So the economic shrinkage has begun, and we are grappling with instability, uncertainty, insecurity. In times like these, finding a place to stand becomes more of a challenge than ever. It’s an important question for many of us: how to sustain what we have been growing all these years, and not be knocked off balance by the far-reaching changes? An insecure position does not have to translate into feeling insecure, I tell myself. Emotional reactions like fear and doubt are natural, but don’t work to our benefit. But faith does.

I want to be really clear about what I’m calling faith. It does not mean believing in something that does not exist, or clinging to an illusory view that does not correspond to reality. For many in a Christian-dominated society (others too!) it connotes believing in a doctrine, in specific entities and scriptures. When I rejected patriarchal religion, these ideas caused me to shy away from the concept of faith. I saw how faith talk was used in the service of doctrine, to control people, and especially to delude and repress women.

But that’s doctrine, and my reaction to doctrine. To stop there closes the door on a transformative power that is real and far-reaching. Faith is not believing in something that doesn’t exist, in particular entities, or any of the cultural delusions we are all too familiar with. Bush II used the word in a bait-and-switch euphemism in order to fund right-wing churches, alias “faith-based” institutions, which bar the formal leadership of women. Bah! Closed minds are the antithesis of real faith, which is expansive vision, optimism and openness to possibility. Faith anchors you in what you most deeply love and value and desire. It confers the ability to look beyond immediate obstacles, hardships, enmities, and to pull yourself through and beyond them.

It is essential to believe in yourself, in your destiny. To reach out to the Fates, and embrace the ultimate meaning of your life. In the memorable words of Mary Daly, to “throw your life as far as it will go.” This means cultivating a deep connection to the Wellspring, the Radiance, and constantly renewing that connection. This is Remembrance of our real nature, that lies underneath all the conditioning and contraction.

Faith is a practice that needs to be cultivated with intention, affirmation, determination. On my altar is a saying: “Full effort is full victory.” I put it there there during a time when things were not going well, as a reminder to keep making the offering, under whatever conditions. Concentrate on the goal—not the difficulties. Energy spent in worry and anxiety about the future is worse than wasted; it’s destructive. Like the saying by Mark Twain: I’ve suffered many disasters—most of which never happened.

Faith is a medicine for disappointment and despair. It alleviates the impulse to strain and lock up under stress. It’s an antidote to fear, and far better than rage and bitterness—which poison the body and injure the spirit. The remedy for those is to come to presence, consciously enter the pain, release the past and transmute poison to nectar.

More than one visionary has said: You have to ask for help. They often say, When the child cries out, how can the Mother stay away? Of course, if you feel foolish doing this, or get caught up in literal-minded debates about deity, you may never get around to trying it. (That’s how all those old rejected doctrines can still get in our way, if we remain stuck in reacting to them.) I prefer to think about it like this: the universe is conscious, magnetic, and responsive. It’s a web of interrelated beings—we have relatives—and our bodies are stardust. Our literal minds can’t grok the totality of it; the only way to witness it is through reunifying our being.

Taoists call this connection with the Whole “the Mysterious Pass.” Through that unfathomable shift we enter the stream of nectar and experience wisdom directly. Mystics say devotion is the easiest way through, expanding from the heart. (It doesn’t have to be devotion to a deity; it could be to Life, Earth, Truth, or your own real nature.) As we learn to enter this state even under conditions of hardship and lack, we deepen our connection, and become stronger and happier.

All well and good, but what we understand in moments of clarity is not so easily put into practice. It has to be actualized over and over again, down to the bones. This happens through a practice of faith, believing in possibility. Reintegration involves dealing with the emotional reactions that come up in life—with compulsions, obsessive thinking, addictive behaviors. Refresh screen! Check in with body! Stress goes to the body, wherever it’s weak. It can’t be suppressed, it can only be released. Apply breath to the toxified places and empty it out.

