"Our Lady of the Shards" series..... New Work

The Memory Keeper

These are Shrines, or perhaps Madonnas, that celebrate and "en-shrine" the lost, forgotten, broken and buried Divine Feminine, as well as all of those ancestral women who kept the important memories, wove the stories and connections, birthed the babies, buried the dead.  "Our Lady of the Shards" lies among the broken shards, debris, and re-surfacing mythos of the past.  She is the Black Madonna, the Numina at the roots of sacred springs and caves.  She is the ancient Great Mother, rising from beneath the careless feet of contemporary civilization to speak to us again, teach, and remind us. 

The Weaver

Weaver, Weaver, weave our thread

whole & strong into your web

Healer, Healer, heal our pain

in love may we return again

We are dark and we are light

we are born of earth and light

of joy and pain our lives are spun

male and female, old and young

No one knows why we are born

A web is made, a web is torn

But love is the home that we come from

and at the core we all are one 

Of life's  Spring may we drink deep

and awake to dream and die to sleep

and dreaming weave another form

a shining thread of life reborn

~~~ Starhawk, from "The Spiral Dance"

                 
                 Our Lady of the Desert Spring, Nuestra Señora de las Aguas :

"We pray You hear our prayers, oh Lady of the Desert Spring, Our Lady of the dry Arroyo, Come to us, hear our prayers.   Mother of the cottonwoods, the Palos Verdes, refuge for all.  Bless all those who suffer thirst.  Spread your mantle of green and turquoise, your shining artery of life, upon  the red Earth of our lives."

Ann Waters, from "The Awakening:  Our Changing Earth"

The Black Madonna

Bone Woman

Our Lady of the Midwives

Waiting for the Barbarians at the Hot Springs

"The Memory Keeper" (2018)

I realize I haven't written for a long time now.  Not really writing, spontaneously.  This was originally intended to be a journal, a journal that began with an artist residency based on my quest to follow the "trail of Spider Woman".  To envision what She might represent, across the ages, across the miles, and across cultures into this crucial contemporary time we live in.  I wonder how far I have come or  strayed from that path, which began  in 2007?

Spider Woman's Hand (2007)

It is my birthday, the last year of my sixth decade.  I guess I have become old, certainly the mirror tells me so, so do my bones.  Sometimes the world seems strange to me, like it's moved on, and, well, here I am, seemingly by the roadside with a few old friends commiserating,  wondering if we have anything anyone wants any more.   And no.  We don't have time to be polite in saying that.

The helper here at the hot springs who handed me a towel is a pleasant, large boned young man with big hands and  a bra under his tee shirt.  He seems like a sweet kind of  person.  I know I'm legally supposed to treat him like a woman now,  but frankly, he just looks and sounds like a  young man in a stuffed bra.  If he takes the bra off, does he have the option to become a man again?  Is womanhood just a "choice" or even a "recreation"  now?  This could get confusing.  Sometimes it seems as if the world has moved on in directions I don't understand.

I often go to a hot spring not far from me, where the waters without fail remove the stress and emotional crusting and debris that accumulates, like lint to Velcro,  to obscure clarity of mind.  At the very least, I relax, and watch old videos that the proprietress makes available.  I've had some great insights and a few visionary "directives" here over the years.  In 2012, for example, I  enjoyed the whole pool to myself late at night under the stars.  Sitting in the waters I "downloaded" an entire Proposal for an art project, neatly presented as a kind of academic paper,  complete with a title: "Numina - Masks for the Elemental Powers".  Seriously.  Sacred waters have power.   That gift later became a series of masks, and my friend Ann Waters ended up creating a play performed in Willits, California called  Numina:  The Awakening.

 And then there was the  dream I had at Harbin Hot Springs in 1999 that foretold the "Masks of the Goddess project".   Sacred places, be they hot springs, mountain tops, or numinous caves .........open the way for the Divine to speak.  My idea of being an artist has always been a bit like being a stenographer, able and willing to do transcription.  Does anyone care about what I "transcribe" anymore?  I honestly don't know.  The "art world" has  apparently no use for me, and I have quit wasting money applying for things.   I cross art world taboos:  religion, spirituality, it's not political, it's not "contemporary", I'm not "emerging" (does that mean I've "emerged"?  Where did I emerge from and when did it happen?).  And yet the Powers that Be keep sending me visions, darn it, that I just have to try to make manifest.

So here I sit at dawn.  This is the last year of my 6th decade.   A friend says I should write a memoir, which seems like real vanity  to me -  although in truth, what I love best are the stories people tell of their lives.  Why should I not enjoy telling my own "epic"?  Memory is all that one finally has left.  At the end, perhaps not even that - I suppose in the passage and logic of the soul, memory gets in the way of new becoming.  Forgive me, I stray now into metaphysics, something I don't particularly do much anymore.  "The World is not with us enough, O Taste and See"  wrote Denise Levertov.  Abstractions get in the way of that important truth, even fascinating  metaphysical abstractions.

