Ecomancy: Our Goddess of Water

The Crow Women began working with dedications to the elements many years ago, as explained in a previous post about this aspect of our priestess training tradition. After due deliberation, each of us chose our first element to work on. I could have chosen one of the elements I feel most comfortable with: fire or air. But, excited about the opportunity for growth through our shiny new elemental training system, I picked water.

To me, water is all about going with the flow. I’m a get-it-done kind of person, always busy, always thinking, sparking with creative impulses, loving to make new things happen. I am very fire and air. I figured my soul could use the balance of water’s ability to be quiet and receptive.

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 4th century BCE

Water is also associated with emotion, and I was drawn to a chance to deepen my compassion, maybe get more in touch with my feelings. During that year dedicated to water, I used The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron as my journaling guide. I wrote for twenty minutes each morning. The daily practice helped me explore my inner world and maybe that’s part of the reason I went through a upswelling of creative work at that time.

But the highlight of that water year was the ritual I led for the Crow Women to discover our own goddess of the water. Most of our circle lived in Durango, Colorado, where the Animas river bisects the town, running down the valley the town is cradled in. For me, the river had been a living being for a long time. To her I had brought my child to play in the shallows, and my heart’s pain to cast in the water. Many of us had come to the river to sing for healing magic or to express gratitude for blessings. We sensed the love of the Goddess in her waters. Would she reveal her form to our circle of women?

We gathered in a member’s backyard and cast a circle around a kiddie pool full of water. We sang the chant “born of water, cleansing, powerful, healing changing, I am.” We meditated on the sacred nature of water and then spoke of the insights our meditation had brought. Then, we let loose and played with the water. We poured it from cups to hear the sound, we splashed, we drummed on the water, all the time listening for the sounds of our goddess’s name. We began to vocalize sounds and syllables. Whoosh, pa-ba, la-la-la-la. The sounds converged to a name: Ooshbala.

A few years later, when I wrote a song bringing together our goddesses, this is the verse I composed for Ooshbala. It’s on our second album, Crow Magic.

Ooshbala, Ooshbala; Water Goddess, come to us
Ooshbala, Ooshbala; from the west, bring us blessings
Ooshbala, Ooshbala; tears and blood and rain and ocean
Ooshbala, Ooshbala; open us to deep emotion

In future posts in the Ecomancy series, I’ll reveal the Crow Women’s other elemental goddesses. I’ll give more tips for working with the ecology of your own homeplace to connect with the sacred there: what we call ecomancy. Stay tuned!

The header photo of this post is of a painting by Crow Woman Carole McWilliams, who also painted the cover art for our album Seasons: A Pagan Journey Around the Wheel.

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.

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