"The Masks of the Goddess" at the Women & Spirituality Conference

 

Photo by JJ Idarius

                                   I am deeply honored to be the Keynote Speaker at this years 

40th Annual Women & Spirituality Conference

                  October 4th, 5th & 6th 2024

              St. Mary’s University,  Cascade Meadows Campus,

                                       Rochester, MN

Over 36 workshops to choose from, vendors, exhibitors and more. The Masks of the Goddess Collection will be on Exhibit!  Along with many women’s voices sharing their wisdom, offering their healing, together in community since 1981.  Explore the beauty of the land, experience art in the Maker’s Space, find solace in the Chaplain’s Corner.

And.......... there will be a special Ceremonial Evening 

Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Conference

with a Community Ritual  Performance and the Masks of the Goddess 

                        Friday October 4th, 2024 at 7:00 pm

                         at the Chateau Theater in Rochester,  Mn  

 We are still seeking Participants to Invoke the Goddesses with the masks!  If you live in Rochester area and would like to be part of this offering for the Divine Feminine, please contact Laurenraine9@gmail.com.  We would love to have you join us!

                                                  

“What the audience saw when a dancer looked through the eyes of the mask was the Goddess Herself,  ancient and yet contemporary, looking across time, across the miles.”

           Diane Darling, Director, Playwright                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

The Five Dakinis

 

Masks for The Five Wisdom Dakinis (2016)

The Dakinis are the most important elements of the enlightened feminine in Tibetan Buddhism. They are the luminous, subtle, spiritual energy, the key, the gatekeeper, the guardian of the unconditioned state. When you want to accomplish something, you always invoke the presence of the Dakinis.”

— Lama Tsultrim Allione

I  made this Collection of Masks for a sacred dancer back in 2014, and they came to mind today, so I felt like sharing this post again.  Mekare*** is a  the Tantric dancer and teacher who has worked extensively with Prema Dasara and her beautiful 21 Praises of Tara dance ritual.   This collection I made for Mekare represent the Fierce Aspects of the Dakinis,  which she felt it was important for women to call upon in our world.  Here is something she wrote about the Dakinis: 

"The Dakini is a primordial female wisdom energy found particularly in Tibetan Buddhism.  They are called "Skydancers" for they are completely free, able to travel between worlds and dimensions, free of the entanglements of the mind, and intimate with impermanence. They dance in limitless luminous space. Embodiments of the Dakini are said to do their practices in graveyards,  adorned with skulls and bone ornaments representing their intimacy with impermanence and their freedom from all fear.  They are ferocious and wise, primal and magical. Fierce allies and agents of change.  Their compassion is immense.

They can be tricksters of the most sublime order, terrifying and demanding of truth, and also the most kind of guides, playful and nurturing.  They break through barriers, invoke strength and power, guide us across the thresholds of awareness and change. 

Depictions of the Dakini show her with a crown of skulls, in a wreath of flame, teeth bared in ferocious  display like a tiger -  eyes piercing and somewhat terrifying but with a rare beauty.  The beauty of understainding, compassion, and hilarity shines forth.  In Tibetan Buddhist Tantra there are 5 Wisdom Dakinis, each having a specific gift of mind transformation - the transformation or transmutation  of the poisons of the mind into wisdom."...............Mekare

I immediately related to the Dakinis being associated with the Five Elemental forces.  My sense is that they are like the Devas, primal beings, builders and creators.  Their concerns and origin are not necessarily human.  In this sense, they are elemental beings, associated with the 5 Directions.  Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Center or Aether.  Perhaps, like Kali dancing with Her skull necklace,  the skulls and bones that adorn them represent a ferocious hilarity at the fears that beset us, and the reality of impermanence.  Mekare went on to say:

"Dakini is a source of refuge. Besides taking refuge in the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha), we also take refuge in the Three Roots (Guru, Yidam and Dakini): Guru as the root of blessings because he or she will guide us to attain enlightenment; Yidam as the root of accomplishment because through the skilful method of practicing on an Yidam or tutelary deity, one will realise the nature of his or her own mind; Dakini as the root of all enlightened activities since Dakini represents primordial wisdom.