This becomes increasingly important at 70.  "O Taste and See!"  You don't need abstractions at 70.  You need sunsets, mountains purple and azure, starscapes, the tender hands of children, the taste of old champagne and fresh bread........... you need to love the World.

I have had one revelation while soaking this day.  A visionary experience that I had, oh, back in 1989, came to me vividly for recollection.  The vivid memory of that experience was preceded by the  image of a tortoise I met recently in my garden.  Tortoise represents to me Turtle Island, the Earth, our patient Mother.  When a tortoise shows up I pay attention.

The vision happened in my old red Toyota pick up truck, in a rest area somewhere in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.  It was 1989, and  I had just driven across the country, heading for my summer home at the New York Renaissance Faire.  I became exhausted and pulled off the road, and fell into not so much a sleep as a trance state.  It seemed that my car started flying up into the sky, so that I got a good birds eye view of the landscape below.  What I saw was a misty, green land below, and a great circle of standing stones.  Approaching the Circle was a group of people clad in white, all coming for some kind of ritual. (I reflect that I am going to  Avebury this fall, to attend a conference on Earth energies and sacred sites).

Then I seemed to be flying over a southwestern landscape, red canyon walls that were covered with layers of patterns of petroglyphs that seemed to recede back into the stone.  and then once again, I was flying in my truck, this time over Los Angeles, and below me I saw the freeways of L.A., forming a perfect figure eight, the infinity symbol.  And then........it was over, I was in a rest stop in Virginia.




What I realize now it that this vision was about my life..........I've  loved the stone circles in New England and overseas,  I'm made and participated in rituals, I've learned to dowse, I've sensed the footfalls of ancestors, I've been to ancient sites of England.  And I've lived in the Southwest, and followed  petroglyphs of Spider Woman, like touchstones along the path.   Last, how many times have I driven the highways and freeways of America, the infinity loops of Los Angeles, where I grew up?  Those patterns underlay my life, but they are also the underlying patterns of Gaia, of Turtle Island.    The Pattern is not lost, even if it is too large and too ancient for us to see.

Memoirs.  I've been blessed to see more than one of what people call miracles........... and how do you talk about such things?  I think I got out of the prophet business quite a long time ago!  Especially now, when I do indeed feel like an anachronism along the side of the road.....people do not sit at tables facing each other and sharing visions much anymore, they sit before  little electronic boxes in their rooms with the doors closed.   Standing beside the road, sometimes it seems a little lonely.

So why don't I write any more?  Truth is, I'm depressed. I don't feel a need to apologize for that.
 Depression may in fact be an appropriate, if futile, response right now. The Earth is heating up, the oceans are filling up with plastic, California is burning and Florida is sinking, millions of fellow beings on this beautiful world are becoming extinct every week, refugees are fleeing drought and war, and my grandson doesn't have a very hopeful outlook for his future.  We desperately need visionary leaders, and instead,  America is sinking into savagery and fascism under a corrupt regime headed by a would be dictator paid off by a corporate oligarchy.  Goodbye, America.

Still, practically speaking, it doesn't help me, or anyone else, this depression which  I don't know how to come out of , how to get "positive" and "enlightened".  I'm dark and melancholy these days, and I don't believe in numbing drugs or quick fix therapies.  There is something very American about that denial of the spiritual function, and emotional deepening, of depression.

I think about the Roman practice of the Saturn shrine, a somber place that was set aside in their gardens, where one might sit in sacred solitude, and allow the  melancholy  God  to inform and converse with  one's psyche.  There is a place for the voice of Saturn, for the torches of Hecate, in the gardens of our lives.  I claim the right to examine this long life I have been privileged to have, to ensadden about the losses and the disappointments, to be depressed about the eternal violence, greed and stupidity of humanity,  to grieve the daily destruction of the only Mother Earth any of us will ever know, and the decimation of America, which for all it's faults, was also a place of hope and idealism and great innovation.  My country.

