Fungi as Dark Goddess
Like the dark goddess, fungi are officiators of the passage between worlds. What happens when we make contact with the realm of the dark goddess? Sometimes healing means consciously dying.
Deep imagination is a portal to the soul and the ensouled world. During this Libra dark moon solar eclipse we walk together in the forest. What is the quality of the ground beneath our feet? As I face each direction, how does my body feel differently? Take stock in how you’re investing in your relationships. What are you thinking about your relationships? What kind of attention are you giving to them? What are your relational agreements? Are they what you want? Are they what you don’t want?
How do we deeply imagine? Who is the enchanted universe? Many of our modern ways of life isolate and frustrate this ancient connection. To open ourselves to this space requires a bit of undoing. The deeply imaginal is not under our control. Catholicism and patriarchy have erased this connection to the great mother — to the sacred aliveness of all beings. Institutional catholicism’s inability to accept the necessary darkness of life drives modern society to evade true integration of the life-death matrix. God separates himself to create the world and suddenly life is no longer sacred nor connected; a world is produced and laws are made. There is only one god, and he is a man. The patriarchy doesn’t value deep imagining, where each being is significantly alive and has its own buoyant aliveness.
The dark feminine gives birth spontaneously, without laws, and yes, sometimes it is scary. The masculine drives to seek perfection, whereas the feminine is concerned with wholeness and completion, which involves embracing the failures and successes, the sickness and health. The feminine is not concerned with achieving or ideating. It is not heroic nor does it battle the opposition. The feminine exists right here and right now and in endless flow. It values the dance of the great roundness — the dimension of growth and decay which are not opposites of each other for they are intrinsic to one another. Death is not only necessary on this planet but it is also the generator of life. It enables evolution. The breaking down is the continuity of life.
The feminine exists right here and right now and in endless flow. It values the dance of the great roundness — the dimensions of growth and decay which are not opposites of each other for they are intrinsic to one another.
The pre-patriarchal forms of consciousness may have been forgotten, stuffed under the rug, suppressed, or feared during this mental epoch, but the pre-patriarchal imaginings of myths and magic are the very foundations of our present forms of consciousness. The opportunity of our time, if we are to continue to grow and evolve and not decline into sophisticated barbarism, is to join the two creative aspects of the matriarchal and the patriarchal. The magical and the mythical must be re-embraced. What is not resolved in our past becomes a weakness which makes us unequipped to fully embrace the new. Just in a personal healing cycle, bringing these once subdued feelings into awareness again, we are able to include those lost parts of ourselves and trust them as necessary supports for our growth, rather than obstacles.
The deeply imaginal is looking straight into the ensouled world. It guides us back to wholeness. While we deeply imagine we meet guides who can assist us on the descent to the soul, and then with the re-emergence and integration into our daily life. For thousands of years the feminine has been pushed underground, where the fungi live. Like the dark goddess, fungi are officiators of the passage between worlds. Fungus is goddess of the night and the dark. What happens when we make contact with the realm of the dark goddess?
The dark goddess and her initiatory rituals of loss and death help us arrive in deep imagination. Myth makes sacred, and returns us to the path of our soul. What is mythic in fungi? Myths orient us in places where we feel most lost. I believe nature is our greatest myth. Think back on the original, pre-patriarchal star stories — they had to do with the cycles of the year, goddesses, and celebrating the aliveness of animals. Fungi decompose 90% of all life and directly support 90% of all trees. We wouldn’t have our healthy, resilient ecosystems without fungi and we wouldn’t have renewal. Usually below ground, mostly out of site except when a mushroom fruits, consistently neglected in modern culture, yet supremely powerful and a little scary. The myth of fungi tells of a reclamation of power and wisdom in the dark aspects of life.
