Sovereignty Ain’t Easy
from The Queen of My Self: Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife
By Donna Henes

Coming from the tough love school of spiritual counseling as I do, I feel that it is only fair to warn you, there are no 10 easy steps to sovereignty.

The roads leading to Queendom are diverse and many. The way to Self-esteem can be complicated and long. Each woman must take her own path, make her own trail, clear a passage for herself through the thick brambles that reach up to trip her. What roads do exist are unmapped, bumpy, and full of potholes, tumbleweed, and road-kill. There are no shortcuts along the Queen’s Highway, no services, no shoulders, no signage, but many detours and cul-du-sacs. And the fare can be exorbitant. As Dear Abby, Abigail Van Buren, once noted, “If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we'd be millionaires." Like any grand journey, the trip toward self-dominion requires stamina, determination, and the passionate desire to travel. But if we pack properly, check our tires frequently, and take time for picnics, the adventure is incomparable. And the destination of Self-empowerment is majestic.

The Queen chooses to engage Her Self despite difficulties.

Our Queenly assignment, should we choose to accept it, is to identify, understand, and connect all the component parts of ourselves, to attempt to develop and balance them equally, and to maintain them all in good working order. The Self is like a jigsaw puzzle or a quilt that promises to become a beautiful whole if we spend the necessary time and concentration to assemble it. It is at once the puzzle, the parts of the puzzle, and also, most importantly, the process of piecing them together. The ideal of the Queen inspires us to design the artful patchwork of our own lives designed from the wild and wonderful patterns of our own personality and experiences, and crafted from our individual inner authority. Once we do, we are able to shift into a new stage of life, a new state of being, a renaissance rebirth, ready to rule.

The Self is the seat of sovereignty of the Queen. It is Her throne and Her domain, at once Her base of power and Her field of operation. Stepping into our sovereignty involves an almost alchemical process of adding, extracting, refining, combining, and recombining the myriad elements that make up our four parts in the constantly evolving effort of perfecting the power of our best Selves. The holy elixir that we seek is the transformation of the painful, rejected, neglected, wounded, unsatisfied, unsatisfactory parts of the Self, into the unified, organized, energized, golden glory and grace of the fulfilled Queen. It is through our sincere and complete participation in this process that we learn how to recognize, claim, and proclaim our own true power. The power of the fully engaged Self.

There are no rules, no recipes, no prescriptions, no instruction manuals, no precise formulas to follow when it comes to pursuing the daunting process of Stepping into Sovereignty. This does not, however, mean that anything goes. Just as in life, itself everything counts. Every single solitary thing that we do or don’t do, think or don’t think, matters. This is the bottom line of our responsibility — to ourselves and to others. Our intentions have to be perfectly pure and our attention to the details of our process has to be focused and disciplined, and in exact alignment with our intentions. The quality of our engagement needs to be really right, not according to the standards of anyone else, but only according to our own inner truth.

Clearly, the purity of our Intention and Attention assures that there can be no cheating or cutting of corners in our search for inner wisdom and power. What would be the point? We would only be short-changing ourselves. When we commit to engaging in the process of our own transformation, the search for our inner wisdom, the development of our self-esteem, the elevation of our status and standing, we are consciously choosing to accept total cause and effect accountability for our own lives and living. And since the decision to pursue our personal sovereignty is ours and ours alone, made with clear Intention and without outside direction or duress, we must own our process. Our Attention, our outlook, our approach, and our procedure must be unimpeachable, our attitude positively impeccable.

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
-Louisa May Alcott, American writer
1832-1888

Although the Queen is an excellent role model and source of inspiration, we don’t need a teacher or a guru to tell us what we should do for our Self-development, or how we need to change and grow. Each of us knows perfectly well what is right for us. Informed by the four parts of our being — physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual — we know in our heart, our mind, our gut, and our soul when something is right, because it feels right. And when something feels wrong, we certainly know that, too. The answers to our confusion and questions, our yearnings and longings, are right here inside of us where we keep them safe and warm — perhaps too safe, hidden secretly away in the corners of dark caves, far away from our own prying eyes.

