I Am Warrior Woman

I wrote Warrior Woman in January 2017 to go with a women’s empowerment ritual that I would priestess, part of my emotional response to the pending inauguration of Donald Trump as president. As it turned out, the huge Women’s March in Washington D.C. and many other places the day after the inauguration echoed the sentiment of my song. So did the pink pussy hats. 

The song aims to reflect the individual and group strength and power of women, especially as aligned with the Goddess(es) of your choice. Hopefully we are making progress with the number of women elected to local, state and national offices in 2018, and the number who’ve announced they are running for president in 2020.

The Warrior Woman ritual wasn’t actually performed until later in 2017 at the Crows’ spring retreat at Ardantane in New Mexico. Amber and Azrael joined in. I called the ritual “Awakening and Celebrating our Warrior Selves.”

I asked participants to bring a red candle to represent menstrual blood and an athame of other symbol of personal power. I asked them to dress as their warrior selves and bring a role model warrior woman from real life, fiction, or mythology. Examples I gave were Hecate, Boudicca, Erin Brockovich, Harriet Tubman, Xena, Eowyn, Princess Leia, Wonder Woman, Eloise Kobell, Sakajawea, Chelsey Manning, or a woman we knew personally who we admired as woman who fights for her beliefs. Images for the altar were welcome.

After casting the circle, each woman described her chosen role model and how she was was inspired by that figure of female power. Each participant lit her candle and called upon her role model for help in the coming year. I called us warriors for our Mother Earth. We sang my song Warrior Woman, dancing and yipping and reveling in the empowerment it offers. Raising athame, sword, spear or staff, we drew down power from a just past full moon to bless ourselves and the land and mission at Ardantane.

All this can be adjusted to suit your group’s particular situation. Special creativity will be needed  if your group is co-ed. We are a women’s only circle and it was a women’s only ritual.

Along with singing Warrior Woman, we closed the ritual with a song that we learned from a cassette of chants by the Colorado Midwives’ Association, and that we covered on our first album, “Crow Goddess.” It goes,

We are sisters on a journey, shining in the sun
shining through the darkest night, the healing has begun, begun,
the healing has begun.
We are sisters on a journey, singing now as one
remembering the ancient ones, the women and the wisdom
the women and the wisdom.

I invite you to modify and embellish these ideas for your own empowerment and to strengthen your sisterhood. Blessed Be.

The song Warrior Women will be on our upcoming CD, Seasons: A Pagan Journey Around the Wheel. Production of the track was sponsored by Azrael and was dedicated to Amber K, her beloved Warrior Woman.

A more recent post about this song is here.