Sat. The Warrior Aspect of the Goddess.

A few extracts from this penultimate chapter...

There is a myth that women are not naturally warriors, that a society dominated by women would not be warlike, that warfare is naturally a domain of men. This gave me great problems.

Some of my friends were influenced by Maria Gimbutas, an archaeologist who confounded the male dominated world of archaeology by saying that the many ancient female images found in European excavations were evidence that a matristic age preceded the age of patriarchy. She stated that this matristic age was a time of peace, of co-existence and of culture because such civilised values were central to the lives of women unlike that of men: "Its people did not produce lethal weapons or build forts in inaccessible places." Instead, inspired by the gentle influence of the goddess, they lived in "comfortable houses," in an "age free of strife." This glorious age in Europe ended suddenly and violently she said with the arrival of the Kurgan marauders who brought with them warfare, military technology and patriarchy. (Ref. Her 1974 study "Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe" and in her later "The Language of the Goddess: Unearthing the Hidden Symbols of Western Civilisation " (Harper & Row, 1989)), Men have reinforced her theory by claiming the warrior role as their own.

Such theories gave me much trouble when I was assessing my own nature to see if I were truly a woman. A psychologist who assessed me as part of a medical team to see if I were psychologically female clearly believed that warlike fantasies were inappropriate. It was fortunate for me that he was the only one to so reject me. Since I was a child I had both a secret female identity and a secret warrior self. Under the white cliffs that guard the coast between Folkestone and Dover I played in dugouts or climbed into trenches constructed to protect my country while imagining myself fighting the invaders - and told my parents at the same time I wanted to be a priest.

This combination of callings later sometimes puzzled me. I did not understand how I could both dream of war and of the priesthood, of destroying evil empires and of being the open hearted healing spiritual leader and woman. Surely these were contradictory aims? My spiritual life was built around a relationship with the creating Deity. Could this warrior instinct come out of such an relationship? Or was it a relic of the male conditioning that I had undergone?

When I decided to go into the priesthood, it had been the Jesuits that I selected for they were said to be the front-line army of God. When I was ordained a priest, the ritual was for me my knighting, my consecration as a warrior. After ordination, I immediately went outside the safety of the church structures to the frontiers where the people of the street suffered.

Since then, as a woman, I have continued to enjoy fighting against those who endanger the earth, exploit workers or spread disease. I enjoyed setting my cap against major corporations, and even against the warlike activities of the White House. I am proud that my media work helped instigate Congressional Inquiries - and angry that these turned into cover-ups. I relished getting into diamond mines in Africa from which De Beers had banned me. I loved uncovering secret intelligence operations when working with the BBC.

I have always had this warrior calling, no matter that today it is not often associated with the priesthood, nor with the mystic, the parent, or with femalehood. It has challenged me , kept me on my toes, engaged me in dangerous campaigns and even put my life at risk. If I could not combine being a warrior with being a woman, then I would have to invent a new gender.

One of the first thing I learnt from meeting witches was that there were more than the three aspects to an adult woman's life than those of maid, mother giving birth and old woman or crone found most anciently in carvings at Anatolia's Çatal Hüyük (7000-5000BC) site. My witch friends told me there was another, warrior. This perhaps matches the discovery of tombs of warrior Kargan women dating from around 5000BC across the Caucasus mountains from Anatolia.

In the 12th century the mystic Hildegarde of Bingen was well aware that the Earth must be defended by all including the mystics. She wrote in words that seem prophetic today:

The 20th Century mystic and Benedictine, Thomas Merton, in his 'Emblems of a Season of Fury" expressed the fury of the mystic who sees the sacred earth in danger. He took the divine incarnation to mean that God was one with the object of his love, not just with Christ but the universe. This meant for him that we should cry with outrage when the object of love, the earth, was abused or raped.

Thus when a mining company covets the minerals on an Aboriginal tribe's land and elevates their hunger for profits above the rights and needs of the tribe, then they are making of profits an idol. When a man puts keeping his job above doing anything about a dangerous product that his company makes, then he is making an idol out of his job. But when we see creation as sacred and fight to protect her, see our neighbours as sacred and fight to protect them, then we are not committing idolatry but are worshipping the true god.