Our lessons, and our understanding of them, are often not immediately available or obvious to us. They often come encoded in signs and symbols that seem like a foreign language. But, no matter how difficult, it is up to us to access them if we dare. If we care to earn our sovereignty, we must excavate the buried treasure of our own value and infinite worth. Our coming into power depends upon it. If we do take up the challenge to explore and mine the depths of our Selves, we will discover the unexpected caverns of courage, phosphorescent pools of passion, and glittering, crystal-rich veins of gem-like wisdom running through their passages and crevices. All we need are the right tools to get at them, extract them, and polish them. And I don’t know about you, but nobody ever told me that it was going to be easy.

"It always comes down to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard."
-May Sarton, American writer and poet
1912-1995

Donna Henes, Urban Shaman, is a contemporary ceremonialist specializing in multi-cultural ritual celebration of the cycles of the seasons and the seasons of our lives. She is the author of The Queen of My Self, The Moon Watcher's Companion, Celestially Auspicious Occasions, and Dressing Our Wounds In Warm Clothes, as well as the CD, Reverence To Her: Mythology, The Matriarchy & Me. She is also the editor and publisher of the highly acclaimed quarterly journal, Always In Season: Living In Sync with the Cycles, In 1982, she composed the first (and to this date, the only) satellite peace message in space: "chants for peace * chance for peace." Mama Donna, as she is affectionately known, has offered lectures, workshops, circles, and celebrations worldwide for 30 years. She is the director of Mama Donna’s Tea Garden & Healing Haven, a ceremonial center, ritual consultancy and spirit shop in Exotic Brooklyn, New York.

For further information about Mama Donna, a list of services and publications, a calendar of upcoming events and a complimentary issue of Always in Season: Living in Sync with the Cycles contact:       

MAMA DONNA'S TEA GARDEN AND HEALING HAVEN          
PO Box 380403
Exotic Brooklyn, NY 11238-0403
Phone/Fax 718-857-2247
Email: CityShaman@aol.com
http://www.DonnaHenes.net
http://www.TheQueenofMySelf.com

Booklist for Herbal Bookworms by Nancy Delliber

Working in a small public library for many years has given me access to a great variety of books which perhaps I never would have come across. I decided to put together a list of a few of my favorites, fiction and non-fiction, some are new and some very old. I recommend all of these highly and hope you enjoy a few of them.

Amy Tan and Margaret Atwood are both fine writers of fiction. Amy Tan writes novels based on her Chinese ancestors, and Margaret Atwood is a novelist in Canada who writes novels based on the problems of women , and also Science fiction. Doris Lessing who wrote The Sweetest Dream is British but lived for many years in Africa. The Sweetest Dream deals with the plight of women in Africa who are the poorest and most abused women on this planet. It is perhaps the most revealing book I have read and gave me room for deep thought. Sometimes I can read a novel put it down and forget it in a few weeks, but there are a few special ones that stay with me. 

Iris is a biography of Iris Murdoch written by her husband and later made into a movie. I have read many books by Iris, and indeed yes, she must have been also a witch. Most of her books touch on the metaphysical theme in the novels. Sadly her career came to an end as she developed alzheimers and was under the care of her husband for several years as the disease progressed. Contrary to what one think this book was filled with love and humor and not in the least depressing, although it gave me great insight into the course of this dreadful disease which robs great minds of their ability to think. I have only touched on a few books briefly, however if there is interest, I will do more lists for future issues of Susun Weed's Herbal Ezine...

Digital Witch Booklist of Fiction and Non-fiction I have read and enjoyed

The Bonesetters Daughter by Amy Tan
Cats Eye by Margaret Atwood
The Red Tent by Anita Daimont
We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
The Green Knight by Iris Murdoch
The Sweetest Dream by Doris Lessing
Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler

NON-FICTION
Iris by John Bayley
Life Magic by Susan Bowes
Practical Candle Rites by Ray Buckland
I Send a Voice by Evelyn Eaton
The Ssecret Life of Plants by Tompkins
A Witches Brew by Adelma Simons
Fairies by Janet Bard
The Complete Book of Herbs and Spices by Sarah Garland
Notions and Potions by Susan Bowes
Spirit of the Witch by Raven Grimassi
The Complete Guide to Runes by Nigel Pennick
The Cult of the Virgin Mary by Carroll
In Search of Stones by M. Scott Peck M.D.
The Circle is Sacred: A Medicine Book for Women by Scout Cloud Lee

I can recommend all of these books as being useful towards learning the craft.