A Condensed Herstory of the Temenos Center and the Temple of the Sacred Feminine ~ Part 1

          June 12, I am heading into a deep dive writing retreat for ten days. In thinking about what I want to work on in the writing retreat, this writing about the beginnings of Temenos Center  spontaneously emerged. I am also in deep listening for guidance about the upcoming Temple for September 2015- May 2016. The emergent theme and holding vessel for that temenos of Sacred Feminine Initiation is "Divine Arrangement: Being With What Is, As It Is, Whatever It Is." {What else is there??!!}

            I was cleaning out my file cabinet and found a hefty cache of colorful old flyers from the early days of the Temenos Center. Temenos means "sacred space" in Greek, and refers to a particular place within the ancient healing temples.  In The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983), Barbara Walker writes that a parcel of property was a temenos, "land belonging to the moon," i.e., to woman.  I have since come to understand that a temenos is an actual alchemical vessel where polarities come together in the alchemical fire of transformation, heaven and earth meet, the spiritual fire burns away whatever limits our consciousness of who and what we truly are—Love—and the archetypal energies dance wildly and intensely toward the inner Sacred Marriage, the realization of the Great Heart, and the birth of the realization that we are Love.  

           I think the Hindu Goddess Kali is the Queen of this cauldron, for she is both the destroyer of what is not truth and the midwife of Absolute Truth.  She lifts the veils, allows them to burn so we can truly see what is as it is, beyond limited consciousness. The temenos is where we learn to carry the fire and not get burned—a koan instruction I was given by an African shaman in a ‘big dream’ three weeks or so prior to my first initiatory Kundalini awakening in 1982.

            When I found this unexpected treasure of old flyers, I was in utter delight as I read and re-membered the events and the many women who have spent time in the temenos as far back as 1983. That is when I was guided to give the name ‘Temenos Center’ to what I thought at the time was just the name of my business. I apparently didn’t read the fine print as I did not know that I was signing on for the stewardship of an alchemical vessel and a women’s mystery school. While I had read about these things existing in ancient times, I had no idea that they existed here and now in our times or that this was the destiny of the Temenos Center and my path in the world.

           The drawing above is the logo that I was guided to use on the first lavender flyers I sent out announcing the Temenos Center and its upcoming offerings. The image was drawn by a male friend from a beautiful smokey gray metal Art Deco sculpture that was gifted to me by a woman friend in celebration of the emergence of the Temenos Center in Bethesda, Maryland. I saw this beautiful, strong-bodied, dark goddess as a symbol of the courageous Amazon within us, with her shield, her un-guarded body, and her clarion, calling to women to come and discover the Sacred Feminine within. Over these 32 years, she has certainly fulfilled her purpose even though her image has not appeared in print for a long time. It is significant that she has emerged from the shadows with her clarion to call once again, as I am feeling the Call to reach new women, as well as women who have been in the temple in past years, for this upcoming Temple. 

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