{Goddess Journey} Part Three

The third and final part of the "Goddess Journey" chapter of my book-in-slow-progress, A Memory of Love: The Spiritual Mission of a Princess.

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Glorious Inanna

The Sumerians were one of the world’s first known civilizations, taking form in the fourth millennium BCE, and, according to Joseph Campbell, its mythology was the source of Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, and Biblical traditions. The glorious Inanna, Sumer’s primary deity, was the goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, procreation, war, and rebirth. Throughout the centuries, as the world’s centers of power changed, she was worshiped in ancient Babylon as Ishtar, then identified with the Greek Goddess Aphrodite and, because she was seen as the morning and evening’s bright star Venus, Inanna also later became associated with the celebrated Roman Goddess.

Inanna has a rich, multi-dimensional legacy, celebrated as the Queen of Heaven and Earth. “She embodies the Divine Feminine in all its splendor: a sensuous courtesan and a timid virgin, a life-giving mother and an eternal child, merciful and wicked, wild, passionate, untamed,” wrote Lana Adler in “7 Goddess Archetypes of Empowerment.” “In other words, everything (with the exception of the mother, perhaps) patriarchy aimed to demonize and destroy.” (You only have to look as far as the Bible to see evidence of this.)

Inanna is synonymous with transformation. In The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell wrote that “the oldest recorded account of the passage through the gates of metamorphosis is the Sumerian myth of the goddess Inanna’s descent to the nether world.” Abandoning heaven and earth, she “abandoned lordship, abandoned ladyship,” this goddess “from the ‘great above’ she set her mind toward the ‘great below’”—the hero’s journey. Her courageous descent and transformative return, the ultimate rite of passage, is legendary, her story told for thousands of years—with many faces and in many incarnations. “As we are told by the Vedas: ‘Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names.’”

The legend of Inanna, encompassing a mythological journey, intersected with Diana’s life, even beyond its end. Well-known British astrologer and author Nicholas Campion made some profound royal observations following Diana’s death. But first, a little background: “After the second world war,” Campion explained, “Carl Jung [founder of analytical psychology] wrote that the phenomenon of Nazism could be partly explained by the eruption of the archetype Wotan, the Teutonic god, into the German collective unconscious.” After watching the funeral service for Princess Diana, Campion made this declaration: “I would say that what we have just witnessed was the eruption of the archetype of Inanna, the archaic Venus, into the contemporary collective unconscious.”

Campion, also a historian of cultural astronomy, believed there were people who would doubt him and found it “astonishing” that it had not been realized before, but it was his “contention that monarchy has never lost its magical, mystical functions, merely that the steady creation of a constitutional monarchy with a determinedly ordinary royal family, has concealed it.” During the last two decades of the twentieth century, Campion saw that “from the moment Diana appeared she constellated the archetype of Inanna. She was connected far less to the contemporary royal family of good works and middle class values than to the ancient magical monarchy of ancient cosmology of life and fertility; sacrifice and resurrection. Her life and death were unique in our lifetime, though perhaps not in British history.”

“As an archetype,” Lana Adler added, “Inanna symbolizes the powerful seductress who uses her considerable female persuasion to her advantage.” However, we’re reminded that “sensuality is a gift; but it can also be a powerful weapon. When we trade on it or use it to control others, we give away a part of ourselves.” Women don’t have to look to history to know how easy it is to give away our power, whether we’re being manipulated or we are the manipulator. And when it’s through our sensuality, through sex, Adler believes that it can be seen as a “symptom of deep self esteem issues and subconscious fears.” I sensed that Diana was waking up to this awareness at the very end of her life, perhaps in the last hours. Frustrated with being in the throes of a superficial affair, she was unhappy and ready to be home with her children, to get back to her newfound passion for her work in service to others; to restore her inner power and, with divine guidance, find love within. But her bigger mission took over, and her life moved into legend. ~ 

{Goddess Journey} Part Two

Sharing another section from the “Goddess Journey” chapter of my book-in-progress, A Memory of Love: The Spiritual Mission of a Princess.

