Woman, Earth and Capitalism

When Earth first came into being, birthed from a messy, star-burst labour, the essence of woman also came into being. Essence meaning, the very root of something or someone - the root of the word essence is the Latin verb Esse, meaning ‘to be’.

This is important, because ‘to be’ is a verb. ‘To be’ is to do, even though capitalism teaches us that ‘to do’ is to be.

No matter what origin story, religion, belief system or way of living you follow, the point remains. When Earth was birthed, so was the essence of woman. If we continue with that line of logic, we assume that the essence of Earth, is the same as that of woman.

And that is regeneration; to create from nothing, to create for the sake of life and to sustain life, despite the inevitability of death.

The key word here is sustain. Sustenance is the very fabric of Earth, because it is blessed with all that we need. The Indigenous people know this, they have understood the wisdom seeded into soil and stars, they steward the Earth through it’s cycles to maintain abundance.

Isn’t woman the very same? Womb-an, I should say. In her womb is held the future of humanity. Without it, humans won’t exist, and neither will the stewardship of Earth. Woman is regenerative, in her very essence, she is regenerative because she follows a cycle.

From this, we can understand that Earth and Woman are both cyclical, both exist within their own constellation of phases. If both are regenerative, then it holds true that cycles must be the magick spell of regeneration.

And what are cycles? They are patterns of change.

We’re all well aware that our current system (capitalism, birthed by colonialism) doesn’t exist cyclically, it’s stuck in a rut of GO! GO! GO!

It screams at us in a frenzied rampage to always DO! DO! DO! so that there is MORE! MORE! MORE!

And fair enough, otherwise this system would disintegrate if it isn’t constantly fed.

There is no space for a slowing down or a softening. There’s no space to regenerate in the stillness and slowness, so that we can come back to our doing with renewed vigour.

As compared to Earth, which has been alive beyond our understanding of time, realises that it is just as important to pause as it is to go.

Summer swells and winter contracts, bears hibernate and then they mate, flowers blossom and they wither.

Woman releases as she bleeds, starts to lift from her reverie as she goes into her follicular phase, blossoms during ovulation and lilts inwards as the leaves start falling in her luteal phase.

When we can follow this cycle, we feel in essence.

When capitalism berates us for following this divinely expressed rhythm, we act as if it doesn’t exist and march on until we’re left burnt out.

Much like Earth is (literally) burning as a result of our deafness to its cycles and capitalist gluttony.

So the most resistant, revolutionary and anti-capitalist thing we can do, is return to essence by mirroring our soul-mother, Earth.