Dakini is associated with spaciousness, therefore has the ability to give birth to limitless prospects of enlightened activities: pacifying, enriching, magnetising and destroying. Dakini also embodies the union of emptiness and wisdom. There is nothing more than this.  A Dakini has the ability to move freely in  space which is beyond thoughts and beyond fabrications. This is the state of awareness which is under control, stable and yet free. Everyone has the ability and the potentials to realise the Wisdom Dakini principles or nature within oneself."

The Green Karma Dakini,  Element of Air

 The transmutation of overwork, struggle, and competition  into  

all-accomplishing wisdom and enlightened activity.

Associated with Karma Dakini:  Fulfillment. Aware choice. 

Grace. Ease. The Tao. The Martial Artist aware in every direction. 

 Compassionate and capable action in the world.

The Red Padma Dakini, Element of Fire

 The transmutation of desire, lust, and grasping into discerning awareness.

Associated with Padma Dakini:  Compassion. Radiance. Magnetism 

in order  to bring benefit. Warmth. Comfort. Delight. Joy.

The Gold Ratna Dakini, Element of Earth

 The transmutation of arrogance and greed into equanimity and generosity.
Associated with Ratna Dakini:  Abundance. Stability.
The richness inherent in every moment and everything. 
Golden. Generosity. Enrichment.

The Blue Vajra Dakini, Element of Water

 The transmutation of confusion and anger into mirror-like wisdom.

Associated with Vajra Dakini:  Clarity.  Precision. Intelligence. Intuition. 

Reflection.  Clear seeing wisdom.

The White Buddha Dakini, Element of Space

 The transmutation of despair, depression, apathy, 
and disconnect into  illuminated spacious mind.  
Associated with Buddha Dakini:  Calm. Peace. Spacious. Soothing.
 Realization  of connection and the web of all. 
The restful state of enlightened mind.

Dakinis by Penny Slinger
http://journeyingtothegoddess.wordpress.com

***

MEKARE is a Sacred Dancer, Artist, Storyteller, Shamanic Bodywork Therapist, and Visionary Creatrix who is passionate about embodiment, evolution, sacred dance, and healing.  She has traveled extensively, studying with indigenous healers and dancing ecstatically around the world, including performing for His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the Mandala Dance of the 21 Praises of Tara with Prema Dasara.

"The Masks of the Goddess" at the 2021 Parliament of World Religions

 

2021 Parliament of the World's Religions

"The Masks of the Goddess":

Contemporary Temple Masks & Ritual Theatre 

in Celebration of the Divine Feminine

Session # 1558  Presented by Lauren Raine MFA)

https://www.accelevents.com/e/2021parliament/portal/stage/210273 

 (only viewable for registered attendees)

"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, Director, Playwright 

I am honored to be presenting a slide show and talk at the Virtual 2021 Parliament of World’s Religions about the “Masks of the Goddess” Project. 

After studying sacred mask traditions in Bali,  I was inspired to create a Collection of 35 multi-cultural masks, which I dedicated as “Temple Masks” to the many faces of the worldwide Divine Feminine. The Collection travelled to communities throughout the U.S.A. in collaboration with Priestesses, Dancers, Storytellers and Ritualists for over 20 years, bringing the Goddesses to life through the magic of Invocation and Theatre. The Project was concluded in 2019 with an Exhibit at Her Church in San Francisco.

I was, indeed, a privilege to collaborate with so many people dedicated to the Return of the Goddess.  No artist could ask for more.

 To view slideshow:   https://www.slideshare.net/laurenraine/the-masks-of-the-goddess-2021

Monday, October 18^th

7:00 AM to 7:45 Mountain time (Arizona)

8:00 AM Central time

9:00 AM Eastern Time

6:00 AM Pacific time (California)

 

Agenda Parliament of World Religions

Photographs by Jerri Jo Idarius 

New Works.......Elemental Touch, The River, and Shaman Masks

Looks like it was a good idea to take my own advice (in the previous Interview post) , having been avoiding the studio for months and feeling the Holiday Blues as the days are short and dark.  I went into the studio, forced myself to work, and low and behold, FLOW has kicked back in and I am full of ideas once more.  