When I was a child in the 50's my family toured Italy.  My mother dragged us to many Roman temples and mausoleums and museums, and I am embarrassed to say that all I really remember of it all, outside of the wonderful cats in the Coliseum, are the statues without noses.  They always seemed to be without noses, and in my 10 year old imagination, I pictured Romans as toga clad people without noses.   Much later, when contemplating pictures of those impressive (noseless)  marble statues, I imagined breaking floods  of  roaring barbarians, crossing the Rubicon and riding into civilized Rome, looting the Temples, raping the women (women always seem to be perceived as loot), and shouting with glee as they knocked the noses off of every statue they saw.  That, I believe, accounts for the facial disfiguration of Roman gods or generals.

Waiting for the Barbarians. ( I do not refer here, by the way, to the poem by  C.P. Cavafy,  or the famous book by  Pulitzer prize winner J.M. Coetzee ,  or even the very promising  forthcoming movie which will star Mark Rylance).  I co-opt the term for my own uses.  As an educated, and thus privileged woman, sitting here sipping coffee and enjoying the sound of running waters and dawn birds, sometimes I cast myself as an aristocratic late Roman woman.  How  might she  have felt, sitting in her Atrium with her family, "waiting for the barbarians" to arrive?  In the modern version, will all the sculptures in my sculpture garden be noseless one day, as the barbarians ride in with their motorcycles, hideously angry, sexist hip hop music blaring, NRA assault rifles in hand? Will they gleefully knock the noses off of every Goddess in the place?

Instead of Star trek, is the future to be more like the Road Warrior? A glorious patriarchal dream of one alpha male duking it out with another for supremacy?    Is it decent for me to even care about art, in what sometimes looks like the "end times".........with so much suffering, now, and hovering on the horizon?  And here I am.  I've partaken of the higher benefits of a great civilization, been part of an optimistic generation.

  I just finished a piece called the Memory Keeper.  She holds an overflowing bowl.......... she shares waters from another time, sustaining and growing the seeds of the future.  What else can any of us do, waiting for the barbarians?

Here I am, writing  at last.  I'm being truthful, and personal.  It seems like the day to do it

"The Parting Glass"............ wonderful Celtic drinking song!

This is true blessing at the bar............ it could easily be my own theme song!  I have always loved Celtic music for the exquisite blend of bitter and sweet.  Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/s1P-365rkOg

"Our Lady of the Midwives"... Reflections

          "The breath of the ages 
            still ghosts to the vitality
            of our most early and unwritten forebears
            whose wizardry still makes a lie of history
            whose presence hints in every human word
            who somehow reared and loosed 
            an impossible beauty enduring yet:
            and I will not forget."

            Robin Williamson, "Five Denials on Merlin's Grave"

"Our Lady of the Shards" is a series of Madonnas I have been working on for a year or so now.  Our Lady of the Shards lies among the broken shards, debris, lost artifacts, and resurfacing mythos of the past.  She has been buried by time, his-story, and by endless war, and co-option of what was once sacred.  She is the Black Madonna, the dark Earth mystery at the roots of timeless sacred springs and caves, the generative "Numina" of place.  She is also the buried work and lives of the women who wove the ancient stories, who birthed our ancestors, the memory keepers and the comforters.  Perhaps collectively my "Madonnas" are  the Divine Feminine, arising into the world again at our greatest need, insisting that we see, re-member, re-claim. 

A number of years ago I met a midwife who was retiring.  Her hands had brought many children into this world, so I asked if I could take a cast of her hands.  She took what she told me was the "Midwives Gesture".  My Icon celebrates her life and work, and the lives of Midwives going back into prehistory, those un-named ancestors who brought us here through that Portal.

My Madonnas are also visual prayers, iconic images that pray that humanity will turn toward life-giving and life-nurturing once again, toward generation instead of destruction, toward reverence for our Mother Earth. 

            "I hate the scribblers, who only write of War
             and leave the glory of the past unsung between the lines."

             Robin Williamson, "Five Denials on Merlin's Grave"

I reflect on the ongoing tragedy of patriarchal culture and priorities, whereby the military, whereby technologies devoted to Death, are celebrated, funded excessively, endlessly rewarded and mythologized.  The U.S. has the highest military budget in the his-story of humanity.  What might be accomplished, if even a fraction of that went to serve Life, communion and love,  instead of Death?  Entire museums are devoted to famous generals, great epics about conquering armies and the rape and murder of women and children, like the Iliad or the Odyssey, are celebrated classics.  While ubiquitous Midwives of new life of all kinds.......are forgotten, un-known, trivialized, un-important.  How might we live, how might we act, if the welcomers of souls into this world were as celebrated, as honored, as those who are experts at killing? 

                                           