Fungi teach us about the powers of initiatory death. Fungi eat death. Saprophytes (a major group of fungi, the ones who decompose and break down matter) means “death-eaters”. This is a feminine myth. The place of undoing, the creative ground within is where we access the depth of the deep psyche. Fungi are guides for crises and transformations, both ecologically and imaginally. When in crisis, there is a change of psychological boundaries that happens through a shift or expansion of awareness. In nature fungi are the webs of ecosystems, the unlockers, the transformers, and the digesters. In human bodies they can heal us, feed us, kill us, and shift our consciousness. Fungi exist in the great roundedness of life and death. Mushrooms are a medicine that speaks for the in-between.
Fungi exist in the great roundedness of life and death. Mushrooms are a medicine that speaks for the in-between.
By banishing an ensouled world, banishing the gods and spirits, separating the worlds of matter and spirit, of life and death, our American culture has nothing to hold and guide us through profound initiatory experiences of loss, death, and crisis of decay. We are culturally adrift when faced with profound depth experiences. Modern society rarely supports the healing crisis in ways that allow the process of renewal to come to completion. Sometimes our ability to adapt to normal society is at odds with our inner integrity. To heal, to become whole, the experience of death and the gifts that are found through it must be embraced and integrated. There are parts of ourselves that might resist the inevitable pain, loss, and death of life. We might create neurotic suffering just to avoid them.
But, fungi show us that much happens in the underworld. What do we learn in the underworld? New ways of relating to the masculine? To the feminine? Might it lead us away from certain relationships? Connecting to this underworld truth serves to balance us from what was missing or one-sided before. Sometimes it leads us in directions contrary to where we hoped or intended to be. Returning to the upper world means confronting the patriarchy from a new standpoint of feminine, and fungal, empowerment.
If we merely survive the experience, and don’t transform the suffering and pain, we may be left only with bitterness, anger, and resentment. We might remain the victim of our own suffering, still not truly alive to our own heart and creative self. To make this transformation we need to rediscover faith and confidence, essentially in ourselves, and trust in the basic goodness and wisdom of our own true nature.
How do we internalize and integrate the life-giving waters of fungi? I am a being of both light and dark. The wisdom of fungi flows, breaks up, digests, unlocks, and releases the inertia and rigidity of the underworld. Fungi restore wastelands… digest toxicity and create new materials for nourishment. Do you embrace the totality of yourself and its relations? Fungi relate to us in our dying. Fungi are the interface of life and death. Do you have capacity to travel between the worlds?
The way of the dark goddess is about transformation. Even the fruits of our difficult journeys must be sacrificed, as we continually let die a small part of ourself for something greater than ourselves. And, fungi surely show us the immensity of life greater than ourselves. The soul continues to cycle eternally between heaven, earth, and the underworld. Each time we surface from the underworld, perhaps like a mushroom, we bring back more gifts that may have been long buried. We don’t make the descent once, but again and again. If we don’t trust the deep mycelia void, and our ability to be deeply held here, we remain stuck in the underworld. When we surrender to the shadow only then can we bring the light of consciousness to the realm of darkness.
In order to touch strength and wisdom which lies within us, we must feel the pain, the grief of what has been lost, the anguish, the fear, the shame that haunts us. We become for a time weakened, vulnerable, as we tease away the layers that hide our inner self. A person going through such a healing crisis does not need to be treated, cured, sterilized, or invalidated, but to be held, witnessed, loved, and cared for until they are able to feel held again by the love that lives within themselves. Eventually… we return deepened, renewed, and humbled. Slowly we may descend with less fear and a greater acceptance of suffering. If we place our life in a context of soul and spirit, we learn that everything must be offered up to some greater purpose. Without doing this, our suffering has no meaning and the world becomes disenchanted. To quote Lawrence Hillman,
“Without a dying to the world of the old order, there is no place for renewal, because… it is illusory to hope that growth is but an additive process requiring neither sacrifice nor death. The soul favors the death experience to usher in change.”
Sometimes healing means consciously dying.
How can we form a companionship with the deeply imaginal and allow them to be our guides? During this dark moon enjoy the natural cycle of slow, inward, and shadow potential in the cycle of life. So, come, deeply imagine.