Meet Benzaiten

A little sneak peek and midweek inspiration and prompt for you from my re/generative writing community The Well. 

Hi all,

Meet the Japanese Goddess Benzaiten.

She originated from the Hindu river goddess Saraswati before travelling to China and then onto Japan, where she blended with indigenous Shinto water and dragon spirits to become the Japanese goddess of all things that flow - the rivers, tides, breath, Qi, creativity, music and words.

Benzaiten rides on the back of a white dragon and tames the chaotic forces of the Earth - wild oceans, storms, earthquakes - not by fighting them but by listening to them and answering them with music from her lute.

I love that idea of meeting chaos with the beauty of our expression, our words. She has been a personal guide for me for a while now (since my Reiki II attunement with Dani Van de Velde and I think she will make the perfect guardian for our little community.

In researching her a little more, I came across this poem by Pascale Petit.

Excerpt and prompts below:

The river

glittered with waves and each

was a picture I could paint

or a book I could write. It was

as if I’d entered a new element

and could breathe water. My feet

touched the bottom where stones

told me their stories and I listened.

– From The River by Pascale Petit

Prompts:

Use your own practice (or the energy practices I have uploaded to the platform) to move into an embodied state and then write...

• What inner or external chaos do you want to answer with your music, your words?

• What stories do the stones tell you?

• Or start a new piece of poetry or prose with the line: ‘The river glittered with…’

See you on Friday for your weekend prompt. In the meantime happy writualing.

Chantal xxx

p.s. A reminder: I am offering three months free of the highest membership tier, which includes monthly themes, prompts every few days and regular Zooms where we write together! Just get in touch if you would like the gift code for yourself or a friend.