THE DARK GODDESS
by Vicki Noble, from Woman of Power magazine 12:57-59

The Dark Goddess is no lightweight. She promises trouble, an end to form as we
have know it, the death of the ego. Her mythology suggests that she is venomous,
wrathful, outraged, awake and on fire. She is impersonal, yet she erupts form
deep within the human psyche with unexpected passion and rage. She is transform-
ation in the extreme, and her power is regenerative and healing. Like a trick-
ster, she frees us from the trappings that bind us to your tiny personal worlds;
like a knife she cuts away all that is inessential and untruthful. She shatters
structure, disintegrates the personality, destroys form. She liberates and
saves, heals and frees.

There is an inherent problem with the reappearance of the Dark Goddess in the
world today, and more personally in women's individual lives. When she was
repressed, and her priestesses disempowered, she was also "demonized" by the new
ruling elite. What had always belonged to Her was the power to interpret and
carry out "natural law" in individual and community lives. The powers of life
and death were hers, and we humans approached her with awe and respect. When
female roles were replaced by male priests and shamans and temples became places
where rules and regulations were made and held as 'commandments', the Dark
Goddess was maligned and made evil.

Women carry this malignant definition of female power in our cells today. When
the Dark Goddess begins to erupt in us, instead of rage at the wrongs that have
been done, many women feel guilty and ashamed, as if something 'demonic' were
awakening within them. What is this terrible force that makes a woman scream at
her lover, rage at the authorities, and rail at God? When the Dark Goddess
enters into the lives of even the most 'ordinary' women, She turns them into
troublemakers. Certainly the world around us defines Her presence as demonic and
destructive. Little old ladies march for abortion; mothers and housewives leave
the fold and take up with 'uppity' women; women of all ages and types stop being
'nice'. If ever there was a revolutionary deity, the Dark Goddess is it!

I love the Dark Goddess – worship her, pledge allegiance to the changes She
would bring in my life and others – yet when She visits my life, I feel as if I
am in an earthquake, a volcano, a tidal wave of terrible proportions. And
through Her visitations come the ability to "feel" – on a visceral level, in the
body – the creative power and expression of the earth itself. As She says "NO!"
to what was; and "YES!" to what isn't quite yet, She forces us to jump the
inevitable gap between the past and the future.

Transformation always involves a death of the old, a moment of total, unknown
viodness when we are naturally afraid, and a breathless leap into the renewal
when we are "reborn". It is imperative that we surrender to the death and let
go into the unknown before we can experience and appreciate the rebirth. It is
this amazing doorway between death and rebirth that the Dark Goddess guards.