"La Voz Mitológica" - Reflections on the Butterfly

 

"The butterfly dancer must be old because she represents the soul that is old. She is wide of thigh and broad of rump because she carries so much. Her grey hair certifies that she need no longer observe taboos about touching others. She is allowed to touch everyone: boys, babies, men, women, girl children, the old, the ill, and the dead. The Butterfly Woman can touch everyone. It is her privilege to touch all, at last. This is her power. Hers is the body of La Mariposa, the butterfly."

 "La Mariposa" …excerpt from Women Who Run with The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Years ago (about 15, to be exact) I was living in a trailer court, but spending most of my time caring for my mother, who had a house not too far away.  It was no easy time,  as my mother was in her 90's,  my brother Glenn had had a brain stem stroke and was on life support in a facility, and my other brother, David (who thankfully lived part of the time in his house in California) was, and still is, aggressively hostile and paranoid toward me.  That's why my trailer was my personal sanctuary.

I didn't know any of the (mostly elderly) people in the  trailer court, so I was very surprised to see that someone had left a bag hanging from the door to my old motorhome one afternoon.  It contained two greenish rolls of what the label called "Butterfly Carpet" - you spread them out on soil, water, and up comes a garden of flowers guaranteed to attract butterflies. I never found out who thought to leave this "butterfly food"  for me, but considering my fascination with butterfly stories, it was a synchronicity I took note of.  A "butterfly carpet" to help me remember that things will change, transformation and new possibility will come eventually.  

Years later, I still remember the symbolic "nourishment" that provided for "this butterfly". Just plant and water. I remember looking at those rolls of "butterfly food" some unknown person had left, and found a living metaphor that gave me heart, then and now. 

Butterflies are not only lovely creatures that embody the perfect metaphor for transformation. They are also the final life stage of the caterpillar, responsible for laying the eggs that will ensure future generations. They are generators of the future. And, they also have another job to do. A very important job. They are Pollinators. They must  see to it that not only caterpillars, but many other kinds of life are able to have a future. Just as diminishing populations of honey bees threaten the food crops, so too are these creatures potent, and vitally important to the Web of life on our planet.  

"And here too come visitors, some of whom are very starved of their geno-myths, detached from the spiritual placenta. They have forgotten their ancient Gods. They come to watch the ones who have not forgotten."  

In Clarissa Pinkola Estes famous book Women Who Run With the Wolves she tells the wonderful story of waiting to see the "Butterfly Dancer" at a Native American Pueblo ceremony (I believe at one of the Hopi pueblos). Perhaps tourists, waiting a long, hot, dusty day to see her, expected a slender, ephemeral Indian maiden; no doubt they were shocked out of their paradigm to see, finally, the grey haired Butterfly Dancer emerge, slow, sure, heavy, with her traditional tokens of empowerment.  An old woman.

"Her heavy body and her very skinny legs made her look like a hopping spider wrapped in a tamale. She hops on one foot and then on the other. She waves her feather fan to and fro. She is The Butterfly arrived to strengthen the weak. She is that which most think of as not strong: age, the butterfly, the feminine."

In the context of the cyclical ritual these dances symbolize and invoke for the Hopi,  the vital work of pollination is no job for for an inexperienced girl, no trivial job for a pretty child. It's a job for one who has lived, and lived, and can thus seed and generate the future from that solid base of experience and understanding.  As Estes goes on to say, 

"Butterfly Woman mends the erroneous idea that transformation is only for the tortured, the saintly, or only for the fabulously strong. The Self need not carry mountains to transform. A little is enough. A little goes a long way. A little changes much. The fertilizing force replaces the moving of mountains. Butterfly Maiden pollinates the souls of the earth: It is easier that you think, she says. She is shaking her feather fan, and she’s hopping, for she is spilling spiritual pollen all over the people who are there, Native Americans, little children, visitors, everyone. This is the translator of the instinctual, the fertilizing force, the mender, the rememberer of old ideas. She is La voz mitológica."

