How to Reconnect with Your Circle of Mothers: An Excerpt from “Mothers of Magic” by Perdita Finn

In our increasingly chaotic world, Perdita Finn, co-founder of The Way of the Rose and author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World, invites us to take time to breathe and restore our spirits in her next book, Mothers of Magic: Summoning the Wisdom of Our Ancestors.

If you’ve ever felt lost, unmoored, or simply unsure of the path ahead, this book teaches you how to seek guidance from the Divine Mother in all her forms – animal, plant, and human; living and deceased; ancestral and future.

Part memoir, part cultural history, Mothers of Magic also includes reflection & journaling prompts, plus practical exercises for learning to hear the maternal voices around you. Read on for an excerpt from Part 1, sharing a cultural history of Appetite as well as practical exercises for (re)connecting with your personal circle of mothers.

Appetite is Holy and Makes Us Wholly Us

What most defines the civilized human animal is a disconnection from the organic guidance of our appetites. For earlier peoples, hunter-gatherers still, their hunger led them where they needed to go. They carried little and ate whatever was available. In some seasons they gorged themselves on fruits and honeycomb, while in others they subsisted on the tough shreds of last year’s jerky. Animals in the wild fatten up before the winter, but they are never chronically overweight, as long as they don’t have access to human refuse. True, sometimes food is scarce, and their numbers diminish. One season is a mast year, and the forest floor is littered with acorns and hickory nuts. The next year the chipmunks, squirrels, and mice proliferate, thriving on the unexpected plenty—until, of course, the hawks and owls rebound and the vultures circle overhead. Deep in the ground, the abandoned acorns begin to sprout and grow. The Earth offers to all creatures vast cycles of abundance and scarcity that entangle us with the desires and appetites of all other creatures.

But when human beings began cultivating crops and hoarding grains in their city-states, they set themselves against these regulating rhythms of the natural world. Some people, the aristocrats, always had too much. Some people, the enslaved, never had enough. Religions arose to tell those on the bottom that hunger was holy and those on the top that their banquets were well-deserved. How many of my grandmothers, trapped in poverty and piety, learned to ignore their appetites? How many of my ancestral mothers, gold chains around their necks, were willing to eat their children to live another day?

Beneath the monuments and museums, the mausoleums and mass graves of civilization, is the deep organic wisdom of our ancestral mothers. Since civilization set itself against the rhythms of the Earth, it also set itself against the primordial womb from which all life comes—wanting to control fertility of plants and animals, seeking to defy death itself for human beings, and resisting the ever-changing creativity of nature. Religions of all kinds urged us to turn our eyes toward the purified abstractions of a singular organizing deity, instead of the many bodies of our mothers. They told us to control our gluttony and extinguish our desires, even as our souls craved a spiritual sweetness that became harder and harder to find and receive.

An Invitation: You Are Circled by Mothers

Imagine that we are circled by mothers—not one mother, not one biological singularity, but many orbits of motherhood that include all those who have held us for more lifetimes than we can possibly remember. Let us summon the many beings who have brooded over our eggs, dropped us into the soil to grow, and held us in their wombs. Let us call upon the soul kin—young and old, male and female—that have nourished us, cherished us, and celebrated us. Let us summon all of our mothers.

Our Animal Mothers

We begin by calling forth our animal mothers as our first protective pantheon. We begin with our animal mothers so that we can return to the animal body of our own being.

• What animals are calling to you? Do you dream of bears and owls? Or whales and dragonflies?
• Do you want an otter mother to play with you and make you feel silly again? Do you want a spider mother to help you with your writing? Do you want a bird mother to teach you how to fly? Who are the mothers you need right now? Perhaps you need a mother who is soft and gentle. Perhaps you need a mother who is small and direct. Perhaps you need a mother who can protect you with her venom and her power. Who are the mothers you want?
• Perhaps these are mothers from lives you have lived before—lives as a raccoon, a raven, or a turtle. Perhaps these are mothers from lives you are already praying yourself toward—lives as a butterfly, a seagull, or a salamander.

When we feel ourselves circled by our animal mothers, we can make space for them in our lives.

