I Am the Kitchen of the Goddess

Happy Mother’s Day! Earth spirituality often depicts the earth as a mother: the source of nourishment, healing and comfort. From “give thanks to the Mother Goddess” to “the earth is our mother, we must take care of her”, images of the divine mother abound in pagan songs.

One of the things that drew me into modern neopaganism is its affirmation of each of us as divine beings. I loved learning about the Goddess. I delighted in connecting to a deity that looks like me. Truly, having this sense of sacred womanhood, beginning in my teens and continuing to today, has strenghened me as a person. Years ago I was doing one of those personal mission statement exercises and this is what I wrote, “I will dance the Goddess into life.”

My song Belly Pot is an example of this affirmation of the divine feminine. It’s a playful song that equates pregnancy with cooking. The song is from the point of view of a pregnant woman who sees herself as the sacred kitchen where a baby is being cooked up. Here’s the chorus:

I am the kitchen of the Goddess
My womb is the kettle of time
I’m cooking up a child in my belly pot
Cauldron of creation, I make life

Belly Pot was fun to write. I had this image of a partnership between woman and Goddess, messing around in the womb kitchen, laughing and sharing tips and cooking up a person. When the Crow Women perform this song, we pretend we have a big cauldron and act like we’re adding ingredients to the Belly Pot. I think my favorite part of the song is the bridge, where the singer paints the image of the Goddess working within her womb:

She’s puttering around in me
She’s rifling in my pantry
With a smile on her face
She adds magic to taste
Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy
in my yummy tummy

I wrote this song in 2008, and like many of my songs on the album Crow Magic, it went with a novel I had written in 2007 called Magical Rite. My daughter was just starting high school at that time. She came to me one autumn day and said, “Mom, do you want to write novels together in November?” Of course, I agreed. When your teenager suggests doing something meaningful with them, what else would you say, right? Thus was born my long and happy relationship with National Novel Writing Month. Leigh and I both wrote 50,000 word novels that November and “won” the writing challenge.

My novel was about Annie (myself, thinly disguised) who moves to a new town and has all kinds of adventures, including learning to make mead (Bless Our Mead: The Yeast Herder’s Anthem), guiding a young person through the coming of age rite (You’re a Woman Now) and befriending Beth, an unhappy pregnant woman, and helping her come to terms with becoming a mother (Belly Pot). Annie gets a job as a Tarot card reader, and Beth is her first client. Here’s how the scene in which Annie reads Beth’s cards ends:

      Annie tapped the card on the top of the pile, drawing Beth’s attention. “This is the last card, the outcome of this reading, if forces continue in the direction they are leading now.”
      “It had better be a happy ending, or I’m not paying you.”
    Ignoring this, Annie turned over the card and laid it down with a flourish. “It’s the Hanged Man.”
      “I said I wanted a happy ending!” wailed Beth
      “Actually, this is a good card. It means transformation. You go through an ordeal or ritual, or make a sacrifice, and it changes you into something new and better. That’s Odin hanging from Yggdrasil, the world tree. He didn’t have an easy time in his saga, but he came out of it a god.”
      “I’m going to be God?”
      “No,” said Annie, “but you’ll be a mother, and that’s almost the same thing.”

I’ve been working with this Tarot deck since I was about 12 years old. The cards are worn and infused with magic.

Writing about Magical Rite in this post is making me feel like going back and polishing it up and birthing it out into the world. An e-book, maybe. I have been so involved in writing and producing music over the past decade that I haven’t given much time to fiction writing. But then, one thing I learned from being a mother is that we all have limits. Trying to do everything (and worse yet, do everything perfectly) will leave you exhausted and unhappy. One thing at a time.

So, that’s my bit of mother wisdom for today. Sending blessings to all the mothers who read this. Love your yummy tummy. Thou art Goddess.

For more information about the Crow Women pagan choir, and access to all the blog posts by Alane and the other 9 crowsingers who have written for Pagan Song, you can visit the Crow Women author page here on Pagan Song.

Please subscribe to the Pagan Song blog, to receive our blog post each week. Don’t miss any of the musical magic!