How might we live, how might we act, if Our Lady of the Midwives rose in all of Her power to teach us a new way of being?

            “What might we see, how might we act, 
               if  we saw with a webbed vision?
              The world seen through a web of relationships
               .…as delicate as spider’s silk,
              yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.”

             Catherine Keller,  From a Broken Web 

"Not Man Apart" - Robinson Jeffers

Then what is the answer?
Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.

When open violence appears,
to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.

To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness.
These dreams will not be fulfilled.

To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
appears atrociously ugly.

Integrity is wholeness, 
the greatest beauty is organic wholeness, 
the wholeness of life and all things,
the divine beauty of the universe.

Love that, not man apart from that,
or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken."

- Robinson Jeffers

"Seldom do we realize that the world is practically no thicker to us than the print of our footsteps on the path. 

Upon that surface we walk and act our comedy of life, and what is beneath is nothing to us. But it is out from that under-world, from the dead and the unknown, from the cold moist ground, that these green blades have sprung."  

............Robinson Jeffers

Hecate (2018)

I have  made a number of paintings throughout my life that portrayed myself as Hecate  It wasn't until later that I began to realize that I was invoking the aid of the Dark Goddess Hecate,  asking for the inner guidance I needed as I moved through  through menopause into old age, calling on Her aid as I became a caretaker for members of my family as their lives ended, calling on Hecate who stands, with her two Torches, at the crossroads of life and death, at the crossroads of time.

So when I made this sculpture in my "Our Lady of the Shards" series, it was not possible to personify Hecate rising from the broken pieces of the past to confront us again........without making Her a Trilogy.  She encompasses all aspects of the cycle of life, the Maiden, the Mother, and at last the Old Woman at the liminal point of life.  
 
Hecate is the Underworld aspect of the Triple Goddess.  The "power of three", the sacred Triad, is very ancient indeed, with roots that go back and back and back into prehistory.   The Triad represents the eternal cycle of nature, the Earth  which the most ancient of human beings seem to have universally revered  as  "Mother Earth".  Early peoples observed that the Earth, like women, gave birth, nurtured, and finally "took back" life into some mysterious spiritual underground realm (Womb/Tomb)  to return again in the springtime.   The Triad or Trilogy was  co-opted by later patriarchal cultures and religions that sought to diminish or replace the Great Goddess, among them Christianity (Father, Son and Holy Ghost)  and Hinduism with Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva (Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer).

The earliest known  paintings were of animals.  But the earliest known paintings (or sculptures)  of human beings (not animals)  are of  vulva symbols.  These female symbols  occur in cave paintings - the one on the right is over 30,000 years old, one of the oldest paintings in the cave.  The bull was apparently painted over it at a later time.   It might be said that very ancient people understood the vulva as the  crucible of entry into this world, and to honor the Earth Mother in caves, along with the animals  early people hunted and revered as spiritual beings as well.....was to enter the womb of the Great Mother, and thus prepare, sacrifice,  and  pray for a good rebirth.  The cycle of life/death/life was recognized as arising from the body of the Earth Mother, and returning to the body of the Earth Mother.

"Hecate's Wheel" 

Associated with Hecate is a peculiar icon called "Hecate's Wheel",  which shows three loops suggesting a labyrinth  turning around a wheel, symbolizing an  eternally transformative movement.   The Wheel of the Triad moves through conception and birth, sexuality and motherhood, and finally death, the return to the Underworld, incubation and return.   The Three Goddesses are really One Goddess, each a manifestation in a different phase.  

Hecate  lives at the crossroads between conscious and unconscious, dream and waking, life and death.  She stands at the apex of the  liminal zones.  It was  Hecate who   heard the cries of the naive maiden Kore as she was carried by Hades into the underworld, and it was Hecate who bore a torch for Kore as she evolved into the mature Persephone, Queen of the dead and also Queen of life's rebirth.  Hecate is the guide of souls through deep, unfathomable places of the psyche. When the time is ripe, Hecate stands quietly at the threshold with her two torches, unseen until She hears the soul-cry of those who ask Her to light the way. 

I  take the liberty of copying a wonderfully insightful and well researched  article by  Danielle Nickel - for further insight, visit her site 

