and dying can be midwifed |
|in grace, love and beauty, which are all aspects of the sacred feminine in women's spirituality--the oldest spirituality on the planet. |
|What I have discovered, or rather, uncovered, from the forgotten realms of our ancestors is a deep and profound wisdom of the nature of |
|life, death and regeneration. In order to understand aspects of women's spirituality and their pertinence to death and dying, I feel it is|
|important to have an overview and body-centered sense of what women's spirituality actually is. |
|Most of us in this fast-paced Euro-Western culture have no idea how our Neolithic and Paleolithic ancestors experienced the sacred, |
|because we erroneously assume that history begins with Mesopotamia and Sumer. While we cannot say we can know exactly what the ancients |
|knew, we can put the pieces and shards together of the puzzle of our past and see as well as feel a timeless reality that spans past, |
|present and future. Most of the scholarship in archeology, cultural anthropology and cultural history has within it an insidious male bias|
|which has not allowed for accurate vision and conclusion regarding our human evolution. Well-known figures and teachers, such as Joseph |
|Campbell, have realized that without the necessary light of feminist scholarship, we have unfortunately been hoodwinked into believing |
|things about ourselves as a species that simply are not true. Without the advent of recent pioneering scholarship by women such as the |
|late Dr.Marija Gimbutas, archeomythologist, linguist, scientist, professor at UCLA for many years who created the new field of study of |
|archeomythology, and author of the encyclopedic The Language of the Goddess and The Civilization of the Goddess, as well as numerous other|
|books and articles, we would be doomed to create and recreate a fear based, violent and insane reality spawned from lies about who we are |
|as beings on this planet, which we have already been doing quite long enough, successfully contributing to our own demise and that of many|
|other species. My research for my book was deeply influenced by her work, as she has literally unearthed from her diggings and studies of |
|Neolithic Old Europe, evidence of peaceful woman-centered cultures that not only lived in peace, but also flourished in creativity and |
|beauty. She has inspired people from around the world to further study these cultures. It is my prayer that her work will become part of |
|the general curriculum in our schools, for her work and research clearly show that humankind is fully capable of living peacefully, |
|because this is our legacy for the millennia preceding patriarchy, the advent of which occurred some 5,000 years ago. Campbell informs us |
|in the forward of Gimbutas' definitive work, The Language of the Goddess: |
|As Jean-Francois Champollion, a century and a half ago, through his decipherment of the Rosetta Stone was able to establish a glossary of |
|hieroglyphic signs to serve as keys to the whole great treasury of Egyptian religious thought from c.3200 B.C. to the period of the |
|Ptolemies, so in her assemblage, classification and descriptive interpretation of some two thousand symbolic artifacts from the earliest |
|Neolithic village sites of Europe, c. 7000 to 3500 B.C., Marija Gimbutas has been able, not only to prepare a fundamental glossary of |
|pictorial motifs as keys to the mythology of that otherwise undocumented era, but also to establish on the basis of these interpreted |
|signs the main lines and themes of a religion in veneration, both of the universe as the living body of a Goddess Mother Creator, and of |
|all the living things within it as partaking of her divinity-a religion, one immediately perceives, which is in contrast to that of |
|Genesis 3: 19 where Adam is told by his father creator: 'In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for |
|out of it you were taken, you are dust, and to dust you shall return.' In this earlier mythology, the earth out of which all these |
|creatures have been born is not dust but alive, as the Goddess-Creator herself.1 |
|From the time we can read and write we are taught that humankind, often referred to as mankind, and I ask you to reflect on that |
|referencing which is constantly used to describe all of humanity, as a symptom of what is not working for us as a species, has always been|
|violent. We are taught and teach our children that history is equated with which great heroes conquered whom and how many wars have been |
|raged throughout time. We have been forced and force our children to learn detailed accounts of violent atrocities perpetuated by these |
|so-called heroes and of violent demises of civilizations, as if this is all good, important and necessary for us to do and to know, |
|without any regard or consideration for the sensitive and beautiful open mind of a child; there is no questioning about how this kind of |