Merton wrote sadly of the Idolaters.

...

Later, in 1985, I would as I have mentioned research and write a book about a warrior band lead by women, in particularly by the famed Truganini who was wrongly supposed to be the last of the Tasmanian Aborigines. This band around 1840 drove the new settlers back from the settlements made east of the then newly founded Melbourne. They raided station after station, sometimes walking fifty miles a day. I found unpublished hand written settler diaries describing what had happened. They said that Truganini was known to be as good a shot with the rifle as any man. The Aboriginal fighters would order the white women and children away from stations before attacking. There was also another warrior band lead by a woman who angrily denounced the stupidity of elders whom at first thought that white people were their ancestors returned to life and therefore not to be attacked. (Ref. Jack of Cape Grim.) Tarerenorerer taught her people to use guns and led an Aboriginal war-band around Emu Bay in northern Tasmania. (Ref. p 6) She eventually died in an island concentration camp.

In an Aboriginal settlement in central Australia in 1977, Diana Bell was armed by the women with "fighting sticks" and instructed in their use when she was being harassed by drunken men. Men would not dare to come near the Single Women's camp - perhaps more from fear of their magic as of their weapons. Both the young man and the young woman of the Warrbiri nation of Central Australia learn to use weapons to defend themselves. Some Aboriginal nations have Dreamtime stories of how once women controlled fire and men stole it from them so perhaps equality always needed to be worked at to be maintained. (P34 bell).

Central Australian men, if they hurt a woman, feared that she might take ritual action against them. A women's spiritual power was said to be considerable, to entitle her to much respect and to be based on her relationship to her country. Men needed this woman's power for it also helped link them to the ground. Bell wrote of negotiations she observed during ritual preparations : "the women needed men within their ritual groups, the men needed the [women's] knowledge to back their claims to rights in the country." p204

The yilpinji rituals among the Warlpiri were performed by the women for such purposes as attracting lovers or repelling men they did not want - and could similarly be performed by men. Such rituals were only undertaken after much serious discussion and weighing up of circumstances. It as said that women's rituals were invariably successful unlike those of the men. Similar stories about the use of magic by women in particular abound in Irish or Celtic mythology. Thus the mythical Ulster hero Cu Chulainn came under attack by "the three skinny handed daughters of Cailidin" which he could only resist through the magic of other women that he had to obey. (Misc. p46)

Another perhaps common element between Celtic and Aboriginal spirituality was the use of stones to mark out ritual areas. Warlpiri men and women alike would mark out ritual sites with stones, arranging them sometimes to show the direction from which totemic animals or Ancestors had travelled. These rituals were still being carried out in the 1970s and no doubt is still happening.

I wa....lked towards these elders but stopped and sat when I reached the distance from them that desert etiquette dictates. I left between us the distance of a reasonable front garden and gate. Noticing that I knew the rules, an Elder called out and asked my business. I explained and he invited me to come closer. I moved in half way. He then said that the women had been waiting for me - and to my surprise I then heard a woman's voice calling: "Sister, over here." She was calling from a distant tree where a circle of women were sitting. No one knew I was coming - so I was surprised.

They waved, made space and warmly welcomed me. We talked, eyes sparkling. Then one said. "We have something to show you." They had me climb with them into the back of a truck parked nearby with its engine idling expectantly. We then drove towards the long red-grey cliffed monolith that dominated their horizon like an enormous hunch-backed caterpillar.

They pointed out first a small fenced off area at the base of the rock. Keeping well clear they explained to me that this had been fenced because it was used for sacred purposes by Aboriginal men. They then took me away from the male area and invited me to walk single file with them up a path towards a cave partially concealed behind bushes. One woman started chanting to greet the spirits of the place. Another turned to me and said with a grin: "See that cave? It looks just like a vagina, doesn't it." And with laughter we all drew near and sat down by its entrance. Here they regaled me with the stories of creation in this most appropriate place, stories many millennia old. It felt for me as if I were with the ancient tribe of Israel hearing its creation stories. As I listened, it seemed that Aboriginal women's magic was tied to a Dreaming that went back at least as far as that of Israel.