Hekate:  Moving Through Darkness
by  Danielle Nickel 

Hekate is primarily a goddess of the Underworld, holding dominion over death and rebirth. This is meant both in the literal sense and in the metaphorical as well. For life is filled with many deaths and rebirths aside from that of the flesh. Because of this the Dark of the Moon especially is her time of the month, since it is a time of endings and beginnings, when what was is no more, and what will be has yet to become. 

Hekate guards the limenoskopos (the doorstep), for she is a goddess of liminality and transition. Of being on and crossing boundaries. This includes not only the boundary between life and death, but any boundaries, such as those between nature and civilization, waking and sleep, sanity and madness, the conscious and the subconscious minds. Indeed, any transition can be said to be her domain. As such she is also goddess of the crossroads, where the paths of one's life fork and a person must choose which future to embark upon. In ancient times these were believed to be special places where the veil between the worlds was thin and spirits gathered.

Hekate is also the goddess of psychological transformation. Her Underworld is the dark recesses of the human subconscious as well at that of the Cosmos. Many have accused her of sending demons to haunt the thoughts of individuals. What they fail to understand is that the demons are not hers, but their own. By the light of her twin torches Hekate only reveals what is already there. These are things which the person needs to see in order to heal and renew. However, if they are not prepared for the experience of confronting their Shadow then it can truly feel like they are being tormented. Hekate is not motivated by cruelty, nor is she seeking to harm. But her love can be tough love. She will prompt a person to face the things that they must, whether they like it or not..........Hekate goes with them. While she may not be the deity many people would like, she is the one whom they need. Because of this I believe that she comes to those who require her, whether or not they were looking for her.

In modern Neo-Pagan practice Hekate is typically identified as an aspect of the Crone, and as such is most often portrayed as an old woman. This is in contrast to ancient vase murals which depict her as being an adult woman in her prime. As with many things about this goddess, this is a perception that has changed over time. However, the Crone aspect of the modern Triple Goddess is not truly defined by her age, but rather by the powers her age represents (that of wisdom, magical potency, annihilation, and the transformative journey through the Underworld), and those indeed fall under Hekate's domain. So while perhaps not historically accurate, this is not a demotion or devaluing of her, but rather the way in which modern Neo-Paganism fits her into its philosophy (this difficulty with integrating her into their cosmology is something that we will see Neo-Pagans share with the Ancient Greeks as well).

Hekate is more often than not portrayed as carrying two torches and is known as "The Torch-Bearer". She carries these because of her role as a guide through the transition of the Underworld. One torch shows a person where it is they currently stand, the other where they might go. In this manner she reveals the mysteries of transformation to those who enter her realm of darkness. 

.......Hekate is also associated with a wheel shaped design, known as Hekate's Wheel, or the "Strophalos of Hekate". It is a circle which encloses a serpentine maze with three main flanges, that in turn are situated around a central, fiery spiral. The symbolism refers to the serpent's power of rebirth, to the labyrinth of knowledge through which Hekate could lead humankind, and to the flame of life itself: "The life-producing bosom of Hekate, that Living Flame which clothes itself in Matter to manifest Existence" (according to Isaac Preston Cory's 1836 translation of the Chaldean Oracles). The three main arms of the maze correspond with her being a triple goddess, as well as goddess of the three ways, and that she has dominion over the earth, sea, and sky.

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A Goddess of Crossroads and Transitions 

As earlier stated, Hekate is a guide for people who are in transition. While she is most famous in her role as a psychopomp, guiding the spirits of the dead in their journey through the Underworld, she also aids those who cross boundaries or otherwise travel from one condition to another, particularly when that crossing involves danger.........For more than anything else she is a deity of liminality.

She is a goddess of the crossroads for this reason. In the ancient world a crossroad was a point where three roads met to form a "Y"-shaped intersection. It was believed to be a place where spirits gathered, including those of the Underworld and those of Fate. It is also a metaphor for the divergence of possibilities in an individual's future. Their life will bring them to the crossroad along one of the roads, and they will be met with a branching, where they must choose one path or the other to continue onward. As goddess of transitions, Hekate rules this place where the roads separate and differing futures are possible. 

