Tattoo as Rite of Passage into Cronehood
		This is the story of how tattoo transforms my life. This is the story of my sacred croning tattoos, my sixtieth birthday present to myself in 2001. 2001 is the year that the re-emerging archetype of the sacred crone finds expression in my life. It's the story of how I come out of concealment in the collective and face forward as an outrageous, eccentric Cosmic Fool. This is also the story of how I reconnect with a submerged and forgotten portion of my passionate and dramatic younger self and plug more fully into the playfulness of Now. This is the story of when I realize that I have a bone-deep need to live my life full-throttle in at least some realm -- vividly and expressively rather than carefully, politely and rationally. This is the story of how I find my crazy wisdom and welcome her home. If not now, when? The local PBS television station broadcasts a Wayne Dyer seminar. He's a motivational speaker and his big message to me is to tune into what brings the juice into my life and to follow that sense of calling. Is this what I came here to do? Does my heart sing from this? I have been pondering this for a good while as I've been getting in deeper touch with an aspect of myself that was long held in a neglected inner prison because she supposedly didn't mesh with my expected social roles. I learned to hold her in as I did my social duty -- marriage, child rearing, family, doing what I considered to be worthy world-work at a spiritual organization, and then retirement. So my adventurous and daring younger self languished for decades, sunk in despair and hopelessness. Unlike my enculturated self, she never sought to achieve conventional goals involving stability, practicality and other householder concerns. It seems that my new meditation practice -- visualizaing and chanting my meditation-intuited spiritual lineage -- helps to call her forth. I see my line of connection beginning on Earth and extending to our Sun, the Pleiades, our Milky Way Galaxy and outward into the Deep Field, the farthest out that the Hubble orbiting telescope can register. No wonder my inner girl-child began to stir in her prison! For indeed, as I ponder, I realize that my transgalactic meditation really does express this more expanded version of me, who truly yearns to explore the distant reaches of consciousness, life and mystery. Drawing largely upon the energy of my reclaimed young aspect, I have come to know that I am not here to lead a good and careful, dutiful life. I am here to push the limits. I need to live vividly, largely, deeply, strangely, differently -- far beyond what the consensus culture generally envisions. I now remember and feel strongly what I knew so clearly as an early adolescent -- I will not live a life that denies my inner awareness and vision and imagination. I am coming back on track with my long-delayed calling. I feel that I am a contrary, one of those people who serve as life's way of breaking up social and cultural crystallizations. I feel as though I have been hidden for decades, living only a partial life. But now, as I near my sixtieth birthday, I enter more fully into myself and I rejoice in coming out of my shell, my cocoon, via tattoo. Since I view my tattooing as a ritual or ceremony honoring my new "crone" stage of womanhood, I naturally chose a female tattoo artist. I get tattooed on my forehead to signify my emergence from hiding -- a sky-blue, four-pointed star with slightly concave edges and a green outline. It honors the green world of nature, as if looking at the sky through leaves. By choosing a facial tattoo, I set myself apart from the preferred consensus role for a postmenopausal woman. It's my sixtieth birthday gift to myself -- coming out of hiding and proclaiming my creative expression and freedom, my inner wild child. I realize that part of what excites me is the fact that -- finally -- I no longer even look like a daughter of the patriarchy. Finally I am visually -- at first sight -- off the customary grid.To appear outwardly as I feel myself to be inside is exhilerating and liberating! So far, in addition to the brow star, I have delicate bird wings tattooed on my ear lobes (earwings) and a white solar disk just below my throat on my chest and a flaming leaf between my breasts. I have a bracelet of personally meaningful Hebrew and Chinese characters encircling each wrist, and another bracelet of flowing water, leaves and stars enclosing a spiral. These are all empowering images and symbols emerging from my dreaming and they nourish my soul each time I see them. Tattoo is a wonderful way to "come out of the consensus closet" and a powerful way to be initiated into formal cronehood. Let the good times roll!
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