PRIESTESS PATHWAYS
IN AVALON
To hear a call is something special. It is a magical occurrence, with echoes from something before; maybe another lifetime or a memory of a belonging you knew when you were little, but that has been lost this lifetime. On hearing that call your can do two things: you answer the call or you ignore it. The latter does not work, not really. The call will start hunting you, in your dreams, in signs and signals, in conversations with people you meet. It is definitely better to answer the call. It is both the easiest and the most difficult thing I have ever done. The first step towards She who called me was the start of a long journey. It was the day that I started to walk my Priestess Pathway.
I never really wanted to become a Priestess of Avalon. When I arrived in Glastonbury I was already a Priestess of Goddess and a Priestess of Brighde. Becoming a Priestess of Avalon would just be another title, which I didn’t need. I didn’t need to proof anything, not to myself or anyone. From now on I was going to be a Priestess in Avalon, like Kathy Jones, or more accurately, Brighde embodied by Kathy, had once foretold.
It was fine, I had done my share. Actually, at that time I felt I had done more than that. Since I had started walking my Priestess Pathway, by entering my training in The Netherlands with Sutisha Hein, my whole life had changed. Before my first conscious encounter with Goddess, during the 2003 Goddess Conference in Glastonbury, I led a quiet life. I was happily married, had two lovely children (then a teenage girl and boy), a good part-time job as a lawyer, I was intensely involved with the local Catholic Church contributing to the ‘youth’ services and for creativity I had ‘De BigBang’ a percussion group extraordinaire. Finding Her and becoming a Priestess was only going to be the next little step into even more perfection.
Little did I know. Little did I know about the mirror that She would hold up. The mirror which always, time and time again will make you look at the places you cannot seem to look at otherwise. In my case it was my marriage. Looking in that mirror it became clear it was not the happily ever after as I innocently had assumed it was. Yes, we were happy, but not in a way that still would be counted as a marriage. We had become very good friends, such good friends, that the love and support we gave each other allowed us to find our own true happiness. What we had not realised until then was, that it would mean a parting of ways, because for him it meant to find a different kind of love. A big door shut in my life, but at the same time She opened another door for me, which was the opportunity to answer my call. It was then, that for the first time I understood that allowing Goddess into my life, would be a pathway towards finding authenticity, which would be a wonderful and at the same time a deeply challenging journey to undertake.
I have often compared that time of total change with the journey of Goddess Queen Innana into the underworld to meet Her sister Erishkigal. During this She passed through seven gates where She had to let go of parts of Her worldly life in order to be able to enter the realm of the dead. After being killed and hanged up dead with Her sister for three days, She would then be reclaimed and travel back through the seven gates to return to Her worldly realm with newly gained wisdom and deep knowledge through that experience.
My own journey was from The Netherlands to the Isle of the Dead, the Isle of Avalon, known in this earthly realm as Glastonbury. I let go of my marriage, my day-to-day role as mother, my spiritual practice, my job, my family and friends, my drumming and my home. Each of them were an intricate part of my worldly realm and identity and letting go of them meant that I felt like there was nothing left of me, that I had entered the realm of the dead. It is well known that if you ‘survive’ three years in Avalon, you will be able to stay there. Those three years in that place of the dead, were again a time of transition for me, I was there, but not really there yet. I was still holding on to ‘the old me’, just because I at least knew who she was. I was still somehow in control. Not! After the three years, She decided it was time to make another transition and I went ill from my job in the Youth Offending Team. It was time to begin the return, the finding of the pathway back to my own realm.
Of course my own realm was that of being a Priestess. In reality this meant to be self-employed for the first time in my life, another thing I said I’d never do. To take such a big step meant as much as reinventing myself. I decided I needed a bit more ‘grounding’ to be able to do that.
So first I went back to the first ‘assumption’. Not to proof anything, but because She had called me and I had answered the call. I had gone through the seven gates to meet Her, The Lady of Avalon, Goddess of the Sacred Isle. I had sat in Her temple, celebrated Her seasons, served Her during the Goddess Conference, I had walked Her land, Her Body. It was there that I felt the real calling to become Her Priestess. Walking Her Land was the one thing that had kept me sane whilst I went through that time of transition. To feel that Her Earth supported and grounded me, to know that Her winds cleared my head and whispered to me, to quench my thirst for flowing with Her sacred waters, to sense Her radiance shining through me. She had been there all the time for me, with every step I set on Her body, every time I stumbled and faltered, Her Land had held me, She had picked me up and nourished me, She had walked with me every step of that narrow and difficult way. How could I not become a Priestess of Avalon?
So I stepped over another threshold and started the inner journey of meeting Her beyond the veils, beyond the Mists of Avalon. She showed me places and faces of Her sacred Isle that I had not seen before. She mirrored in Her waters aspects of me that I hadn’t seen before. She lifted me to castles high in the sky over the Tor and took me to the darkest caves within Her sacred body.