"La voz mitológica". The mythic voice. 

A very important concept that touches the Archetypes, the Ancestors, and the lively, evolving, yet ancient country of Mythos.  As Estes points out, among the audience who come to watch, rather than participate with, the rituals of the Hopi, are many who, unknowingly, are "visitors, very starved of their geno-myths, detached from the spiritual placenta.".  The Mythic Voice has great power to animate, enliven,sanctify, and en-chant, our world, which Modernism and Capitalism has turned into a lifeless commodity, a thing.  The "Mythic Voice" has the authority to re-call (or should I say re-sing)  our longing for  the re-enchantment of the World back from the places it has been buried, dismissed, left to dry up like a discarded leaf.  And yet the longing and the seeds of that longing remain, ever ready, like the "butterfly food blanket" (gifted by a stranger to me) to rise up as sprouts, then leafy plants, then flowers that provide food for the beautiful winged Pollinators of the imagination.   I find that I wrote numerous times in this Blog:

"We're Incubating the Future with the Stories we tell. So What Are They?"

I think on this a lot.   Because we need, especially now, "wise pollinators", women and men who can help to imagine and thus generate what Ursula Leguin called "Realists of a larger Reality".  We need them now, very much.

More Butterflies......

"The butterfly dancer must be old because she represents the soul that is old. She is wide of thigh and broad of rump because she carries so much. Her grey hair certifies that she need no longer observe taboos about touching others. She is allowed to touch everyone: boys, babies, men, women, girl children, the old, the ill, and the dead. The Butterfly Woman can touch everyone. It is her privilege to touch all, at last. This is her power. Hers is the body of La Mariposa, the butterfly." "La Mariposa" …excerpt from Women Who Run with The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I currently live in a trailer court, although almost all of my time is spent at my mother's house as her caretaker. I'm not often at my "house on wheels", and scarcely know any of my neighbors, so I was surprised to see a bag hanging from the door a few days ago. It contained two greenish rolls of what the label called "Butterfly Carpet" - you spread them out on soil, water, and up comes a garden of flowers guaranteed to attract butterflies. I still don't know who thought to leave this "butterfly food" for me, but considering my run of butterfly stories and synchronicities lately, I've thought a bit more about the phenomenon, the metaphor, and hopefully, the guidance. I love that "nourishment" was provided for this butterfly. Just plant and water. To be honest, I've never felt more uninspired, confused, useless, and stuck in my life. I look at my two rolls of "butterfly food", and find a living metaphor that gives me heart. I have also been thinking a bit more about butterflies. Butterflies are not only lovely creatures that embody the perfect metaphor for transformation. They are also the final life stage of the caterpillar, responsible for laying the eggs that will ensure future generations. They are generators of the future. And, they also have another job to do. A very important job. They are Pollinators. They must also see to it that not only caterpillars, but many other kinds of life are able to have a future. Just as diminishing populations of honey bees threaten the food crops, so too are these creatures potent, and vitally important.

"And here too come visitors, some of whom are very starved of their geno-myths, detached from the spiritual placenta. They have forgotten their ancient Gods. They come to watch the ones who have not forgotten."

In Clarissa Pinkola Estes famous book "Women Who Run With the Wolves", she tells the wonderful story of waiting to see the "Butterfly Dancer" at a famous Pueblo ceremony (I believe at one of the Hopi pueblos, but can't remember). Perhaps tourists, waiting a long, hot, dusty day to see her, expected a slender, ephemeral Indian maiden; no doubt they were shocked out of their paradigm to see at last the grey haired Butterfly Dancer emerge, slow, sure, heavy, with her traditional tokens of empowerment.........an old woman.***

"Her heavy body and her very skinny legs made her look like a hopping spider wrapped in a tamale. She hops on one foot and then on the other. She waves her feather fan to and fro. She is The Butterfly arrived to strengthen the weak. She is that which most think of as not strong: age, the butterfly, the feminine."

