Spirit Doll

Blood Mystery Spirit Doll

She became a prayer

and a song of something very old and powerful

and deeply healing for me,

the one who she birthed herself through.

Seven times around the sun it took,

the clay of her molded back then, when my girl was still small,

in the deep winter forest of Toolangi where we lived.

Her head and hands and feet I molded and fired,

so fierce she looked then and almost like a man.

I had dreamed her up there, a protector for my girl child,

a wild one, with beads and fur and bone,

and birds wings.

I found a wee bird dead on the forest road,

and saved her wings for my own wee one’s doll.

And then the years passed by

and she traveled around with us unfinished,

from house to house she came

wrapped in some possum skin and tucked in a string bag.

Sometimes I pulled her out to finish, but never did,

sometimes I tried to claim her as my own,

forgetting she was for my girl,

once I nearly threw her out.

Until it was time for my girl’s first moon blood to flow

and she whispered to me “It is time.”

and so I sewed and  stitched and visioned her whole.

In her chest I placed the big rose quarts heart

that our beautiful friend Lisa had gifted us

when my girl was a babe.

It had moved between us over the years

and had been the anchor

that had soothed on many occasions

when we were apart, when she was young.

For thirteen years it had dwelt on my alter

and now it found it’s home in this doll.

In her womb I placed the two jade stones

that had sat beside the rose quartz on my alter.

Gifted to us at the market by a traveling gypsy

for peace and harmony between mother and child,

she had been 2 then,

and over the years I had gone to great pains

to keep those two little stones together.

On her head I placed wild woolen hair

and around her neck beads,

turquoise for clarity of speech,

indigenous seeds that my Mother had gifted from the desert,

cowry shells in her ears,

and clothing of silks and velvets from old clothes

worn out from love and time.

 When I ran out of stuffing my mother came,

mysteriously knowing my need

she carried more stuffing with her

and she cared for my little one’s

while I sewed and painted and adorned,

a labyrinth on her womb,

blood on her brow,

nipples, dark fur and a plump, ruby heart.

Naked and without hair she frightened me,

so fierce she seemed

and so full of some mysterious power unknown to me.

Who was this creature demanding her own birth

with such steadfast resolve.

I hurried, my hands shaking to drape her in cloth,

soften her with hair,

to ease my own discomfort

at the hidden power that dwelt

in what I was creating.

Over the years I had lost the original wings

found in Toolangi,

but it just so happened that at this time

I traveled back through that place

and there on the road, a dead red-browed finch,

a potent and poignant gifting from life,

the wings for our doll.

And then she was finished,

the weight of her felt almost alive.

And there was a soft compassion in her eyes now,

not so fierce, but the authority remaining.

teaching us about power and depth

and mystery and becoming.

I gifted her to my girl at her Menarche blessing,

with her Grandma and Aunties

and Spirit Sisters circled around.

It felt like our doll had found her home there

in that circle of women,

and a girl becoming maiden.

Lucy Pierce © 2013