|focus affects the tenderness of a soul and our capacity to be loving and kind human beings. I think it is safe to say that it is painfully|
|and obviously clear that such indoctrination has one outcome--the sanctioning of violence against "other" to the point where we, as a |
|species, are now teetering on the edge of a collective near-death experience. When our children murder other children in our schools, |
|something is deeply and drastically wrong. When men use and abuse children as sexual objects for a temporary fix in an attempt to end |
|their own pain and suffering, something is excruciatingly and drastically wrong. With such profound imbalance in our lives, how can we |
|possibly live loving, kind and peaceful lives? And if we cannot live peaceful lives, how can we possibly expect to die in peace? |
|The global and cross-cultural wisdom of the ancients, prior to pre-patriarchal times, offers wonder, truth and beauty about life and |
|death. At the core of many of these Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures is a wisdom nearly lost to us now, without which we grievously |
|suffer, not understanding why. The central core of strength of early peoples from around the world was the experience of earth as Mother, |
|of universe as Mother, of life emerging from the sacred womb of the Great Mother, also known as Goddess. At the core of these communities |
|was the mother-child bond, which informed all aspects of daily life. When I attended the First International Congress on Matriarchies in |
|Luxembourg two years ago, I heard Chinese professor, Dr. Lamu Gatusa whose work centers on the preservation of the social and spiritual |
|heritage of his people, the matriarchal Mosuo of China, speak to the fact that the mother is considered the origin of life and society |
|expressed in both "ethnic concepts and in the concepts of love."2 |
|Archeological findings from the work of Gimbutas and many others as well as research by feminist cultural historians such as Dr. Lucia |
|Chiavola Birnbaum, show that our ancestors knew very well who gave them life and who sustained life. Birnbaum, professor in the women's |
|spirituality department at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and author of several books including her most |
|recent, ground-breaking dark mother, african origins and godmothers, has researched the African diaspora of homo sapiens and has shown |
|that within the psyche of all humans is a deep memory of the dark mother and her values of justice with compassion, equality and |
|peacefulness.3 Her work is corroborated by eminent geneticists, such as L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza who agree that there is only one human |
|race--Afiican. Birnbaum postulates that the core of the deep spiritual nature of our being is informed by the cellular memory of the dark |
|mother who gives life, sustains life and receives life back unto herself in an eternal cyclical existence deemed as heresy by the later |
|church so-called fathers. The implications of Birnbaum's work are far-reaching, for she shows us that the notion of race is really an |
|illusion. In understanding this truth, racism is then eradicated. It is also my prayer that Birnbaum's work will find its way into our |
|curriculum in what we teach our children. If we taught them the truth about who they are and that human beings are far more informed by |
|peacefulness and beauty than insane violence and hatred, as all children really know before this natural wisdom is conditioned out of |
|them, which is happening at increasingly earlier and earlier ages with the age of technology, we will be giving them the tools to live |
|happy, productive, cooperative lives, with a deep respect for their mothers, Mother Earth and Mother Nature, and therefore the |
|extraordinary gift of life and the magical cycle of life, death and regeneration. |
|The amazing discoveries of the birth, life, death and regeneration murals in the excavations by archeologist James Mellart in Turkey of |
|the 8,000 year old Neolithic culture of Catal Huyuk in the 1960's beautifully depict the deep and profound reverence in which these early |
|peoples lived. The Catal Huyuk settlement lasted approximately 1,000, years. The unearthed evidence of three different skull types found |
|in various diggings showed that diverse peoples lived together in harmony. There is no evidence whatsoever of weaponry or warfare in any |
|of the murals or iconography. And there is amazing substantiation of the reverence of a Mother Goddess. The majestic Neolithic double |
|temples in Malta and Gozo, themselves symbols of the sacred female principle and predating the pyramids by 1,000 years, have yielded |
|numerous female figurines suggesting the primaIness of woman--she who births life into form. One enters the temples through the sacred |
|yonic gateway, which leads to round earthen womb-like spaces deep inside. And one leaves the temples through the same gateway, |
