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The Mechica (Azteca) Moon Dance near the Teotehuacan Pyramids, October 2002

The news of the bombing in Bali tipped the scales for me and I jumped on a plane to Mexico City to join my Mechica (Azteca) sisters in their strong and beautiful moon dance, tribute to the Mechica Moon Goddess, Coyusouxi. We danced and fasted through the night for four nights, with sweatlodges each dusk and dawn. The intent: to use our bodies/consciousness to pull the feminine energies of the moon to the earth plane to help balance these agressive forces that rage on Gaia's surface.


I didn't think I'd have the stamina to join the dance this year--so close to my Bali trip. But after the bombing, I couldn't imagine being elsewhere than this circle of strong-hearted women, and the beautiful men that support them to keep going through the round of nights. I am so inspired by their commitment to consciousness, their clarity, their determination to leave behind victimhood, their tolerance for adversity. For instance, the second day it rained hard. The circle we dance in was a sea of mud. The kind that sticks to your shoes and clumps up thick. The dance is a line dance. We make formations: serpents, waves, spirals, stars, and columns aligned with the four directions. There is no time or place to scrape one's shoes off. So it was a night of slipping and sliding on these mounds of mud stuck to our shoes.

The dance involves brief periods of rest where we seek visions in the dream-time. Each one has her place in the circle to lie down, with her little stash of bedding. So, it was just lie down in the mud. By morning, we had danced the circle dry.

There was not even one little complaint. No whining. Not a peep.

This was my third dance. But the first that I went into without resistance, without internal chatter aimed at rearranging, calculating, assessing, analyzing, etc. Every time I found myself engaging in such, I would return to some simple focus, like feeling my heart as a source of fire, or bathing my third eye in the luminesence of the moon, or kissing the earth with my dancing feet--and receiving her embrace in return.

It was so good to move beyond resistance. The rewards so much greater.

During the first two days and nights, I went through a period of rigorous testing by the group. The anti-American sentiment was high. I just took refuge in the moonlight. I kept thinking: I understand. I know. I know. I agree.

In the fourth sweatlodge, I spoke of my personal history providing a particularly acute struggle to belong, and how ironic it was to hold this challenge as one of two "gringas" in a group of 60 women. They laughed. The circle opened, and I was in it. It was that simple. Then, we rose to a magnificent unity. It's hard to describe how good this felt.

It is so good that this kind of work is happening. I'm sure it's happening all over the globe. This group that I dance with, since I last danced with them three years ago, has since splintered into four groups and this one splinter has grown from 30 to 60.

Rhythms of nature, ancient mythology, warrioresses of consciousness, men supporting women to do their spiritual work...all in the shadow of the Teotehuacan pyramids. Gracias, hermanas.