Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Goddesses Alive Ritual at Parliament of World Religions - Article by Heather Greene
Friday, July 3, 2015
The World Parliment of Religion 2015
"What the audience saw when a dancer looked through the eyes of the mask was the Goddess Herself, an ancient and yet utterly contemporary presence, looking across time, across the miles."
Diane Darling, Playwright
In Salt Lake City in October at the Parliament of World Religions a group of women and men will be will be literally “bringing the Goddess to life”. “Goddess Alive!” is produced and written by M. Macha NightMare (Aline O’Brien), with Mary Kay Landon. Participants will use my “Masks of the Goddess” Collection to create a ritual theatre event honoring the many faces of the Divine Feminine throughout the world.
The Masks of the Goddess Project began in 1998, and since then the ever-evolving, multi-cultural collection of masks have travelled around the U.S. to different communities for dance, storytelling, exhibit, and personal invocation, always collaborative.
"The work of our group was not to re-enact the ancient goddess myths, but to take those myths to their next level of evolutionary unfolding. We are the mythmakers.”
Katherine Josten, The Global Art Project
In 1999 I was invited to create masks for the Invocation of the Goddess at the 20th Annual Spiral Dance in San Francisco. I wanted to offer the collection as contemporary "Temple Masks" devoted to the Goddess. It’s been my great privilege to see the masks used in numerous communities, as well as to produce several events myself, and over the years an archive of performances, stories, and interviews has accrued as the Collection travelled, gathering story.
As the Goddess is invoked through the masked dancer’s performance, these stories come alive as a visible Presence. Through the medium of masks, we have sought to re-claim and re-invent for today the universal, ancient, important stories of the Goddess, as well as empowering women to explore each archetypal presence within herself. Masks are potent bridges for transformation, and by working with the mask as both performance and invocation the process serves as a blessing for both the audience and the dancer.
In 2013 I produced a new series I called "Numina - Masks for the Elemental Powers", for a new play by Ann Waters - "The Awakening - Our Changing Earth". The Romans believed that places were inhabited by intelligences they called Numina, and many gardens or springs had little shrines dedicated to them, the "genius loci", of a particular place. I have often asked myself how we can regain this sense of communion with the elemental powers of place that are the true wellsprings of myth.
References:
Darling, D. (2000) Interview excerpt, “Masque of the Goddess”, Sebastopol, Ca (2000)
Josten, K. (2004). Unpublished journal of “Restoring the Balance” cast, Tucson, Az (2004).
Photographs illustrating this article are with permission of Thomas Lux, Ann Beam, and Jerri Jo Idarius.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Invoking, Beginning, Procrastinating.....
"Gaia's Hand" (2012) |
The day before I went into surgery in November, I received an email from Prema Dasara, who wanted to knowif I was still interested in creating the 21 masks of Tara we had discussed in previous years - they were to be made in Bali, a collaboration with Balinese artists. I felt very much encouraged by this synchronicity (I often pray to Tara for healing), and said (to Prema and to Tara) that I would be most glad to do it if the results of my surgery were positive. And so they were!
But Prema has had to cancel the project for this year. I reflected on how many women have requested the use of the "Masks of the Goddess" Collection, which was sold at a benefit auction for the Independent Eye's production of The Descent of Inanna in 2008 (I'll write about this powerful play in the future).
Elizabeth Fuller in "The Descent of Inanna" (2008) |
Mana Young and Cast, Black Box Theatre, Oakland (2002) |
- The Road goes ever on and on
- Now far ahead the Road has gone,
- And I must follow, if I can,
- Until it joins some larger way
- Where many paths and errands meet.
- And whither then? I cannot say.
- J.R.R. Tolkien
At "The Spiral Dance" (2006) (Courtesy San Francisco Chronicle) |
I guess I just have to close my eyes and take the plunge. Synchronicities have clustered around the idea almost before I began. Almost simultaneously, my friend Macha NightMare (Have Broom Will Travel), who I've collaborated with in the past, proposed a first "inaugeral" performance at the Women and Mythology Conference in May. Something very close to my heart, ideas I've been wondering and wandering about ever since I walked among the Stones in Avebury, and felt the living presence of the Springs in Avalon last summer - the Spirits of Place. Here's Macha's Abstract:
"Ritual studies scholar Ronald Grimes suggests that relearning of ritual ways can help us re-attune to the environment at a time when the ability of our Earth to sustain our lives is imperiled. “The surge of popular interest in the ecological possibilities of ritual is fed by a rich, publicly consumed ethnographic literature, some of which depicts rites as a primary means of being attuned to the environment.” Artists, ecological restorationists, and composers are exploring the use of ritual to enhance our understanding of our interdependence and our responsibilities as a species to attend to maintaining of a healthy Web of Life.She invites story/voice and ideas from others in the evolution of this piece. I touch the violet amethyst pendant I found in an apple tree in Glastonbury, which I wear around my neck feeling very much that it was a gift from the Lady of Avalon, and try to imagine how I might tell that story..........and what voice the Desert Goddess might have as well.............Well. Time to take the plunge, pull out the threads and start weaving, re-weaving, and spinning.
Around the world natural phenomena and spirits of place have revealed themselves to us in anthropomorphic forms. These encounters generated stories that were told over the ages. Employing the use of sacred masks especially created for this event by Lauren Raine, using rhythm and chant, narrative and movement, and current scientific knowledge (physics, geology, biology, ecology, climatology, et al.), we propose a ritual performance that offers all celebrants encounters with these goddesses, as they have been known in the past and as they exist today."
