Earth Uprising

The Ecstatic Revolution

Painting: “Woman’s Wisdom” by Veda Ram

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The Unsacred Wound: How the War Against the Feminine Wrecks Our Living Earth

Our glorious, gasping, wounded world is reeling from many budding catastrophes. Among the most crucial and least acknowledged: our collective amnesia. We have forgotten who we really are: sacred vessels of a sentient cosmos—not just us humans, but also the stones, rivers, foxes, oak trees, wetlands, microbes, everything.

Our collective forgetting splits reality down its smoldering center. On one side: the masculine principle, enshrined as god, reason, civilization, domination. On the other: the feminine, cast into the shadows along with feelings, bodies, and the great sentient entity we call Gaia.

This global psychic wound manifests as the slow-motion apocalypse that’s unfolding all around us.

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The Master's Delusion

For millennia, men have shaped civilization with their primal command: I am Self, I am Master, and all the rest is Other—outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control.

Thanks to author Ursula K Le Guin for exposing the exact phrasing of that primal command. It’s the operating system of empires and corporations, the not-so-covert programming behind clear-cut forests and strip-mined mountains—and the code that ensures women's bodies are controlled and exploited.

The same psychic virus that tricked us into thinking that a forest is merely lumber also convinced us that a woman is mostly a resource.

The word “rape” originally meant “to seize or carry off by force” and applied broadly to acts of violent taking, including land, goods, or people. Later, it came to refer mainly to sexual violation.

This is no coincidence. The language of conquest speaks with forked tongue but single intent—to assert dominance, to sever relationship, and to transform the living into the dead, the sacred into the profane, the thou into an it.

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The Terror of Otherness

This severing of relationship doesn't stop at the feminine and the wild. The masculine principle, divorced from the most robust expression of its balancing counterpart, develops a terror of all forms of Otherness. Having cast the feminine into shadow, patriarchal consciousness turns a fearful gaze on anything that reminds it of what it has suppressed.

Look how easily antipathy toward the feminine transfers into antipathy toward other ethnicities, other tribes, other religions. The colonial mind that believes it can own land and women holds the same contempt for Indigenous peoples whose ways of knowing honor both.

Not by accident did colonizers call Indigenous peoples "feminine" and "childlike" in their "superstitious" reverence for the land. The same voice that says, "Women are emotional, not rational" says, "Primitive peoples are mystical, not civilized." It's a similar dismissal.

The Master's consciousness must always create hierarchies of worth: white above black, civilized above natural, rational above intuitive, male above female, human above animal. Behind these artificial hierarchies lurks an aversion to embracing what we truly are: interdependent kin in the great family of being.

So too does this fear extend to other modes of consciousness. The patriarchal mind exalts waking consciousness—linear, analytical, divisive—as the only "real" way of knowing. Meanwhile, it dismisses dreams, visions, intuitions, and all altered states as "just your imagination"—as if imagination were not another portal to truth!

The Dream Realm—that dimension where rigid boundaries dissolve and we reconstitute our wild belonging—becomes not a source of revelation but a threat to control. Indigenous cultures worldwide have understood dreams as messengers from the sacred, but phallocratic civilization medicates its dreams away with sleeping pills and Netflix binges.

When was the last time our workplaces honored the clues that come to us in a dream? When did our education teach us to cultivate altered states as tools for knowledge? The patriarchal academy fears ecstatic awareness because it dissolves boundaries, expands definitions, and exults in the loss of control. All scary to the “Master.”

The painting above is called “Madrecita Alma” by the artist Kendall Candella.

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The Atrophied Divinity

Buddhist teacher Lama Tsultrim Allione reminds us that we have lived “without the full feminine for so many centuries, we don’t know what it would be like to live within a society where the feminine voice is not repressed, women’s bodies are not distorted, controlled or sold, and where both men and women live with balanced psyches.” She articulates the shocking truth that we are a species living "with one side of its body atrophied."

Imagine! Half of our cosmic inheritance is partly dormant; half our divine capacities derided and stunted. The masculine without the feminine is like trying to breathe with one lung and see with one eye. It's not merely imbalance—it's cosmic dismemberment.

A key nuance: The traumatic loss isn't strictly focused on biological gender. It's about the energies that flow through all beings. The most vibrant men often channel the divine feminine; many bright women embody sacred masculine fire. Nonbinary prodigies claim the right to express both with vigor and rigor. The tragedy isn't just that men have ruled the world. It's that the world has been ruled by only half of what makes us whole.

The values of interconnection, of reverence for the web of life, of the sacred divine pulsing through matter: These haven't simply been ignored, but actively suppressed, burned at stakes, mocked as primitive, dismissed as indulgently emotional. We have been playing the master game with half the pieces hidden and stifled, and we wonder why we're losing.