They told me this vaginal cave was sacred to women and could not be knowingly approached by men. But I saw the women's sanctuary was protected by no fence, no warning like to those that had protected the male site. Tourists could freely enter and were doing so to other nearby women's caves. I saw white men, camera in hand, ignorantly exploring them.

The women explained to me that their men had been able to secure Government protection for their sacred place because Aboriginal Law allowed a man to tell a man where his places were. But the women had lacked this opportunity for the government had not thought to appoint a woman officer they could tell. So they wanted me to tell the world that the women of Uluru wanted equal protection.

They then took me to two deep pools under these high golden cliffs, where the desert condensation ran down the sandstone rock into shaded basins under trees and shrub. One of the pools was sacred to the Rainbow Serpent who slept within its depths. They showed me the snake like markings it left on the cliff above when It entered or left the pool. (cross-Ref. Mon. .) Such permanent waterholes are very precious to a desert people, but even more so here where they are linked through the Serpent stories to the creating and renewing energy of water and the earth. Finally they took me into their birthing cave and showed me with much laughter, how to sit astride a most precious thing, a large central sloping rock which served as their birthing chair.

They finally again told me that I was to write of all these things - for they were relying on me to make public that they had sacred places as well as men. I felt extremely privileged - this had been utterly a day of wonder and of magic for me. I also learnt how the women and men of the Central Australian tribes have two Sacred codes of Law, one for men and one for women. Both are of equal status. They would sit in separate parliaments to make decisions. It was here that I learnt that only when an elder had grey hair was she or he allowed to know some of the secrets of other's Law.

In SE Australia Aboriginal society is traditionally differently organised. Men and women sit together on the same councils. This lent to some hilarity when Aborigines met for the first meeting of the National Federation of Land Councils in Alice Springs. Some women friends of mine went to it and later they told me with much laughter how when they arrived in Alice the locals had tried to organise them. They told them that there would be different meeting for each genders. The Southern women refused. The Central men said: "We have always met separately since the Dreamtime." The Southern women replied: "We have met together since the Dreamtime." There then had to be an immediate serious meeting of Elders - at the end of which they decided that for the purposes of national meetings, men and women would sit together to discuss the Law - for the first time in the Centre for possibly thousands of years. But the Central Australian men were so uncomfortable in this meeting, that one by one they would leave "to have a smoke". My friends regaled me with stories of the patrols they mounted to track down the men and get them to return!.

A day after my visit to the rock with the women, an Aboriginal man took me in his utility truck past the smoothly eroded phallic shaped rocks of the Olgas, a range of hills on the horizon when one looks west from Uluru. As we passed he directed me to avert my eyes. The other women with me also put up a hand to shield their eyes. These rocks are sacred to males.

I had a sense that the sexual and sacred implications of caves and of tall slim rocks were a subject of much enjoyment and not a little fun among the local tribes of the Arunta and the Pitjantjatjara. The traditions were both respected and enjoyed. Sex was clearly fun and pervading the landscape. These were no prudish people. Were our ancestors much the same? Did they laugh at the sexual implications of tall slim standing stones and fat squat diamond shaped standing stones? I hope so. Certainly the British pagans of today note and much enjoy these implications at such places as the Avebury stone avenue.

I was also taken to women's places in SE Australia by the local women. We were walking along a path on a beautiful wild coast when they told me to stop and wait until the men had gone on ahead. Then they quietly told me that we were in an ancient women's sacred place. I asked did they want it protected and fenced off as had the women at Uluru? They said no, too many whites around here.. If it were fenced off with signs saying this place is sacred to women, it would be vandalised and the place desecrated. I sadly agreed.