 The Reappearing Goddess

“In the middle of the 1970s,” a decade before most of the world became aware of Lady Diana Spencer—and before she added her own ‘goddess’ essence to modern culture—“a paradigm shift took place, partly inspired by the rapid development of the women’s movement,” wrote Lanier Graham. The author of Goddesses told of various books of the time that “revolutionized how people looked at the roots of their spiritual heritage.”

Before books like The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas and When God Was a Woman by art historian Merlin Stone, then later in 1987, a heralded game-changer, The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler, “history textbooks had been stating or implying that the male had always been dominant in Western theology.” The consciousness-shifting winds of the more open-minded Aquarian Age were blowing through—energies we saw in the social upheavals of the 1960s and ‘70s—and a truer history of women was being revealed. “Western culture had been dominated by the male-oriented values of Indo-European culture for so long that it took a social revolution—the women’s movement—to start to bring it into balance,” explained Graham.

Discoveries in archaeology, studies in mythology, scholars of social history and linguistics were finding that “goddess cultures tended to be egalitarian, earth-centered, and nonviolent,” and these findings were then being taught in colleges and universities. “The image of the earth as sacred and society as balanced between male and female,” Graham wrote in 1997, “has become a powerful inspiration to people in the women’s movement, the ecology movement, and many other new ways of thinking.”

Joseph Campbell reminded us: “The goddess represents nature. The god represents society. And when you have a mythology that accents a god over a goddess you have a religion that accents society over nature. Then with the Fall, nature itself is cursed.” As we felt these goddess nudges in the first years of the twenty-first century, it was only natural that women and family issues of health and well-being and concerns about the environment were in the headlines. (Our Mother Earth, after all, is metaphorically represented by women’s bodies.) “There is something coming up in our own consciousness now, with the ecology movement,” Campbell wrote over fifty years ago, “recognizing that by violating the environment in which we are living, we are really cutting off the energy and the source of our own living.” It is this “sense of accord” that is so disrupted today. No wonder humans are so out-of-sorts; they have not been in accord with themselves, their very nature, since this break in consciousness. No wonder with the power of this reappearing goddess energy that so much fear-based, women-bashing backlash has been stirred up!

I had a real-life experience of this years ago, and a reflection of the hateful conflicts now on the rise today. In the late 1990s, a friend and I went on a day-long road trip from Atlanta to Huntsville, Alabama, to see an exhibit at the Space Center, where neither of us had ever visited. We turned off the expressway and while driving through the rural countryside, I saw a sign with huge, hand-painted letters; it was like a punch in the gut similar to what I felt on November 9, 2016. The message read: “FATHER CHURCH, YES. MOTHER NATURE, NO.”

That seems to sum up this violent backlash coming at us today, as I sit here writing in 2018—with the toxic masculine and the dark feminine trying to destroy the “mother” in all of us, the nurturing spirit of humanity, the health and well-being of our life-sustaining home, our sacred mother, our “Mother Earth.”

Lanier Graham gives us this history, writing at the end of the twentieth century:

...a few thousand years ago many goddess-oriented civilizations were destroyed by extremely aggressive Indo-European tribes. They demolished the old cities and then reconfigured civilization throughout most of the settled world from Greece to India. These barbarians worshipped aggressive sky gods and had scant room in their theology for goddesses; to them, women were little more than property and sexual objects. Not only did male gods become supreme, but females lost their sacredness, in a dramatic turning-around in human history that my friend Joseph Campbell called the ‘patriarchal inversion.’ It was even argued by some fathers of the early Christian Church in Rome that women had no souls. Twentieth-century men have at last started to realize that when males lost their reverence for that which is female, they also lost something within themselves.

The grasping, last-gasp obscenities of this “patriarchal inversion” were on display in the dignified halls of the United States Senate Building in Washington D.C. in the autumn of 2018 when leering, screeching white men defended their outdated network of cruelty and cronyism—no matter the cost or number of souls squandered—against one lone, brave woman speaking her truth. (And whether anyone was aware or not, she was representing the goddess spirit in us all.) This cowardly mischief was cheered on by a president whose motto seems to come directly from Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s patched-together monster, as written by Mary Shelley two-hundred years ago: “If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.”