I started casting hands back in 2007 when I had an Alden B. Dow Fellowship at Northwood University in Michigan, and with ceramic artist Kathy Space we created a community arts project based on  the legend of the Spider Woman that I called "Spider Woman's Hands" which was shown at the Midland Arts Center.  Each participant made an Icon that was composed of a cast of their hand or hands, something significant to them as a personal symbol, and the entire exhibit of "Icons" was united by a "thread" that was held in each hand and extended to the next.  At last the Thread went right out the door, to represent our connection to all others and all life.   The Creative Spirit Center in Midland Michigan went on to repeat the Project, with Kathy Space and Space Studio. In 2009 I was Resident Artist at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C., and continued casting hands and pursuing "Spider Woman's Hands" with the community there with a sculpture called "Weavers".

                                 

I've been creating sculptures with casts of peoples hands ever since. Many of them seem to be rooted, another metaphor that repeats for me.   Here's an article I wrote back in 2009 about hands, and the "Hand and Eye" which fascinates me.  I guess  I would say that hands are as individual as faces, they age like the rings of a tree, and are full of the stories of what those hands have created and touched.  We touch the world, we "handle" the world, we create and caress and are active participants with World with our hands.  Hands go beyond the abstractions of the mind, abstractions that often remove us from the sensuous and the actual experience of being alive.   And hands can also represent the active and creative force in nature and in the cosmos - the "Hand of the Divine".                                

This is for a friend who is recently divorced, after a long and somewhat abusive marriage.  The butterflies represent the transformation she is now making in her life, the new life she is creating for herself.

Four Shaman Masks: 
 The Oracle (East), The Healer (West) The Maker (South)
 "Mask for the Crossing of Dimensions" (Center)

This  Series began with finding a drawing for the mask below, with the title, in a very old sketchbook, and feeling like, after some 20 years, it was time to make the mask.   Then the other masks followed, and I began to realize that they were related to the elements.  The last mask for North I have not made yet.  They need story, and I wish the right people would show up who can do just that, who will "activate" them. 

Surely, they must have been made for someone..................

"Mask for the Crossing of Dimensions" (2020)

The Masks of the Goddess: New Slide Show

I will be giving a Salon Presentation next week with the Association  for the Study of Women and Mythology, and put together a new, improved Slide Show!  Here it is below, and the Slide Share link - and I'm most grateful to Slide Share for making their wonderful service available.  And since I'm also doing a kind of "retrospective" here as I  wait for the heavy hand of Bloggers "new look" which may make it rather difficult to access my older posts, I copy below an article I wrote about the "Mythos" of the Goddess, and the creation of masks.

https://www.slideshare.net/laurenraine/the-masks-of-the-goddess-2020

The masks of the goddess 2020 from Lauren Raine

MYTHOS
The Multi-cultural  Divine Feminine

"Western civilization has been overshadowed by the Father archetype, to the exclusion of the Mother archetype.  By suppressing the feminine, we have done enormous damage to our individual and collective psychic health, ​ to say nothing of the health of our planet."   

Jennifer Barker and Roger Woolger, THE GODDESS WITHIN
​

​In 2002, just before the invasion of Iraq, I directed an event with the Masks of the Goddess collection devoted to peace in Oakland, California.   I   remember a conversation I shared with one of my collaborators,  Dorit Bat Shalom, an Israeli artist who brought Israeli and Palestine women together in “Peace Tents” to share their stories in the 1990's.   

Dorit asked: "How can there be peace in the Middle east without the Shekinah?"  The Shekinah is the feminine aspect of God in Judaism.  Dorit explained "The Shekinah has been driven away from the holy lands. We cannot heal without her."

I never forgot her comment.  Because  indeed, endless strife does takes place in the very heart of what was once the fertile homeland of the ancient Great Mother, of Inanna, Astarte, Isis,  Asheroth, and the Shekinah.   Artists are mythmakers - and myths are the templates of dream, art and religion, the templates upon which both civilizations and individuals name what is sacred, and what is profane. I think the question Dorit raised is profound:  how indeed can there be peace, in the Mideast or elsewhere, when deity, and values, are personified and polarized as almost exclusively male? 

