What if you discovered something, a piece of fruit that had all the nutrients needed to preserve life in body and mind. This fruit, as you hold it in your hand, was available generously to every child, woman and man. Wouldn’t you want to help others to have some?
This fruit even though easily accessible, had been hidden and a mystery to behold. It was accessible by faith and when consumed was soothing, sweet as nectar and satisfied as a great feast. Does this fruit exist today, you ask. Yes, it does and it is tangible and a mystery.
How may I have the faith to receive such a gift you may ask? Touch the Earth, look to the sky, feel the wind, hear the water and know the great Mother is with you at all times. She offers this sweet fruit with great abundance and she withholds nothing from her children whom she cherishes. The nurturing and strength she offers will carry you through the darkest night and vilest storm.
Her cloak will give you peace. Her presence, often felt and not seen will bring light to your eyes and an inner resolve that dissolves fear. She will comfort you when your faith wanes and hold you all the same. Judgement will never come from her. She doesn’t prescribe how to know her, only to talk to her as if she was sitting beside you. In your own way, your own time. She is your Mother and she loves you unconditionally.
She has lived on through the mystery of beads for millenea. Many cultures call them worry beads and others Rosary beads. Rosary beads have been carried on through the Catholic religion, however their origin is much older. Rosary beads carry the feminine, the goddess, the great Mother. How can a world only have a Father and no Mother? Does this parallel our natural world? As above, so below. We are all enveloped in this beautiful cycle of life. We are the creation and the creators. We are the fathers, the sons, the mothers, the daughters. We learn the way from our Mother. She loves us all; no matter what, always, unconditionally.
If you’d like to know more and be enriched beyond belief, read or listen to The Way of the Rose by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn. Clark’s present day visitations by Our Lady will encourage you and has come for such a day as this. Below are some writings by Clark and Perdita and Our Lady.
Words of Our Lady, Mother Mary to Clark Strand
You have long misunderstood the nature of our relationship. Granted, that misunderstanding served you in certain ways. Seeking My protection under the eaves of churches was your way of staying put. Creating religious institutions in My name allowed you to build towers, build cities, build empires. Going forward, you will not be able to build any of these things. Nor do you have any need of them. You must understand that you are clothed in My robe by virtue of having a body. Nothing can alter that. Nothing can destroy it. Nothing can take that away. So you must not seek protection under the eaves of structures and institutions that, even now, are in the process of being destroyed or dismantled. The robe of My protection is the Earth you stand upon. What your feet touch is none other than the warm body of your Mother. The Earth that rises to meet your footsteps, to support you and carry you forward on your way, is nothing but that mother possum’s back. I will carry you where you must go. There really isn’t any other readiness but that. I will take you where you must go. At birth the umbilical cord is cut and tied off and becomes the navel. But that only happens in your world. I don’t experience any such severing. The cord that once connected you to your mother now connects you to the world, which is also your mother. It is as if I have moved you from one hip to the other when you were born—same mother, different hip. I am carrying you just the same.
Strand, Clark. The Way of the Rose (pp. 233-234). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
A Brief History of the Rosary (from 40,000 BC to today)
Clark Strand
40,000–12,000 B.C.E.—Figurines of the Great Mother are fashioned from stone, bone, antler, or clay. These are all small, portable, and meant to be held. None of the prayers or mantras associated with these figurines have come down to us from the Upper Paleolithic, but it is almost certain that such devotional formulas existed. In terms of function, loosely speaking, these are the first “rosaries.”
12,000 B.C.E.–400 C.E.—Throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, rose garlands are offered to various Mother Goddesses—including Inanna, Isis, and Venus—as a seasonal devotional practice. By the end of the Neolithic, most people are sedentary (live in one place). Larger statues of the Great Mother are installed in shrines or temples and it is to these that the people come with their floral crowns.
400–1,200 C.E.—As Mary gradually displaces the Mother Goddess across Europe, rose garlands are used to crown statues of the Virgin instead. The vast majority of people are illiterate and only superficially Christian in their beliefs, which are still tied to the festivals and folk traditions of the ancient world. For these people, Mary is a Goddess who can grant prayers in her own right. In her miracle stories God and Jesus rarely play a significant role.
1,200–1,400 C.E.—The rose garlands of the past gradually give way to the bead rosary, in which a flower is visualized for every Hail Mary uttered by the devotee. The rosary (or “rose garland”) is then offered to a statue or icon of the Virgin, or to her visualized presence in the devotee’s imagination. The rosary consists of 50 or 150 Hail Marys, uttered like a mantra. There are, as yet, no other prayers or mysteries.
1,400–2,000 C.E.—The rosary gradually develops its modern form. The Catholic Church sees itself as the author of the rosary (which it believes originated in the Middle Ages) and remains almost entirely ignorant of the rosary’s evolutionary past.
Present—The rosary contains Hail Marys (Maters) and Our Fathers (Paters) in a 10:1 ratio and, through its 15 Mysteries, offers a circular ecologically-based, sustainable alternative to the linear, end time scenario of the New Testament narrative, which ends in Apocalypse. The rosary ends the the Coronation of Mary as “Queen of Heaven and Earth,” restoring that ancient title from her earlier incarnations as the Great Mother.
Preserved in the modern rosary are: (1) an ancient form of devotion to the Magna Mater of the Upper Paleolithic, (2) a re-enactment of the Hieros Gamos (the “Sacred Marriage” of a God and Goddess), and (3) the ancient “Mystery Religions” of the pagan world in which human beings and the natural world are not viewed as separate and reincarnation is the rule.
What is the Rosary?
Clark Strand/Perdita Finn
The rosary is one of a tiny handful of spiritual devotions left in the world that we can still turn to in order to get that connection back. For the rosary preserves both the Our Father AND the Our Mother. In the wave-like oscillation of Hail Marys and Our Fathers, the two basic prayers of the rosary, we find a reenactment of the dance of soil and sunlight that gives rise to—and sustains—all life on Earth. Add the fifteen episodic “mysteries” of the rosary to those two prayers and you get the evolutionary storyline of the entire planet reduced to a narrative scale you can relate to and apply to your own experience of life. Birth. Death. Resurrection. It's the oldest, wisest, most durable pattern there is.
In the rosary, the ratio of Maters to Paters is ten to one. The Maters (the Hail Marys) function as both a mantra and a matrix. They are the womb within which our spiritual awareness is conceived and nurtured, and from and into which that spiritual awareness is eventually “born.”
As a prayer, the Hail Mary functions at a very deep, mostly unconscious level. That is why we often have the feeling of “dozing off” during a decade. Recite ten Hail Marys back to back and your breathing becomes more even and relaxed, and your heart-rate slows. Its wisdom comes to us in much the same way that an infant takes in nutrients from its mother's body, along with water, oxygen, and everything else it needs: through the umbilical cord.”
I, Julia, am praying the Rosary. This is something I never expected to do. The picture I included are the beads I made and am using just now. I am not worried and that is not why I join with the beads in prayer. I do believe Clark and Perdita have been given a mission to encourage all of us via the Way of the Rose. Join me, join us.
Julia Parsell is a Certified Holistic Health Counselor with an emphasis on the intersection of science and the sacred. She writes from experiences and transformative understandings that have led her to an authentic and peaceful life. She goes by these names: wife, grandmother, mother, sister, aunt, niece, cousin, and friend. As home educator of her three children, she also developed/ran cafes, and maintained various leadership roles within her community. Her greatest desire is to encourage others to live life fully. Her passions are family, art creation, writing, and trail blazing. She is happily married in Western North Carolina.