This is what happens when humanity is disconnected from the “spiritual feminine,” Jim Fitzgerald wrote in “The Death of the Heart,” his essay for When a Princess Dies. “Since Reformation times, there has been a dearth of religious imagery, particularly of women, through which both men and women might maintain a connection to the spiritual feminine.” What imagery that remained left “a divine King but no Queen” in both the consciousness and unconsciousness of men and women. This created a split, according to Fitzgerald, as the feminine spirit became an object of “the rational mind”—and its profane opinions and deprived thoughts. “This split—of mind from matter, of spirit from nature—has continued to the present.” However, when he wrote this at the time of Diana’s death, near the end of a millennium, Fitzgerald was among many who sensed things were changing. “The values of the heart, not those of the mind, have begun to be sought after and appreciated. A new relationship to the Earth and Nature is growing. We are witnessing a change of heart.” 

The rise of Trumpery—and the hate it stands for and the “loss of soul” it reveals—is a desperate strike against this new heart energy. “I think it was this that Diana, as a woman of the times, equally a sufferer from the ills and neuroses of modern life, it was this new heart that she represented,” Fitzgerald added. And it is this “new heart”—a sacred calling of the “spiritual feminine”—that Diana and Charles’ sons inherited and now speak its message, as well as live its values, from their spot-lit world stage. These are aware, awakening men—who attracted and married aware, awake women—and they are rallying the “new heart” troops, encouraged along by the reemerging goddess consciousness their mother helped crack open!

I think of Diana and her sons when I read lines from a Sharon Olds’ poem about feeling less raw after experiencing such heartache, “as if some goddess of humanness within us caressed us with a gush of tenderness.”

[“Glorious Inanna,” third and final section of this goddess-focused chapter, posted soon.]

{Goddess Journey} - Part One

This is the first of three excerpts from the “Goddess Journey” chapter of my book-in-progress (tentatively titled) A Memory of Love: The Spiritual Journey of a Princess. Enjoy....xo 

GODDESS JOURNEY 

{Part One}

“Diana was an ascendant female,” explained Jungian scholar Josephine Evetts-Secker, “who could flout both the patriarchy and matriarchal order, fulfilling and negating feminist ideals; lauded as independent woman by some and by others castigated as a Barbie-doll princess.” Naturally charismatic with “star quality,” Diana attracted a variety of stars from the entertainment world—Elton John, Pavarotti and Freddie Mercury (there’s a story of Diana going clubbing, in disguise, with Queen's lead singer and his pals)—just as she befriended well-known people who were “aspirants to justice” like Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa. Writing in her essay “The People’s Princess,” Evett-Secker continued: “She bridged the glittery world of fashion and the seat of Establishment power. She was as much the female trickster as goddess; so seen, so mysterious, hiding quixotically behind apparent transparency; unconsciously manipulating concealment and revelations, echoing archaic mystery conventions.” 

Like many scholars from the Jungian school of thought, Evetts-Secker compared Diana to various goddess archetypes. To Aphrodite, who “dissolved resistance” and inspired a dynamic of “an ancient strategy, through love to power.” To “girlish Persephone” because of Diana’s playfulness while tiptoeing around danger, and to Demeter as “the raging mother protecting her sons from public assault by those who wanted to peddle their images.”

As a daughter, sister, friend, bride, princess, wife, mother, divorcée, lover, fashion-plate, healer and ambassador, Diana’s life stages, her womanly rites of passages, were lived out in a world arena for all to see. And since her life was and still is examined like few others, its complexity offers an intriguing milieu, connecting the spirit of all women. “Diana was a divided, unhappy and bewildered Princess,” Evett-Secker added, “as well as an ebullient beauty, graceful, opulent and full of vivid, if vulnerable and threatened, life.”