But in the centre, the women won their battle. As I had promised, I made public their need to get their sacred places protected. They probably roped in other white women too. At Uluru today, most of the women's area around the base of the rock is fenced off . As far as I could judge, the base of Uluru is mostly women's territory.

Tourists still climb the rock totally unaware of the sacred lands that lie below and despite Aboriginal protests at this desecration. Uluru has been returned to Aboriginal ownership - but this only happened on condition that the Aboriginal community, within 5 minutes of regaining their title, assigned rights back so their land be used as a tourist park.

....Robert Bropho was for me an elder who spoke of the greed of modern society like some Old Testament prophet. When we camped together in the bush, I learnt to appreciate the Australian land more as he saw it. It was a fine partnership - we were both stubborn but our few disagreements eventually vanished like, he said, "dirty water under the bridge". I had learnt much from him - including something of how to be a strong woman that did not defer to men - including sometimes not deferring to Bropho himself!

It was odd that I had to learn this given my background. Why should I, brought up as a "male", have to learn not to defer? I had not been conditioned in childhood to be submissive to men. But it was not so simple. When I began to live as a woman, I slipped naturally into what seemed to be my destined place on the gender map, but I had not yet learnt how to deal with men's attitudes towards women - especially not how to deal with the males who presumed authority, who presumed to adopt the air of expertise, who did not empower the women they worked with or treat them as equals, who did not work with them as they would with male mates.

My work for the land was not just done for Aborigines. Sometimes poor whites got in touch with me, even small scale miners, for I had obtained in the media a reputation as a defender of the underdog. This lead me to discover that CRA -RTZ was planning to pump cyanide into seven hundred kilometres of the underground rivers of Northern Victoria in order to dissolve out the gold that lay in their beds. These rivers were the major water resource of the farmers of the region. This was the only time that just one of my articles succeeded in reversing a development.

Other times stories came to me by seeming chance. One day I was driving with a friend back from dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant when we suddenly were stopped in the middle of Hoddle Street, a major Melbourne road. We could see that the few cars ahead of us had suddenly and mysteriously halted. A minute later two police cars came up screaming - one raced across the grass through the nearby park. Gunshots rang out. We had nearly driven into an ambush. The drivers just ahead of us had been shot dead. I then reported what became known as the Hoddle St. Massacre for the ABC while police in pyjamas ran with guns between the trees. It was like a scene from a movie. The dead people lying in the street seemed like models. It was utterly unreal - it felt as if at any moment a film producer would shout "Cut" and everyone would get up. I later learnt that a young man rejected from a military school had decided to set up a sniping post in bushes by one of Melbourne's busiest intersections. It was nearly an hour before he was captured.

Atrocities are fed into the newspapers at an ever increasing rate. Some ask how can such evil exist if the world was created by a good God? In today's world the nature of evil is often confusing - as too is "professional misconduct". We have witnessed an American president nearly overthrown for having illicit sex rather than for bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and the wrong camp in Afghanistan. It was clear that for some in the US Congress illicit sex was by far the more serious a crime. So what then is evil?

Christianity for much of its history has explained evil as disobedience to laws laid in a Maker's Manual known through supernatural Revelation. These laws were found in the Holy Bible and seemingly regulated our sexual life much more than they did war. Perhaps this was why many conservative American Christians condemned President Clinton for his sexual behaviour rather than for bombing and killing the Sudanese?

Christians often saw themselves as beseiged by devils that wanted humans to disobey the divine Rule Book - and consequently would tempt mercilessly. This was not a full blown dualism. There was no Evil God opposed to a Good God. But it was in practice much the same. Evil angels were opposed to Good Angels. It's Good God was assisted by angels and was opposed by Lucifer, or Satan, with his host of demons. The Christian was thus living in the centre of a battle in which the City of the Damned fought the City of God.

.......

