This is a very sweet short pamphlet by Ariel Spilsbury about what it means to be a priestess. By short I mean short: it’s 14 pages long.
It talks about the archetypal and poetic meaning of the role of the Priestess focusing on the idea of the Priestess as a vessel. Honestly I read it and thought it was a beautiful reflection of many of the things that I believed were important on the priestess path, just expressed far more poetically than I ever could.
I think it’s short because the purpose and practice of a Priestess is actually very simple: connect with the divine, empty out, be the vessel. It’s fun to read about all the different goddesses and traditions and a hundred ways of creating sacred space, but the essence it all boils down to, the true work, is this: Connect with the divine, empty out, be the vessel.
We like to make things complicated and often overlook the simplest things because we are like and are used to the idea of things being complicated and difficult and needing outside obstacles and barriers and things we need to buy and do before we can start the process or be worthy. Mostly it’s just avoiding the simple true work, which is the hardest and the most challenging to do because it requires us to focus and be still listen to ourselves.
This is super hard today when the whole world is built around distracting ourselves with entertainment. Shamefully I realised recently that my obsessive Facebook-checking habit was triggered whenever I had to really think seriously about figuring out a problem or thinking about something uncomfortable. Now, I have to do a lot of things I find uncomfortable or challenging in my job, and I realised every time I was confronted with one of them I’d opt out of dealing with my fear and distract myself with Facebook.
And the awful thing is, Facebook and the Interwebs are availible, through the magic of smartphones, everywhere and all the time: we can opt out of stillness and facing our internal challenges anywhere we like.
The focus and stillness aspects of the Priestess Archetype are the parts I find most challenging. I like being distracted! I’m so used to being able to follow up every vapid thought with a quick internet search (ooh what’s Gary Oldman up to these days?). We are used to giving them undeserved importance, just because we have the Internet in our pocket ready to indulge our every curiosity and idle thought. I do find the practice of stillness and focus very difficult in my personal practice, I know it’s uber lazy to blame that on the uber-distracting, information overload aspect of the world we live in, but I’m gonna try!
Anyway, back to the pamphlet.
I really like this little book because it speaks about something I think is really important: the sacred aspect of Beauty and of Beauty as a pathway to the divine. I feel this is so important to own and indulge in as ambassadors of the Sacred Feminine because beauty is important. It profoundly touches people’s lives, it opens people up to something greater than themselves, and it makes Life a more wonderful experience. Beauty is SO important, and it’s wonderful to read about it being a sacred practice.
It’s described as a distilled essence of the work of Ariel’s 13 Moon Mystery School: her teaching tradition and body of priestess work, and I think it’s a lovely reference book to have on hand to dip into every now and again, as a reminder of what it means to be a priestess.
It’s pricy: at $15, it converts to £12 good english pounds including postage which is a lot for such a tiny book (and I admit to being dissapointed that there were only 14 pages when I got it) but they are valuable pages and I am very glad I bought it. If you want to get one yourself you can purchase it here.