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The Earth's Uprising

But creative commotions have been erupting from every direction. The Earth herself is staging an uprising against the machinery of forgetting. Climate chaos isn't punishment; it's feedback. It's the planet's fever breaking the delusion that we stand separate from her body.

A flood that follows deforestation isn't nature's revenge. It's nature's teaching. When we cut the trees, we gash our own lungs. When we poison the rivers, we contaminate our own blood. When we silence women, we quash half of our brilliance, half of our vitality.

This is in part metaphor, but in part very literal. The same systems that have disproportionately harmed female bodies have disproportionately harmed the body of our living Earth. The chemicals that concentrate in breast milk, the violence that targets women, the extractions that mine both mountains and underpaid care work: These aren't separate issues but one wound with many facets.

Thank Goddess that voices long silenced are rising. Many women and people with feminine acumen are finding ways to express power. Indigenous peoples whose wisdom was dismissed as primitive. Plants and fungi whose intelligence was denied.

The Dream Realm itself sends increasingly urgent messages through collective nightmares of extinction and collapse. All that was cast as Other now returns, demanding recognition.

Nadia Waheed, “Danaides Redux”

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The Ecstatic Revolution

Here's the secret ripening at the heart of ecofeminist wisdom: Liberation isn't about swapping one form of domination for another. It's about learning the art of how to sing and dance for pure joy. It's about reclaiming the wild, fluid intelligence that exults in being intimately connected with myriad non-human intelligences.

The revolutionary work before us isn't grim or dour. It's ecstatic! It's the reclamation of sacred pleasure, of the body's wisdom, of reverent relationship with all that lives. The patriarchal consciousness that desecrates wilderness and women diminishes them for the same reason. They evince the messy, cyclical, death-birth-death-birth dance of creation that can't be controlled.

This still-all-too-secret revolution asks us to reclaim not just the feminine, but all that has been cast as Other. To honor not just waking consciousness but Dream Realm wisdom. To value not just our own tribe but all peoples. To revere not just human intelligence but the brilliance of whales and mycelium networks and thunderstorms.

When we journey into altered states—through meditation, dreaming, plant medicines, or immersion in wild nature—we may discover what many Indigenous peoples have known: the boundaries between self and other are more permeable than we've been taught.

We may also come to cherish a way of knowing that is barely acknowledged by the phallocrats: gnosis. Gnosis is personal, experiential, and intuitive, rather than purely intellectual or rational. In contrast to understanding gained through empirical observation, logical deduction, or systematic study (often referred to as episteme), gnosis is rooted in direct, inner experience. It’s "knowing by being" and "knowing through participation."

Here’s a joyous possibility: We can become rapturously dedicated to beauty and truth and love even as we fight with all our birthright’s might to keep our imaginations flowing and curious and hungry and free. We can cultivate cheerful buoyancy and blithe empathy even as we fervently resist the temptation to buy into thousands of delusions that have been meticulously packaged as progress, development, and mastery over nature.

Our task is both wrathful and tender: to compost the dying systems of separation while nurturing the emergent shoots of reverent interconnection. To be both disciplined and wild, both structured and streaming, both masculine and feminine in their most resilient expressions.

The truth is that we do have the élan and ingenuity to embody the totality of who we are. When we resurrect and nourish the stifled luminosity within us—regardless of our gender—we reconstitute the fullness of the gift so many of us have long refused: the sacred marriage of feminine and masculine.

We begin the majestic healing when we honor dreams as being as real as waking experience; when we see all peoples as kindred, not other; when we recognize that consciousness flows through all beings, not just us humans; when we register the fact that we are nature, not its master.

“The Four Elements” by Sue Wookey

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Hear my song “You Taste Delicious”:

Hear my song “Moon Lodge”:

