Kathleen Meadows: I’ve been following CBC’s coverage of the International Conference on AIDS in Toronto this past week. It’s rather like taking a tablespoon of cod liver oil every day…something my own grandmother believed was good for whatever ailed you. She used to say, “The things in life that are the best for you taste the worst”. I don’t know many women who could follow the events of this conference without weeping. I couldn’t. I feel the sharpness of tears behind my eyes while writing this article. Maybe I will always weep about AIDS, women, children, poverty, and indifference. I confess and ask Grandmother for forgiveness, when at one especially horrifying segment I ran out of the room. It was when a young researcher spoke of their findings as to why Africa suffers a pervasive, chronic and rampant rape of babies, and young female children. The researchers discovered that one of the most significant contributing factors was a belief that having sex with a virgin will cure a man of AIDS. Literally thousands of innocent baby girls are raped and given the virus based on this belief. This is not a new myth. Throughout Victorian times with the advent of syphilis, this was also widely practiced. Centuries of horror fill my soul whenever I think of it. I can only let tiny slivers of this knowledge to penetrate my psyche. Slowly, very slowly.I’ve been an unabashed, simpering fan of Stephen Lewis and his wife, Michelle Lansbury, for almost thirty years. This is a couple who can teach us how to love so deeply, so expansively, that it just keeps extending its reach to more and more people around the world! Indeed their love is a community healing medicine that will be told for generations to come. Of course, here is heart-full Stephen Lewis spearheading this conference where of all things, Grandmothers solidly constellate the focus, theme and tribute of the whole affair. This AIDS conference brings our attention again and again to the Grandmothers in Africa who are shouldering the whole responsibility for all the children who have lost their parents to AIDS. Thousands of Grandmothers who have lost most of their own children to AIDS; who nurture and nurse their grandchildren 50% of whom have AIDS in deplorable poverty. Aging women who are often suffer the ravages of this disease themselves. On top of everything they feel, and do, these Grandmothers worry daily who will take over their task when this disease ultimately takes them too. “Who will feed, educate and nurse my grandbabies when I’m gone?”, cry the Grandmothers. Can we ignore their pleas-e? Can we afford to?In the Hindu faith, it is believed that we are living in the time of “Kali”. Kali, Crone and Goddess of Darkness, is the primal female force of the universe. It is said that when Kali emerged, she filled the cosmos with a roar. She destroys in order to create anew. She is the Shaman and Healer. The great Goddess of death, and re-birth. The Great Grandmother of us all.The time is upon us humans to integrate the power of the Dark Goddess into the world of the living, restoring wholeness to the original Trinity.
Now The Crone returns as the comforting Mother in the endless round of birth, death, and rebirth. We are living in the time of Grandmother. Her self sacrifice is bald and wise, her message is without artifice or frill, and her strength is like the earth.The Crone, the third stage in the woman’s sacred trinity is ascending, and we should rejoice. She has been denigrated for thousands of years as an unproductive hag, a dried up old husk of womanhood, a burden and most denigrated creature. She represents has-been womanhood – she holds her menstrual blood within, and according to patriarchy this is what drives her to madness. Kathleen Meadows: In a matriarchal culture, the Crone’s withheld menstrual blood makes her powerful, wise, and magical. It is the bearer of her secrets to healing magic and reconstitutes her light and energy ten fold.So although I weep and listen to the Grandmothers tell their stories to the audience and camera, I rejoice too. For to me, the Grandmother’s stories are the Song of Her Return. Who has the strength and magic to heal this crazy, war-mongering, money grubbing world? Surprise! Grandma, that’s Who.
© Kathleen Meadows, M.A. Certified Psychic and Tarot Grandmaster
www.TarotbyKathleen.com
