Dark Cup of Light
A Healing for Self, Community, Planet, and Gods
Francesca De Grandis

She shattered the cup, boxed the pieces up to send to her spiritual
teacher. The cup, the chalice, the mother, the Goddess. She enclosed a
verbal attack, denouncing the teacher for charging for lessons. 

This happened in the 21st century. In ancient times, a shaman charged.
“To cheat him or her of payment was considered stupid.”*

She shattered the cup, the chalice, the mother-embrace, the Goddess-link. 
She is afraid of her mother, and of her Mother, and of herself
and all her beauty.
           
The teacher’s friend commented, “I’ve never known a shattered cup to
mend. Throw it out. Forget it.”

In ancient times, the shaman had a reputable profession.

The student’s teacher often taught for free, had explained there are
lessons that, for one reason or another, cannot be exchanged for
money or goods. Other lessons cannot even be given for free. But she
—the student—broke the cup, the mother-womb of caring, the
ancestral link to the Old Ones.

Down, down, down go the misled, the fearful. The teacher can bless them,
hope for them, long for them, weep for them. She can protect herself as
they reach up from a well of pettiness to drag her in. Pettiness is a sad
and awful thing to be snared by, it is an abyss, not a womb or vagina.

The shaman can smile at the fearful and misled, offer her professional
services —for free or for fee, as is appropriate. She can hide both her
light and darkness from them until they’re ready to see these
without attacking. She can decide, “I’m not going to let anyone
f**k with me.”

But she cannot save them. Our caretakers, the earth among them,
see us naked—our full magnificence, potential, misery, lies, and failures.
If we cannot face one of our powers, fragilities, or shortcomings, we
refute those who can: We tell lies about them. Like “She doesn’t
understand me.” Or “She wasn’t there for me when I needed her.”
“She doesn’t know the mysteries.” “She doesn’t have real power.”

Or we take a high “moral” ground. “You’re bad because you charge
for lessons” is a particularly effective way to leave a loving witness behind
and hide one’s misdeeds. It targets and annihilates a core responsibility
that a student has, thereby severing a connection. The teacher cannot save
the fearful and misled. Her path is narrow, more so every moment. There’s
no time to spare on fretting. Not about anything, not about those who try to
extinguish light, who smash a cup. They have denied the Dark Womb
who had held them, forsaken the God of Light who flowed from it. So,
now they’ll wander, perhaps through lifetimes. Until there’s the
decision and opportunity to fulfill their Karma, to come home, to buy a
new chalice, a pretty one, and give it to the teacher.

She has not forsaken them, even though she will not be f**ked with. She is
calm and patient or abrupt and stern, both responses acts of love.

If you take but do not give back what’s right, your chalice breaks. Payment
of meaningful words and trinkets sometimes isn’t enough. When the
mother, the Mother, the teacher, Gaia gives her life, her breath, her
DNA, the marrow from her bones, hard cash may be the payment needed
—at least from those who have it to give.

The cup, the chalice, the teacher, the Gods—fill them with grateful
payment. You’ll be feeding the earth. You’ll be feeding yourself.

Sometimes money is love.

*Author's Note: My friend Kush said this though the version in this
story is a paraphrase.