Friday, September 24th, 2010
I am the oracular Sibyl, eldest daughter of a Naiad nymph. My native land is Erythrae alone and no other…in which I uttered oracles to mankind as soon as I had issued from the womb. And seated on this rock I sang to mortal men prophecies of events which were yet to come…
Inscription of the Erythraean Sibyl, Pausanias
I cannot keep the Sibyls from my mind. In preparation for the upcoming course I am teaching about the Sibyls, I hear them day and night. I scribble their utterances and my own memories, filling pages over the dining room table and spending long late hours there. The other day I looked down to see that my notebook of channelings and memories was open next to my open copy of Rolling Stone, full of its flashy pictures and splashy colors and I laughed. This is being an Oracle in this modern time. It isn’t just ancient scriptures and moonlit walks to the garden. It is going to the doctor and dressing up for parties. It is watching movies and driving along highways. It is finding a way to belong, and if you can even thrive, in a world unlike your own. There are missing pieces, but that may change, as long as you don’t forget the world you really come from, inside.
I, like the Sibyls, walk in two worlds…like you. I look like I am just having lunch in a busy restaurant but I am hearing the whispers of the Sibyls in my ear. I look like I am just dancing at a party with my friends with my eyes closed, but I am back in the temples of India with my sisterhood lost in the prayers of the body, with bells on my bare ankles. I look like I am a simple human, making small talk, going to appointments and meetings, riding my bike through town. And while I am in many ways indeed a simple human and engaging in all of those tasks, as they are no less than any other, I am aware of and functioning from such deeper recesses of my heart than can be seen. I look like a young woman…you can’t tell that I am hundreds of thousands of years old…that I am timeless. You can’t tell that I remember when time began. Like the Sibyls, I look like everyone else, but my inner world is far different than the one I live in. Slowly, these worlds are coming together.
I remember the feeling of the stone beneath my feet on the temple floors. I remember always my sisters, calm and bright, unafraid and free, and wilder and more powerful than any ocean…always hands in mine. I remember my brothers and those of other genders, so deeply at ease with themselves, soft and full of life…with the clarity and the presence of great mountains and sky. I remember communion, community, tribe. I remember ritual before it was stifled by rules and limitations. I remember celebration unlike anything else I have ever known. I long for this like an ache in my very bones. I thrill at glimpses and drink them in like the nectar of sweetest heaven. But most of the time I, like the Sibyls, keep to myself, cloak over my body, hood pulled low. True, at the moment there is shared understanding, any sign of kindredness, I am as vocal as any Oracle has ever been. After all, I have made my entire life about teaching from this inner world, and how to help others hear from, speak from, and live from their own. But the rest of the time I am the unicorn whose horn no one can see. Sometimes, rather than being sad about this, I have a little giggle to myself. I am incognito. You cannot see the mark of the priestess on my forehead. You cannot see my robe, or the garland at my crown. I am wearing jeans, and boots, and barrettes in my hair.
I live on an island like Avalon, and my house is my home. I am grateful to count people that I love in my life, and that I love greatly. I do the work I love and was born to do with all of my heart. It fills my soul endlessly. I am blessed beyond measure. Yet still, when the full moon rises there is a longing in my bones like wildfire. I want to gather at the mouth of the cave and burn with the others who know. I want to simply know with others. Not just one. Not just at a distance. I want to gather like the Sibyls, who lived for a thousand years, who were part-immortal-creature and part-human, who didn’t even try to fit into the world they couldn’t…and touch the darkness with our voices. And splinter light through the universe with our song.
The Sibyls spoke their truth, and only their truth, without hesitation. They did not have the ability to be untrue to themselves. They were wild and unkempt and they lived by their own inner rules. I too will live by the truth inside me. I too have no choice. I too will alienate some people for this reason, and this will be a blessing as well. I’d rather alienate quickly those who dare not walk alongside me. I’d rather speak to those who walk with fire, or walk alone. I’d rather carry my ancient world in my hands, quietly, than let it slip away in forgetting myself.
Oh yes, we need temples and more gardens. We need many things that will come again. But in the meantime I will make a temple of wherever I go. I will gather with my tribe to dance to blasting music at house parties because we can’t help but get together when the moon is full. I will keep loving even when it costs me what seems like so much. I will love unconventionally, fully, deeply. I will invest my heart. I will keep my music magazines next to my oracular channelings, and my hoop earrings and blue fingernail polish next to my crystal bowl. I will go places in the world where the Sibyls walked…where I walked before. And I will walk as a Sibyl now, and because the other Sibyls are remembering who they are in this life and the messages they are meant to bring, I will not walk alone.
Love, Jennifer
Learn more about the Sibyls and their power to heal with sound in Jennifer’s course, The Intuitive Sound Healing Course
Read more about the Sibyls here…