The faith aspect comes in again once you have done everything possible. At some point, the rest is not up to you, so let go and turn it over. To keep straining past that point—what if? and then what? and second-guessing yourself—only damages body and spirit. It’s good to work hard, but not to feel like you’re pushing a boulder up a hill. By all means learn from mistakes, but dwelling on them is not helpful. I’m at this point of learning to stop straining and stressing, to become peaceful regardless of outcomes. I don’t know how I will pay the rent in two months. But worrying about it only makes me freeze up, and it burns energy I can’t spare. Much better to offer it up, ask for help, and take everything as an opportunity for self-transformation.

One way of doing this is praying with the body, opening awareness through movement and incantation, stretching and breathing, invoking and chanting the names of Goddess. I’ve improvised incantations, and compiled litanies of goddesses from various lost traditions. Some ancient litanies have survived in inscriptions, like the profound and majestic litanies of Neith, the Kemetic Mother of the Gods. Or the hymns of Inanna written by the priestess Enheduanna (the first author in the world whose name is known). Or the aretalogies of Isis, which take the form of the goddess affirming her qualities:

One place where Goddess litanies are still alive is India. There are ten or twelve of them, the most popular being the Sri Lalitaambika Sahasranama (“Thousand Names of the Mother Who Plays”).2 Many people chant it every day. It contains the names of familiar Goddesses—Kali, Durga, Lakshmi—as aspects of the Supreme Reality from which everything arises. (This is “the Mother’s Play,” from which the litany takes its name.) The Sahasranama also celebrates the microcosm of the chanter’s own body, blood, and marrow as part of the Whole, and it is rich in affirmations of divine qualities: Shraddha Daa, “Giver of faith,” and Durlabhaa, “Attained through difficulty.”

Daily invocation is a way to strengthen and clarify and attune to these qualities in yourself and around you. Calling on “Pranesvari, who is the breath of life itself, and who grants prana,” you become more reverent and conscious of breath, which reunifies the elements in your body. Chanting these names is a powerful meditation practice which activates faith and strengthens the spirit. These are some of the names I love to chant:

Holy Mother who governs all, blessed one seated on a lion…

Thousand petalled lotus, pouring forth the nectar of essence…

Forever pure, forever aware, stainless, endless…

All-knowing, compassionate one, than whom none is greater
Who possesses all powers, auspicious in every way, granting the true goal…

Consciousness, supreme bliss, in the form of intense wisdom…

Auspicious one at the root of the world, sea of compassionate essence…

The wish-fulfilling tree to devotees, who frees those who bound from bondage
Who is like cool moonlight to those burned by the three fires…

She who is worshipped in secret rites, for whom secret libations are poured out.
And who responds with instant grace, the universal witness, herself unwitnessed…

Effulgence, light itself, ultimate attainment, supreme sovereign…

Immeasurable, self-illumined one, who is beyond mind and speech…

Serenity, benediction, luminosity, delightful beloved, destroyer of obstacles
Brilliant, three eyed one, the glance of women’s desire…

Dakini Goddess surrounded by Immortality and other powers…

She who wipes away all disease and wards off all forms of death…

Supreme power, established beyond, who is intense divine knowledge…

Great one, compassion itself, blissfully ruling the universe…

Self-knowledge, great wisdom, blessed wisdom, attended by desire…

She who is within the heart, blazing like the sun, like a triangle of lights…

Primordial power, unmeasured Self, supreme, sanctified
She who has birthed tens of millions of universes, divine embodiment…

She who is attained through meditation, unlimited
Giver of knowledge, embodied knowledge…

1. Aretalogy of Isis from Cyme, circa 200 CE, from Sophie Drinker, Music and Women, p 114

2. Sri Lalitasahasranama, translated by Sw.Tapasyananda, Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, no date. This is one of the better translations; however what appears above is my adaptation based on several translations and my own study.

This article wraps up my third year of Seasonal Salons, and is my last for now, though I’ll contribute on a more occasional basis. Thanks to Lynnie Levy! I’m working on carving out that “place to stand” in this economy, while finishing The Secret History of the Witches. I’ll be offering online courses on priestesses, diviners, and healers.