The Body of My Mother

back to the heart of the matter

[the Egyptian goddess Tawaret]

Tell me about your mother’s body. Her hands and her feet, her belly and her breasts. Tell me about her skin and her hair and the color of her eyes. Tell me about her smell—her breath, her underarms, the scent of her when she leaned in close.

[the Egyptian goddess Bastet]

In the beginning I do not want to know your grievances with her. Do not tell me, yet, about how she failed you, disappointed you, infuriated you, frightened you. Do not tell me about your relationship with her, much as I know you want to confess and condemn, plead and implore. No, let us leave all that, for now. Tell me about your mother’s body.

If she were an animal, and she was, I tell you this, she was, how would you describe her?

[the Egyptian goddess Hathor]

Tell me about her fur and her funk, her fangs and her feathers. Did she fly? Did she burrow? Did she slither upon the ground or slink through the shadows of the forest at dusk or step into the meadow at noon her head held high?

You have reached out your hand to lay it upon hers and already I know you have begun to cry.

Her hands were dry, her hands were soft, her hands were chapped and cracked. Her nails were always polished, her nails were chipped, her nails were bitten down until they bled. Her fingers were thin and tapered, or stubby and swollen. At the end of her life was her skin mottled with brown spots? Maybe you touched her hand after she died and felt it turn hard and cold beneath yours. Maybe she is still alive, but it is a long time since you imagined touching her. Maybe you look at your own hands and have begun to see hers.

Your mother’s body was your first home in this life. Deep within the darkness of her womb you came into the knowing of who you might become, listening to her heartbeat, smelling her blood from within, feeling her muscles contract around your body. Her body creating your body.

My mother was a tiger, her languorous haunches moving stealthily through the jungle. My mother was a seal, her muscular body undulating in the waves. My mother was a crow, muttering irritated curses under her breath. My mother was a spider, a snake, a vole, a hawk. My mother was an animal.

Travel back in time and our ancestors will tell you that the goddesses, the most ancient mothers, had the wings of vultures, the heads of hippos, the paws of great cats, the tails of sea serpents, the bodies of buffaloes, reindeer, mammoths and aurochs. Our Lady of the Beasts is the oldest name, after all, of the Madonna. Our Lady of the Beasts, a lion at her side, a snake in her hands, is herself a creature of this earth.

[Our Lady of the Beasts: Ancient Minoan depiction]

Let us circle ourselves with these ancient mothers—with mothers who are bears, mothers who are owls, mothers who are spiders. The first magic that we will perform together is to turn our mothers back into the animals they have always been.

Let us give our mothers back their bodies. The appetites and desires of those bodies. The force and power of those bodies. The songs and howls and growls of those bodies.

I need to tell you about the body of my mother—and I need to hear about the body of your mothers and together we must remember what was done to the bodies of all of our mothers. All of our mothers.

Because for a long time now their bodies, our bodies, the bodies of animals, the bodies of tree and the bodies of mountains, and the body of the earth, all bodies, have been under attack.

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In March I will be offering my workshop Mothers of Magic: Recovering the Love at the Heart of the World. In this four sessions we embrace an ecological feminism that explores the Mother before patriarchy and within patriarchy and imagines an entirely different experience of the Mother for the world that lies before us. You can find out more here.

This has been a Free offering for my substack. I also offer a Paid substack with offerings from my latest projects (this is an excerpt from my next book) and a monthly Zoom conversation about working with the unseen world. Join us!

Perdita Finn is the co-founder, with her husband Clark Strand, of the feral fellowship The Way of the Rose, which inspired their book The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. They are currently at work on their next book together Circles Not Lines: Spiritual Community Beyond Patriarchy.  To find out more about her devotion to “ecology not theology” visit wayoftherose.org

In addition to extensive study with Zen masters, priests, spirit workers, and healers, she apprenticed with the psychic Susan Saxman, with whom she wrote The Reluctant Psychic. Perdita Finn now teaches popular workshops on Getting to Know the Dead. Participants are empowered to activate the miracles in their own lives with the help of their ancestors and recover their own intuitive magic. Her book Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World is an intimate journey through her recovery of these lost ways. She speaks widely on how to collaborate with those on the other side, on the urgent necessity of a new romantic animism, and on the sobriety that emerges when we claim the long story of our souls. Her next book is The Body of My Mother.

She lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains.