Ego Sum Nihil Ego Sum Lux Mundi

I was repeating this out loud while walking the streets of New York, passing Times Square from 8th to 2nd Avenue on a cold winter night. Nobody noticed; I was just another human in the world’s busiest streets. But for me, it felt as if I was casting a spell out loud.

I have cast parts of this spell many times before, especially Ego sum lux mundi. I am everything, the world, the universe, all. Through these years in which I have lived all these different lives, from working in the big city to working on sacred lands, from being a student to a professional, a tantricka, a priestess, a simple woman. I have felt the power of Ego sum lux mundi: to feel as if your essence is the very essence from which this whole existence is made.

It has now been a year since I arrived to the edge of Spain, after walking for 40 days from France on the Camino de Santiago. I had decided to walk for the divine feminine, a decision that led me straight into death. You can choose to end your walk in Fisterra, known as the end of the world, or in Muxía on the Costa da Morte, the “Coast of Death.”

I remember that day with painful clarity: a storm was coming, and we were advised not to walk. I was bleeding from my yoni and my heart. I had fallen in love and now had a broken heart.

I walked anyway. My spirit needed to get there, and without even noticing it, I began drifting to Muxía. My feet carried me to the holy stones of the Virgen de la Barca. The story tells of the Virgin Mary’s miraculous arrival in a stone boat to strengthen devotion to the divine, so that the Apostle Saint James, "Santiago", would continue his mission in Spain.

I was thinking through the whole walk that day, the last stretch of 33+ km, that I was ready to die, to let go so completely, to surrender. There was nothing left in me; I had bled myself out. And so it was. I arrived and let my blood flow into those holy waters. I cried and prayed that my heart would understand the depths of love. The storm finally broke. I felt as if the rain was cleaning my wounds, so they were still open but no longer dirty with blood.

Wet & clean, I went back to my little rented room and did an Eros ritual. I had a vision. The crash of the waves into the stones where I left my blood created the foam of Eros, from where Aphrodite, goddess of love, was born. I saw myself bigger, on top of the main stone, the one known to be the boat where Mary arrived. I was there on top of it, riding it.      

They held my hands, on one side Mary Magdalene and on the other Mary, Mother of God. Both were holding me as I was penetrated by the big stone. I was there making love, creating miracles of fertility. The big splashes of the crashing waves in the storm were these orgasmic miracles. Every time the waves crashed, I got wetter, more aroused, more ecstatic. So much pleasure and love. I am fucking the world. Ego sum lux mundi. I am a goddess of sex and love. I know this is what I came to share with the world.

The Marys were gone, and I started seeing two giant beings, my divine masculine and feminine. They were making love to each other; I was in between, and I could feel their essence, the salty sweat on their skin. I could hear their sounds of pleasure, of surrender, of knowing nothing other than the act of love. And I knew that this is where I come from. This is my source of creation. From pleasure and love we create. I am created through the alchemy of ecstasy. Through lovemaking.

Ego sum lux mundi took me directly into Ego sum nihil...

Life happened after that, and the world as I knew it changed. I was not ready for this kind of death, the one that, layer by layer, takes away the things that are precious to you, but that in this grave you no longer need. It was the initiation to Inanna’s journey to the underworld, to the dark night of the soul. So I let go, not with a happy heart, but with the last trace of my will clinging to who I had been, even as I surrendered to divine death.

Ego sum nihil.

I am nothing. As I write this, it is the anniversary of this ritual of death and love. As I stripped away everything that once defined me, it was so hard to keep looking forward. In such a confused state, having lost an identity and trying to build a new one out of the void. I often feel as if I were absolutely nothing, as if all worth and value had vanished from me.  What is the point? What is the point of this existence, of this life? What is the point if anyhow death seems the most permanent relief? Should I let my body die as well? What would happen if I chose to walk away from this human life now? These thoughts haunted my mind. The dark night of the soul, the void in the underworld. The absolute nothingness. Ego sum nihil. My empathy goes out to all those who have stood at the deepest edge with dark thoughts. I understand you know.

It is only now that I can see, how it is essential to cast both parts of the spell.

And as I am climbing out from this valley of death. When I finally look around, I see that I am not the only one who has heard the call of the goddess, of the divine, of the feminine. This draws me to take inspiration from all the great women who walked the path before me. I am able to overcome me, this state of drakness and death just as the ones who stared into the abyss before me, the ones who became Ego sum lux mundi from bathing deeply in Ego sum nihil.

While I was walking, I visited churches and meditated with statues of the divine feminine as my mentor suggested, as she had done this walk too. Some spoke to me: “Miracles come from love,” when I looked into María Milagrosa’s hands. Pain liberates the heart, as I saw Mary of Sacred Heart. “Women, bless your womb; creation comes from it.” The power of love, the power of love, the power of love. I heard the whisper of the tree, but I knew it was HER.

I am glad I was able to hear the call from these sacred places that are, in fact, a silent rebellion to the patriarchal system. She is there to teach us the religion of love; this is the church of mystery. I am happy I have been able to get inspiration not only from these archetypes, saints and goddesses that are part of the divine feminine, but also from the women I have around me, the ones who have fought to become who they were meant to be, and who have loved fiercely in both life and death.

Now I realize that I have made the pilgrimage from Mary Magdalene at Sainte-Baume, where I went to ask for a blessing before starting to walk, to the Virgen de la Barca, Mary, Mother of God. The path from the Goddess of Love to the Great Mother, to Shakti herself. A powerful initiation for my soul. I was now to serve love & eros with the guidance of the Great Mother of Love. I want to be part of this human world becuase I have this divine mission.

From a tantric perspective, one cannot be true without the other. We cannot be nihil or mundi alone. We are both and neither at the same time; we simply are. Ego: I, me, the experience I have in this world, and how I live my truest and most authentic purpose in this world.

Today I know that :
I am nothing and everything at the same time.
I surrender completely, and I choose to live, to be exactly who I am supposed to be here.
A being that comes from love, that is love, and that is here to share love with the world, honoring death in every corner of the spiral.

It took me a couple of weeks to finish this writing. Dreams of life, death, and eros have followed me through these days, showing me how all of these are the holy trinity in themselves. Ego sum nihil and ego sum lux mundi are a dance of all and nothing, of alive and dead, sustained by the notes of Eros.

Now I am ready to be everything & nothing: Ego Sum Nihil & Ego Sum Lux Mundi.

PS. “Ego sum nihil & Ego sum lux mundi” comes from Latin. I heard this words as a divine intervention from Rosalia's newest album "Lux" song " Porcelana " when I did I knew I had to write this piece.

Love,

Jhoselyn- Arushi Devi