|experiencing a sense of rebirth and regeneration. The ancients also knew to whom they returned at the end of life. Today there are |
|existing remnants of this mother wisdom alive insuch cultures as the Minangkabau in Sumatra, the Berber in Tunisia, the Mosuo in China and|
|the matriarchal >culture found in Juchitan, Mexico. Significantly, when people revere the Mother and the Sacred Feminine, peace abounds. |
|So, it is true that his-story is about war. And it is also true that her-story is about something else entirely. |
|My journey with the questions about death began a long time ago. Most recently, I was called to care for my aging parents. When my father |
|became ill, I made a decision that I would help him through his passage from this world into the next. It was a spiritual practice for me |
|to show up in that way, because his wounding had gone unhealed in his life which made him difficult to be with at times. Often when people|
|are dying, and they are afraid, their anger and fear can be released in ways that can be very confusing for caregivers, loved ones and |
|family members. My father's death was twenty years ago, and since that time 1 have learned a great deal about midwifing death. I have seen|
|the need for people to feel safe at the time of dying. And I have noticed that most people don't. I wondered why not. That question guided|
|me on my own spiritual quest, as I realized that there was a great deal I did not know about myself, my conditioning, the ruling paradigm |
|I had grown up in, the global wanton hatred of women, culminating in the burning and torture of thousands if not millions of women in the |
|Inquisition, that is, simultaneously, referred to as the age of the Renaissance. This is the single most unspoken event in the recent |
|herstory of our specie-s-the women's holocaust that lasted for about five hundred years, ending in Europe and in the U.S. only three |
|hundred years ago, now finding current expressions in other parts of the world. It might not be easy to understand why anyone would talk |
|about this in relation to death and dying. For me, it is painfully obvious why it is absolutely necessary. In the cells of every woman is |
|this memory, unseen, untold and forced into exile within a woman's soul. Death and dying take on a new meaning from this perspective. |
|Aspects of women's spirituality in tending to the dying become more comprehensive and encompassing in regard to the current human |
|condition, because if we do not understand the Mother Wisdom from which we are born, we will not know how to impart it to ourselves or to |
|our children, in life and in death. Understanding women's spirituality is also about cultivating a deep understanding of what is happening|
|on our planet and seeing that the death and destruction, violence, and war we wreak on ourselves is intimately connected with the denial |
|of the Mother Wisdom lying dormant in our cells, though there is a new spark of awakening that is happening around the world as women are |
|choosing to create something new rather than fight against the old. |
|Interestingly, midwifng my father in his death taught me a great deal about life. I saw that we need a completely new way to live, which |
|is not new information, really, but it came to me in my process with him because I came face to face with my own anger and fear, and I |
|needed to learn how to express myself in compassion and love without blame and judgment,-all the values of the original dark mother. As I |
|continued in my journey helping people die, I felt I was awakening to that cellular memory within me of the Mother and began to create |
|with and for people a new way to be together in one of, if not the most important, mysterious and awesome experiences of a lifetime. |
|Midwifing the dying means to bring into the experience the sacred values of mothering, which have been all but destroyed in global |
|male-dominated hierarchical cultures around the world. Death for the ancients was always connected with regeneration. In our society, we |
|associate death with the grim reaper-a scary image of a man with a sickle coming to get us. In pre-dynastic Egypt as well as dynastic |
|Egypt, the Goddess Nut is found painted on the bottoms of coffins with open arms and the body of the dead is placed on top of her image, |
|face down, indicating a face-to-face meeting of the mortal with the immortal Mother Goddess. The arms of the Mother Goddess welcomed the |
|dead back into the numinous realm between life and death. The Norse Goddess Hel was the wise eternal grandmother whose womb cave of |
|regeneration, the place where souls went in death to find nurturing in her safe haven of warmth and rebirth, was found deep in the heart |
|of the mountain. Today the remnant of Hel's sacred domain has become split off from the cycle of life, death and regeneration and has |