.....The next KGB General I had to interview was somewhat more spunky. So I set up the interview to hopefully ensure more spontaneity. I told my translator only to translate my questions, not his responses. I sat sufficiently close to him (but off camera) for our legs to touch. I sparkled at him and he sparkled back. My questions were quick. I acted as if I understood his responses, firing back other questions to keep up the pace of the interview. When afterwards it was translated, I found that he had given me what I needed. He told me a hot line had been set up at this meeting between Moscow and the British MI6 -and that all participants would be reporting back to their governments. When I repeated his words to the British delegates, they gave themselves away by exclaiming "He should not have told you that."

I managed also to secure for the BBC the exclusive rights to a joint training exercise between Russian and Western Intelligence. This would be the mock hijacking of an airliner carrying Russian diplomats. Panorama loved it. We called the project the KIA (KGB and CIA combined.) It was planned that BBC reporters based in Moscow would give reports of the incident as if it were a real event. But unfortunately for us and for Gorbachov, he was overthrown before this exercise happened.

But immediately after this, I came under a most unexpected attack. Gerry Bostock, an Aboriginal friend, phoned me from Australia to tell me that a British tabloid, the Sun, had journalists in Australia hunting up my gender past. I was shocked and amazed. It was some twenty years since I transitioned. In work terms, I had simply got on with life as a woman. Everyone accepted me as such. Why was I now being challenged - and in Britain where I was hardly known? I feared it was a deliberate leak to the media by the diamond companies I was investigating. I knew they were well aware of my personal background. I wondered if it were an attempt to discredit me with the BBC in order to stop n the diamond film. At this stage, if the BBC had dropped me, I would have lost the film.

I was forced to warn the BBC of the coming exposure and tell them of my personal background. My Commissioning Editor at the BBC said it made no difference to them. It did however cause amused smiles at Panorama - especially when the Sun ran a page two story headlined "It's Manorama" full of invented detail. They did not get to see me so they described me wrongly as a blonde - perhaps because they wrapped the story around the picture of a blonde Page Two Woman. The best thing that came out of this was a phone call from my younger daughter, Katie. She had seen the story in Australia and was outraged. She told me that since she was now grown up, I no longer had any need to protect her. She told me I could go for them, be proud, be open if I need be.

I feared that this exposure did seriously damage me for I noticed afterwards a difference in how I was treated by the BBC. When I finally completed raising the needed funds, I was told I was to stay in Australia and act as a nominal producer, British staff would produce the film in my name. I was amazed again, flew back to London and insisted on my contractual right to really produce. One of my British staff later apologised to me, telling me that they had been mistaken in deciding to "quarantine" me!

.....The man the BBC wanted to take over my film as producer was the one who earlier told me that they had wanted to "quarantine" me - which decision I associated with their discovery of my gender background. When I protested against these moves, he had put an avuncular arm around my shoulders and reassured me that my "child" would be safe in their protection.

I then returned to Australia and went to the women who worked for the Australian film funding agencies, expecting them to support me - but I found that they were so engaged with their careers, that their overt friendliness had no reality . For me they were reduced to being suits, I was clearly seen as a danger, not a sister needing aid to combat injustice. It seemed that they did not want to upset the BBC who was a heavy investor in the industry.

When I first started living among the female ranks, I was thrilled by the easy sense of co-operation, trust and sharing that was so prevalent among the women with whom I worked. For a while I could have shared the vision of Gimbutas that matristic society would be naturally highly civilised. But in this, my first experience of the world of finance, I had discovered another female world. It seemed that if they were painting themselves with a still more inhuman competitive spirit than ruled the lives of men - despite many of their male colleagues still demanding of them that they soothed the male ego, serviced the male need for comfort and be an attractive aspect to the decor.

While I recuperated from the assault on me I continued to try to resolve the problems with the BBC. Eventually it was necessary to take them to arbitration. The BBC then attempted an out of court settlement with me. While arbitration hearings were pending and in my absence, the BBC restarted production on my film. While this was happening persistent leg pains from after the beating were refusing to go away. I thought these aggravated by stress. An acupuncturist friend attempted to treat them. Thus when I went into hospital for what I was told would be an afternoon's minor surgery to have vaginal scar tissue removed on Friday, the 29th April 1993, I gave no serious thought to the leg pains.

