I’ve been sitting on this article for about 10 days, waiting for it to hatch, I guess. There’s just so much energy around it. If you’ve been feeling very affected by all of the energy around sexual violence that’s in the air, I witness you! I have been as well. I’ve been telling my stories of surviving sexual violence with passion and compassion for years, but right now the energy around this is SO hot, it’s had a huge impact on me.
Warning: this may come off as a diatribe! I’m putting the catalyzed-by-the-Harvey-Weinstein-revelations in a larger patriarchal and historical context. I have done quite a bit of research, but have had to resort to some glosses and generalizations to save time. As always, only take what carries resonance for you, and leave the rest. I am holding us all–all men and women who are troubled, shaking, as well as those who simply don’t get it–in Love.
May we all know ourselves as Whole. May we all know ourselves as Free. May we all know ourselves as LOVE.
–Elizabeth
When you heard stories about dragons as a child, when you were told they were creatures to be feared and slain, you were being fed a line, which is to say: a lie. It was the same line, repeated in still other stories, that taught you that witches were evil.
Before I get to the dragons, I’m going to pause on witches for just a moment (it is Halloween, after all) and will paint in broad strokes to get to the point more quickly:
In our cultural lingua franca, witches are understood to be old women of evil intent, bent on hurting others, especially children. We know this to be so because that is how they are represented in all the stories of witches we heard as children.
Picture her in your mind: very old, possibly toothless, wearing a pointy hat with a buckle.
But here’s the thing: historically, we know that most of the millions (estimates range from between 6 and 9 million) who were burned (or drowned, or hanged, or flattened by stones) as witches, were not old women with hooked noses and warts. They were the mothers, daughters, sisters, and would-be partners of the rest of the villagers or townspeople.
These women were not dried up crones, but very sexual—too sexual. “Riding the broom” wasn’t for transportation; that legend came later. It was for pleasure: a safe way to have an orgasm without losing one’s maidenhead. And a woman in her pleasure, not needing a man, was not able to be controlled. In other words, she was dangerous. A threat to the Patriarchal Order.
More damning still, these women were the healers. What later became known as “witches’ brews” were plant remedies, cooked up in a cauldron, which at the time was where everyone cooked everything that wasn’t grilled on a spit. This wisdom was often passed down from mother to daughter, or grandmother to granddaughter. It wasn’t seemly that women should know more than men in any area, so the medical profession was created and women locked out.
Remember that pointy hat with the buckle? That’s not random. That was the hat worn by people of learning at the start of the 17th century, or the height of the Burning Times. You knew a woman needed to be burned if she had the effrontery to proclaim that she knew something.
Powerful women—be they sexually potent or potentially more wise and skillful than the men—were considered threatening. Sinister.
They needed to be punished.
Blotted out.
This was done by killing them of course, but most effectively by telling untrue stories about them. This sealed the fate of the witches, because when children, who grow up to be adults, believe you’re the epitome of human evil, the battle is already lost before it starts.
Those with the power to tell the stories—no matter how false—will prevail. And over time, the originally false stories carry the ring of truth, and then the weight of the centuries.
But now, as Mother Earth is starting to birth a new, post-patriarchal paradigm, the original truth is starting to come out. Witches weren’t evil, not as a group. They were a threat to the status quo, and as such had to be dealt with severely. But what if the status quo itself was unhealthy, unsound?
Before moving on to Dragons, let me say a few things about the Divine Masculine and Feminine, and the Patriarchal Order.
If you know me at all, you’ll know that I’m a strong proponent of the Divine Feminine. And yet, that energy, to be good for anything, must be paired with the Sacred Masculine. No thing can ever be created in our world without the participation of both. It’s just not possible.
The feminine is turned inwardly, so the spark of intuition, and the actual creation of the thing (say, the writing of a book)—that is the Sacred Feminine at work. But a book cannot function AS a book until it can be read by others. The printing and distribution of said book is the work of the Sacred Masculine. Together they create the thing. You cannot have what you hope to create without the participation of both energies.
Where Patriarchy (the warped Masculine) got it wrong was to claim that all good things were masculine, and all bad things feminine. If you think I’m exaggerating, just look at the Book of Genesis. Not the original story where God creates man and woman equally from the same mud; in this first version, Adam refuses to see Lilith as his equal. Fed up, she leaves to start her own race elsewhere. (And subsequently gets painted as a demon because of her refusal to submit to Adam’s desire to be head honco.)
Not that one, but the one right after it in which Adam asks God for a wife who will be under him, and Eve is created from his rib. What ensues is that she gets blamed for all the evil in the world. She wasn’t wearing a pointy hat, but her sin was that of meddling with knowledge. (In this photo, the Serpent [Devil] is represented with the head and torso of a human woman.)
Again, it was the power of story that condemned Eve, and by extension all women, from there on out. The story, repeated over and over, and carved into the culumns and porticoes of the churches, became true because people believed it.
So now, let’s look at Dragon. Or at least, at the stories we’ve been told about Dragon, because until very recently, all dragons were gone from this Earth, and all we knew were the stories we had been told by the slayers of dragons.
I’m curious to learn more, so this coming Monday afternoon, I’ll be hosting a live channeling on Dragons vs the Patriarchy. I hope that you can join me! Send in your questions by replying to this email, and register for the event here. There’s no charge.
