Free the wild beast inside you

You were wild once.
Feel the wild beast inside you, waiting to be freed.
Waiting to be unlocked from the cage within.
It is trapped.
Locked away for safekeeping.
Blindfolded, bound, silenced.
But not for long.

This beast knows itself.
This beast embodies its truest untamed essence.
It comes from the wilds of your soul, you see.
This beast is all that it is meant to be.
Connected to all that is.
To earth, air, fire, water, ether.
To the great mystery.

It feels the rage of a thunderstorm, the devastation of a hurricane.
It is intimate with the fizzle of electricity before the lightning cracks.
It understands the flow and crash of the rising powerful sea.
It knows the calm and peaceful strength of the highest redwood to the smallest pine.
It merges with the swelter of the desert, with the magnificent stillness of the mountain.

The beast within has not been domesticated by an overly cautious, overly stifled, overly soul-starved society,
Even if the body that contains it has.
Even if you have been conditioned by a society concerned with fitting in,
With appearing a certain way,
With an ache to be different from that which we are,
This beast remains innately free.

This societal labyrinth has molded and shaped us.
This machine has ground us into submission.
Yet still the beast growls, the beast howls,
The beast awaits the hour of release.

Is it time, yet, for freedom?

Shh. Be still.

Can you feel the beast’s pulse?
The more you ignore it, the more it grows.
The more the beast snarls.
The more it writhes in pain within you,
Longing to break out.
Desperately testing the strength of the bars,
Checking for weakness in the fencing that surrounds it.

Can you sense the purity within its ferocity?
A wrath laced with innocence, like the scream of a baby calling for nourishment.

Do you feel it wrestling within your ribcage aching to be unleashed
Every time you dance but hold back,
Every time you are tethered by inhibition,
Concern for others’ peering eyes, and fear of silent judgments?

Do you feel it aching to assert its powerful presence
Every time you make a decision with trepidation,
Plagued with self-doubt?

Do you feel it clawing its way up your throat
Every time you speak but self-censor,
Bound by the voices inside and outside who tell you what you have to say is wrong, or stupid, or meaningless, or too much?

The beast will be heard.
It comes from the wilds of your soul, you know.
The beast will grow louder,
Louder, louder still,
Until you hear.

The beast knows Truth.
The beast knows Self.
The beast knows Soul.
The beast knows Purpose.
The beast knows Healing.
The beast knows that you are a divine being of the earth, sea, and sky.
You are Everything and more.

Know this:
You can trust this wild creature within.
It will fulfil your anguished longing.
It will grant you all you desire.

For the wild one has never been severed from its anchor,
Its roots,
Its mother,
This wild holy earth.
And your blazing cosmic soul.

It knows the way.

Listen to its wisdom.
Let the wild one out.

Discover the key. Open.

Be free.

Jen Wyatt

Imbolc

Imbolc, also known as Candlemas or Saint Brigid’s Day, is an ancient Celtic festival that’s celebrated on 1st or 2nd February each year at the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. It marks the awakening of the Earth as she moves towards Spring. In fact, the word Imbolc or Imbolg actually means ‘in the belly or womb’ implying that the natural world around us is expectant like a just showing pregnancy, full of hidden potential, renewal and life force and moving towards its rebirth with the returning light and energy of Spring. As the plants, trees and animals start to emerge from their Winter slumbers, now is a time of re-awakening for us too, a time for action and new beginnings, a time for embracing the new start that nature is offering us. But to make way for the new, we need to let go of the old, that which no longer serves us – we need to have a good old-fashioned spring clean, not just of our physical environment but of our inner space too    –       Lara Heppell, Imbolc: The Reawakening of the Earth

And what about the octopi?

To be honest, they’re totally meaningless. Or at least that was my goal. After a while I started thinking of all the parallels to them in other art like James Bond and tentacle porn. I’ve found that the octopus paintings have actually been on a lot of bestiality sites. So when I go to check the stats for my website, I’m like, ‘what does this link go to?… AGHH!!’

Zak Smith, Interview in White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art: issue 4 Summer 2007

Cerridwen

Celtic Cerridwen represents powers of prophecy, and is the keeper of the cauldron of knowledge and inspiration in the Underworld. In one part of the Mabinogion, Cerridwen pursues Gwion through a cycle of seasons — beginning in the spring — when in the form of a hen, she swallows Gwion, disguised as an ear of corn. Nine months later, she gives birth to Taliesen, the greatest of the Welsh poets. Because of her wisdom, Cerridwen is often granted the status of Crone, which in turn equates her with the darker aspect of the Triple Goddess. She is both the Mother and the Crone; many modern Pagans honour Cerridwen for her close association to the full moon.

