Ebb and Flow: Shekhinah Mountainwater

Shekhinah Mountainwater died yesterday at 2:30 pm, quietly, in the company of her loving Goddess-sisters and her family. She had been battling cancer for some years, and she was ready to depart. I’ve been typing and deleting for quite a while, struggling to say the right thing here — not a eulogy, just a remembrance.

Shekhinah was one of my first teachers in Goddess spirituality. We lived very near each other in the 1980s and our paths crossed in some way that I can’t remember now. I began to study with her, one on one, and we worked together for several years, as sisters and as friends. Much of what I’ve integrated into my everyday spirituality had its roots with Shekhinah. She shared her own style of magic, lore, symbology, ritual, her own utterly unique way of perceiving women’s spirituality. She recognized me as a sister-priestess from the beginning, and she was impatient for me to take vows, to formally surrender my life to the Goddess’s service, which I knew I would do when the time was right. One vital turn of my serendipitous path was facilitated by Shekhinah, for she introduced me to Carol She-Bear, who had started a little magazine called SageWoman, and who was about to close it down. I bought it from her, to Shekhinah’s delight, and moved into the next phase of my Goddess service.

I remember Beltane celebrations with Shekhinah, just the two of us, crowned in tiny pink roses, drinking wine in which strawberries and raspberries floated. I remember many tarot readings, Shekhinah unrolling her worn tarot cloth on the floor between us and spreading out her handmade round tarot cards, telling me to “stir” them and then to draw forth cards one by one. I remember making rune stones with her, smelling the magical oils and incenses she made, ringing the little bell on her altar as I made my offering. I remember every study session beginning with her Rainbow Cone meditation, both of us toning the “Maaaaa” chant higher and higher, visualizing swirling colors rising around our bodies, and then the profound vibrating hush that followed. Prayers spoken into this rainbow-sparkling silence will be with me always: “I am one with thee, Goddess, and thou art one with me….”

I remember driving Shekhinah and Merlin Stone up to the Bay Area for a dinner party that was included in the film Goddess Remembered. I was still fairly new to the Goddess community then, and I sat enthralled listening to Starhawk, Luisah Teish, Charlene Spretnak, Hallie Iglehart, and others whose work I had read and so admired. I felt so proud that my friend and teacher was included among these luminaries. After the filming, Shekhinah and I comforted a weeping Starhawk, who was upset because the film makers had only wanted to hear from the “stars,” while the rest of us were on the periphery, off-camera. This was so contrary to what these two women felt about the Goddess movement, about sisterhood, about fighting patriarchal values.

Shekhinah’s personal mythos was always about this struggle, always pitted against the oppressive patriarchy, always feeling excluded, pushed aside, unheard, unacknowledged. She wanted to change the world, and it saddened her that the world tends to change rather slowly. Shekhinah always lived on the cutting edge, and that’s a sharp and uncomfortable place to dwell. I don’t know if she ever really took in how many women honored and appreciated her work. I hope she felt it in her last days, at least. When Shekhinah was happy, her smile and her merry cackle were irresistible. Nothing made her more blissful than singing, sharing her music and her poetry with others. When you chant “We are the flow, we are the ebb, we are the weavers, we are the web,” you are singing Shekhinah’s words. Send her your thanks and your blessing.

I gave Shekhinah my own thanks and blessing when I said goodbye to her on Thursday. I rang the little altar bell for the last time and lit one final candle. I wrote of that visit at the time, and you can read that account here, if you like. Today I will go down to the ocean with a fallen apple I took away from Shekhinah’s garden — once so lush and wild with roses and herbs, now sad and neglected, but her beloved apple tree was still bearing fruit. I will offer the apple to Aphrodite and envision Shekhinah in the arms of the Goddess she loved so passionately. I will say these words of Shekhinah’s, from her book Ariadne’s Thread:

Wise One who knows the secret ways,

I receive thy gifts in joy and in solemnity.

Always will I treasure these,

Always will I remember their teachings.

Many thanks. Blessed be.

Comments

[Sia]

Beautifully said.

Sia

[joanna]

A beautiful remembrance. Thank you.

Shekhinah also wrote one of my circle's favorite chants: "Make for yourself a power spot, Bring you a spoon and a cookin' pot -- Bring air, bring fire, bring water, bring earth . . . And you a new universe will birth . . ." Blessed be, Shekhinah.

[Beth atwood]

Oh so sad. Thank you for your words. When I first began my pagan studies, Ariadne's Thread was the book I used, oh so long ago.
Blessed be.

[JulieZS]

Thank you for this beautiful remembrance Lunaea. I never knew her personally, except through your words, but I will miss her nonentheless.

[Lunaea]

Thank you for your loving words, everyone. I wanted to add that the image that accompanies this post is a painting of Sappho by Charles August Mengin. Sappho was a favorite muse of Shekhinah's.

[Inanna]

Thank you so much for this. Beautiful.

[Bella Luna]

Are hearts are sad for this loss. The sweet Goddess will comfort us all. May we all learn to Breath, Relax, Feel, Watch and Allow.

[Turtleheart]

Thank you for posting this beautiful remembrance.

Ariadne's Thread was among one of the first books I bought when I began my path... Her loving words and teaching in that book touch me deeply...

I still treasure a short e-mail I received from her back in 2002, when I wrote her to tell her how much I liked her poem "So She Stirs."

I am glad to learn she had a peaceful passing, surrounded by so many loved ones.

[Cate (Kerrdelune)]

Shekhinah was a friend, and I loved her dearly - her passing leaves a great big painful hole in everything.

[Goddess of Leonie]

Blessed be beautiful Shekhinah, you have touched my life even over the seas.

[Devora]

It is so good to hear the thoughts in my heart echoed in your words. I too met Shekhinah in the late seventies and eighties. Her way of raising the rainbow cone and chanting MAA has been with me all my life. Throughout my life I have found it hard to find others to circle with who also followed her ways of trancework. People would say they were "Between the worlds" when they really weren't there. Shekhinah would guide us to really go to that place. She always directed us to set aside ordinary talk in ritual and to only speak in poetry, dance, and music.

I am sad that I was out of touch and didn't get to say goodbye to my teacher. I am glad to know that people realize what an amazing priestess she was and how humbly she dedicated her life to the goddess. Blessed be, Devora