How does our attachment to the idea of youthful beauty arrest the recognition of poised maturity? The relinquishment of the flower bride into the earth and the alchemical process that occurs away from the light of day, incubating the transformed goddess, represents my own evolution. I am now ready for all that this sovereignty symbolises.

Releasing the Flower Bride
 
Once upon a time
She walked in beauty,
like a spring morning. 
Her skin was like a damask rose barely kissed by the dawn dew.
The world was sunshine, the skies were cloudless.
Flowers blossomed at her every step and she was blessed.

The Hag Approaches

She walks without beauty.
 
In mizzle she stamps,
bony knees, brown with the tannins of the bog,
her sagging thighs, puckered and patchy, have long-forgotten the strength of youth. 
 
In dusk she trudges,
clod feet cleave the mire, her greying hair falling over her face covering unshed tears, 
pooling in soft punches under her red-rimmed fire eyes. 
 
In darkness she strides,  
age-mottled hands clutching at damp wool, rubbing snot from her steaming nose.
And so,
 
She walks without beauty.

The transformation of a Goddess
 
She walks in ugly beauty, 
​​​​Her being is as it should be.
Glorious she walks in the fullness of sun and moon, and in between. 
Her golden wealth comes from the richness of those lines and the stretched skin which held her babies.
Her silver wealth comes with the greying times which herald her as she should be – as she always was.
She walks in ugly beauty and is neither of these things.

Tilly Meredith is a facilitator and a long-time educationalist in both study and practice. From an early age her deepest soul-longing was to commune with nature and to explore imagination. She has a love of myth, folklore and story and appreciates how this cosmology can expand our view of the present and future. She is currently working with two friends on developing The Wisdom School which revolves around the Celtic year, working with myths, craft and communal wisdom to grow emotional and practical resilience for the future.

Words and images ©  Tilly Meredith 2021.