In the Presences of a Goddess
August 27, 2005
by Jeffrey Pierce
Saturday morning, after waking up early and spending the better part of three hours working on some projects related to the pagan community, I was thinking of taking a nap when I suddenly felt a certain hidden sea cave on the Oregon Coast calling to me. Everyone receives "calls" in a different way. Typically speaking, I hear them as a series of one to five snippets of interlocked film, each about a second long, like an internal movie cut down to a short series of sequential frames from different parts of the story. Rather than being something that's happened, it's clearly "film" of something that should happen and it's being made clear to me that I need to put the events in motion to make it happen.
After a quick check of the tidal charts and an even quicker shower, I drove to the ocean. Even with summer traffic, I pulled the car to a stop at exactly the moment when the tide was at it's lowest point. What was more interesting is that the beach was packed with summer vacationers and the parking space I ended up was on a side street about a half-block away - exactly where I saw it in the "mental film" I had received.
It was a perfect summer day. The wind was so slight that it was almost non-existent (a rarity for the Oregon Coast) and there wasn't even the slightest wisp of cloud to be spied anywhere in the stunning blue sky. Families were playing on the beach, children in swimsuits were frolicking in an incredibly gentle surf, and a handful of surfers were doing their best to ride the very small waves that the ocean offered for their enjoyment.
Pulling a "dory" ashore.
I hiked into the chosen location and made the decent down the towering cliff to the small beach that is only exposed at low tide. From there, I took to a narrow trail flanked by a stone guardian who watches over the cave. I stopped by the guardian (an anthropomorphic outcropping of stone) that you have to pass by to get to the cave (the trail goes between it and the face of the cliff) and spoke to its spirit, offering it my respect and thankfulness for its role as the cave's spiritual guardian. I also provided it with a gift - an ornate cube of stone that I collected on a beach in California earlier in the summer. We spoke for a time, I received its blessing, and then I continued onto the cave.
stone guardian
It was only a short hike from the guardian to the actual sea cave. The entrance is well-hidden by a fold in the shoreline and numerous massive boulders that partially obscure its opening. The cave itself is essentially a tunnel that stretches from its hidden mouth on the coastline out to the Pacific Ocean, but it opens up into a three or four story high dome near the center of the structure. The floor of the cave is a smooth, gently sloping sandy beach, unmarred by even a single stone.
the cave entrance
As soon as I spoke the first word to the spirit of the place, a small crab appeared at my feet and quickly burrowed into the sand a short distance away. I had previously asked the spirit world's permission to adopt the cave as a sacred site and use it for my ritual work and one of the ways that a positive answer is conveyed is by the appearance of animals near you when you next return to the site. It was a sign of acceptance. Not only was I now responsible for the site, but because it was under my care and I now had a spiritual rapport with the energy inherent in the location, any ritual work that I did there would be amplified, sort of like working in a permanently cast circle.
Relying on a rather elaborate system of energy flow, I had been directed to stand in different portions of the cave for different types of ritual work. On this particular occasion, I stood just off to the left, partially hidden behind a small outcropping of stone. From this position the far mouth of the cave that opens onto the ocean was obscured from my site, but the cave was well-lit from the shore end as well as the light from the summer sky reflected on the one wall of the cave that I could see from my vantage point.
In late October or early November of 1998, I was doing some ritual work on a secluded stretch of beach in Southern California, when I had a spirit of the ocean introduce herself to me by name. After working with her for several years, she shared that she was only a spirit in the service of a goddess and asked if I would like to meet her matron. Unable to turn down such a request, I agreed, and found myself in the presence of a being of indescribable power. The only way to even suggest the scope of the power inherent in that being (who I was introduced to but won't name) is to imagine yourself in the midst of a massive typhoon but completely untouched by either the wind of the waves. That raw, primal, unlimited force was akin to the energy she possessed, only she was exponentially more powerful.
I had brought a clipping of a fern whose spirit had called to me in a vision last December and who I had rescued and nursed back to health. (It was in such bad shape that the woman who cashiered my purchase deeply discounted the price of the fern on the spot saying, "We don't normally sell plants in this condition"). I placed the clipping on the waves, offering it and the energy of me receiving the fern in a vision and caring for it as both a gift and a testimony of my path, then stepped back away from the water.
As I stood there in that cave, I called upon both the spirit that I had met on the beach in Southern California and, through her, the goddess she serves. As I called both of them by name, I stood a good ten feet from the gently breaking surf, an occasionally wave drifting up the beach in a thin sheen of water, not even deep enough to rise over the soles of my sandals.
the hidden sea cave
As I spoke the goddess's name, a presence filled the cave mouth by the sea. The light in the sea cave instantly dimmed and a massive shadow was cast on the one wall that I could see as a physical presence blocked out the sunlight. At the same moment, there was a tremendous shift in the water level and suddenly I found myself standing knee deep in an ocean that had barely touched the sand ten feet away from me. The air was pregnant with power and there was no question whatsoever that it was the same presence that I'd be introduced to by my spirit friend some time before.
I stood in water that refused to recede, speaking the words of my rite and performing the task that I had instinctively felt was the reason why I had been called. While the water surged, it did not drop below the middle of my calves for the entire rite, a period of several minutes. Upon speaking the final words of the ritual, not only did the water immediately recede back to it's previous boundary ten feet away from me, but the presence of the goddess drew back to the ocean and the light returned to the cave.
The rite concluded, I pulled out my camera and took some photographs before scouring the area for garbage to pack out with me. (It's an appropriate method of thanking nature spirits and a necessary task when caring for a sacred site). During the entire time that I remained in the cave (approximately an additional ten minutes), the water level did not move past the spot where the waves originally gently broke upon the beach, nor did the lighting level in the cave shift. I had literally stood in the physical presence of a goddess whose power filled the sea cave. Her physically manifested form blocked out the sunlight and the waves responded to her presence, the element of water they represented connecting us together in the rite.
Jeffrey in the sea cave
Why am I telling you all of this?
First of all, it needs to be told. So much secrecy has grown up around our spiritual paths for untold generations that many of us have forgotten the power inherent to being pagan. We need to be reminded of what is possible so we can begin to open our perspectives and embrace the mystical.
Second, I'm going to begin teaching the path that led me to this point, first through Old Ways and then through an in-depth three-year training manual that I'm writing called, "The First Cycle." As soon as the manuscript is completed and I've found a publisher for it, I'll let you know. Until then, I'll share what I can through Old Ways. I would share everything through Old Ways, but the basic format of the Internet simply isn't suited to spending a significant period of time reading text. The finished book is projecting to be approximately 150 single-spaced pages in length. To put that in perspective, the average article that I write for Old Ways is two and a half pages in length. Moving to a book format simply allows me to cover the information in more depth, a step that I'm hoping will be useful to all of you.
Third, the concepts, techniques, theory and approaches that have brought me to this point in my own path were learned directly from the spirit world. I'm not oath-bound to any Tradition not to share this material nor have I made a pact with any of my teachers to keep this information secret. To the contrary, I'm being encouraged by the spirits that I work with to share as much of this information as possible - which is one of the key reasons why I teach and write.
Our culture has shifted away from the old ways and has forgotten the link between the physical realm and the spirit world. We're destroying our planet and the impact of our actions is felt on more than just a physical level. It's the hope of much of the spiritual community that I work with that, if we are reminded how to live on this level, how to reform the alliances, partnerships and relationships between ourselves and the spirits who accompany us on this journey known as "life," then perhaps we will make changes, not only on a spiritual level, but on a physical level that benefits the environment as well.