(Essay) My Journey Home to the Creatrix/Dea Madre by Mary Saracino

Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico: Photo by Mary Saracino

I was born in 1954 into a working class Italian-American Catholic family, the fifth child and first daughter of parents whose parents had immigrated to the USA from Italy in 1913 and 1920. Needless to say, from an early age I was steeped in patriarchal Catholic dogma, from which I did not emerge until I came out as a lesbian in 1972 and, recognizing that the Church viewed me as sinful, I started questioning everything I had been told, and taught.

As a young girl, there were no books in my working class household, except for Lives of the Saints, a few Nancy Drew mysteries, and a set of encyclopedias. My love affair with words and poetry began with song lyrics. My mother always had the radio on when she was working in the kitchen, and I sang along with her. In 6^th grade, I was introduced to the Great Books club by my teacher, a nun who saw something in me. We read the classics, written by dead white men. In high school, two other teachers chose me as one of their students in their World Literature class, which began to open my world to a wide array of writers, although they were also white males from the “Official” literary canon.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, my feminist consciousness was birthed and I became hungry for a different perspective. At some point, I discovered the work of Virgina Wolff, Doris Lessing, Eudora Welty, Zora Neal Hurston, Alice Walker, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Niki Giovani, Dorothy Allison, Rita Mae Brown, and other female writers—broadening my world view, showing me the world through the reality of the female experience, not the male gaze. Seeing women as protagonists in their own lives, not objects controlled by men, deepened my commitment to feminism.

In graduate school in the late 1970s, I majored in American Studies with a focus on Women Studies (there was no graduate program in Women’s Studies at that time, although there were graduate-level Women Studies courses). I took classes on comparative religion, learning about the roots of patriarchal religious traditions. I also took classes about women’s spirituality and read Merlin Stone, Mary Daly, Susan Griffin, and many others. Years later I came to know the work of Marija Gimbutas, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Joan Marler, Vicki Noble, Lydia Rhul, Monica Sjoo, Barbara Mor, and many others. With each step, my mind expanded and my heart began to remember all that I was programmed to forget. I began to reclaim the female culture that had been buried under eons of silencing and oppression. I began to understand that women as a class of people have long been colonized by the long arm of patriarchal imperialism.

As I matured in my understanding of what had been lost to women and to all humankind, I began my writing life as a poet, not knowing how to write anything longer. I took classes at the Loft in Minneapolis, at first in poetry, and later in prose. In the early 1990s, I claimed the full power of my writer’s voice and wrote my first novel, No Matter What (Spinsters Ink 1993), told from the point-of-view of a ten-year-old female protagonist whose family was unraveling. I never looked back. That was followed by my second novel, Finding Grace (Spinsters Ink 1999), and my memoir, Voices of the Soft-bellied Warrior (Spinsters Ink 2001), My later novels, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2026), and Heretics: A Love Story (Pearlsong Press 2014), focus on the lives of women and their relationship with the Divine Female. Over the years, my poetry has evolved, reflecting my embodied understanding of matriversal feminism (that is, intersectional and multicultural feminism) and its innate connection to the Creatrix. My collection of poetry, Motherlines (Pearlsong Press 2026) focuses on matrilineal female empowerment, reclaiming one’s ancestral roots, celebrating the healing power of nature, and naming the many ways that women mother the world. It joins the ongoing international collective effort encouraging women to reclaim their voices and take back their power to make the world a better place for all.

All these experiences informed my belief in the primacy of women. Females are the great Cosmic womb from which all life flows. I believe in the Dark Mother’s values of sharing, caring, equality, cooperation, and transformation—values that all humans carry in our DNA (if only we would listen and remember). I believe that war is evil and that Love is essential. Not romantic love (although that can be lovely, too), but Love as in empathy, compassion, connection, and the understanding that humans and plants and animals and the sky, the oceans, the very air we breathe are all interconnected. Feminist/Goddess spirituality upholds those values.  That’s why the Creatrix/Goddess matters.

In the beginning God was Female—literally and metaphorically. In their seminal book, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of Earth (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mornote that “God was female for at least the first 200,000 years of human life on Earth” (p. 49) All humans share the same cosmic reality of being created in our mother’s womb. That first, primal memory is imprinted in our DNA. We emerge from the birth canal seeking our mother’s touch and her life-giving milk.  Connection. Nurturance. These are holy. These are strong and vital. These sustain us all.

One only has to read the symbols to know that the female body is powerful, life-giving, and sustaining—pubic Vs on ancient cave walls, rock surfaces. Bones painted ochre red then buried in the arms of the Earth. Menstrual blood as sacred alchemy. Menhirs as guardian sentinels. Cup marks in ancient stones, collecting rain, Mother Earth’s life-sustaining milk. Springs and caves and ancient wells. Trees and birds, serpents and eggs.  All give witness to the primacy of birth, life, death, and regeneration. 

That’s why reclaiming the Creatrix/Goddess is so essential. That’s also why naming female reality matters.

I believe we are co-creators of this thing we call Consciousness/Reality—it matters how well we love and honor ourselves, other humans, other creatures.  This is the heart and soul, the very body of the Creatrix/Goddess.

As the seasons cycle around the wheel of the year, so too do we all cycle around the wheel of Her. Mother Earth. Mother Nature. Mother Soul. Motherhood. 

We are all inter-connected—women, men, children, plants, animals, stones, water, air, the sun, moon, stars. We are all Loved, Honored, Blessed, Embodied—each and every one of us—human and non-human alike. Everything is birthed from Her and everything returns to Her. The body is as sacred as the mind, as holy as the soul; most humans have forgotten that—at our peril.

I believe that women and girls matter—as much as men and boys do. But somehow, too many have forgotten that. Reclaiming the Divine Female matters because humankind is killing us and our beloved planet with isms—racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, nationalism, patriotism, imperialism, colonialism—and all the many other ways patriarchy has invented to divide and conquer, pillage and plunder, rape and kill.

As a species, we have forgotten where we come from. We have lost our way. We need to come home. We need to stop the hate, the bigotry, the fear, the perpetual violence that keeps us imprisoned in a lethal paradigm, the wrong kind of cycle.

We must awaken from the amnesia that has dulled our senses, entombed our knowledge of another life-affirming way, and reclaim the long-lost memory of the Creatrix/Divine Female—for in Her loving embrace, we are all sacred, and we all thrive.

Meet Mago Contributor, Mary Saracino – Return to Mago E*Magazine