Because in the agricultural ritual these dances symbolize and invoke for these people, the vital work of pollination is no job for for an inexperienced girl, no trivial job for a pretty child. It's a job for one who has lived, and lived, and can thus seed and generate the future from that solid base.

"Butterfly Woman mends the erroneous idea that transformation is only for the tortured, the saintly, or only for the fabulously strong. The Self need not carry mountains to transform. A little is enough. A little goes a long way. A little changes much. The fertilizing force replaces the moving of mountains. Butterfly Maiden pollinates the souls of the earth: It is easier that you think, she says. She is shaking her feather fan, and she’s hopping, for she is spilling spiritual pollen all over the people who are there, Native Americans, little children, visitors, everyone. This is the translator of the instinctual, the fertilizing force, the mender, the rememberer of old ideas. She is La voz mitológica." "La voz mitológica". The mythic voice. I'd like to write about this in a later post; it's a very important concept. Perhaps, following this insight that came to me today, and remembering the huge inspiration of this great storyteller, I find an answer of some kind to my own quest for meaning in this difficult time; and I pass this on to any who may be listening or reading. I am a storyteller, a maker of special masks. But we are all, in fact, storytellers. I believe the world desperately needs, especially now, "wise pollinators", women and men who can help the future to generate, flower, seed.

"We're Incubating the Future with the Stories we tell. So What Are They?"

*** To read in full this marvelous excerpt by Dr. Estes, here is a link I was fortunate to find: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=20411005516&topic=4033 

Changes and Syncronicities

It's been a long time since I've written in this blog. Much has changed since I came back to Tucson, or perhaps it's easier to say that returning, I was immediately cast into any number of internal sea storms that precede change. My environment in Tucson is unchanged. Just me. I'm changing.

Returning several things happened: I became depressed. And angry. My life seemed so lonely here, purposeless, my concerns for my mother and troubled brother overwhelming and something I feel powerless to change or even talk about, many of my connections with others now seemed superficial. Feelings of needing to move on, not knowing where to move on to.........and so on. In other words, after my wanderings, I returned to find myself immersed in melancholy and confusion, feeling ashamed for feeling that way. After all, haven't I been talking about interconnectedness, and community, and healing, for all these years? How could I find myself in this Saturnine morass?

There are times when, like it or not, various illusions that have sustained a worldview, a personal myth, a relationship, the cocoon of a personality............breakdown, activate, digest, bloom, become......obvious. I found myself unhappy with myself, and just about everything else. That wasn't supposed to happen after my wonderful summer!

Meanwhile, butterflies turned up. Fluttering by at appropriate moments in the course of my thoughts, flying over my windshield while waiting in traffic as if to say "follow me". Then a woman from N.Y.C. called, and wanted two custom "Butterfly Women" for a convention. After making those masks (which I'm quite pleased with, they were beautiful), I also received an invitation to join "The Butterfly Connection", an arts organization in Ft. Worth, Texas! Depressed, and recovering from surgery, butterflies flutter metaphorically, creatively, literally, bringing their message of beauty, mystery, CHANGE.

I'd like to make a comment here about Butterflies. When the caterpillar is neatly cocooned in its crystallise, it's not necessarily having a great time, or even a nice nap in there. The "Imaginal Cells" (yes, that's what they are actually called) are enzymes and agents of change that basically reduce the poor caterpillar, and all of it's juvenile memories of munching contentedly on glossy summer leaves...............to SOUP. Change is rarely effortless, or comfortable.

One of the painful discoveries I made in the course of the past 6 Saturnine weeks is that my Masks of the Goddess project, at least as it has been for the past 8 years, is over. I need to move on, bringing closure to both the project and the past, a place and time I realize I'm stuck in. I no longer have the means to continue to keep the collection circulating, financially or emotionally. Coming to this realization has forced me as well to be honest with myself about many negative feelings that have accumulated like soot over the years as well - feelings of disappointment, anger at others, anger and shame at myself for often being unfair in my expectations of others. I feel lightened now, having done this "8 year life review". And all throughout, butterflies occurred.

