The Crone Speaks: I am the Mother of Monsters
Dedicated to Lou Lorenzi-Prince
The Crone Speaks:
I am the Mother of Monsters
I am the Mistress of Lies
I am the Fear that binds you
the Hate that eats you
the Pain that never lets go
Can you face me?
Can you embrace me?
And so find the power
To fight me?
The Devil’s red body represents her strong passion for life. Yet with fierce teeth, she chews up her strong body, immobilizing herself from expressing her passion and fully living her life. By turning on individual pieces of her own physicality, she can avoid seeing the larger teeth poised to devour her entirely.
Teeth are like bone; they represent both strength and truth. When we don't face our truth or accept our strength, these resources can appear to us as unbearable restrictions or unrelenting adversaries. Teeth are also that which wants us, and enables us, to take great big bites out of life; teeth are symbolic of wildness and lust.
The Devil’s gaping vagina and womb represent her insatiable appetites as well. These are sources of power and of life, as black and as deep as the void. And Source is meant to contain space, space for birthing, space from which creation may emerge. It is not meant to be stuffed full, from the outside in, in an attempt to escape its emptiness. The Devil reminds us that if we run from the darkness inside of us, it will soon appear to surround us.
The Devil confronts us with issues of desire and power. What is power? Who has it? Do they really have it or do we just think they do? Do we have it? Why have we given up our power? And to what? What would it mean to our lives to take it back?
We must remember that power is not given but either taken or earned. It requires action. It requires integrity. The Devil holds back her power, destroys her own power. What is she so afraid of? Is she lazy? Unconscious? So deep into suffering she can see no way out? Or no way out that she is willing to try? What could she lose by trying that she has not already lost by keeping things as they are?
And what of desire? What of the deep wants of our bodies and our souls? The Devil asks us to face the times our desires were rejected, times when we were not only told “no” but also that there was something wrong with us for asking. Our desires, our deepest desires, are not wrong or right, they merely are. It’s how we act upon or react to our desires that can get us into trouble. Thinking murder and committing it are not the same thing; just ask the victim. Denying murderous thoughts, or any scary or inappropriate desires, does not remove them from our lives, it buries them so we cannot address them with our consciousness or our conscience. Rationalizing dishonest or harmful action in order to fulfill desire is another of the Devil’s traps, and the teeth of truth will bite us if we try. We can let the Devil help us, rather than enslave us, by asking her to show us what we truly need, and who we truly are.
For the Devil is the Mistress of the Material World. As much as we might long to be free spirits, she reminds us of our inescapable involvement in material being, and our knowledge of its limited resources. Our body's limitations and our planet's. We cannot ever truly escape either of these boundaries in our lifetimes, and we must accept this. We must accept both the pain and the pleasure of our being bound to materiality, as well as the responsibility implied. We are born with an innate and insatiable appetite for life. By embracing the Devil, we can begin to relish the pleasure in our lives, and reclaim the power we’ve forfeited in order to avoid pain. The Devil can wish us bon appetit, and introduce us to a life with no more excuses.
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© 2002 by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince. All rights reserved.