 A mythos that denies “the feminine face of God”, and degrades or belittles the sanctity of feminine experience - has left us a humanity divided against itself.

At the closing of our event participants and audience approached a masked “Sophia”, who held a mirror over her heart. As they drew near the stage, each saw themselves reflected in the mirror, the “heart of Sophia”.  The name of Sophia, the feminine face of God in early Gnostic Christianity, means "wisdom".  Ultimately, to "know Sophia" means to "know thyself". In all our complex diversity, male and female, dark and light, old and young.  The "mirror of Sophia" represented the Gnosis necessary to become true peacemakers.

The Goddess of antiquity and world culture, as well as in contemporary women's spirituality,   has a thousand faces - maiden, mother, wise crone, teacher, warrior, healer, destroyer, lover, nurturer of new life or the flame of creativity. She is found throughout world religions and mythologies, with names like red Kali, Inanna Queen of the stars, Quan Yin the compassionate, suffering Sedna Ocean mother to the Inuit, Aphrodite the capricious goddess of love, and Mary, the Virgin. To me, most of all, she is Gaia, Anima Mundi, the feminine “World Soul”.  As the collective power and voices of women rise now so does the Goddess, often hidden and underground, rising now from the buried past.  

I've found, with many others, that re-discovering and re-inventing these universal stories is important to empowering women.  They are also important on many other levels:  to restore the balance within the fragmented soul of humanity, which includes reverence for nature and the sanctity of embodied existence, and for the affirmation of women’s experience.  It's been my privilege to share some of that telling through the use of masks, dance, ritual and theatre.

SACRED MASKS AND DANCE

When I studied mask making in Bali, I realized the Balinese had no understanding of our western discourse on art....art, to them, is a way to commune with the deities of their Hindu religion. Everyone in one way or another assists in the daily practice of their beliefs,  from creating offerings for ritual events, dancing in performances, participating in Ketchak performances, or many other activities associated with festivals and ritual dramas. Every village has its collection of Temple masks, preserved for specific events, such as the seasonal battle between the Barong (light) and the witch Rangda (dark).   For the Balinese the Temple masks are not "art objects" - they "belong to the Gods", and are imbued with special meaning and energy, just as the telling of their stories is more than entertainment.

"Theater" comes from the same Greek word as "theology" - Theos, or "god". In traditional cultures, masks, drama and dance are about contacting the divine, and refreshing the mythologies that inform their cultures... Masks are never made lightly. Animated by the body, masks are threshold tools that mediate between this world and the realms of spirit. There are many procedures to be followed, including choosing the right materials from the right place, asking ancestral spirits what kind of mask is required for specific ceremonies, and consecrating the finished work. A great deal of preparation was necessary, and masks were activated and de-activated with great respect.

As psychologist Stephen Larsen commented in his 1996 book The Mythic Imagination:

"The primary function of the mask is to unite the indwelling wearer (and the observer) with a mythic being, or as Jung would say, 'an archetypal power'. The mask, as we have found in our own work, becomes a transformer of energy, a medium of exchange between ego and archetype. Thus in traditional societies one finds taboos surrounding the mask, its recognition as a power object.”

Among natives of central Mexico, masks used for corn and rain dances were destroyed after a number of years, because they believed they accrued too much power over time. This sensibility is found in Japanese Noh Theatre. Noh masks are created according to traditions that go back many generations to represent personae that have firmly become animated by the mask. Actors will often sit for days with a mask, creating fusion with the character. An artist I know once told me of an African mask at the Museum of Art in Milwaukee that, legend had it, sweated. She said she went to view it over a number of days, and sure enough, there it was, if carefully observed, sweating away. Unnoticed by hundreds of people, she commented, magic is literally on display. 

