Goddessing: A Goddess / Pagan Blog

For three days, a soft rain, a pale gray sky, bird song, and tender green leaves sprouting from white oaks. Yesterday morning I awoke with the word gentle on my mind.

That might describe how I've been feeling lately. Soft and tender, like new skin, pink around the edges of a wound.

Gentle. What does that mean, really?

At its roots:

To produce: from Proto-Indo-European (base, gen).

Earth, ground, soil: from the Greek ge (think geography, geology, geode).

Birth, race, family, kin: from the Latin ge (think gender, gestation, generation).

At the root of these, the goddess, Mother Earth Herself: Gaia, Gea, Ge, the womb, the genetrix.

So gentleness is in our family, in our human family, at the roots of Western consciousness.

Where is gentleness in this time of turbulence, of war, of eroding civil and human rights? Where is the Goddess in our stressful lives, our broken families, our despair?

Oh Goddess: Ge, Gea, Gaia --
Remember us!
We are your children
Born from your womb.
Remind us!
We are gentle and generous
At our core.
Relish us!
We are still-bright crystals
In the heart of the geode.
Reorient us!
We can return to our roots,
Relearn that each human life is a precious gem.
Reeducate us!
We are co-creators
We can produce better systems, better thoughts, better behaviors, a better future.

The word gentle itself came into the English language about 1225 CE from the Old French gentil ("high-born, noble, courteous") from the Latin gentilis ("of the same family or clan"). Fifty years or so later, its meaning included "gracious, kind." The word today retains a hint of its earliest English meaning in the words gentleman and gentle woman.

As I read about gentle in The Online Etymology Dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, I was reminded that one of the ways we use the word today is as a transitive verb: to gentle.

I found this definition particularly interesting: "To tame or break (a domestic animal, for instance): gentle a horse."

First, because I think that we humans are the most domesticated species on the planet, though we seem to be headed into an alarming wildness that may have little (or everything?) to do with Tennyson's "nature red in tooth and claw."

Second, because I'm working with five runes, drawn in sacred circle on the day of my nephew's death, a message for me:



In the reading, I meant to pull three runes, but two extras popped out of the bag as I pulled my hand out. One fell onto the floor (the bottom rune in the set, above) and another onto the altar (the top rune, above).

I reasoned that the two extra runes were important to the reading -- the one that fell to the floor to represent earth, that from which I am coming, the ground of the matter; the one that fell on the altar to represent spirit or the heavens, that which inspires, the outcome of the matter.

I'm an accomplished card reader, but runes are a new addition to my spiritual tool belt. My first serious study of them starts with this reading and these five runes, which I'll be studying and working with for a year. When I laid the three runes out on the altar, the immediate meaning I got was "get on with living!"

The first of the three drawn runes, Ehwaz (the one that looks like an M), is generally taken to mean horse and sun and movement. I'm somewhat familiar with this rune, because I drew it two years ago in sacred circle for guidance about health matters: Take control, take the reins, use the tremendous power of your will to accomplish your goals. You're in the driver's seat.

I've been meditating on Ehwaz for several weeks, and to be reminded about gentling horses has expanded my thinking about this rune, and about my life. The will is not just a high, horse-powered engine at our disposal. It is also the soft nostrils, the gentle breath, the sweet spirit, the beauty, the sensitivity, the grace, the companionability of the horse. Remember: Life is precious, a gem, gentle and high-powered, fragile and full of strength, soft as baby's skin and hard as hooves.

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The sky is still pale today, but not gray. The long, gentle rain has ended. The sun is shining. Nature, green in bud and leaf, calls me, as do the birds: get on with living!

Permalink posted by Sage -- 8:58 AM.

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