Or as counselor Steffan Vanel stated in his book, Charles and Diana, An Inside Story: An Astrological-Karmic View: “Diana embodied a complexity of contradictions which would enable virtually everyone to see and hear their own story or agenda in her life.” Diana’s contradictions were indeed our own. 

Ann Shearer, writing through a Jungian lens about her observances of Diana’s memorial service, noted the paradoxical images used about the late princess, from powerful goddess to helpless victim. “And here is a central paradox: the forces of unity that ‘Diana’ became grew the stronger for the very complexity of contradictions she contained. As we learned more of her real and fictitious selves,” Shearer continued in her “Tales of the Unfolding Feminine” essay, “and the legends around her grew, she carried for us an incontestable truth: that we humans must struggle with a mass of inconsistencies within ourselves and somehow learn to honour them.”

Another Jungian analyst, Ian Alister, shared this take in his essay “Your Cheating Heart” from When A Princess Dies: 

An extraordinary feature of Diana’s life, from her engagement to her death, was the extent of public exposure, providing many personal details and characteristics which could act as pegs for our own individual projections. It had all the qualities of a soap opera except that this was real. We could watch this drama which involved the suffering and sacrifice of a person who carries a symbolic charge for most of us, whether consciously or not. We can feel it, think about it, and try to relate it to continuous psychological processes within us. To make sense of it in this way, to give it meaning, is part of our struggle to make body and mind whole. 

Perhaps that was a gift of Diana’s life, in support of both women and men, then and now, to “make sense of” and to honor our “whole”—body, mind and spirit. And, in turn, a deepening of soul. It’s an inner journey calling forth our wise intuitive intelligence and a depth of feminine-grounded compassion, tapping into mythological longings and long-ago legends that can reveal a magnificent peeling-away-of-layers kind of journey. A journey where we all can hear the call of the goddess.

In the words of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic: “There’s a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen to it, as the personal self breaks open.” Such a break open of self holds the possibility of an extraordinary rite of passage into an intimate journey, measured only by the level of our courage, where we just might discover the authentic spirit of, for men, the empathetic side of masculinity, and for women, the authentic spirit of our womanliness, indeed, our own goddess nature. Not unlike one princess-swirled exploration in all its archetypal glory once upon a time.

[Part Two next time, “The Reappearing Goddess”...then Part Three, “Glorious Inanna”]

{20th Anniversary - Excerpt No. 5}

To complete our 20th anniversary Princess Diana memorial, I'll share another book excerpt noting a moment from her wedding day...perhaps, from our perceptive as we look back, it was a moment that looked into the future, and illuminated her spiritual mission. (From my upcoming book, From Princess to Goddess & the Rebirth of Love...the second book in The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride series.)

{continuing excerpt from}

Chapter One: Princess Mission

Did this young woman, who became a princess on her wedding day and after a long, winding road, the ‘queen of hearts’ upon her death, ignite a pathway for a consciousness shift of the heart? Was this a signal for the return of a nurturing goddess spirit intended to nudge along the occurring paradigm shift where we see a flowering of feminine strength and influence? 

During a life fluctuating between tedious soap opera and compassionate healing, how could we imagine then that Diana would be showing a way to, in the words of spiritual thinker Xavier Le Pinon, “educate the heart” on how to be tender, open and immaculately loving? In all the pomp and glamour and personal drama, it was easy to overlook her spiritual mission.

There was an exquisite bridal moment that summer-lit wedding morning on the red-carpeted steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, captured in a memorable zoom-lens photograph, where Diana—veiled in what seemed to be the ancient mystery of womanhood—paused to look back. Perhaps it was simply to check the fluffing of her impossibly long train, stretching down the staircase; but then you see her eyes, piercing through the veil as if with an inner knowing, glancing toward some distant past in support of encouraging her forward. Was Diana standing in for all future brides at a time when they, too, pause at their nuptial doorway to embody, no longer a woman’s loss of power and self-expression, but the female essence of beauty, strength, forgiveness and love? ~

[Scroll down for earlier {20th Anniversary} posts excerpted from

 The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride]

{20th Anniversary - Excerpt No. 3}

Continuing our celebration of Princess Diana's contribution to weddings and all the feminine mythology the costumes of that storied ceremony entails! During this memorial summer of the 20th anniversary of her death, I'm sharing excerpts from my book, The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride: For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding.