I'll begin my journey with the only Goddess mask I still have, Flora, the Roman Goddess of flowers, and originator of May Day celebrations (at least in Rome). Florence is also my mother's name, and Flora was the name of my great grandmother. The mask spent the past 6 months with a woman who lost her son, and wanted the mask for healing. I'm sure she has infused the mask with the beginnings of story..........Flowers are a good place to begin, they represent beauty, and the invitation to new life.
Fertility it is, insemination, all that. As far as that dream goes.......at 62, I'm way beyond May Queen. Sometimes I feel more akin to Miss Marple. But Symbolic it is.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Solstice - Pax Gaia
"Only now can we see with clarity that we live not so much in a cosmos (a place) as in a cosmogenesis (a process) -- scientific in its data, mythic in its form."
~ The Universe Story by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry
Long ago ancestors lit fires to welcome the "shining god" who was the sun returning from mysterious underworld depths. They built stones or made circles or created doorways to be aligned with the sun's pathway. They lit fires as sympathetic magic, fires to light and imitate the Sun's passage (which is why we still light candles, and Christmas lights, today).
The light is returning again.
(2009)
"In my tradition, we gather on the beach at sunset on the longest night of the year, and as the Sun goes down over the waves, we all plunge into the ocean as a ritual purification; then return to warm up at the big waiting bonfire in the sand.
Later we return to homes, often lots of us in one home, where we sing Yule carols, light candles, drink hot brews. We feast and eat Sun cookies the children have baked. We gather near the fireplace telling and listening to stories, playing games, perhaps doing divination.
As dawn approaches, we go outside and gather in the high places around the Bay Area and sing and sing and sing up the Sun – often in the rain, but always we can see the lightening skies.
When we perform these acts – when we sing the carols, trim our trees, light candles – we reenact the things our ancestors did, we reconnect with them, and we honor our heritage. Celebrating Midwinter together allows us to reaffirm the continuance of life."
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Morrigan
Macha M. Nightmare at the Russian River, "washing the shroud" (2001)
I have a friend, Macha Nightmare, who is one of the founding members of the Reclaiming Collective in San Francisco, as well as the Covenant of the Goddess. Macha is an author of numerous books on Wicca, Earth-based spirituality, and activism. As a priestess, ritualist, and community organizer, she has been tirelessly dedicated to justice, the earth, and magical healing for many years. If I hadn't met Macha, I probably never would have made the "Masks of the Goddess" collection, because she was the one who thought to call me when she, Starhawk, Rose May Dance, and others were planning the 20th Spiral Dance, the event I initially created the masks for in 1999. The Spiral Dance is a powerful event to honor the turning of the year, the cycle of death and rebirth, and the beloved dead.
I myself organized a Spiral Dance in 2000 with the community of Tucson, and we were fortunate to be able to bring Macha to town to lead the Dance. Above San Francisco on the Russian River, is a famous resort ironically called "Bohemian Grove". For decades it hosted a retreat for corporate and military executives, annually attended by some of the most influential people in America. Bay Area political groups also demonstrate there annually, and in July of 2001, Macha staged a protest remembering certain tragedies of corporate exploitation. Macha wore the mask of "The Morrigan" as she stood in the river, washing a business suit saturated with "blood" which spread, a long red stain, slowly into the water.
The Morrigan was the Celtic Goddess of battle, of justice, and also, of lamentation. She washed the shrouds, and remembered those who were gone. Roman historians remembered that the Gauls (Celts) looked for her in the guise of a raven before they went into battle, certain that she would carry them into the west, into the Summer Lands, if they fought bravely.
Perhaps because I am angry at so much waste, so much injustice these days, or perhaps, because a black feather fell onto my windshield this morning, and I looked up to see a big raven croaking her mysterious way into distance.....I share this poem, and my fond remembrance of fierce Macha.
May we all drink from deep, deep waters.
THE CURSE OF THE MORRIGAN
May you look into the sweetest, most open eyes, and howl the loss of your own innocence.
May you look into each face, and see a mirror. May all your cleverness fall into the abyss of your speechless grief, your secret hunger, may you look into that black hole with no name, and find....the most tender touch in the darkest night, the hand that reaches out. May you take that hand. May you walk all your circles home at last, and coming home, know where you are.
May you breathe the bitter dust, may you thirst, may you walk hungry in the wastelands, the barren places you have made. And when you cannot walk one step further, may you see at your foot a single blade of grass, green, defiantly green. And may you be remade by its generosity.
May you be emptied out, may your hearts break not in half, but wide open in a thousand places, and may the waters of the world pour from each crevice, washing you clean.
May you know true loneliness. And when you think your loneliness will drive you mad, when you know you cannot bear it one more hour - May a line be cast to you, one shining, light woven strand of the Great Web glistening in the dark. And may you hold on for dear life.
May you find yourself in the hard place with your back against the wall. And may you rage, rage until you find your will. And may you learn to shape yourself.
May you wake up in a strange land as naked as the day you were born and thrice as raw. May you look into the eyes of any other soul, in your radiant need and terrible vulnerability. May you know your Self. And may you be blessed by that communion.
And may you love well, thrice and thrice and thrice,and again and again and again:may you find your face before you were born.And may you drink from deep, deep waters.(1999)