Grandmothers Counsel the World: Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet

Now it’s my job — and not only my job but also other women’s jobs — to bring back the stories and tell the teachings: about how vanity was born, how ego was born, all of these things. About why vanity and ego are opponents of ours and how we can learn to walk with them, how we can be intimate with them. A lot of the old teachers have died now and h

Ecology came out around the same time, suggesting that the “patriarchal foreground” of the visible world can be overcome by contemporary women “moving beyond the boundaries of patriarchal space” into the “matriarchal background” of our re-membered ancient past.

intone the words with integrity, we must commit to respect the bountiful diversity of nature, to listen to the voices that make up the terrestrial and cosmic choir, to find the divine sparks that set the world ablaze with light.

Reclaiming the right to birth in our own instinctual way is a shamanic act of courage that has unfortunately become as remote to us as our ability to fly through the night in the form of an owl or heal the sick with the power of the drum. It wouldn’t hurt if we began to think of our birthing and child rearing as central parts of our shamanic work—a