Earth — The South, the Ancestors
Everything for this gateway, gathered in one place: the teaching, the recordings, the practices, and the map of your own blood.
From the Triangle into the Four
The first three gateways wove the Triangle. Maiden, Mother, Crone: the three lights, the trinity of forces, the Yoni Temple at the base of the cross. These are not ideas to hold. They are faces, presences of the psyche, met from within. Three is the number of spirit, of what moves and creates.
Now the register changes, not only the shape. We move from faces to forces, from presence met within to elements met beneath the feet. The triangle opens into the square: the four directions of the womb's earth. Four is the number of matter, the ground itself. Carry the square into a third dimension and it becomes the cube — six faces, resting on one another, the most stable of the solids. This is Earth: the element that holds still so everything else can stand.
Pythagoras heard the numbers as living powers, each one a stage in the unfolding of the world. One is the seed-point, undivided: iccha, the will, the yes before the mind finds words. Two is the first reaching-out, the line: jnana, the knowing that only comes through relationship. Three is the triangle, the first shape that can hold space: kriya, the power that clears ground so something new can form. This is the shape we have just walked. Four is the square, the ground of the material world: Earth herself. This is the shape we walk now.
This is the descent the whole pilgrimage has been moving toward. Not a fall into the ground, but a homecoming to it. The trinity of spirit takes a body. The three become four. The faces become forces. Here, at Earth, spirit learns to stand.
The Soil We Inherit
We arrive at the South. The lower womb, the HARA, the ground at the base of the sacrum. Here the mantra is AH-DOO-MA, and the Goddess is Pachamama, the Earth herself. This is the gate of the ancestors, of the soil, of everything that came before us and still lives in the body.
Before a seed can grow, we meet the soil. The soil of the womb is not empty. It is thick with what has been planted here, season after season, generation after generation. The grooves worn into us by repetition. The beliefs that feel like bedrock and are only sediment.
A belief is a conclusion we have come to live inside, as though it were the world itself. I am not enough. It is not safe to be seen. There is never enough to go around. My body cannot be trusted. We rarely chose these. Many were planted before we could speak, before we could consent. And many were never even ours. A grandmother's fear of being seen. A great-grandmother's hunger. A great-great-grandmother whose abuse was silenced. A mother's grief she could not put down. The womb is the first ground into which these seeds fell, and the womb is where they live now, at the center of our creative life force, the energy that fuels the pranic body, feeding the emotions and the samskaras held in the mind.
This is the inheritance. Not only the colour of the eyes and the shape of the hands, but the shape of the fears, the reflexes of the heart, the armor of the family crest, the protective suite, the old agreements about what a woman may and may not want. A belief system is a whole field of these, tended across a lineage, handed down like a language we learned so young we forgot it was ever taught.
At Earth, we come to see them. The work here is gentle. We turn the soil, we let the light reach what has been buried. We do not tear the roots out by force. We bring what is hidden into awareness, and awareness does what force cannot.
When a belief is seen as a belief, rather than felt as truth, it loosens its grip. When a pattern is witnessed as a pattern, rather than worn as who I am, it begins to soften. This is the whole of the practice: to become the one who watches the inheritance, instead of the one who is lived by it.
Feel the sit bones. Feel the weight of the body drawn down into the ground. Breathe into the lower belly until the pelvic bowl softens. Sound AH-DOO-MA, low, into the bones. And ask, without hurrying the answer: whose voice is this? Whose fear? Was it ever mine?
The ancestors are not only the wound. In the same soil lives their resilience, their devotion, their courage, the love that survived everything. As we see what we would lay to rest, we also recover what we would keep. This is the composting of the South. The old leaf falls, and it feeds the ground.
The Belief as Protector
Every belief we carry was once a keeper.
Before we name a belief a wound, we might meet it another way. Each one began as protection. It is not safe to be seen once kept a small girl from a danger she could not yet understand. There is never enough kept a whole lineage alive through famine. Do not want too much softened a grief that had nowhere else to go. The belief stood as a guardian at the gate, doing the only thing it knew: keeping us safe.
To objectify the belief is to lift it out of the body and set it down in front of you, so it becomes something you can see, rather than something you see through. While a belief is me, it runs my life. Once it becomes an object in my hands, I can turn it over, thank it, and choose.
A contemplation.
Bring to mind one belief that has shaped you. I am too much. I am not enough. Love will cost me. Let it come as it is, without softening it.
Feel where it lives in the body. The throat, the belly, the sit bones, the ground of the womb. Breathe there. Sound AH-DOO-MA, low, into that place.
Now ask it, gently: what have you been protecting? What did you keep me safe from? How old was I when you first came? Wait. Let the answer rise from the soil, not from the mind.
When you see the young one it was guarding, the girl, the mother, the grandmother, place a hand on the body and say: thank you. You kept me alive. I am here now. You can rest.
This is the composting of the South. We do not tear the guardian from the gate. We relieve it of a watch it no longer has to keep. What once protected us can be laid down in the earth, with gratitude, and become soil again.
The AH-DOO-MA Mantra
The mantra of this gateway, sounding through the bones.
🎧 Listen — AH-DOO-MA Mantra · about 7 minutes.
Let the sound settle low, into the lower womb, the HARA, the ground at the base of the sacrum. Sound with it, or rest and let it move through you.