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of May 15

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The most successful people aren't those who merely follow their passion, but those who follow their curiosity. Honoring the guidance of our passions motivates us, but it can also narrow our focus. Heeding the call of our curiosity emboldens our adaptability, exploration, and maximum openness to new possibilities. In that spirit, Taurus, I invite you to celebrate your yearning to know and discover. Instead of aching for total clarity about your life's mission, investigate the subtle threads of what piques your curiosity. Experiment with being an intrigued adventurer.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Gemini author Huston Smith was a religious scholar who wrote 13 books. But he was dedicated to experiencing religions from the inside rather than simply studying them academically. Smith danced with Whirling Dervishes, practiced Zen meditation with a master, and ingested peyote with Native Americans, embodying his view that real understanding requires participation, not just observation. In the spirit of his disciplined devotion, I invite you to seek out opportunities to learn through experience as much as theory. Leave your safety zone, if necessary, to engage with unfamiliar experiences that expand your soul. Be inspired by how Smith immersed himself in wisdom that couldn’t come from books alone.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): More than 2,000 years ago, people living in what’s now the Peruvian desert began etching huge designs of animals and plants in the earth. The makers moved a lot of dirt! Here’s the mystery: Some of the gigantic images of birds, spiders, and other creatures are still visible today, but can only be deciphered from high above. And there were, of course, no airplanes in ancient times to aid in depicting the figures. Let’s use this as a metaphor for one of your upcoming tasks, Cancerian. I invite you to initiate or intensify work on a labor of love that will motivate you to survey your life from the vantage point of a bird or plane or mountaintop.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): You now have extra power to detect previously veiled patterns and hidden agendas. That’s why I urge you to be alert for zesty revelations that may seem to arrive out of nowhere. They could even arise from situations you have assumed were thoroughly explored and understood. These are blessings, in my opinion. You should expect and welcome the full emergence of truths that have been ripening below the surface of your awareness. Even if they are initially surprising or daunting, you will ultimately be glad they have finally appeared.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Renowned Virgo author Nassim Nicholas Taleb has called for the discontinuation of the Nobel Prize in Economics. He says it rewards economists who express bad ideas that cause great damage. He also delivers ringing critiques of other economists widely regarded as top luminaries. Taleb has a lot of credibility. His book *The Black Swan* was named one of the most influential books since World War II. I propose we make him your inspirational role model for now, Virgo. May he incite you to question authority to the max. May he rouse you to bypass so-called experts, alleged mavens, and supposed wizards. Be your own masterful authority.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I predict that your usual mental agility will be even more robust than usual in the coming weeks. Although this could possibly lead you to overthink everything, I don’t believe that’s what will happen. Instead, I suspect your extra cognitive flexibility will be highly practical and useful. It will enable you to approach problems from multiple angles simultaneously—and come up with hybrid solutions that are quite ingenious. A possibility that initially seems improbable may become feasible when you reconfigure its elements. PS: Your natural curiosity will serve you best when directed toward making connections between seemingly unrelated people and fields.

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SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): You're ready to go to the next evolutionary stage of a close alliance. Although you may not feel entirely prepared for the challenge, I believe you will be guided by your deeper wisdom to do what's necessary. One way I can help is to provide exhilarating words that boost your daring spirit. With that in mind, I offer you a passage from poet William Blake. Say them to your special friend if that feels right, or find other words appropriate to your style. Blake wrote, "You are the fierce angel that carves my soul into brightness, the eternal fire that burns away my dross. You are the golden thread spun by the hand of heaven, weaving me into the fabric of infinite delight. Your love is a furnace of stars, a vision that consumes my mortal sight, leaving me radiant and undone. In your embrace, I find the gates of paradise thrown wide."

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In ancient Egypt, mirrors were composed of polished copper. To remain properly reflective, they required continual maintenance. Let’s take that as a metaphor for one of your key tasks in the coming weeks. It’s high time to do creative upkeep on your relationships with influences that provide you with feedback on how you’re doing. Are your intended effects pretty close to your actual effects? Does your self-image match the way you are perceived by others? Are you getting the right kind of input to help you stay on course?

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Chances to initiate creative transformations will come from unexpected sources in the coming days. I guarantee it. But will you be sufficiently receptive to take maximum advantage? The purpose of this horoscope is to nudge you to shed your expectations so you will be tenderly, curiously open to surprising help and inspiration. What sweet interruptions and graceful detours will flow your way if you are willing to depart from your usual script? I predict that your leadership qualities will generate the greatest good for all concerned if you are willing to relinquish full control and be flexibly eager to entertain intuitive breakthroughs.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): For many Indigenous people of California, acorns were part of every meal. Nuts from oak trees were used to create bread, soups, dumplings, pancakes, gravy, and porridge. But making them edible required strenuous work. In their natural state, they taste bitter and require multiple soakings to leach out the astringent ingredient. Is there a metaphorical equivalent for you, Aquarius? An element that can be important, but needs a lot of work, refinement, and preparation? If so, now is a good time to develop new approaches to making it fully available.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): When Pisces-born Jane Hirshfield was a young poet, she mostly stopped writing poetry for eight years. During that time, she was a full-time student of Zen Buddhism and lived for three years at a monastery. When she resumed her craft, it was infused with what she had learned. Her meditative practice had honed her observational skills, her appreciation of the rich details of daily life, and her understanding that silence could be a form of communication. In the spirit of the wealth she gathered from stillness, calm, and discipline, I invite you to enjoy your own spiritual sabbatical, dear Pisces. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to relax into the most intriguing mysteries.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): What may appear to be slow or static is actually moving. The developing changes are imperceptible from day to day, but incrementally substantial. So please maintain your faith in the diligent, determined approach. Give yourself pep talks that renew your deeply felt motivation. Ignore the judgments and criticism of people who have no inkling of how hard you have been working. In the long run, you will prove that gradual progress can be the most enduring.

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