However, it is important to remember that Hekate is a guide. She points out where a person is currently heading and where else they might go if they change their path instead. She does not choose a person's fate herself. That is always left to the person to decide. She is a torch-bearer because of this illumination she sheds upon one's life. That is also one reason she is a lunar-deity, for while a torch brings light to the darkness of night, so too does the moon on the grandest possible scale. This reflects both her link to the night-realms and to her role as an illuminator of ways.. 

Hekate is often portrayed as  three torch-bearing female figures standing in a circle looking outward, with their backs joined so that they are in fact one being. This exhibits her dominion over the triple-crossroads and her ability to see in all directions simultaneously. The road a person had come from, and the directions they might take in the future. These hektarion (or hekataion) were placed at crossroads. Their earliest forms consisted of a pole upon which three masks were hung, with one facing each road. In more recent times these became statuary, sometimes of three figures standing with their backs to a central pillar, other times a similar portrayal without the column in the center.   The Romans knew Hekate as Triva, which means "where the three roads meet".

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Hekate Triformis - The Triple Goddess

Hekate is a triple-goddess, serving as the Crone aspect in more than one triumvirate of deities. Perhaps most commonly we see her partnered with Kore-Persephone and Demeter. Where Kore takes the role of the Maiden (indeed, the word kore means "maiden" in Ancient Greek), Demeter the Mother, and Hekate the Crone. This triumvirate plays a central role in the myth of Kore's descent into the Underworld and her re-emergence as Persephone. 

This myth appears to have been the basis for the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which initiates relived the experience of Kore and like her returned forever changed, reborn with a new understanding of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

 In the earliest tales, Kore willingly descends into the Underworld, while in the later and more well-known versions she is kidnapped by Hades. The latter being indicative of the rising patriarchy of Ancient Greece. In either version, her mother Demeter - who is the goddess of agriculture -  withholds her blessings from the Earth and causes the first winter to come about. It is Hekate who spies Kore within the Underworld and guides her back to the surface to be reunited with her mother. She emerges not as the maiden Kore, but as Persephone, a powerful woman in her own right, and with her comes the warmth and promise of spring. Persephone however, has become inextricably tied to the Underworld and returns there for four months every year, one for each pomegranate seed she ate while there. Her leaving is accompanied by the onset of winter, and while she holds her court in the Underworld she is joined by Hekate. In this myth we not only see a metaphor for rebirth, but also of coming of age and into one's own power and place in the world.

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The Invincible Queen Of The Dead

While Hekate is a versatile deity, she is best known as a goddess of death and the Underworld. However, it is important to remember that her Underworld is not the place of terrible suffering popularized by patriarchal Greece and later Christianity.*** Rather it was a place of divine transformation, like the cocoon where the caterpillar becomes the butterfly. This was the primordial Underworld, the place from which all life ultimately derives. Death and Birth stand back to back in the great spiral of existence, while Hekate and her Underworld lie between the two. 

Our ancient ancestors saw that many things sprang from the earth, not just plants, but animals such as snakes, bears, rodents, and others as well. Even the sun and moon appeared to rise from the earth and later sink back down within it every day and night. To their eyes, it seemed that something magical was taking place in the darkness below the ground. This idea was further reinforced when they learned that plant life originates from seeds buried within the earth. They saw that if a person kept a seed in - for example - their pocket, it would never grow into a plant. It had to be buried in the soil. Our ancestors reasoned that something magical must take place down there. Some transformation hidden away from the eyes of people and the rays of the sun. 

This was their Underworld. A place of renewal and rebirth where buried seeds sprouted into life. Because they saw the generative power of the Underworld, they buried their dead deep within the earth so that they too could transform into new life, just as a seed does into a plant. Being thorough people, they also dyed the bodies with red henna to symbolize menstrual blood (and in some cases did use menstrual blood), in order to capitalize upon the regenerative power believed to exist in that as well.  