Sama Vritti · The Equal Breath
Sama, "equal, even." Vritti, "the turning of the breath." Also known as equal part breathing.
Centre in the heart. Sit in meditation pose or Yoni Asana, hands in Yoni Mudra. Count four in, four full retention, four out, four void retention. Practice four rounds or more. When the mind scatters, the count returns it to the earth.
This practice will be introduced properly in the next practice session. It is optional for now, for anyone who would like to add another practice to their sequence to calm the mind.
A Native American Prayer
Acknowledge the ancestors by saying Grandmothers and Grandfathers.
1. Ask for permission. A reweaving of honour, respect, and humbleness. In the world of oneness we transcend such boundaries, and in the world of form, cultivating the sacred law of reciprocity and alliance with the life forces brings a deeper connection and transfiguration with life.
2. In the name of me, and my lineage. In the name of me and Humanity. Your name is your wind, an evocation of your incarnation, connecting you to who you are in form. To honour our ancestors is to honour those who came before us in this web of life, from whence we came.
3. To bring forth. Forgiveness to all that needs to be recognised: to the wound of the land, to the pain of isolation, displacement, and fear.
4. Through the sacred law of reciprocity. Ayni, a Quechua word from the Peruvian Andes, meaning "today for you, tomorrow for me." Ayni is the thread that holds the fabric of Andean life together. Giving and receiving are inseparable, an exchange of energy between humans, nature, and the universe. Through this recognition we may state: As a sign of my willingness to re-establish eg: peace love and harmony x3
5. I offer this sacred blow of life. So that you may take what you need to feel healed. When one gives, one also receives, and harmony is kept.
Close with gratitude. Thank you, Grandmothers and Grandfathers.
The Fourth Gateway
The teaching for this gateway: the earth, the South, the ancestors.
▶️ Watch the recording · about 22 minutes
Passcode: bj%#3W3K
Open Concepts
A way of meeting the mind, and the inheritances it carries.
▶️ Watch the recording · about 15 minutes
Passcode: $Syb.A9%
Practice: either as a meditation, a minimum of 5 minutes, or as a micro-practice, one minute of open concepts every hour through the day.
The Earth Womb Bowl
Try to consecrate this practice within the coming days.
▶️ Watch the recording · about 7 minutes
Passcode: Df8?LCKR
Practice: source the bowl that will become your womb. Practice with it a minimum of 5 minutes.
Menstrual Mysteries
This teaching speaks to the initiation into the blood lineage.
We travel across the planet looking to other lineages for their teachings. What of what lies deep within the blood of our own? What if mastering our cycle was the practice?
▶️ Watch the recording · about 35 minutes
Passcode: 7&.Hyp^@
Mapping Your Cycle
Print the wheel below. Map your own menstruation onto it: the four inner seasons, and the three phases within each. Let the year of your body become visible.
🖨️ Open the printable wheel — open, then print (the rings, inner to outer: cycle day, body & energy, mood, dreams).
The Playlists
Each gateway carries its own current. These playlists were curated in resonance with the energetic architecture of this gateway. Sound is not neutral: tone, rhythm, frequency, and atmosphere impress themselves upon the subconscious and take part in shaping perception, emotion, memory, and coherence.
As much as you can during the immersion, let these be your sound. You might set aside other music for now, especially music carrying strong nostalgic, romantic, or identity-based imprints, which tends to call the field back toward familiar patterns and timelines.
- 🎵 Meditation — open in Spotify
- 🎵 Personification — open in Spotify
The Practices — Building a Daily Practice
You now hold these practices for this gateway. On average, a minimum of fifteen minutes a day. Transfigure this time as being with the Goddess that you are. I AM.
Consecration — centre in the heart.
Earth Grounding — feel the sit bones, feel the feet. Let the weight of the body draw down into the ground. Breathe into the lower belly until the pelvic bowl softens. Rest your hands on the lower womb, the HARA. (a few minutes, any time you feel scattered.)
Pelvic Presence — rewatch the practice as often as you feel, to find the flow. Attune to the subtle dimensions through the five bodies. (10–30 min, at least once a week, ideally 4–7 days, no pressure.)
Yoni Asana — enter gently. You may practise the sounding in the posture, and the rocking. (~7 min with the sounding, use props.)
Yoni Mudra — hands in Yoni Mudra over the womb. Drop into stillness. Listen. Feel. Add this into your practice with yoni asana and sounding
Sounding for the Gateway — use your voice to sound AH-DOO-MA, low, into the bones. Let the sound emerge from the womb, no forcing. ( 7 min a day.)
Sama Vritti — the equal breath, four counts in, four counts out, dropped low into the belly, the exhale long and complete. (a few minutes, you may practice before the sounding)
Open Concepts — as a meditation for 5 minutes, or as a micro-practice, one minute every hour.
Earth Womb Bowl — Working this year with the clearing and cleansing ritual.
Menstrual Mapping — map your cycle onto the wheel. Return to it across the moon.
Playlists — meditation and personification.
Mula Bandha — the root lock, now initiated. A gentle drawing-up and sealing of the pelvic floor, the perineum, so the energy rises inward rather than spilling out. Formally and informally.
Reading — the ebook and extra material. (45 min or more per cycle.)
Let the practice become a natural enquiry and walk through the Earth Element.
Loving and adoring you, Shakti. If anything is unclear, just ask. 🌹