Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Stones that Remain..........

Photo by Martin Grey
                    Avebury
Sometimes language bears in its fossil rock
things once commonly known, now information
available to us only as tourists
as here poke through the earth
through the welter of houses from the last thousand years
through country roads, prim churches, blowzy pubs,
through male and female stones, the huge breast
called Silbury Hill, vast and cumbersome
works of a people whose will slumbers
in the stone circles, rows, wordless
as the thoughts of the sheep that graze.


Yet that will is potent, not with the dumb ferocity
and shapeliness of mountains, not with the bodily
eloquence of frightened or curious sheep.
Here are erected runes of language partly designed
to be read by clouds or goddesses, left for us
too carefully wrought to be ignored.
Sometimes with my hands on the warm/cold stone
I almost think I hear it in my bones.


Marge Piercy



I share with poet Marge Piercy a deep wonderment at the presence of the Stones, set so laboriously and intentionally by such distant ancestors, to mark circles, leys, energy ebbs and flows and currents, Solstices and Equinoxes, moon crossings, and other, more mysterious means and ways that are remembered now only by the stones themselves, and the language of the land.  Yet when I walked among those stones, at Avebury or elsewhere,  I always felt the whispering of the "songs that remain". 

"Where Time began and will Begin",  Scottish Bard Robin Williamson once said as he began his telling of an ancient story from the Mabinogian,  "I make reverence to the Ancestors and the Spirits of those yet unborn".  Perhaps the Beloved Silence I remember him speaking of is that  Silence that contains the language of stones......and holds the songs of the  Bards as well, the "songs that remain when we are gone" . 



https://youtu.be/n63UbX5kzAc

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Gaian Reflections approaching the Vernal Equinox

Apple trees in Avalon (the Chalice Well garden) 2011

I am a lover of the steady Earth 
and of Her waters

She says:


"Let the light be brilliant 
for those who will cherish color";
what if there be no heaven?
She says:
"Touch my breasts
the fields are golden"


Her songs are all of love
life long
every blue yonder
Her grass harp rings

unlettered 
in Her rivers our cherished sins
our musts drift voiceless
in Her clouds

She will rust us with blossom
She will forgive us
She will seal us with her seed



From "Verses at Powis" by Robin Williamson

The Vernal Equinox  is the stillpoint when the time of light and the time of dark are in balance, when the day and night are equal.  After the Equinox the days lengthen as Summer comes.   In this time of chaos and fear, may this day of Balance remind us to  invoke the principle of Balance within the small circles of  our lives, knowing that as we do so, we invoke this virtue in the  greater life of  Gaia, the living Goddess of which we are a part.   I've often quoted the song above, because it so often sounds in my memory and heart,  a touchstone gifted to me and so many  others by the Bard.  When I feel overwhelmed or despairing,  those touchstones are important to return to, they can illuminate the path once again.  They belong to the  "Re-Membering".  She will seal us with Her Seed.  

Blessed Equinox!  



Saturday, March 10, 2018

The Association for Women and Mythology Conference 2018


The 2018 Conference for the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology will be held March 16th through March 18 in Las Vegas and I'm honored to be presenting a paper on Spider Woman: A Creatrix Myth for Our Time.



The speakers will be extraordinary!
Animal, Earth, Person, Story
At this year's conference we will explore earth and animal mysteries in myth and ritual, along with research into new partnerships of humans with animal and plant worlds to ensure the welfare of planetary systems. We have many wonderful presenters joining our program for this conference, including Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Kathy Jones, Sherri Mitchell and Gala Agrent. We are very happy to be able to include as our special guests a number of Native American and Indigenous scholars and artists. Others you will see include: Max Dashu, Vicki Noble, Annie Finch, Mara Keller, Starr Goode, Cristina Biaggi, Lucia Birnbaum, Malgorzata Oleszkiewicz-Peralba, Miriam Robbins Dexter, Genevieve Vaughan, Heide Goettner-Abendroth, Frances Bernstein, Nancy Vedder-Shults. And many more! We will also feature films like "The Breast Archive" and "Under the Husk," including discussions with the filmmakers. Plan to come early to join us for an optional tour to the Temple of Goddess Spirituality Dedicated to Sekhmet. And stay for a day of Modern Matriarchal Studies on Sunday.

Here's the powerpoint slide show for my presentation:

https://www.slideshare.net/laurenraine/spider-womans-hands-a-native-american-myth-for-our-time

My websites: www.laurenraine.com
and www.masksofthegoddess.com



Learn more and register for the Conference: https://womenandmyth.org To see the Schedule: https://womenandmyth.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/SCHEDULE-MARCH-7.pdf/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/SCHEDULE-MARCH-7.pdf

Sunday, March 4, 2018

"Some Day" - wonderful "flash mob" in Israel

So inspiring, so good to hear these  voices singing together for the Human Family!  Thanks as ever for my friends the MacGregors at their Blog Synchro Secrects  (http://blog.synchrosecrets.com/)

https://youtu.be/XqvKDCP5-xE