{excerpt from}

Chapter Three: "A Whiter Shade of Pale"

By the time Diana’s wedding came along, the notion of “virgin white” had not been completely swept away with the sexual revolution. There was still an underpinning of deeply embedded beliefs about the “rules” of wearing subtle shades of white—ivory, cream, beige—inferring one’s virginal status. “Symbolism of color in the bride’s wedding dress seems almost universal,” wrote historian Donald Clay Johnson in 2003. “In Europe and North America, white, symbolizing ‘purity,’ remains the preferred color, a reflection of the pervasive power of English Victorian society to impose its value system throughout many parts of the world.”

Women’s studies scholar Colleen Denney pointed out the sexual ambiguity of Diana’s gown, following in the “fairy-princess ideal” of nineteenth-century royal brides. Denney considered the über-feminine, fluffy, virginal-like gowns of both Princess Alexandra and Princess Diana—two Princesses of Wales marrying almost 120 years apart—representative of “their newly confined circumstances.” The crinoline-style gowns portrayed the “insistence on the continuity of history and tradition, an ever-present cultural memory, and the demands of royal protocol.”

Nonetheless, ruffley-romance was the new again, Vogue-approved fashion of the early 1980s—whether a “throwback” or not. And for these times, the look was fresh, light and feminine—and what Diana Spencer truly wanted to wear. It seems her lack of worldliness and attraction to fairy-tale romance actually worked for her when selecting the designers and her gown. Diana made her choices before she was so wrapped up in an emotional struggle to please everyone—the palace, the public, the media. She was guided by her own intuition as well as the two designers’ vision where silhouette, color, accessories, length of train, and veil style were created to compliment the woman, the setting, perhaps its symbolic place in history, but, definitely, the heart’s desire of the bride.

Since we know now that Diana’s life had a broader arc, was her queenly, Victoria-inspired, femme-femme bridal silhouette a key ingredient in a powerful “modern mythology” being created? Was it all part of some Divine Feminine plan to help usher in a new spirit stirring the cosmos as we approached the end of an old, tired patriarchal millennium?

It may always remain a heavenly secret, but this query beckons. What, indeed, becomes a bridal legend most? An iconic white gown that truly captures her essential self, yet stands out in some fashionably-designed, breathtaking way; where the woman is the star, the gown only her complement, and we are left with a feeling that a goddess just entered the room. ~

[Excerpts from The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride: For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding, pages 42, 44 and 51.]

{The Princess Myth}

Dear Bride-to-Be: 

In my new book, The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride, I write about the origin and mysteries of the “princess myth”—the underlying desire of women to feel and look like a princess. From my experiences working with thousands of brides through the years, I share how this desire influences many women when planning their wedding and, in some cases, it’s the core reason some want to be a bride! This “princess” desire—stirred by royal brides to Disney princesses—can work to deepen your feminine strength...your goddess nature; or it can move you to live in a fractured fairy tale of illusion and disappointment.

So a recent article in Vogue Daily about wedding gowns caught my eye: “The Cool Girl’s Guide to Wedding Shopping.” It shares that “while there’s nothing wrong with wanting to go traditional, not every bride dreams of a dress of Disney-princess proportions.” The article features colorful, floral, unfussy designer dresses—not a crinoline or corset or pouf in sight! (Of course what’s considered “traditional” hasn’t always been, well, “traditional”—you’ll find intriguing stories in my book.)

Yes, we’re all affected by what’s “fashionable”—even if we’re rebels or free-spirits! So keep that in mind when shopping for a wedding dress: Is it the latest fashion that’s tugging at your heart or maybe 'tis some once-upon-a-time “princess” yearning? Or perhaps something deeper happens when you try on the dress? Something more akin to: “I feel like a destiny-shaping goddess…inside and out!”

