She has no cult, and no prayers are really directed to her, but when the fields are sown and the priests chant their incantations the Kagaba say, "And then we think of the one and only mother of the growing things, of the mother of all things." One prayer was recorded. "Our mother of the growing fields, our mother of the streams, will [you] have pity upon us? For [to] whom do we belong."

Hozhoni, hozhoni, hozhoni
Hozhoni, hozhoni, hozhoni
The Earth, its life am I, hozhoni, hozhoni
The Earth, its feet are my feet, hozhoni, hozhoni
The Earth, its legs are my legs, hozhoni, hozhoni
The Earth, its body is my body, hozhoni, hozhoni
The Earth, its thoughts are my thoughts, hozhoni, hozhoni
The Earth, its speech is my speech, hozhoni, hozhoni
The sky, its life am I, hozhoni, hozhoni -
The mountains, its life am I -
The Sun, its life am I -
White corn, its life am I -
Yellow corn, its life am I -
The corn beetle, its life am I -
Hozhoni, hozhoni, hozhoni
Hozhoni, hozhoni, hozhoni

Only a race in drastic denial of its interdependence with all things and beings could be devastating the environment as blindly as we are. What a recovery of the wisdom of the Mother brings to all of us is the knowledge of inseparable connection with the entire creation and the wise, active love that is born from that knowledge. Unless the human race realizes with a passion and reverence beyond thought or words its inter-being with nature, it will destroy in its greed the very environment it is itself sustained by. Unless our fundamental sacred connectedness with every being and thing is experienced deeply and enacted everywhere, religious, political, and other differences will go on creating intolerable conflict that can only increase the already dangerously high chances of our self-annihilation. The Mother's knowledge of unity, her powers of sensitivity, humility, and balance, and her infinite respect for the miracle of all life have now to be invoked by each of us and practiced if the "masculine" rationale imbalance of our civilization is to be righted before it is too late.

Coming to know the hidden and forgotten Mother and the marvelous wisdom of the sacred feminine as revealed from every side and angle by the different mystical traditions is not a luxury; it is, I believe, a necessity for our survival as a species. Knowing her, we will know that we are her divine children in a relationship of complete, unconditionally loving intimacy; we will know that nature is holy in all its sacred particulars because it is everywhere vibrant with her light and her love; we will know that we have come to this earth not, as some of the patriarchal mystical traditions have implied, to escape it but to embrace it fully, not to "transcend" it but to arrive here in full presence, gratitude and love.

What knowing the Mother means above all is daring to put love into action. The Mother herself is love-in-action, love acting everywhere and in everything to make creation possible. Coming into contact with the Mother is coming into contact with a force of passionate and active compassion in every area and dimension of life, a force that longs to be invoked by us to help transform all the existing conditions of life on earth so that they can mirror ever more clearly and accurately her law, here justice, and her love.

The universe, as many mystical traditions tell us, is the "child" of a sacred marriage between the feminine and masculine forces within the One, what Taoists call yin and yang, what Hindus name Shiva and Shakti; it is the constantly self-transforming expression of their eternal mutual passion. For the human race to have a chance to survive, this cosmic sacred marriage has to be mirrored and enacted in our being at every level. At every level there has to be a fusion between our masculine and feminine energies, a fusion between those polarities we have been taught to keep apart - between our vision of "heaven: and our vision of "earth," between what we have called "sacred" and what we have called "profane," between our innermost mystical awareness and our political, technological, and economic choices. Only such a fusion and "sacred marriage" can produce in us the necessary clarity, knowledge, and force of active love necessary to preserve the world. There cannot be a sacred marriage however, without a bride; until the Bride, the Mother, is recalled in all her wise splendor, the fusion of full mystical knowledge with the most committed economic and political action that alone can help us now cannot take place.