I had a strange dream before going into this operation. I was standing by a van in a bleak industrial landscape. I was thinking about joining a nearby group of people when a car stopped at a nearby gate. Men got out that had the sombre air of undertakers. They came towards me. I thought they were coming to discuss with me the death of a near one. They took me to the back of my van and spoke to me of the need to give myself space and time , to accept what would be a loss that affected me. The mystery was that I did not know anyone who had died.

A week after this minor operation I was in deep trouble. It had gone wrong and I was admitted as an emergency into the Royal Women's Hospital with necrosis of vaginal skin and a chronic infection. Two days later they discovered that the worsening cramp in my leg was no psychosomatic illness but a deep vein thrombosis. A surge of blood clots were migrating up towards my heart. They immobilised me and pumped me full of blood thinners. They gave me an emergency alarm for me to keep in my hand to use if I felt I was going unconscious. The hospital registrar told me I would in danger of dying for probably the next two weeks. When I had to use this alarm, I witnessed in a haze the rush of a medical team to save me and this convinced me that I was seriously ill!

A day later I gave up my arbitration hearing and gave my precious child, my film, to the BBC. I did so because I was being pressured in hospital by a barrister acting for the BBC. I did not immediately agree to sign the papers. I first threw them across the ward. But I soon recognised that my body could not take the stress of a continuing fight - no matter how willing my spirit or how unjust the take-over. I believed the BBC would kill my project if I did not agree - and the reasons why I was making it were bigger than my ego. The BBC had guaranteed they would complete it according to my script and this meant they would keep in much that I had filmed and documented on the human rights atrocities in the diamond industry. After this I spent some two months in hospital, for many weeks on oxygen as my lungs were partially blocked with blood clots.

I now learnt to respect my body more. I realised that my life was much more important to me than any fight with the diamond cartel or with the BBC. I now needed to relax, to think, to take the time needed for understanding what was happening to me. The hours immediately after I learnt I was critically ill were a revelation to me. It seemed that it was not sufficient that I was so ill, that I had given up my precious film - for everything else that could possibly hurt me also happened at that same time.

....

Thus I did not collapse in tears. Instead I found myself to my surprise, laughing at my Lover God. I was sure His hand was in this. As I said, it seemed utterly beyond coincidence for so many utterly devastating events to have happened together on one day. Any one of them separately would normally have plunged me into total demoralising misery. I was thus convinced that there was something, someone, else behind this.

Looking back my reaction seems to have been illogical. Why did I not then blame my God for my misery? How could I see in these events the hand of a divine Lover? I can only explain this by thinking it was because of the strength of the relationship between us. Stripped of family and friends, of work and of health, naked as I had never been before, I felt certain that I had all that was needed within me and within my relationship with the Divine.

It was my time of rebirth. I instinctively knew the time had come for me to stop putting first my career as the professional woman journalist warrior who kept private most of the magic of her life in order to be accepted and "effective". I knew I did not want on my tomb stone "She fought the diamond cartel". No, I wanted on it the poetry I had experienced in my life, that I was a woman with two daughters who was gifted to walk between the gender worlds, who was a mystic who loved the earth and saw in it the face of her Lover, perhaps even that she was a good witch! This is what I still wanted for my epitaph - among other things.

If I had died then, much would have passed into the next world with me included my most precious possessions which I had been hiding for fear of rejection. Yet I knew that these were gifts given to me not just for my own enjoyment but also for sharing. I have since learnt that I am not alone in such reluctance. Hildegard herself also kept quiet about her visions until she was past 40 for fear of rejection She said this continued until: "I was forced by great pressure of pains to reveal what I had seen and heard." p231 Gospel ac to W

I was well aware that all my campaigning as a warrior could not put right more than the tiniest fragment of the things that need to be rectified. I knew that my campaigns for the impoverished, for the damaged, could easily be endless. I knew that spiritual work was more important for it is the prophet's, the mystic's and the poet's message that gets passed on from generation to generation, that it is their inspiration that can do most to help people create a beautiful world. I now knew that my naive campaigns against the powerful, while important, should now take second place to sharing and learning the poetry of life. I told my Lover God that I would openly re-dedicate myself to the priesthood, bring it to the fore and living as both a warrior and priestess since that seemed to be what he wanted of me. I promised this - but had little idea how it could happen in practice. I simply had to wait and think and pray.