|deteriorated into the demonized place of hell where the hot and cold fires of fear and rage are fanned with violence. People are |
|frightened into believing that to be god-fearing will save them from punishment in the afterlife. Fear, however, does not allow for love, |
|openness, surrender and peace, which are all favorable states to be well acquainted with in life in order that one can be prepared for |
|death, and once again, the values of the dark mother from which we all have come. |
|To bring the values of mothering to the dying requires skill, because we no longer naturally know these values in our bones, though the |
|memory is there. One must cultivate presence and bring to the bedside of the dying a loving openness that is not encumbered with an |
|agenda. And one must keep one's own fear, anger and need to control in check in order to be truly available to the dying. One must be able|
|to see the needs of the moment and be able to give. This is not a co-dependent giving. This is a giving from the heart that sees and |
|feels, grounded in compassion and authenticity. A loving and present mother knows what is needed. She just knows. It is the same in |
|tending to the dying, which used to be women's practice prior to the advent of patriarchy. When people feel cared for and safe in their |
|dying process, amazing things can happen. I have witnessed a person who has carried a lifetime of anger shed that deep-seated identity |
|with anger in the moments before death, thereby changing the effects of what they carry with them into the realms beyond. Such was the |
|case of my own mother. I midwifed her in her dying, bringing her home to die in peace. Many of us in this culture are the walking wounded.|
|My parents' generation, and many before, did not know much of anything else--therapy was not considered as something people needed unless |
|one was diagnosed as mentally ill and needing special confinement. From what I witness, that describes just about all of us. Valium was |
|offered for women who were considered hysterical. Now we have Prozac. So, my mother suffered from a deep depression all of her life, at |
|the same time raising five children and certainly doing the best she could. But she was angry most of her life, having suffered a |
|difficult childhood. In her death, because she was surrounded by love and safety, she could let go of her pain and really surrender into |
|dying. It was an amazing process to witness, because her personality fell away as the true nature of her being emerged. It is said that |
|our true nature is 10,000 times brighter than the sun, and I could actually feel something of this truth as my mother let go of her anger |
|in the hours before her death. |
|It is motherly love that births life, sustains and tends to it. Why wouldn't we want motherly love surrounding us in our dying? I am sure |
|most of us would. But most of us do not know what that is, nor what it looks like, because we have been deprived of the ancestral |
|grandmother wisdom that guided, for instance the indigenous peoples of this land, such as the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, as they were |
|named by the French, whose wisdom was not only used in the formation of our constitution, but also was offered by the Haudenosaunee women |
|to the suffering Euro-Western women who were their neighbors to help them realize their own oppression--such women as Matilda Joslyn Gage,|
|Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott. We all know what those women did with what they learned from their Indian sisters. |
|Motherly love in death and dying offers sanctuary, authenticity and open-heartedness to all involved. Fear and anger melt away in the open|
|arms of love, compassion, truth and beauty. However, in order to be able to give in this way, we must cultivate this reality in our lives.|
|This is the ancient global truth of women's spirituality. It is an indigenous truth that when women are respected, then so is all life, |
|which makes the opposite true as well. |
|If we are to have peaceful transitions from this world to the next, it is imperative that we change our ways and become more aligned with |
|our true nature, which is love. Life is meant to be lived in peace, joy, harmony, abundance and celebration. With such a life, death is |
|not the end, but rather an opening, a portal, into another realm of the Great Mystery. |
|Footnotes |
|1 Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, 1989, p.xiii. |
|2 Professor Lama Gatusa, personal experience/conversation. Also refer to Goddessing, An International Journa lof Goddess Expression, issue|
|#19, 2004-5, article by Leslene della-Madre," Societies in Balance: Gender Equality in Matrilineal, Matrifocal and Matriarchal Societies, |
|" p.41. |
|3 Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, dark mother, Authors Chioce Press, Lincoln, 2001, p.xxvi. |

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From the website of Leslene della-Madre