Eros

Eros was a Greek god of lust and primal sexual desire. In fact, the word erotic comes from his name. He is personified in all kinds of love and lust, both heterosexual and homosexual, and was worshiped at the centre of a fertility cult that honoured both Eros and Aphrodite together.

There does seem to be some question about Eros’ parentage. In later Greek myth he is indicated to be Aphrodite’s son, but Hesiod portrays him as merely her servant or attendant. Some stories say Eros is the child of Iris and Zephyrus, and early sources, such as Aristophanes, say he is the offspring of Nyx and Erebus, or Chaos itself, which would make him quite an old god indeed.

During the classical Roman period, Eros evolved into Cupid, portrayed as the chubby cherub that still remains as a popular image today. He is typically shown blindfolded — because, after all, love is blind — and carrying a bow, with which he shot arrows at his intended targets. As Cupid, he is often invoked as a god of pure love during Valentine’s Day, but in his original form, Eros was mostly about lust and passion.

Eros was honoured in a general way across much of the ancient Greek world, but there were also specific temples and cults dedicated to his worship, particularly in the southern and central cities. A poetic description of the statue of Eros that appeared in the temple at Thespeia—the earliest known, and most popular cult site — border on the erotic. The Greek writer Callistratus described a statue of Eros that appeared in the temple at Thespeia, the earliest known, and most popular cult site. Callistratus’ summary is extremely poetic… and borders on the erotic:

“The Eros, the workmanship of Praxiteles, was Eros himself, a boy in the bloom of youth with wings and bow. Bronze gave expression to him… you might have seen the bronze losing its hardness and becoming marvellously delicate in the direction of plumpness and… the material proving equal to fulfilling all the obligations that were laid upon it. It was supple but without effeminacy; and while it had the proper colour of bronze, it looked bright and fresh; and though it was quite devoid of actual motion, it was ready to display motion; for though it was fixed solidly on a pedestal, it deceived one into thinking that it possessed the power to fly…”

As a god of lust and passion, and fertility as well, Eros played a major role in courtship. Offerings were made at his temples, in the form of plants and flowers, vessels filled with sacred oils and wine, beautifully crafted jewellery, and sacrifices. Eros didn’t have too many boundaries when it came to making people fall in love, and was considered the protector of same-sex love as well as hetero relationships.

Patti Wigington – Eros: Greek God of Passion and Lust

strangeness of Time

The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can’t see, whose beginning you’ve forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable.

Joyce Carol Oates – Foxfire

School for girls – a confession…

My parents enrolled me in all girls Catholic boarding school to keep me from hanging out with boys. I was 14 and slept in a bedroom with three other girls. One night two 16-year-old girls walked in and sat on the edge of my bed and began sexually touching me. My three-bedroom mates pretended to be sleeping because they were scared of these girls. I remember one of them telling me to keep quiet while the other one pulled me to the edge of the bed by my legs, took my pajama bottoms off, spread my legs and began liking my pussy. I remember her spreading my pussy lips with her whole mouth over it and tongue practically inside me. I had never felt so guilty and horny at the same time – and it was impossible to stop myself having a ‘muted’ orgasm. I later found out from my bedroom mates that they had gotten sucked and fingered in the same way. I was new fresh pussy in the school. I had never had oral sex before but it sure beats masturbation. I don’t know if that makes me a lesbian or bisexual because I still like boys – but girls finger, lick and suck better than any boys.

Anon, SOURCE

the experience of desire…

Surrealist beauty is convulsive. That is, you feel it, you don’t see it – it exists as an excitation of the nerves. The experience of the beautiful is, like the experience of desire, an abandonment to vertigo, yet the beautiful does not exist as such. What do exist are images or objects that are enigmatic, marvellous, erotic – or juxtapositions of objects, or people, or ideas, that arbitrarily extend our notion of the connections it is possible to make. In this way, the beautiful is put at the service of liberty.

Angela Carter – The Alchemy of the Word

the contradictory aspects of eroticism

Eroticism is, first of all, the most moving of realities; but it is nonetheless, at the same time, the most ignoble. Even after psychoanalysis, the contradictory aspects of eroticism appear in some way innumerable; their profundity is religious — it is horrible, it is tragic, it is still inadmissible. Probably all the more so since it is divine.

Georges Bataille – The Tears of Eros

Lazy Sunday Afternoon…

I just want your clothes on my floor, your skin against mine, and your face being the only thing I will wake up too on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

A.M.