When a nun came to visit me in hospital on her charitable rounds, I started to tell her of my resolution and my rich life. I can remember the look on her face. She was resolute and calm, as if dealing with a mad patient.

On the seventh day after being warned I might die, the nurses put a cable across the ward's floor at my request so I could use my laptop computer - and I started to write this book, taking on my fears, determined to share unashamed and to rejoice in my life. I wanted it to be a book for my daughters and for the rest of my greater family.

When I left hospital I continued with writing this book but found that I was not yet ready for the task. I had much more to learn. My hospital time was but a germination. The wild weed had to grow stronger. I still had to conquer fears about being open. There was still a disunity within me and a wholeness I had to seek. A voice within nagged me. I knew I needed to run with the wild creatures, to fly with owls and lope with wolves, to seek wisdom in unity. I had faith that I would grow strong enough to do this.

My greatest fear after leaving hospital was still that of rejection. I liked being accepted as a woman. I enjoyed being a woman. I was at home as a woman. I was scared that if I were more open as to my background, then some people would reject me, saying that I was not really a woman but a freak. I knew too that if I were open about being an ordained catholic priest, the tabloids would love it -and I could easily find myself a commodity in their pages - and thus perhaps even more a freak.

I was also scared about being publicly open about my spirituality. My mysticism was I knew naive, childish, trusting - and precious to me. It was at the very root of my being. It gave me the motivation for much of what I did, but could I be open about this and maintain my credibility in a media manned by cynics? Yes, despite all my bravery in taking on diamond cartels, the White House and the intelligence agencies, when it came down to it, I really was a scared and nervous cat!

So this tabby cat who was a lioness who was a tabby - needed all the courage I could muster for very different kind of fight to those I had in the media. I knew that for every fear I conquered, I would be that much stronger. I came to understand that if I could be write about what was most precious to me, I would gain self knowledge and find my way to freedom. The process of writing this book thus became for me a way to wisdom.

It was providential that this critical time came for me after I had learnt more of the ancient shamanic path that was my birth right. I knew that in many cultures the experience of life in both gender roles was seen as good training for shamans. There is also another route called the sharmanic wound. This was a learning path open to those who received the gift of knowing what it was to live in immediate danger of death. Now also on this path, I found myself having to reach beyond gender. I realised I had to transcend gender roles and to centre myself on a love in which my very skeleton had to be painfully taken to pieces and reassembled to accommodate a larger heart..

On one of my last days in hospital, when I phoned my younger daughter from hospital, she told me she had good news. I replied: "What? Your contractions have started ?" Her reply came: "No, I am at home with a baby boy." She had a red head, like herself. His name was Kirra. She had experienced a very easy delivery. Thus from ?So from my near death experience, I left hospital to celebrate a birth.

.............

Now when I look back on my years as a warrior, I see how often I fought by loving and identifying with the mass of oppressed, the tribe, the community, the nation, rather than with the individual . I was not so good on the individual level - for I was hiding my own pain. I was fighting other battles rather than my own. I was being the warrior but not the priestess, not the healer, not the crone - a quarter of what I was meant to be. In such struggles eventually even the women's hospital became a haven and a school for me.

I now know I hid myself to protect my children, I hid myself to protect causes, I hid to protect my professional status. This led me, despite all my bravado, to being scared of authority, scared even of social workers, to having an absolute ridiculous vulnerability. It was about this time that I wrote the following parable about myself.

The Cowardly Lioness.

I know a lioness, sulking deep in a dark cave who has been terribly wounded, betrayed by a friend to a demon. The betrayal hurt more than the wound - the wound is healing but she scarcely knows it - so deep is the hurt in her heart. She knows her friend wished her dead. This is incomprehensible to her.