Love. Listen. Let go.

…with love from Cornelia

ps: I think you’ll enjoy the various stories and examples in my new book about how this “princess myth” lives in our modern culture…and perhaps you’ll see yourself in one of them! The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride {Volume One} For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding is available at Amazon.com.

[Image above from 1970s Gunne Sax, Jessica McClintock Inc.] 

{The Joy of White}

Dear Bride-to-Be: 

Are you wearing white for your wedding?  Volumes have been written about the mystery and allure of the white wedding dress—as well as the symbolic notions of its pure color. Ancient Egyptians, considering the color sacred, draped their brides in gossamer layers of accordion-pleated white linen. The ancient Greeks and Romans, with their ever-present gods and goddesses, assigned symbolic meaning to everything; the color white represented “joy” and was worn for most festive occasions, including weddings.

Through the centuries various colors went in and out of fashion for brides—in fact, I tell many of their stories in my upcoming book. But a number of European princesses from wealthy kingdoms felt it their right to dress as opulently as possible so were costumed in gold and silver fabrics—sometimes encrusted with diamonds and other precious gemstones

So of course in 1840 when the young Queen Victoria wore “plain” white satin and lace instead of the glittering lavishness of her predecessors, she set a new standard—and the rest is bridal history! (In contrast her gown perhaps seemed “simple,” but both the silk satin and lace were lush, exquisitely handmade, and of great value.)

I’d love to venture inside the head of this much-in-love, girl-of-a-queen bride to know if her desire for an all-white wedding was truly from an idea of “purity” and humbleness or just her uncluttered fashion sense. Or perhaps there was some essence of mythological romance that captured the heart of a young woman deeply in love. Indeed, the only color Victoria wore was near her heart: the large blue sapphire brooch her beloved Albert gave her as wedding present.

Love. Listen. Let go.

…with love from Cornelia

ps: I’ll keep you posted about the release of my new book, The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride {Volume One} For Better or Worse, How Princess Diana Rescued the Great White Wedding. 

{Divine Connections}

Dear Bride-to-Be:
The color blue, long considered a "bridal" color, has divine connections. Blue is the color associated with Mary, mother of Jesus, and with Brigit, the Celtic goddess of healing and the arts. Brigit, called the maiden goddess of springtime, was also known as Bride—who gave her name to a woman about to wed. Therefore, as a bride, you are the namesake of a goddess!

Use your time well in this legendary bridal spotlight. Start or continue practices that take care of you...mind, body and spirit: Journaling; eating healthy foods; doing stretch exercises; breathing slower and deeper; having some quiet, reflective time each day. This helps keep your mind clear, your body vibrant, and your heart open to receive and give love. It's just naturally what a goddess would do!

Love. Listen. Let go.
...with love from  Cornelia

ps: And if you're feeling that "goddess vibe," then you'll love my book, The Bride's Ritual Guide: Look Inside to Find Yourself....

[Photograph: Priscilla Wannamaker]

{The Language of Flowers}

Dear Bride-to-Be:

I thought you'd enjoy this reprint of my article, The Language of Flowers, published in the summer issue of SEASON magazine.

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Bridal folklore throughout history, inspired by goddess mythology, tells of maidens entwining creamy white, aromatic orange blossoms into a bridal wreath for their hair, to ensure fertility; or carrying a bunch of sweet smelling white lilacs, representing innocence; or tucking fragrant herbs into their bouquets, rosemary for remembrance and dill, believed to provoke lust. (Both herbs were also eaten for their supposed powers!)

 

Along came the French, picking up where the ancient Persians left off by assigning meanings to flowers and herbs, and in 1819 published Le Langage des Fleurs. The etiquette-driven Victorians, as passionate as they were sentimental about flowers, followed suit. With so many rules and restrictions about what was proper to say to whom—and outright flirtations certainly prohibited—they adopted the romance-filled language of flowers, creating their own dictionary-like books, lyrically illustrated, to help sort it all out.

