Venus Synchronicities.........

I'm still here in California. And strangely, I seem to be in the middle of a Syncronicity Cluster based on the Goddess of Love, Aphrodite/Venus.  I think, when this kind of thing keeps going on, one must pay attention.  

"Venus" by Lorraine Capparell 

I received a notice from artist Lorraine Capparell  about her beautiful sculpture Venus.  Oddly, I used another of her sculptures to illustrate the previous entry. 

I received a day later an order for an Aphrodite mask.  And a notice about a Circle Work workshop with Jalaja Bonheim, who wrote Aphrodite's Daughters, a wonderful book I revisited a few weeks ago when visiting my friend Joanne, who had it on her kitchen table because she is doing research with the book. (I also posted about her a month or so back)

 Then I received a notice about an Aphrodite Workshop occurring this coming weekend, sponsored by two women I know from Reclaiming - one is an acquaintance, Laurie Lovecraft (an appropriate name for a priestess of the Goddess of Love).  I'm tempted to brave the truly horrendous L.A. traffic to attend - Laurie and Tami's description of working with the heart to open the path to creativity, and to create beauty.......is  just the healing affirmation I may need.

And how terribly wounded Aphrodite is in our world.  As I write this, I reflect on how, a few days ago, I was lying on the bed in a motel room, flipping through the TV channels.  There were no less than 5 programs within that hour about young women, girlfriends,  wives  and an exotic dancer murdered by men.  A stranger from another culture would think that raping and killing young women was the national sport. 

In fact, now that I think about it, the need to destroy Aphrodite in every way is at the very heart of patriarchal culture.  Because a culture that values love, beauty, and Eros............is a culture that would not be able to make war, or guns, because it would be a culture with great reverence for life.

Here is a poem I wrote for Aphrodite in 1999:

APHRODITE IN BROOKLYN

Please allow me to take off my shoes,

this faux marble pose 

this modern, pragmatic mask.

Permit me my ruin.

Let us not consider this therapy

  or revolution

do not ask me to give you space

let us not discuss those who came before

and those who might follow.

Let us not talk of past lives.

I have fallen on hard times.

If you come to my temple

  just

let me make for you an ocean.

Half seen in the darkness

your body, a mystery

true, tangible, radiant,

lined with the rings of your life.

You are beautiful,

beautiful to be a man.

Darling, even in this era, I will not believe

that love is disposable,

that sex is safe

that lovers are trains, rolling past each other

to some certain station 

  I remember,

  I almost remember my river source

My skin forms the word anew,

  yes,

  enter me

  as if you were coming home

Aphrodite (Pt. 2)

Mask of Aphrodite (1999)

 "Today, I would describe a priestess as a woman who lives in two worlds at once, who perceives earthly life against the backdrop of a vast, timeless, reality."

"In the Western traditions, spirituality has been so drained of Eros, it has vitually been removed from what most people consider a spiritual life.  And there is a deep hunger to heal that wound."

  Jalaja Bonheim

In my earlier post I shared a performance piece I wrote for Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Erotic love.  I also wanted to re-post also some information about  Jalaja Bonheim,  psychologist, temple dancer, and creator of the Institute for Circle Work in Ithaca, New York who has devoted much of her life to re-sacralizing and healing  the wounds of feminine Eros.   She is the author of Aphrodite's Daughters: Women's Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul.  After spending her childhood in Austria and Germany, Jalaja studied classical temple dance in India before coming to the United States in 1982. She is the author of three other books as well, which were inspired by her passion for integrating sexuality and spirituality in our world. 

"I think that every woman should have the opportunity, at some point in her life, to set down her sexual baggage among people who respect and support her, and to unpack it with them.  Our isolation has reinforced the assumption that nobody shares our feelings, or cares about our story, or wants to know.  But our individual baggage is never just ours alone.  Rather it belongs to the collective.  Other women have their own piece to carry.  The time has come to speak of what we know.  In the Temple we now sit in silence, a circle of priestesses.  One by one, each of us has stepped forward to make her offering.  Each one has given her gift, revealing through her story a beauty that made us catch our breath, a courage that renewed our own.  Around us we sense the spirits of many others - mothers and grandmothers, lovers and husbands, teachers and guides, the spirits of the ancestors and the spirits of those who are yet to come."

(from Aphrodite's Daughters)

http://youtu.be/03Rm3K8Ail0

A Sad Synchronicity

 "Today, I would describe a priestess as a woman who lives in two worlds at once, who perceives earthly life against the backdrop of a vast, timeless, reality."

  Jalaja Bonheim

In my Valentine's day Post, I shared some thoughts about Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of love.  One of the things I found interesting was a correspondence that had been going on with a friend in Portland who is bringing up a ritual with Goddess masks.  Apparently, she and others in her group are frustrated because they can't seem to get the Aphrodite mask to "cooperate"..........several priestesses have volunteered to dance the mask, and then abruptly withdrawn.  Some discussion has passed among us about the deeper meanings of Aphrodite in our contemporary world.  I love psychologist and priestess Jalaja Bonheim's book Aphrodite's Daughters, the compassion with which she illuminates this through women's stories.  She is also, quite appropriately, the founder of  the Institute for Circle Work in Ithaca, New York.