Here are some of the entries into a wisdom-library I compiled on Dragons over on Facebook recently, with qualities people associated with Dragon:
Magical, majestic, loyal, fierce, ancient, hidden, sacred, strong, passionate, mystical, compassionate, wise, having heightened perception, dignified, adaptable, misunderstood, heart-guardians, regal, focused, resilient, courageous, primal, manifestors, witty, protective, free, peaceful, intense, daring, elemental, interdimensional, nurturing, vain, truth-tellers, powerful, family-oriented.
According to the stories, then, Dragons were evil. (Hmmm. Where have we heard this before?) They would hoard treasure, or guard damsels in distress in high castle towers. The courageous Knight in Shining Armor would go out on a quest to slay the dragon, and keep the gold or the damsel it was protecting. To the victor go the spoils, after all. More importantly, so do the stories.
I’ve been working with Dragons for a few years now. Their energy is unpredictable and therefore can appear disruptive, but I always know that it’s for the best.
Now, if I didn’t already consider Dragons to be feminine (the embodiment of the Fierce Feminine in the Mythic Realm), this list would certainly push me to change my mind. In fact, with a few exceptions, this same list might apply to those wise women who were burned as witches 400 years ago.
One might even suggest that when Dragons left our 3-D world, their fierce feminine energy was replaced, at least in the West, by those women.
In the research in the Records that I’ve been doing for my #MythicAllies class, I’ve learned a few things about Dragons:
In contrast to the stories we have been told, the truth is that the dragons were protecting the damsels, not menacing them
These women were able to be free when “captured” by the dragons, not given away as pawns in strategic alliances, put on pedestals, or locked in towers by fathers or husbands
Dragons left the earth-plane when they got sick of being the favorite targets for those adventurers and knights seeking glory
During their physical absence from this plane, dragons would occasionally “return” as a kind of invisible friend to work with a small number of humans, typically children or adults who had retained the ability to see interdimensionally
They are back at this turning of the Age to help humans usher out the old way of doing things, and bring in the new
Not surprisingly, one of the things they are eager to help us with is the overthrowing of the Patriarchal Order, which was responsible for so much dragonocide in the first few hundred years of the Common Era.
One of the reasons that the question of witch burning and dragon slaying is so UP for me these days is the resurfacing of the questions of sexual harassment/abuse/violence following the Harvey Weinstein revelations. It’s time to shine a light on the injustices of the Patriarchal Order toward women. It also wounds men (teaches them they’re womanish if they have real emotions, love their children, or feel compassion for those less powerful than themselves, not to mention the very real physical and psychological wounds caused when they are sent to war), but that’s a topic for another day.
If you’ve been on social media in the past few weeks, you are no doubt aware of the #MeToo movement, in which women who have experienced (note that I didn’t say “are victims of”) sexual abuse ranging from rape to sexual harassment in the workplace or on the street use the hashtag to indicate that they too have withstood such abuse.
[Turning to speak directly to men, here] I’m sorry to say that every woman experiences this, at chilling frequency, in her life. Official figures show that one out of every three young women have been sexually assaulted. But how many don’t report it? I didn’t. Frankly, that kind of thing f*cks with your brain in ways I cannot express. I believe that the number is actually closer to EVERY woman under the age of 75. (Why 75? Because women older than that were less often in the workplace, and men’s behavior might’ve been more subtle prior to the sexual revolution.)
In other words: unless this changes—unless you and all the men you know start militating alongside the women for the end of our rape culture—your mothers, your sisters, your partners and your daughters will be sexually assaulted if they haven’t been already.
It’s outrageous that in the 21st century, in the West, we have to live like this. In the US, we consider ourselves very advanced in terms of women’s rights, but we’re not. We have to look no further than the Oval Office to find a man who proudly trumpets his sexual predation.
This is one reason why the dragons are coming back. (I’d say they “are back,” but we’re only now seeing the Vanguard coming in, so that the Dragon-riders can get the hang of it again in this lifetime. The vast bulk of the dragons are still lining up to come through the fractal into our third dimensional world.)
But it’s just one of the many injustices that are calling these fierce guardians back onto our planet. There are so many more, and all are related to the abuses of Patriarchy: an order which can only exist through separation and hierarchy. All the forms of inter-human hatred and injustice in the world are born from separation (hierarchy can’t exist without it).
Basically, the Patriarchal Order is a Pyramid Scheme. Only the infinitessimally few at the top benefit, and all the others on lower rungs buy in to feel superior to those below them, and with the promise of great riches for participating. Instead, they get wounded and still do their darndest to enroll others. It’s crazy.
Dragons are coming to help us bring a revolution in Unity consciousness. Probably not in my lifetime, but I’m happy to be here to watch as long as I can.
My priestess mentor who lives in Sonoma County, California, in the midst of all of the destructive wildfires of the past week, declared today (last week) that she sees the time of “business as usual” as being over for good, and I agree.
This year of 2017 is a pivot point on our planet.
We are not used to all these Earth events, especially in the unrelenting onslaught we have experienced on the North American continent since the Total Solar Eclipse (visible over the same areas where these events are mostly occurring) in August.
It’s time now to drop all pretense of business as usual, and start doing things differently.
One of the ways in which I personally plan to operate differently is to ride my dragons and have them breathe fire over all the injustices in my field of vision. It’s time. I’ve been working in this direction for years already, but in a less public, less of a wide-angled way.
Are you with me? Then join my call next Monday to find out more about how dragons are here to hasten the end of the old patriarchal paradigms.
Own Your Magick,
P.S.: Here’s a handy link to share on social media or with your friends: https://www.elizabethlocey.com/dragons-v-the-patriarchy/
I hope to see you there!