 

This romantic language was perfect for weddings. Many brides, including royal ones, get a bit sentimental when it comes to their wedding bouquet. Queen Victoria carried a nosegay of snowdrops, representing friendship (they were her beloved Albert’s favorite flower); and Grace Kelly, after much thought, selected lilies of the valley as her simple wedding bouquet, meaning return of happiness. And of course Kate Middleton included blooms of Sweet William, signifying gallantry.

 

During the golden-age of movies, whatever the royalty-like brides of old Hollywood loved, the rest of America did as well—and they loved orchids! Especially huge, lush cattleya varieties that, if truth be told, were overtly sexual. Although a “language of flowers” book might say the orchid represents beauty and refinement, Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, called it “the sexiest flower on the planet.” So no matter what some whimsical Victorian floriography says (or what post-war brides and their mothers pretended), an orchid’s real language was passionate, sensual, even erotic.

Yet, ironically, as was the fashion, a large opulent orchid sat on top of a bride’s small, white bible; or was attached innocently to her fur or satin muff; or worn as an oversized wedding corsage. Orchids were also popular in the center of big, boisterous bridal bouquets, like eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Taylor carried for her first wedding in 1950, right before the premiere of Father of the Bride with Spencer Tracey. (She didn’t carry orchids in all of her eight weddings, but Goddess Liz knew her way ‘round passion so she included them often!)                        

 

Needless to say, the language of flowers could be confusing: their “meanings” changed because of fashion or locale or color; or with what other blossom it was combined. No wonder tussie-mussies and nosegays—a style of mixing specific herbs and flowers—became so popular in the Victorian era (and were forerunners of the modern bridal bouquet.) Since these “talking bouquets” said the sweet-nothings for you, gentlemen suitors carefully chose their flower combinations, assuring the appropriate message be delivered to their sweetheart. (Plus one did not want the nosegay intended for tonight’s dinner hostess mixed up with last night’s paramour, etcetera.)

 

However, if your flower choices for a wedding bouquet don’t match up as you’d like with the messages in a Language of Flowers book, then just assign them your own romantic meanings and I’m certain the flower goddesses will bless you! ~

 

 

 
[This is a reprint of my article published in the summer issue of SEASON magazine. See page 74.]

{Springtime Inspiration}

Dear Bride-to-Be:
From ancient goddess folklore comes the story of Brigit -- also known as Bride in the Gaelic form -- who was considered the maiden goddess of springtime. Doesn't it makes perfect sense that an origin of our bridal traditions comes from the essence of spring: an abundant, life-giving time of renewal and beauty? And it's a glorious season to have a wedding!

If you are a bride during this new growth, shades-of-green season, then your inspirations come touched with goddess magic and love.

And as I continue my blog sabbatical to focus on finishing my new book, The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride, I call on this womanly, goddess-like support and beautiful, renewing energy of springtime as well...and I use deep, easy breaths to help my work, well, bloom!

Give it try: Take a deep, slow breath...then another 'n another...and feel the ease and comfort it brings. Whenever you are having your wedding, the pleasure of it all increases if you slow down, find some quiet time, and take luscious, easy, deep breaths and enjoy the beauty of the season...and you'll be more present for your wedding.

Love. Listen. Let go.
...with love from Cornelia

ps: While I continue to work on my new book, I'd love for you to take a look at my other book, The Bride's Ritual Guide: Look Inside to Find Yourself. Brides of all ages and "seasons" have enjoyed its stories and message ever since Amazon released it to best seller reviews! Women say they learn things they never knew about weddings, being a bride, and how to enjoy the experience even more. And when you order the book using these links, you'll receive free gifts: two relaxation CDs and a vintage six-pence to bring abundance! Ahhhh...the gifts of springtime!

pps: I'll keep you posted on the progress of The End of the Fairy-Tale Bride...its release planned for later this year!

[Photograph: Ian Grant]