From individuation to collective experience, we learn, we grow together. Like children we first learn by stumbling and having to stand up again. Our animal spirits serve as guides, reminding us to connect to our souls and trust the process. Alexandra Coffin, serving this year as Art coordinator in Lucidity Festival’s Goddess Grove, invites us to follow her on the path of the Jaguar.

YEAR ONE.

She comes to me as I awaken to the dream.

The choice to accept an impossible reality is a force so strong, she rides its waves of into my consciousness. She is as real as the dream, and for now, the dream is the impossible reality.

I know her to be the Goddess, though in her least material form-Maiden, Mother, and Crone as one. She is a creature of creation, existing on a plane around mine; her lifeblood is the creation of everything.

She has awakened with me.

She takes form just behind my eyes, made of colors I could never pigment. She speaks in a language with no tongue, a low hum and a high scream all at once. It spills past my cochlea and out of my eardrums. It is with that voice she tells me the story of her birth.

She began as we all did. The Big Bang. In the milliseconds after the necessary explosion, a force called energy was set in motion. It was she who was formed to move it. The movement in every atom is her structure. She has no age nor location; she is everywhere at once, and nowhere forever. She is constant, yet her form changes ad infinitum. She is present at the birth of a cell and the death of the universe.

She touches my consciousness as I awaken. I find her presence everywhere. On the full moon after my birthday, I hear her roar through the canyons of El Capitan. I could swear I’d seen her along the Shoreline, a black dead cat in her jaws.

I am not alone, either. As a new consciousness moves toward Lucidity once again, whispers begin among sisters. Lovers and Trixsters, Mothers and Nomads, Warriors and Healers; all hear the call of the Goddess to our consciousness. It is among this roar she emerges as the Jaguar.

YEAR TWO.

The Goddess settles among the Live Oak. We offer sacrifices in the form of dance, art, healing-any and all creation sustains her. She flourishes, takes a form we can begin to know. She fuels the growth that has become the Goddess Grove. She thrives on its presence.

Rambling through Live Oak, she renews connections among every totem. She finds fellows in every species, even human.

From the Wise Owl, she learns regeneration and the ability to regenerate others.

From the Loving Dove, she learns what companionship was at every dimensional level; she begins to understand the intricacies of deep, intimate connections.

From the Courageous Dragon, she learns what it means to replicate; she understands the importance of scattering pieces of herself amongst existence.

From the Wild Monkey, she learns to wander through the nothingness between connections. She comes to terms with the absence of existence and the space in between.

From the Playful Coyote, she learns rebellion; she celebrates the chaos between the nothingness and its necessity to the structure of creation.

From the Humble Tiger, she learns balance. She sees that, though it is necessary and carnal to revel in chaos, she has a responsibility to herself to understand the structure of creation and therefore herself.

We revel in the chaos of her movement, meditate on her balance. We give her form, and she gives us creation. She pulls on the maternal strings connecting our consciousness, and we sing along to this melody. We scream, we roar, and as we create, she takes more form, every idea yet another spot in her coat.

What does your spot look like?

YEAR THREE.

It is this year we toe the line between prophecy and myth. The Goddess has taken the time to show us a form we can grasp, understand, and learn. However this is not her final form. Now that we have shown her our creation and how to embody it, it is time for her to show us what she is made of.

We open ourselves to the Universe, listen to her voice and gaze upon her face and let go of our notions of reality. She shows us the movement of the impossible, the dance of delight and decay so necessary to creation. We recognize ourselves among the movement, vital and whole, embodied within her pelt.

Ruby from Emma Allen on Vimeo.