One of the most significant meetings was with The Lady of Avalon on Brides Mound. It was an experience which would teach me about loyalty. I walked the land and ended up on Brides Mound, feeling torn by loyalty towards Brighde, and there She stood, almost as a mockery of that emotion. At first, I felt comfortable as it was only Morgana who stood there before me all radiant and violet, but then I noticed Brighde standing on the other side of me with Her Green Mantle and red hair gleaming in the sunlight. Immediately I felt anxious, torn and confused. Then there were the other great Goddesses who are significant in my life: Mary shining in sky blue, Quan Yin dressed in a soft pink kimono, Yemaya in ocean green, Lakshmi all red and gold. You might think I would have felt blessed, to be surrounded by these great energies, but by then I felt profoundly desperate. How could I ever choose who I would serve, who I loved most?
It was then that it happened, in that place of deep distress, as with me no longer being in control as a result of my despair opened a doorway, the doorway of my heart. In that instant and almost with a physical shock, they all entered me. In that moment I understood. Only in the form, outside me, in my thoughts and expressions, is She the many. Only without are they separate, are we separate. Within me She is the One, we are one. That experience felt like a real initiation and my vows a to Her a few weeks later, were expressed accordingly. I was one with Her and I was Her expression in the world; I had become a Priestess of Avalon.
So there I was, everything I never thought I wanted to be, a self-employed Priestess of Avalon. Many times I have been asked what that means and I am sure it would mean something different to every single Priestess or Priest of Avalon. For me the next three years of my Priestess pathways was all about finding ways where I could be in service to Her as well as making it possible for me to remain a self-employed Priestess in the here and now, in this society, even when living in the bubble that is Glastonbury. This was a journey in itself.
Often, I have heard Her sigh, ‘are you serving Me or are you serving money?’ Well, I definitely did and do not want to serve money, but I also felt strongly that if I were to be able to keep doing what I love, I needed to earn enough to be able to pay for the mortgage, food and if possible also to look after myself and my children. I know now that this was (and still is) the next part of my journey.
Our pathways as Priestesses do not always follow a chronologic continuity. There are many lessons to be learned and to be a Priestess is very much about walking the path of continuous learning. This particular pathway started when I was embodying ‘The Mother’ in the Earth Goddess Conference of 2013, exactly ten years after the start of my Priestess journey. The Mother Goddess holds a lot of energies and generally I feel very comfortable in Her loving presence. She however also holds the mirror of Abundance, which mirrored for me the strong image of my Fear of Lack. Not a pretty image and it touched on a deep wounding I didn’t consciously knew I had. In this lifetime I have never experienced lack and still, since then I have recognised that I often worry and behave as if I will not have enough, not be enough or will starve if I am not (more) careful. Over the last few years I have worked hard to follow the signs on this particular journey, to look for the shadow places in me and bring them into the light, so I could see what they were all about. They led me to past life experiences of death through lack and priestess lifetimes of losing my temple community, to meeting people who show me the way and finally to be given a great opportunity. Because this year (2017) I will ‘hold’ The Great Mother once again. Though this will not be in just ‘any’ Goddess Conference (if ever there was such a thing), but in the first Goddess Conference that I will be organising and holding together with my friend and Priestess sister Katinka Soetens, as Kathy Jones, after twenty-one years of being the Conference weaver extraordinaire, kindly handed the honour over to us.
I got a strong feeling that this year will be another threshold on my Priestess pathway, where I will be given the opportunity to surrender even more to Her guidance and loving support and learn that there is nothing to fear if I truly trust Her. I know She will walk with me once again, as I will experience that there is always enough, that I am enough, that living in Her abundance is the most natural thing there is.
My journey as a Priestess of Avalon is definitely one of many pathways. They have taken me to places that I had never dreamed of and places that I never even knew I wanted to go. On those pathways I learned many lessons and I am sure there are still many side paths, little lanes, highways and rocky roads ahead of me with more people to encounter, mirrors to look in and lessons to be learned. I love every moment of it, even the difficult ones, although probably more on hind side than when I am in the thick of it.
The most significant pathways however, which for me are at the centre of all the above, are those in Her nature, those on Her earth. This is where it begun for me and this is the practice and work I love most doing with the people who come to me for my Priestess services: walking the Land. Her earth is the place of the deepest magic. It is where we can experience Her expressions of real beauty, joy, healing, abundance, wisdom and transformation. For me, connecting with Her that way, is the most sacred of connections.
I am convinced that if it wasn’t for my own deep connection with Her sacred Land, Her nature and elements, my pathway of becoming a Priestess of Avalon would have been near impossible for me to have trodden. It was there, on the land, that I found comfort in the most difficult times; it was there, in the connection with the elements, that I received healing; it was there, in nature, that Her beauty lifted me; it was here, on Her sacred body which is the Isle of Avalon, that I have come home, to myself. I therefore thank Goddess, Brighde-Brigantia and all of Her expressions for this, Her earth, on which I can walk my Priestess Pathways.
Marion Brigantia
November 2017
