Who is a Priestess?
Who is a Priestess?
A woman who honors her body as she honors the Earth
A woman who knows her body is the Earth
A Priestess walks in presence,
in awareness, in the truth that she is of this world
and not only in it.
She is the one her friends reach out to when they have a moment of need
She is the woman who brings bread and mead to the new neighbor
She is the woman who always has the elderberry syrup
a hive of bees
an old dog that loves to be petted and has never bitten anyone.
She has cats and butterflies flutter in her wake
Her garden bourgeons with greens, with lady bugs, and with weird plants that only she can name by sight.
She is the woman in a tiny studio apartment in every huge city
and whose apartment smells of incense and coffee with cardamom and cinnamon
whose apartment smells of the fires in the eyes of female djin
She is that woman who walks to work in tennis shoes and changes into high heels when she arrives there
and whose fingers flutter as she walks past the cubicles of her co-workers, whose fingers flutter because she is blessing them with healing, with love, with calm, with peace, with light.
She is a woman who looks into her own eyes when she is triggered
who walks the path of integrity, self-awareness, and honesty.
She is a woman who holds her own feet to the fire of truth and who does not try to tell other people what the truth is
She is a woman who honors the right to choose, her right and the rights of others.
She is soft and kind and gentle
She is wild and fiery and passionate
She is the weaver and the spinner of the webs of light
She is the tantrika pulling life force through her body...and yours
She is the chef who is a magician with the salt
And she is the mother nursing her babe in the chair beside you.
She is the immigrant trying to bring her family through the desert and into a world where they might eat, where her children might live. Might thrive.
She is the holy woman celebrating the Festivals with drumming and bonfires and the spirits who come to her aid.
She rescues cats in Omaha
She sells eggs from her flocks in Normandy
She is raising 6 kids and working a full time job as a bank teller
She is cooking breakfast in the mountains of North Carolina
and hiking the Camino de Santiago
and swimming in the Agean sea.
She is making love to her partner in a hot bedroom in Belize
and she is trance dancing in Bali.
She's walking over a sand dune on a new moon night and into the wild embrace of the ocean's luminescent bloom
She is doing ceremony with plant medicine
She is healing people using vibration, sound, herbs, essences, her voice, her hands, her heart, her words, her soul.
Who is a Priestess? she is you.
Bettina Colonna Essert, March 16, 2021
