When I lit my candle in front of a large statue of Kwan Yin that lives in my shrine room this morning, I gave thanks for all the ways in which She watches over me. One of the many blessings from Kwan Yin is the Mt Shasta Goddess Temple, where I am a Skydancer Priestess. The Temple is a place of deep devotion and spiritual learning, created and supported by smart women doing wonderful things. It sustains me with sisterhood and the experience of walking a priestess path with other like-spirited women. It challenges me to take my practice to new levels of service and commitment. At the heart of the temple is Mandala Priestess Yeshe Meryemana Matthews, who founded the temple on the winter solstice of 2015. Priestess Yeshe knew the world needed a living goddess temple that would help women empower themselves to create goddess culture and bring the female divine into Her rightful place in these times.
Based on the many wonderful stories I had heard from beloved coven sisters, in the fall of 2019, I reached out to Priestess Yeshe and experienced the beeswax divination that precedes enrollment in her Woman Shaman Priestess training program. There were so many aspects of that reading that struck a deep chord in me, messages from my ancestors, memories of past lives as a priestess, and gentle suggestions about how to move my practice forward. The two years I spent in the Temple training programs Woman Shaman Priestess and Flight of the Skydancer, were profound and joyous. I returned to using my frame drum and remembered other shamanic training from earlier in this lifetime and prior lifetimes. I learned new techniques for accessing the wisdom that lives inside my body and is mirrored in the stars. I taught and shared these experiences with other women with a renewed sense of purpose and commitment to the expansion of all gentle beings. Holding a stranger as she sobs over a pot of steaming water because no one has ever, ever paid that kind of holy attention to her yoni was both deeply familiar because I have done such work in many lifetimes, but also intensely healing as I found myself back home.
The Mt Shasta Goddess Temple is also Tsogyal Lhamo Drayang Ling, a Tibetan name that means “Melodious Tsogyal Lhamo Temple.” Although the temple welcomes women from many spiritual traditions, it is rooted in Tibetan Buddhism and Goddess Spirituality and a 100,000 mantra offering to Kwan Yin was one of the first collective acts by its members. When I was about ten years old, my family lived one door down from a large and wonderful Vietnamese family with many kids the same age and me and my brother. Mrs. Nguyen would perform daily devotion at the simple but beautiful Buddhist altar in their living room. Fresh oranges and apples that were not for eating and daily incense sticks spoke to my open heart and beginner’s mind. I began to visit the altar every day after school, as part of spending time in the Nguyen household which was always bustling and full of delicious treats (both my parents were at work). I came to appreciate Kwan Yin through the deep compassion Mrs. Nguyen in particular, showed me and my brother—the meals, the movie nights, the connection when my parents were away. I am forever grateful to Priestess Yeshe and the Mt Shasta Goddess Temple for offering me a devotional practice to the Divine Feminine in the form of Kwan Yin, as well as a sense of true community and sisterhood.
Travelling with members of the Temple on holy pilgrimage to Hawaii and Turkiye was deeply meaningful to my Sagittarian soul that loves to level up spiritually through sacred travel. As an archaeologist I have visited many amazing places, but the journeys taken with other priestesses have rekindled my memories of past lifetimes serving the Divine Feminine all over the world. I now understand why archaeology called to me. Through the Mt Shasta Goddess Temple I have a community truly dedicated to the benefit of all beings, that gives freely and without expectation to all sisters engaged in sacred work, and that lives peacefully. This is a precious gift and a cornerstone of my spiritual practice in this lifetime, and for all lifetimes to come.
