Singing Down the Moon

“Singing Down The Moon”

by Toni Truesdale

Songs of the southern Machi

Signal alliance to the Spirit World.

Lyrics for the health of the community,

Protection and fecundity;

Chanted to the psychic footprints

Ascending and descending the

Sacred Tree of consciousness

To the warm voice of the moon;

Speaking of the close passages

In the spiral of time

That charts the cardinal directions

Of ancestor archetypes that

Map celestial paths, Blue and white;

Into unspoken patterns

Heard by the similar singing

Sami cousins across the world.

Truesdale copyright 2010

ToniTruesdale.com

At the turn of the seasons we honor our First Mother Earth.

Cailleach

The Spirit of the land in Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the Isles is female.

The ancients believed she wove the landscape, poured the rivers, carved the mountains,

Controlled the elements, spiraled with the seasons: She is Cailleach.

Divine lady reborn in each yearly cycle as child, woman,

and elder; the first sacred trinity.

Cailleach, of the Earth, eternal, ever changing her quarterly colors;

Cailleach honored in the standing silver stones of Callanish;

That silently dance with light and shadow

 To the maximum of the moon cycle until it pauses each 19 years.

For the last 5000 years.

Cailleach whose last shrine is in the heart of Glen Lyon to remain as the seed,

To bring the past into the now, as the sleeping woman stirs…

And we remember to honor again, our beautiful and sacred Earth

Some have called Cailleach.

T.Truesdale copyright 2014

ToniTruesdale.com

The Imprint of the human Species is female

“The Source”

by Toni Truesdale

The Imprint of the human species is female;

For women are the source of life.

In female hands is the vital essence, water;

Our fecundity and the renewal of the generations.

In ancient Egypt the ankh is the symbol of Water, Woman

and Life,

Eternal.

T.Truesdale copyright 1998

Women are the first teachers of language, culture, religion and values: International Womens Day 2019

Basket-House-Village-Universe

by Toni Truesdale

Baskets of women

Reflect nourishment

Physical as well as spiritual

Object to concept

Keeping sacred the spirit of everyday life;

Within the home

Utilitarian to universal

Dwelling to village

Community to cosmos

Each human passage

of the last 140 thousand years...

Birth to death

The finite to consummation

End to beginning...

copyright 2010

ToniTruesdale.com

Everywoman

Everywoman

By Toni Truesdale

Everywoman,

Emerged from

The rule of four horsemen of Europe:

War, famine, pestilence, and death;

To survive the hypocrisy of

Brutal inquisitional judgments.

Everywoman,

Our ancestor from the west,

Endured the precarious birth of many children;

Nurturing each precious flicker of life that

That might be left hungry

So the aristocracy could be fed;

Training her daughters into servitude if not slavery

To serve the privileged classes.

Everywoman,

Written out of history,

As if she never existed;

Robbed of spiritual significance,

Stripped of speech, property and inheritance;

Denied position in her maturity

Severed from matriarchy.

Everywoman

The ancestor that survived...

ToniTruesdale.com

Copyright T.Truesdale 2008

Winter

By Toni Truesdale

Northern winds slanting sleet,

The great still silence of heavy snow

Falling gently into vacant spaces;

Magnifying moon on a deep, dark night,

Deeply shawdowing indigo blues

Under still shimmering white.

 Sentry starkly quiet trees

Standing 

Over sleeping fecundity.

Long dreaming nights,

Under soft tactile blankets.

Savory smells of simmering soups

And heavily fragrant breads,

Taken from ancient stoves

With sacred inherited hands.

The cosmic fluidity of timeless cycles

On sovereign lands;

The old woman smiles

Copyright T.Truesdale 2019

ToniTruesdale.com

Gabriel's Revolt

Over 250 Slave Revolts in the states, hundreds more in the Caribbean and South Americas to self liberate kidnapped Africans. Resistance to slavery was common in passive and active ways; some were work slow downs, conjuring, religious practices, conspiracies and violence.

Gabriel's revolt is depicted here, it was in 1800 planned with his wife Nanny, brothers Solomon and Martin; with at least 1000 more slaves on different plantations in Virginia they set out to overthrow the plantation system on a dark stormy night. Betrayed, they were apprehended and many executed, a few were sent to Nova Scotia whose descendants helped establish Sierra Leone.

Their banner evoked the words of Patrick Henry on the verge of the American Revolutionary war

"Death or Liberty".

The history of our country must be told in truth, we are a great nation because we fought to be so,  but never forget blood is still on the land.

To become true to the promise of the future acknowledge  the past, for we were built on the lives of slaves, indentured servants, child labor, and the death of millions Indigenous people here before the West wrested the land.

Civil rights are not a guarantee but must be safeguarded as we struggle to be a more perfect nation and live up to the proud words in our Constitution.