8. Our Lady of Exiles, Lilith

Lilith Returned, a series on the origins and evolution of one of the most demonized and weaponized women of mythology

“You may be an exile of some sort, but you have sheltered your soul….Even though the outcast is driven away, she is at the same time driven right into the arms of her psychic and true kin… it is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires. It is never a mistake to search for what one requires. Never.”
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Our altars are made of tree bark, of the setting sun lighting red desert dirt, of dark slate glinting in midday, of salt water coating sea cliffs, of petrified wood, of barnacle-covered docks, of musty book pages, of Russian Caravan tea sipped next to bonfires, of maple trees dripping with lichen. Our altars are made of Nature and of our inner territories. The truest, oldest, most enduring of Wilds wraps around our lives like spongey moss and it is here, on the threshold of our altars, where we knit ourselves back together.

Our Lady of Exiles shimmers opalescent, nearly translucent in the water of collective memory. She curves with the current, bending with a cosmic flow and wrapping her scaled belly around floating, fragmented debris of matriarchy. For centuries, she slips between cracks, between forgotten worlds, and gathers every exiled and broken piece. She tucks collaborative histories under her arms, presses human dignity against her beating heart, and she swims for a space between spaces. In the boundary layers of the world, she fits our purpose back together, waiting for the sound of wanderers searching for their exiled parts.

And then Lilith, Lady of the Air, presses her lips against the in-between and breathes. Small crevices appear in our lives, doorways that are hardly doorways at all. Thin little cracks shimmer against the walls of our homes, the bark of our trees, the surface of our rivers. They undulate, serpentine and smelling of rich, dark loam. The truth is, this summons barely makes a sound, but if you’re the one being called, lay your cheek against the ground. You’ll hear the divine exhale of Our Lady of Exiles whistling through the barely-there.

Step through, wild soul. Turn just to the left and travel through the bristling, prickly sensations of utter honesty where your inner monsters roar to be named. Press your palms against the walls of the universe and open your fingers. Time will pass like sand against the webs of your hands and with it the bare naked truth of who you have been, who you are, and who you will be. If you can let it happen you’ll travel sideways through the story of your life, of all your lives. You’ll swim and sink and open the gills of your soul to finally breathe. You’ll ride the current of Ninlil’s song, bioluminescent destinies swirling and bobbing in dark water. And then, blue and alive, you’ll come to the preserved realm of matriarchy where The Great Goddess works alongside herself, weaving what Lilith has gathered all these eons.

Repair, my friend. That is what I am offering you today.

And to repair a thing, we must name it.