Alan Moore, who created the Butterfly Gardener's Network, has often said that butterflies are messengers. I could write about magic, synchronicity, and Butterflies at considerable length, but first, I I think I need to write about the syncronicities that have occurred just recently, the reason for putting the cover to Robert Hopke's 1997 book
THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS - Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives
at the top of this page. Because, well, I've been given such an affirmation!

1997, ten years ago, was a visionary, intense year for me. My marriage was over, my psyche was wide open as I grieved the past and also opened to new life and possibility. That fall, after the papers came through, I left my home on the East Coast, and by early November, was settled into my little trailer on the grounds of the Arizona Renaissance Faire. Since the Faire is out in the desert outside of Apache Junction, and didn't open until February, I had lots of time to go crazy, dream, heal, and grieve, in relative isolation. I didn't have a clue what the next step was, but I did begin to learn about the Internet, and was enjoying my first computer, creating my first website. I had November, 1997 through March of 1998 to figure out what I was going to do next.

I began to get on the Web, looking up anything I could think that interested me. Transformative arts, masks, art and consciousness, ritual theatre, women's spirituality...........and every time, without fail, everything came up either San Francisco, Berkeley, or Marin Country, California. Without fail.

I lived in Berkeley in it's heyday, and went to U.C. Berkeley. I left in 1976, to move to the East Coast. I hadn't thought of returning to California, but now my interest struck. The clincher was when I searched for "The Center for Symbolic Studies", founded by Stephen Larsen in Rosendale, New York. I wanted to ask his wife, Robin, to write a recommendation for me, as I'd taught a workshop and given a performance there.

Up came "The Center for Symbolic Studies", in Berkeley, California. The founder, Robert H. Hopke, had just published a book called: "There Are No Accidents - Synchronicity and the Stories of our Lives".

I'm not sure it gets better than that, but perhaps Dr. Hopke has stories to match. Being at the crossroads anyway, that was the clincher. I packed up my van at the end of the season, my cat, and my laptop and headed back to Berkeley after 20 years absence, prepared to sleep in my car if necessary until I found a place.

Fortunately for me, my idea of finding a place in Berkeley was based on my memories of 1976. Otherwise, I might have been daunted indeed. On a glorious spring day, I rolled onto Telegraph Avenue, parked my van, and decided to have a cup of coffee at the Med before I began my new life. I walked in, stood in the cappachino line, and ran into an old friend, Joji Yokoi, who remembered me after all those years. Remembered me, bought me a coffee, and offered me a room in his house while I looked for a place.

I didn't have to sleep in my car even one night. Two months later I was Judy Foster's roomate, working with Food Not Bombs, and celebrating the summer Solstice with Starhawk and Reclaiming (Judy was one of the founders of Reclaiming). A year after that I had my Rites of Passage Gallery in Berkeley, created the Masks of the Goddess for the Spiral Dance, and was fire dancing with Serene Zloof and her friends. Everything that happened in those years ...... seemed like that. Seamless.

And then I returned to Arizona, in 2000. I've often wondered what it might have been like if I'd stayed, kept my gallery, continued the life I was enjoying so much in Berkeley. There was a period when I was desperate to return to California, to return to the life I had, the project that seemed to vital there, and so difficult to generate here - but of course, you can't really do that. You can't go back.

Concluding my project, selling the masks, brings up a lot. So I was delighted when I attended, just yesterday, a meeting of the Southern Arizona Friends of Jung. Their subject was the Divine Feminine, and I enjoyed sharing both my masks and knowledge with them. And there on the coffee table was Dr. Hopke's book, which one of the members had brought in randomly. It's not a common book at all, but to me, it was like a talisman. In the warmth of the group and their appreciation for my work I felt - affirmed.

The talisman opened, and closed, my ten year journey. A postcard from Spiderwoman. I don't know what to say at such moments, except, Thankyou. GRACE.