The holiest of holy weekends.

Which transformative powers are we celebrating?

This weekend, many will be celebrating Easter, the christian holiday commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, an English derivative for the Hebrew name of Yeshua.

And yet this timely festival of descent, death, and rebirth, nestled at the very threshold of spring, has deeper roots than many of us are aware of. The rites of resurrection have been practiced throughout cultures for time immemorial. From the solitary contemplation of the shaman in the dark cave , to the Templars’ initiatory practices of descent into underground wells, and the mystery rites of the Priestesses in the temples of Isis. All stem from one thread of transformation, and this weaves us back to the first story ever recorded, the myth of Inanna’s descent. And it would be foolish to anoint this mythology as the first, for this death and rebirth cycle is woven into the very fabric of everything. Our primordial ancestors knew the lunar cycle, the seasons, the tides, the life journey and the menstrual cycle itself encompasses the same lulls and arcs of dying and rebirthing anew.

But as Inanna’s descent to the underworld is our first formally recorded telling of this initiatory journey, and she, not Jesus, is the first written-of deity to resurrect, it seems unjust not to invoke her on this holiest of holy weekends. Her journey to the underworld encapsulates the transformative power of the feminine, the destructive and nurturing power of creation itself. A power that deconstructs us, tears us open, can leave us stranded in the void, and then steadily reassembles us, and rebirths us anew. Only if we allow ourselves to be, of course. And this transformative and initiatory power that was met and embodied by Inanna, absorbs absolutely everything in life as spiritual curriculum. Every thought, word or deed can provide us with an opportunity to grow, meet new edges, and soften more onto life’s path and into our true essence.

When we can stay present with what is dying,

tend to our own endings of who we were or wanted to be,

the roles we have played and narratives we have spun,

can hold space for the grief and great void that follows this shedding,

honouring the stillness,

we can then anoint the fertile ground for resurrection.

We are asked to revere the emptiness,

not brush over it or through it,

or hasten the quickening of the new life on the other side.

Our emergence is tender,

pacing ourselves as we are reborn.

Through these resurrecting rites, the hardships we encounter and the wounds that we carry are rendered sacred. They are the keys that can unlock our potentiality and birth new worlds anew. And this transformative force is spoken of in many traditions, and this force is feminine. She is not linear, she is cyclical. She births and nourishes, destroys and devours, and yet all of this creation streams from her body.

Ultimate creator, ultimate destroyer.

Unified eternally by paradox.

This cyclical force weaves through the power of the menstrual cycle, and initiates those of us with wombs through the rites of passage of our blood cycles, the pregnancy and birthing journeys if we choose these paths, and the great threshold of menopause. These initiations take us and our constructs to dissolve. From the dark void of the womb space, the baby emerges, transformed from cellular cluster to living, breathing human. The Great Goddess and nature herself at work.

So Yeshua’s death and resurrection was an enactment of a great universal truth. Although described as a physical death in the bible, for me this feels a metaphorical overlay to the energetic transformation of spiritual rebirth. The offering of his physical body, you could say, is the sacrifice of something we have outgrown when we feel the calling to evolve. His blood shed, you could say, holds resonance with the blood spilled in childbirth, the ultimate act of sacrifice, creation and transformation. Christ was channeling a primal and transformative power, however this story has been retold as though his enactment of these ancient rites carries a debt, one that we should all carry and repay. But this is not how resurrection works. Having the courage to descend and meet one’s shadows, allowing our delusions and dissolution to die, and ultimately rebirthing oneself liberated from the bindings of suffering, is a pure act of love that carries no debt. My liberation is your liberation, and as we all learn to dance at these thresholds, we welcome back the exiled parts of our collective field of suffering.

And when we look to the actual biblical telling of Yeshua’s death and resurrection, the feminine presence is there. For there were four women who held vigil for him. His devoted mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, his consort and carrier of the teachings of the path of love, Mary of Clopas, a disciple and relative of Yeshua, and Salome, also a dedicated disciple of the path of love. Whilst all others departed, not able to bear witness to his brutal, slow and painful transition to the other realm, these four women stayed and tended to the ending of his earthly life. They understood the sanctity of this void and in-between space, the place between form and formlessness, and between breath and death. The feminine recognised and remembered, and they stood at this sacred threshold alongside Christ. After his passing, they were the “myrrhbearers”, those who anointed his body with protective oils and spices in a cave. This preparation of the physical vessel for resurrection is a ritual that spans culture, time and space, and can be traced back to the initiatory rites practiced in the temples of Isis by the Priestesses.

So this Easter, I celebrate these great transformative powers that be and the ways in which they move through each and every one of us. Not just through a singular male human. As we emerge tenderly from the winter and into the blossoming of spring and the return of the light, may we honour the void space we are stepping out from.

May we honour the skins we have shed.

And the parts of ourselves we have composted, ready to meet our re-birth.

Your liberation is my liberation.

N I N A