"We're really praying" Drissana Devananda, a Tantric dancer, said of her dance practice. "It's a devotional practice. We're not bodies seeking the spirit, but spirits seeking bodily experience. Dance is about remembering to function from our whole bodies, the "body mind". That is the place we remember the Goddess." 

The intent of sacred performance thus is to give movement and voice to multi-dimensional being. What happens when we invite the archetypal powers, the Goddesses and Gods, into our "magic circle"? The answer is, "If you build it, they will come."  I believe there is a magnetic field the dance practice engages, a field of synchronicity and relatedness we step into.

 "When you create within a sacred paradigm", playwright Elizabeth Fuller said "you find a strange thing. You are communicating with, and being fed by, sources you know are within you, but have a much greater reflection somewhere else. You are in touch with something timeless.”

CIRCLE ART

As the group becomes a strong container, it generates energy that flows to the audience and beyond, an expanding circle. "Circularity" is the foundation of evolving Women's Spirituality.   The wheel of the elements, the wheel of the year, circulates. Water and wind move across the landscape like a sinuous snake. All things circle and wind and spiral. So does our creativity as we interact.

Masks are also about circles. To me, masks are an impeccable metaphor for the personae that encircle our souls.

Who are we, really? In the course of our lives we inhabit a noisy council of selves. The metaphor of the mask leads perfectly into that essential inquiry:  “Is this me? Or this? Can I wear this mask, become it for a while, express its unique qualities, feel it in my body, and find its story?  Can I take this mask off, have I become too identified with this mask to my detriment?"

We become, in my opinion, more compassionate beings when we can witness, embrace, and celebrate this "circle of self", from dark to light, mundane to divine, fragile to strong, young to old - as the integral being each of us really is. Not as an abstract concept, but as an authentic experience to be had within our spontaneous, creative imaginations, and in the sensory, visionary immediacy of our bodies. One way to do that is to use the mask consciously - putting on and taking off these many "faces", becoming self-aware shape shifters.

Each mask has its reserve of energy. Women and men exploring mythology with masks and storytelling may chose to work with an archetype for specific reasons; sometimes to call back something they feel has been lost. A woman named Turquoise who participated in a ritual drama in 2001, for example, told me that she discovered a joyful opportunity to reconnect with "the instinctual woman"  she had been in her youth when she worked with the  Artemis/Diana mask.

"I found", she wrote, "renewed love for the animals, the trees, for all living things. I saw my surroundings illuminated with light, the light of nature.  That is the domain of Artemis."

Some may find themselves drawn to a Goddess because she affords them an opportunity to explore something they need to discover.  Enacting the myth of Inanna’s descent to meet her dark twin Ereshkigal has been powerful visioning into the "underground" of the psyche for many who have created ritual events based upon this ancient Sumerian myth. Dwelling in the underworld, Ereshkigal may be understood as the “shadow self”, difficult to meet, necessary to not only know, but to cherish and integrate. The descent of Inanna is among the most universal myths of death, fragmentation, and psychic integration ever told: the shamanic "journey of the wounded healer".  Enacted in ritual theatre, it can represent initiation into mature empowerment; and it is also an enactment of the universal cycle of death and rebirth in the natural world.

The Goddess can also manifest in many intimate or contemporary ways. I remember making three masks for three young women who wished to create a performance about the Biblical Lilith, the "first wife of Adam" who was cast out of Eden because she would not submit to him.    They represented her as three aspects: a dark winged, elemental Lilith, a suffering Lilith cast out of Eden, and finally, Lilith as she appears today - a vamp.

"Mystery" derives from a Greek word, myein, which means "to keep silent". There are Gnostic experiences that cannot be spoken because they are, simply, larger than any word can express. They exist on multiple levels of meaning, and seem to cast us into the field of a consciousness that is greater than our individuality. 

Their expression belongs to dreams, art, myth and ritual. To too literally "describe" them is to diminish them and their potency. That was surely one of the reasons why the Eleusinian rites of Greece and Rome, which endured for 2,000 years, were called "Mysteries".