• Collect images and pictures of these mothers to remind you of their bodies. Find photos of tiger mothers with their cubs, possum mothers with their babies on their backs, goose mothers with their goslings under their wings. Feathers may come to you on your daily walk from the mothers above. A statue or a painting of one of your creaturely mothers may turn up at a thrift shop or a yard sale. A stone may look like a wolf or a fish. You may find the bone of a mouse or the antler of a deer. You may also want to create your own pictures, embroideries, or paintings of your mothers.
• Create an altar to your mothers, a place for them to gather in your home. Maybe you want to see them from your bed so when you are anxious at night you can know that they are there, watching over you. Do what feels easiest and gives your heart the greatest joy.
• Spend time with these mothers. Remember to call and say hello. Offer them flowers; light them a candle; share a bit of food with them from time to time; give them some spirits. They are always with you, circling you, there for you. We must always remind ourselves of this truth. These mothers are ready to offer us blessings and gifts and to collaborate with us to create the life we want to be living.

Our Earth Mothers

Our vegetal and material mothers are also waiting for us to remember them. They are waiting to guide us home to the earth.

• We can call upon river mothers and mountain mothers. We can call on the flowers as our mothers. We can call upon the stones. Look up at the sky and know that it is the mantle of one of our mother’s vibrant cloaks. Look down at our feet and know that the ground is our mother’s body. Drink water from a spring and know this life-giving water is flowing from the bosom of our mother. Know that every tree and every mountain and every river is also our mother. Remember that the whole Earth is our mother.
• People sometimes recognize the shape of the Virgin Mary in the bark of a tree or the discolorations of a rock because their hearts know that the trees and the rocks are our mothers. Let us find the tree in our neighborhood that is our mother. Let us walk up a mountain path and know the mountain is our mother. Let us immerse ourselves in the ocean and feel the waters of our mother holding us up. Let us find a shell on the shore and remember that shell was once our mother.
• Let us go out on a dark night and find our many mothers. The moon is our mother, but so are the planets and the stars and the dark spaces between worlds. Each of these mothers has different wisdom and guidance for us.

Making Our Mothers Real

We will know that each of these mothers is real when we cry out to them and then receive their response. But first we must call for help. Our earth mothers are here to assist us in remembering who we really are. They can help us eat, dream, imagine, and love. There are no limits on what they can do.

• Their messages may be very quiet at first: a small sign that only we will recognize, a decal on a bumper sticker, a passing reference in a conversation, a fleeting dream before waking. Slowly we will learn to accept whatever confirmation we receive. It is not proof that we can offer to anyone else about the reality of these mothers—it is a truth that we can hold in our hearts that transforms our lives. Slowly we will build an unshakable foundation of faith.
• We may find that the beasts and beings of our world begin to behave differently around us. A wren circles our head on the deck and the next day sings to us outside our window. A fox keeps crossing our path at twilight. The night is full of clouds, but just as we step outside, the moon bursts forth bright and full. Or we look up and see a particular star. Or one shoots across the darkness just as we give voice to our worries.
• Let us feel the bodies of these beings within our own bodies. Let us become mountains to become intimate with our mountain mothers. Let us know that the tides rise and fall in our own bodies like the ocean. Let us spread our wings when we need, retract our claws if we have to, show our teeth when there is danger, feel the power in our paws. Let us remember the power and possibilities in our own bodies through the bodies of all of our many mothers.

Our ancestral mothers are waiting for us to remember them. They are waiting to guide us home to the earth.

Dive Deeper

Find Mothers of Magic: Summoning the Wisdom of Our Ancestors wherever books are sold.

Perdita Finn

About the Author

Perdita Finn is the co-founder, with her husband Clark Strand, of the non-denominational international fellowship The Way of the Rose, which inspired their book The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. In addition to extensive study with Zen masters, priests, rabbis, shamans, and healers, she apprenticed with the psychic Susan Saxman, with whom she wrote The Reluctant Psychic. Finn now teaches popular workshops on “Mothers of Magic”, in which she helps students explore how to draw on our Ancestral Mothers for help and healing–of ourselves and our planet. She is the author of Take Back the Magic (Running Press, 2023), and lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains.
 

Learn more about this author

Related Articles