[Inspired by the Creatrix Scholars on the Eleusinian Mysteries, in a S/HE Forum section on November 8, 2025 and November 22, 2025]
We turn to you, great Grandmother of creation
Twirl beneath your glowing body, small graces
before the ancient whirl and call
of your wholeness.
We have long hungered in the memory
of your boldness, cosmic mothers
of night who gather the women
for the journey. We prepare again
with your guidance, grandmother
of creation. Invoke the flames
that touch the stars in long night’s
celebration.
We hold the hands (and wrists) of the
wandering daughter and
the restored and restorying mother,
preparing for the journeying to come.
Hekate,
“Teacher and revealer, Goddess of midwives,
Mother of generations,
Guide who bears beautiful offspring,
Key keeper, Mother of all”[1]
We follow your two-armed light staffs,
waxy-mullein-wanded GrandWoman
leading us to ocean, leading us into earth.[2]
Remembering wholeness from
the whirring whorls of Grandmother,
we remember you, and gather
in the horns of stars, with the moon,[3]
ancient grandmother of
mystery and boldness.
We are made strong in this renewal.
Great grandmother of wholeness.
We dance with women all the day and night’s long way
Great grandmother of boldness.
We are made strong in this renewal.
Celebrate you, reclaim truth.
Great grandmother of wholeness.
Dip and whorl, following the youngers
Arm in hand, we weave and bind the spiral.[4]
Folding in, death feeding life, spiral of spirals.
Going to the ocean, at the threshold of earth and shore
Entering the depths, entering deep mother wisdom,
reflections in the movement,
rhythms of the water – renewal, restoration, regeneration.
Reconnecting with the matrlineages, held and deeper knowing,
help us shed the subtle shackling, reclaiming the essence and the blessings.[5]
In the womb of cosmic starfields, you give us back our brightness,
our lustrous astral tides of depth.
Holding space in circles, dancing women
horse-dragon-serpent bringing waves, breathe with waves.[6]
Gestate our possibility, a world imperiled in forgetting:
Birth our remembrance and resurgence, grandmother of us all
within, in birthing generations, in nature’s restoration –
We offer thanks and praises, guides and guardians,
Regenerate our relations, grandmothers of life.
Maiden, Mother, Matriarch, Crone
We reclaim and exhort the Blessed Ones
Singing, humming, tuning
Bodies all entwining
Jangling of the cosmos with the
Rhythm of the feet
patterned like weaving
in the larger cosmic flow.[7]
The Regeneratrix returns and blesses
Maiden-Mother-Matron-Crone – all around us
Whole and bold,
Regenerating,
Spiral-whorling,
Reconnecting,
Opening,
Repleting.
[1] Epithets and Hekate wisdom inspiration from Vivien Gibbons, and her presentation “Hekate Chthonia: The Tomb as Womb” (November 22, 2025).
[2] With thanks to Vivien Gibbons’ scholarship on Hekate, “Hekate Between Worlds: Guardian of Thresholds and Women’s Blood Mysteries in the Eleusinian Cycle” (November 8, 2025) and “Hekate Chthonia: The Tomb as Womb” (November 22, 2025).
[3] With thanks to Helen Benigni and Barbara Carter, and their presentations, “The Star Cluster Priestesses” (November 8, 2025) and “The Proerosia and the Pyanopsia” (November 22, 2025).
[4] With thanks to Laura Shannon’s presentation on “Dance in Eleusis: Then and Now” (November 22, 2025).
[5] With thanks to Lila Moore, speaking of Screen Dance as Rite of Passage: An Artist’s Monograph – Gaia Mysterious Rhythms (2025), on November 22, 2025.
[6] With thanks to discussants Helen Hwang and Nané Jordan (November 22, 2025).
[7] With thanks to Laura Shannon’s presentation, “Dance in Eleusis: Then and Now” (November 22, 2025).
About the poet: Marna Hauk, PhD serves as Senior Faculty for Dream Tending. Dr. Hauk also serves on the faculty at Southwestern College, in the Doctoral Program in Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership and the Masters in Transformational Leadership. Dr. Hauk has studied and now convenes pop-up and virtual Hygeian dream healing temples and is also developing the research method of lunar inquiry. Marna is a member of The Work That Reconnects Network and a facilitator of poetic inquiry. Co-editor of Community Climate Change Education: A Mosaic of Approaches and Vibrant Voices: Women, Myth, and the Arts, with 130+ refereed publications and presentations, Marna catalyzes learning contexts and nurtures scholarship and practice in living wisdom tradition resurgence, archetypal biomimicry, dream healing, and regenerative futures. Marna co-nurtures Harmony Hill Farm, on the traditional lands of the Chinookan and Wasco Nations, a slow permaculture reclamation project transitioning pasture to food forested sacred gardens in the Hood River Valley.
[Editor’s Note: This poem was pubished in S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies Vol 5 No 1, 2026.]
I like Maiden, Mother, Matriarch and Crone – excellent.