As we are preparing to go into our 2nd retreat for our Fire and Water Leadership & Rite of Passage cohort our attention in focused on medicine. What is the medicine that is called now in the journey? Why is medicine necessary in the first place? Who needs medicine? And what forms does the medicine come in?
I guess to fully unpack this I have to take you back to the beginning of the birth of Fire & Water. Fire and Water was born after two sets of people who came to by house both left saying in similar words “It’s time to share the medicine.” during the same week. People have asked to learn from me or apprentice me before but this time it sounded different to me. It felt more like a communal call.
I called Tenneson and said I think it’s time to start a Leadership/Rite of Passage program for adults and I want to do it with you. I went on to explain that we spend tons of money globally on leadership development programs. But we don’t have a lack of leadership, after all leadership just means people are following you it say nothing about where you are taking them. What we need is wise leaders and that requires initiation.
Initiation means we are taking people on a journey. It is a rite of passage. It is a movement from an adolescent adult culture to an initiated adult culture. It asks of us to become more spirit led in our decision making than earthly led. When on this journey there are a couple of things that are good to have with you. First, it’s good to have an elder (or two) someone you trust so that when thing get really hard and you want to turn back (because it will happen) you have someone else that you trust enough to keep going. Second, it’s good to have peers who are also taking on their own journeys to support and act as witness while in the struggle together. And third it is good to have medicine to provide clues and what I call spiritual bread crumbs along the way.
This medicine I talk about is spiritual medicine. It comes in many forms. It is wisdom that has been passed down through the generations. It is the mystery. This mystery or medicine is often found in the feminine as Author Alison Nappi talks about in her piece Why You Should Date a Normal Girl Versus a Wild Mystic. She goes on to say:
“Everybody wants the magic, but nobody wants the Mystery, the schooling: a thing that must be lived in a place where book knowledge has no meaning, for all books are manuals to the world you already know. That means, the well-honed intellect — the masculine theory of reason — will not save you, cannot free you.”
She then goes on to name some of what she calls the arts of women:
“The art of far sight.
The art of inner knowing.
The art of sign-reading.
The art of deep feeling.
The art of song and circles.
The art of intuition.
The art of frequency translation.
The healing arts.
The art of kitchen witchery.
The art of communion.
The art of sacred story weaving.
The art of creation and manifestation.
And others too wild to name.”
We have forgotten, even demonized this wisdom. It is time to remember and in the process restore what has been lost and reclaim the truth of who we really are.