Invocation to Shekhinah-Lilith-Ishtar … By D’vorah Grenn, PhD – Feminism and Religion

Moderator’s Note: This beautiful invocation appeared on the Lilith Institute’s website on February Feb 19, 2024. If you would like to learn more or see this invocation on their website, click here.

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She of all knowing, dark wisdom … She of the deep abyss, snake’s descent, owl’s knowing … woman of the dark, the light.

We praise You, we stand in awe, marveling at the myriad surprises you hold in store for us always respectful of your power, your M/mystery.

Shekhinah-Lilith-Ishtar, we worship you, in all your aspects; we sing your name.

Walk with us as we yearn to see you, to feel you, to exchange the divine sparks we both need to live … Never let us forget your P/presence in, around and through us, as we seek to proclaim and praise you in every corner of the world, in your many guises, by every name.

Walk with us as we love you, when we are angered by you, when we fail to comprehend you and when we renew our resolve to serve …

Be patient with us as we must be with ourselves, and each other, holding your Presence even when we are in doubt or despair.

Let us recognize and hold this as a time of healing … of creating new roles for ourselves … weaving new threads of oneness and wonder as together we continue to forge new paradigms.

Ishtar, Lilith, Shekhinah … keeper of the Mystery

Be with us through ecstasy and harmony
through death and destruction through reawakenings and rebirths.

You whose actions lead us to create both praises and lamentations, you who teach us to hold paradox. Today we may rejoice, yet tomorrow we may have cause to want to tear at our hair.

In the eye of wisdom which rises forth from the power of your being, your foresight, your intent … how is it we ever got lost, taken over, subsumed?

Allow us always to remember our inner strengths, to come from a place of understanding and so standing in our own power, to feed and celebrate our ruakh, our neshamah, our lifeforce.

Let us not be swayed from our goals.

Work with us, inspire us, protect us as we weave your work—our work.

Help us, sweet dark lady of the night, holy winged figure of the light—rageful, wise judge, warmest heart, soulful visionary, You who dwell within each of us, You who holds the key to our heart, our mafteyakh ha-lev.

Highest priestess of the Temples and the Cosmos, to whom every knee must bend and every tongue give homage.

For it is your word we write now upon the doorpost of our house and upon our gates,

Your word, acts, images and stirrings we share, grow mad at, delight in and weep with … your Divine embodiments, holy sparks from which we can learn much, if we only pay attention.

It is you who makes rise our greatest laughter, happiness, peace and compassion, and you who also sees and gives us our greatest anger and storm, humility and confusion.

Holy Mother, Source of All, Goddess of earth and sky, rivers and mountains, night and day, highest and lowest planes of our existence, and beyond,

We seek to embody your sacred passion, your wisdom, your strength.

Be with us now.

AUTHOR’S UPDATE:

Every time I read this invocation, which I wrote for a Divina et Femina conference in 1999, it feels different. The words have changed slightly over the years, but I’m always speaking to several different deities. At times I think I’m also talking to Rita Rosalind Kolb Grenn, my mother, no doubt an underlying current through which my faith flows. As I read it again today, it’s clear to me that I have a responsibility to carry forward the wisdom, innate power, compassion and resilience embodied by all these foremothers.

And I also wonder, when I read or speak these words, why the female face of the Divine in Judaism, Shekhinah, was kept hidden from us, why I never heard Her name until I was in my mid-40s. It was an omission that used to enrage me, a bitterness that became softer over time. My anger, though somewhat tempered and blanketed by sadness, still remains. It strengthens my resolve to teach women-centered history, mythology, thealogy and sacred arts, so that future generations don’t grow up without knowing their ancient roots and their female lineages, which I know will give them strength and pride, tools they need to survive and to succeed in a patriarchal culture. I am keenly aware that I owe it to my ancestors to do my part in highlighting the ways women have created and been guardians of culture.

So when my spiritual teacher, colleague and friend Reb Nadya proposed doing a “Wisdom of the Mothers” symposium, it immediately struck a chord. The idea of co-producing a conference celebrating women’s matriarchal and matrilineal spiritual traditions seemed incredibly important last year, and honoring women’s contributions throughout history is even more critical now. This year’s symposium, focused on honoring the ancestors, is borne out of our knowing that the wisdom we inherited from our mothers and grandmothers, from our ancient foremothers, has informed every aspect of our lives, and cannot be lost.

The conference Wisdom of the Mothers: Honoring Our Ancestral Roots will be on April 22–23, 2026.

Together, we will ask the questions that haunt so many of us: How do we honor the ancestors whose names we barely know? How do we grieve what has been silenced or lost—while celebrating what has somehow, miraculously, survived? How do we tend the broken places in our lineages, and weave memory back into the fabric of our living?

Through learning, ceremony, and dialogue, we will explore ancient practices and birth new ones—rituals and acts of remembrance that speak to the lives we actually live today.

For more information and to register for the symposium, click here.

BIO: D’vorah J. Grenn, Ph.D is a Yoreshet/lineage holder of a female Kabbalist tradition, priestess and ordained Mashpi’ah/spiritual guide. She founded The Lilith Institute (1997), co-directed the Women’s Spirituality MA Program at ITP/Sofia University and has taught at Napa Valley College and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area on women’s rituals, feminist thealogy and philosophies, sacred arts and literature, and Jewish mysticism. She co-teaches on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life with Reb Nadya Gross; they recently co-produced the symposium “Wisdom of the Mothers: Celebrating Matriarchal & Matrilineal Spiritual Traditions” and will co-produce a “Wisdom of the Mothers: Ancestral Roots and Connections” Symposium on April 22-23, 2026.

Publications include: Lilith’s Fire: Reclaiming our Sacred Lifeforce; Talking to Goddess, an anthology of writings from 72 women in 25 traditions; “Lilith’s Fire: Examining Original Sources of Power”, Feminist Theology Journal; Jewish priestess and Lilith entries in Encyclopedia of Women in World Religions; “For She Is A Tree of Life: Shared Roots Connecting Women to Deity”, her dissertation on beliefs and rituals among U.S. and South African Lemba women of Jewish ancestry, and “Spiritual Brokenness and Healing Presence of the Sacred Feminine”, FEMSPEC feminist journal. She has been a guest on a number of podcasts including the Revelation Podcast Project and Breaking Down Patriarchy, was a speaker in the recent “Crones, Hags and Elder Wise Women” Summit, and co-hosted 50 episodes of the “Tending Lilith’s Fire” broadcast with Kohenet Annie Matan.