This is why how so many Pagan deities such as Kali, Hekate, Freja, et al. are associated with both death and life. Our ancestors saw that death and birth were interconnected, standing back to back in an ever-turning spiral. In this manner Hekate is both child-nurse of all life as well as harbinger of death, and thusly it was to her that the ancients prayed to ensure both long life and eventual rebirth. Interestingly enough it is also in this manner that Hekate might be considered the goddess of compost. For it is the decomposition of plant and animals that insures the fertility of the earth, which in turn ensures the creation and nurturing of new life.

These views of the Underworld would change as religion became politicized, a tool for power. The Underworld became a place of terror in order to frighten people into obedience. So too were its denizens altered in public perception to become the monsters such a place needs to be populated with. This is one of the dynamics by which Hekate was increasingly negatively portrayed............ 

Keeper of the Unconscious

As Goddess of the Underworld, Hekate is not only the guide to the spirits of the dead, but also the keeper of each individual's own personal Underworld, the benighted territory of their unconscious mind. She lives within each of our inner worlds, and is there to guide us as we transition from inner to outer realms of consciousness. When accepted, her blessings enrich our lives with vision, healing, inspiration, and magic. She brings light to the darkness and empowers us with creativity, confidence, and strength. However, when we deny her it manifests in our Shadow-Self. She holds the key to both the treasures and terrors of the unconscious mind.......

Hekate is the light that reveals the Shadow, like the light of the moon at midnight. Her goal is not to destroy, but rather to illuminate. However, it is no accident that we have buried these things so deeply within our psyches. We are often not ready to face them when revealed. In such cases it may indeed appear that Hekate is bringing demons to terrorize us. We must remember that the demons are ours and reclaim them as our own. For with that revelation we also take back our power over them. That is the only way in which the Shadow can be truly defeated. By accepting it as our own. Learning that is the key which turns the lock of the person's emotional healing and rebirth. Hekate is there as a guide to help us, her twin torches shining our way through the darkened recesses of our unconscious.........

.............We must come to understand that Hekate and the darkness she exemplifys are not terrible, but rather natural forces within us and the world around us which are necessary components in the process of healing and regeneration. We must trust to her as our guide and give ourselves over to our journey through the Underworld, rather than resist the sacrifices we must make in order to grow. For one can only heal by moving through darkness. This requires courage and insight on our parts, but thankfully she is there to show us where to find both these qualities within ourselves as well.

"Hecate" (1997)

**Judith Anderson has passed away, and her powerful work is not well known.  She was an extraordinary artist whose prints emerged from the depths of the sacred Earth and the realms of the Soul.  For an excellent article about Judith Anderson:  http://www.crosscurrents.org/Madsen2.htm

***This is true as well of the Nordic Goddess Hella (also part of a triad), Underworld Goddess whose name became the source of the Christian "Hell".

Old Masks

These tales of old disguisings, are they not

Strange myths of souls that found themselves among
Unwonted folk that spake an hostile tongue,
Some soul from all the rest who'd not forgot
The star-span acres of a former lot
Where boundless mid the clouds his course he swung,
Or carnate with his elder brothers sung
Ere ballad-makers lisped of Camelot?

Old singers half-forgetful of their tunes,
Old painters color-blind come back once more,
Old poets skill-less in the wind-heart runes,
Old wizards lacking in their wonder-lore:

All they that with strange sadness in their eyes
Ponder in silence o'er earth's queynt devyse? 

Ezra Pound

I've been working like crazy this summer on ceramic sculptures, and my studio is full of clay and half finished Personae everywhere, all asking not only for completion, but for stories.  Sometimes I swear they are all whispering at me some long lost, forgotten story or conversation.  They are all part of the "OUR LADY OF THE SHARDS" theme I undertook this year, a kind of mythic archeology, the "reclaiming, un-earthing, re-telling" of lives and faces from the shards of the buried and broken past. 

When one is in Flow, those voice seem to arise, they can be heard, not just when you are working, but when you are walking, or doing dishes it seems.  So far I have only finished the one piece above, "Old Masks", but I like it so much that I'm doing a longer, more complicated version.  Also in progress:  "Our Lady of the Desert Spring", "The One Who Wove the Stories", "Our Lady of the Midwives", "Black Madonna", "The One Who Remembers".  Whew.  Good to be working, to have this Conversation going on! 

What will I do with all of this work when it (presumably) is finished?  Well, I don't know.  I'd like to have a show again somewhere, but shows are hard to find or come by these days.  We'll see.