Yet - she can see the mouth of the cave and, in the radiant sunshine, she can see a deep pool of cool water set in a grove of shady trees - not a hundred yards away.

She has been in the cave a very long time, She is getting terribly thirsty. But she fears that the demon is waiting to pounce on her as soon as she comes out into the sunlight... she slithers on her stomach towards the light, looks out at the pool of water, hears the murmur of the stream that feeds it, but in dreadful fear does not venture out into the light.

Lying there she invents excuses. If she writes a brilliant book on "The skills of hunting", others outside in the light might come to the cave to see her and might protect her - so she can safely emerge and go to book launching parties - and drink. The book will take 9 months till it comes out. Maybe she can drink the dew on the moss and lichens and survive till then - this is dubious.... still she is tough, she is a lioness after all. She writes and writes but desperation and thirst weakens her. The completion of the book becomes an obsession... and she weakens.

She thinks, this book is not bringing me in any income, and will not for 2 years - I must get a good income first before I go outside so I can support myself. So if I sell some articles and make a film.... use this haven as a "writing opportunity". She sets to work again, feverishly scratching her stories on rocks and phoning them through to editors (it is a cave with a phone fortunately) ... but as she does so she gets thirstier and thirstier - and more desperate. The tasks she set herself seem more and more impossible .... she starts to think she may die in the cave... she works still more feverishly.

She does get some satisfaction. Some of her articles get published, some do good, most are remembered. Hundreds of thousands read them --- but she is still practically as lonely as ever as her readers presume she must be so sane, so well provided for, so healthy to be writing like that - and few ever contact her.... she stays in her cave.

She is right about the demon - it does lurk by the entrance, sent there by the fears of others who dread her entrance into the world of the light. But the demon does not lurk in the light. It lurks in the half light just inside the entrance to the cave. It too dreads the light but with reason... it knows its one chance to destroy the lioness will come in that half light...

The Lioness does have a Lover - out in the light... a Lover that has long been able to send her thoughts to her Lioness, ever since she was a cub playing and rolling in the light.

As Lioness lies in the gloom, a persistent vision lures her towards the light. Have courage, the voice mutters in her ear.... don't be a scared little puss.

But my scars, mutters the Lioness.

They are nothing. Look they are healed.

Don't feel like it, says Lioness, scratching them open.

You need to drink, come, immerse yourself. Its sparkling, life giving. You will die without it.

I know, I know. As soon as I am ready. The Lioness picks up her manuscript, sent back to her by an equally cowardly publisher for the hundredth time.

Once this is off to the publisher and at the printers, then I will come out.

There "s a peal of laughter close to her ear.

You are so daft! Why not write it while lazing in the sun by the pool. .. there is fresh food waiting for you as well as water. You would write better in the sunlight.

I am not sure of that mutters the lion slinking backwards into a crevice.... it is dangerous out there..... there's some muddy water somewhere back here - it will keep me going and I will finish it.

Out there I might be distracted by pleasure... and really writing gives me pleasure and enables me to escape mentally from the cave.

Again the laughter came. You daft lioness, said the Lover, you only have to make one leap - and I will protect you....

You will protect me?

yes, what good are lovers for if they do not care for those they love.?

Well if you are sure...

The sparkle in the eyes of the Lover filled the cave with a storm of fireflies.

Well, if you don't mind protecting me

Come.

I will come.

It was at this point that the Lioness became aware that there were others there. She looked wide eyed and saw others - come to help her.

Wait a minute, she protested. I am not out yet... don't come in here, it is mucky!

But you are coming, let us get you ready.... let us get to know you.

But, I have not groomed myself, I have scars...."

"We want to know the lioness that is about to leave the cave"

"You too are daft", she told them, and with no more ado,

She leapt into the light

The demon was so surprised by the sudden move that he grasped at empty air then tumbled after her into the light - and faded into a harmless fog...