MOTHER & WITCH
Half Ascending Moon
BY THE POWER OF THE GREAT MOTHER
“Tara, you whose name means Star.
Goddess of twilight blue complexion.
You who nursed Shiva with your healing milk
when he suffered for drinking too much poison.
You are the twilight sanctuary
that heals the most poisonous places.”
– Boonath
Tara is a frightening Goddess to behold, she appears only at night, like her name which means Star. Tara has the wisdom of converting poison into medicine, just as the story tells when the mighty Shiva suffered great turmoil for drinking the Halahala poison. Out of maternal compassion, which she offers to the courageous, she fed Shiva from her breast.
She fed him the healing blue twilight milk of her starry breast – the twilight milk that dissolves the sharp definitions of dark and light, of pleasure and pain.
Tara’s annual Puja takes place upon the April half Moon, in the rising place where opposites meet.
She is the power between light and dark. Her Jayanti (birthday) upon the half Moon that is half dark and half illuminated and calls the soul to a tantalizing voyage of discovery within the mysterious cleavage between opposites.
Her Puja (ritualistic worship) works with the star portals that shine between the known and the unknown.
The Astral Star plane
“Tara grants us the vision of the invisible world.
She who’s name means Star,
is the doorkeeper to the astral world.”
Tara means Star. She is the doorkeeper to the astral world of spiritual energies and insight. Working with Tara grants us the vision of the invisible world. We can see many Star goddesses across cultures.
Sometimes we find striking similarities to the Mahavidya Goddess Tara when we look at the cross-cultural goddesses of the Stars. We find the Greek goddess Astraea, for instance, she is the Virgin star girl who gives her name to the Astraea asteroid of the asteroid belt. She is daughter to the astrological god Astraeus who fathers her along with the planets as his sons.
We also find Asteria. She is the Ancient Greek Goddess of the stars, her daughter is Hecate, who is the goddess of the dark side of the Moon.
Hecate is a grand witch who shares many similarities with Tara – both are connected with ghostly occult matters, both dwell in far-off liminal places, both are connected to poisons and dogs, just to name a few…
We can continuously find Star configurations of goddesses and gods across cultures, if we keep looking. It appears that the ancients read the stars and had a comprehensive language which we might term mythology nowadays.
Ritual Practices
& the Hidden view of the Witch
“Mistress of the starlight and the natural dark.
Tara is fear inducing and exciting
because she is a leap of faith.“
Tara is the grand witch who looks into the unseen view. Her Mudras are many and involve some of the most challenging aspects of Hatha Yog, where the body is twisted and the gaze taken to the most unusual and unfamiliar places.
By looking into physically unfamiliar places the psychic levels of our being, by the law of reflection and correspondence, is also able to access the hidden view of the Witch.
Working with Tara is very much an investigation into pleasure and pain but, twisting past the limits of comfort and familiarity is a painful yet magically rewarding pursuit.
In Tantric practice, there are many variants of Tarasan… this is the star position of Tara, that makes a star-like-shape of the body.
Kamal-Tara-Asan is the Love Star, Padma-Tara-Asan is the Star Flower,
Vajra-Tara-Asan is the electric star, to name a few variants.
Each star position has different effects and activates different astral forces.
The Mudras of Tara are a form of invocation, for they open us up to the celestial forces by exposing the astral body to the starry world and its healing astral beams.
The stars are located in the human astral body in a mirror-like replica. The energy junctions and places where they intersect in the body are the points of power which, when opened up, start to receive the celestial forces from the macrocosm.
The Tantric on the starry path of Tara dissolves the veil between the microcosm and macrocosm. Drinking the dark blue milk of the breast of Tara is the healing Elixir that melts the borders that divide.
These borders are known as the Granthis (psychophysical knots). The Goddess Tara helps in melting the most tenacious of Granthis, but she requires us to tread into unfamiliar, forgotten and even unknown places.
Remember that the very action of the Mudras of Tara involve twisting the physical gaze into places we don’t usually look. By doing so we take the energy body into the secret places of starry treasure.
SHE LIVES OUTSIDE
“She dwells on the outskirts,
like a star in the sky,
always there
but only seen fully in the natural
and unpolluted dark.“
Mistress of the starlight and of the natural dark. Tara is fear inducing & exciting because she requires a leap of faith.
When we know the path, there is a sense of safety and grounding, but when we are not even sure whether the next step will be on solid ground or a gaping abyss, then it’s fear wrenching to venture forth. Tara’s path is seldom trodden, and as a result many of her treasures are never found.
The path of Tara takes courage. Her route is not for the sailor who navigates the sea with a compass and auto pilot on a satellite navigation system, no!
Rather she stands for the pirate soul who sails out ruthlessly into a dark, howling night, not knowing what awaits, but called by a strange mystery, that whispers as it licks its red lips with the saliva of a luscious gamble.”
There is no guarantee of safety with Tara and that’s what makes the soul who follows the way of the Star a courageous soul of power.
Without the unknown, creativity runs dry. When we ‘live’ in life that has no room for the unknown, it won’t feel like life at all.
Many aspects of life involve predictability as an indispensable component, but the unknown and the unpredictable is equally indispensable!
SHE HOLDS THE MYSTICAL BLUE FLOWER
“Tara holds the blue flower
of the hidden wisdom of Twilight.
Drinking the dark blue milk of the breast of Tara
is the healing Elixir that melts the borders that divide.”
Tara holds the mystical blue flower called Neelkamal, a flower which, when prepared in a specific way and imbibed, gives admittance to secret places, both in a terrestrial and in an ultra-terrestrial plane.
Tara is known as Neel Saraswati, the blue Goddess of the hidden wisdom of Twilight.
The Blue flower is the Star flower, around which the healing ritual of Tara revolves. Tara is the Mistresses of the Blue flower that guards the secrets of twilight. Hers are the secrets, where Elixir is tasted and divisions are melted.
Where Kali wears a necklace of freshly severed heads, Tara wears a necklace of skulls. This is a deep subject for meditation and will be covered in the ritual and the lessons that follow.
In appearance Tara looks like Kali Ma, but there are a few differences that can be discovered by looking closely into her mysteries.
We look forward to welcoming you
into the circle ritual on the upcoming Half Moon.
Hara Ring
To join the ritual,
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