My friend and collaborator, Macha NightMare, is a potent weaver and circle maker, and I would not have made the original collection of Goddess masks had I not met her, and followed her to the Spiral Dance, and later the performances she organized with many communities.  The masks being used currently in Portland have their origins in her inspiration some 12 years ago, and are infused with the energies of community she gathered. I see that Macha will dedicate the ritual in May to Luanne, who I did not know, but was friends with her partner, Tami.   I was saddened to receive an email from Macha today about the death of a priestess of Aphrodite, on Valentine's day:


"I've been distracted due to the dying of a close friend in the Reclaiming community; she'd been fighting leukemia for 2.5 years and she passed thru the veil last evening.  I'd like to dedicate this ritual to her memory.  Luanne Blaich, Priestess of Aphrodite (Aug. 29, 1962 - Feb. 14, 2012)."
  
From Reclaiming's bio:  "Luanne was a teacher in the Reclaiming Tradition for 7 years -   committed to radical sanity, ecstatic devotion to the Goddess, and living in the Good Reality. Her magick is informed by a lifetime's study of movement and dance technology as well as drawing on many different shamanistic and magickal traditions. She is a devotee of Aphrodite."

There is a circle here I honor.

Aphrodite and Jalaja Bonheim

 

"Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love "

Leonard Cohen, "Dance Me To The End Of Love"

A friend in Portland is facilitating a ritual performance with masks, and I was a bit amused to learn that the mask of Aphrodite had been chosen by 3 women to invoke, and then each had withdrawn.   In my experience, one does not aspect a Goddess lightly!  When I last heard, they were still seeking a priestess to dance the mask.  I think invoking the energies of Aphrodite especially is no small task!  As I write I  remember a performance in 2001 in which the mask was danced by a beautiful woman with black silk gloves, to the music of "Dance Me To The End Of Love".

Aphrodite was "born from the sea", and without writing about the many sources of the mythic Aphrodite, it seems fitting that the Goddess of love should have her power and source in the vast depths of the ocean.  I also have to say that, considering the blog entry that preceeds this one, I believe Aphrodite........Eros.........is very wounded in our world, and I don't need to go very far to demonstrate my claim.  

 

 "Today, I would describe a priestess as a woman who lives in two worlds at once, who perceives earthly life against the backdrop of a vast, timeless, reality."

  Jalaja Bonheim

Allow me below to introduce one of my personal Heroines,  Jalaja Bonheim, a psychologist, temple dancer, and creator of the Institute for Circle Work in Ithaca, New York who has devoted much of her life to healing that wound.  She is the author of Aphrodite's Daughters: Women's Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul.  After spending her childhood in Austria and Germany, Jalaja studied classical temple dance in India before coming to the United States in 1982. She is the author of three other books as well, which were inspired by her passion for integrating sexuality and spirituality in our world, and empowering women.                                                                                                                            

"I think that every woman should have the opportunity, at some point in her life, to set down her sexual baggage among people who respect and support her, and to unpack it with them.  Our isolation has reinforced the assumption that nobody shares our feelings, or cares about our story, or wants to know.  But our individual baggage is never just ours alone.  Rather it belongs to the collective.  Other women have their own piece to carry.  The time has come to speak of what we know.  In the Temple we now sit in silence, a circle of priestesses.  One by one, each of us has stepped forward to make her offering.  Each one has given her gift, revealing through her story a beauty that made us catch our breath, a courage that renewed our own.  Around us we sense the spirits of many others - mothers and grandmothers, lovers and husbands, teachers and guides, the spirits of the ancestors and the spirits of those who are yet to come."

(from Aphrodite's Daughters)

APHRODITE IN BROOKLYN

Please allow me to take off my shoes,
this faux marble pose 
this modern, pragmatic mask.
Permit me my ruin.

Let us not consider this therapy
 or revolution
do not ask me to give you space
let us not discuss those who came before
and those who might follow.
Let us not talk of past lives.

I have fallen on hard times.
If you come to my temple
 just let me make for you an ocean.

Half seen in the darkness
your body, a mystery
true, tangible, radiant,
lined with the rings of your life.

You are beautiful,
beautiful to be a man.

Darling, even in this era, I will not believe
that love is disposable,
that sex is safe
that lovers are trains, rolling past each other
to some certain station 

  I remember,
  I almost remember my river source

My skin forms the word anew,
     yes,
     enter me
     as if

    you were coming home

             Lauren Raine (1999)

Aphrodite

A friend said that I never talk about love and I'm too grim; just to prove she's wrong, I pulled out this poem, and the mask of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, born from the ocean. See (name with held to protect the innocent)? No crop circles, solar flares, or environmental degredation! Just the Great Goddess Aphrodite, trying to come to terms with post-modernism.

Aphrodite in Brooklyn

Please allow me to take off my shoes,
this faux marble pose
and this modern, pragmatic mask.

Permit me my ruin.

Please, let us not consider this therapy
or revolution, do not ask me

to give you space.

Let us not discuss those who came before,

or those who might follow. Let us not talk of past lives.

This moment,
this moment is all I know.

I have fallen on hard times.

If you come to my temple, just
let me make for you an ocean.

Half seen in the darkness
your body is a Mystery
true, tangible, radiant,
lined with the rings of your life.
You are beautiful,
beautiful to be a man.

Darling, even in this era,
even now, I will not believe

that love is disposable,
that sex is safe
that lovers are trains
rolling past each other
to some certain station:

I remember,
I almost remember
my river source

My skin forms the word anew,
yes
enter me

as if
you were coming home.

(1999)