Ann Weller, an artist and community activist in California, took on the difficult task of invoking the "Dark Goddess" for a community ritual theatre event in 2000. At the approach of the millennium, their purpose was to symbolically transform the violence of the past century into a more just, evolved consciousness. As Ann described her process:

"The Dark Goddess is found in many cultures by many names, and is not aspected lightly. The work calls forth an internal capacity for psychic empowerment, an energy not easy for our limited ego selves to encompass. Because the work is, I believe, ultimately, impersonal. I was a brief vessel for an immense archetypal intelligence manifesting within the drama we created. And yet, the experience did bring personal change. You can't work with sacred theatre and not be changed in some way. I was being re-constructed, whether I was aware of it or not, to better serve Her. I found myself confronting aspects of myself that were just not useful any more. Which meant better serving myself. That's how I look at it. The little overlay of how I imagined myself, which had never been very effective, was now utterly obvious to me. My authentic power began to manifest."

In 1999 and 2006 it was my privilege to see the entire collection of masks used for the Spiral Dance, created by the Reclaiming Collective, in San Francisco. By offering to "aspect" a Goddess, each woman who wore her mask, and entered the Circle that night, was providing a blessing for all gathered, allowing the power of each Goddess to radiate into the world. This practice of viewing masks as “vessels for deity” - the gods and goddesses, the animal powers, the ancestral spirits - is a concept found in virtually all indigenous and early cultures, including the origins of Greek theatre.

There is a way of knowing that we are the artists of our lives, a way of seeing our creative process as participation in a conversation we are having with an infinitely conversant world. We’re dancing the future into the world by the stories we tell: like the web of the Native American creatrix Spider Woman, the threads of myth are spun far behind us, and weave their way far into the futures of those not yet born. May we dance empathy instead of despair, may we tell the stories that make life sacred and loving, profound and reverent.

 Photographs are by courtesy of:  Jerri Jo Idarius, Ileya Stewart, Thomas Lux, Peter Hughes, Ann Beam and Lauren Raine

References:

Bat Shalom, D. 2002:   "The Peace Tent", interview with Lauren Raine.
"The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", self-published  with  Blurb.com,  (San Francisco, California), 147 pages, 2019
.
Devananda, D. 2001:  interview with Lauren Raine. Unpublished  manuscript.

Fuller, E.  2001:  Interview with Lauren Raine, "The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", (2008) self-published  with  Blurb.com (San Francisco, California), 147 pages, p.87.

Larsen, S. Ph.D. 1996:  The Mythic Imagination: The Quest for Meaning Through Personal  Mythology,   Inner Traditions (Rochester, Vermont),  P. 178

Raine, L. 2008:   "The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", (2008) self-published   with  Blurb.com,  (San Francisco, California), 147 pages. 

Raine, L. 1999:   Performance, "The 20th Annual Spiral Dance", The Reclaiming Collective, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, California, Oct. 31, 1999. Community performance of annual event. 

Raine, L.  2004:  Performance, "Restoring the Balance",  Muse Community Arts Center, Tucson, Arizona, April 4, 2004.  Community performance, directed and produced by Lauren Raine. 

Raine, L.  2004:   Performance, "A Thousand Faces",  Black Box Theatre, Oakland,  California, October, 2002.  Community performance, directed and produced by Lauren Raine.  

Darling, D. 2000         Performance,  "Masque of the Goddess", Sebastopol Community Hall,  Sebastopol, California,  May,   2000.  Community performance, directed   and produced by Diane Darling. 

Smith, T. 2001     Correspondence with Lauren Raine.

Weller, A.: 2001:     Interview with Lauren Raine, "The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", (2008) self-published  with Blurb.com  (San Francisco,  California), 147 pages. 

Closing Exhibit of Masks of the Goddess, and New Revised "Masks of the Goddess" Book

In May I will be concluding the 20 year MASKS OF THE GODDESS PROJECT, which began as an Invocation to the Goddess at Reclaiming's 20th Annual Spiral Dance in San Francisco in 1999.  I have been so privileged to collaborate with Priestesses, Playwrights, Dancers, Ritualists, Community Organizers, Photographers, Artists, Photographers, Choreographers, Writers, Singers, and Psychologists in sharing the stories and  "Faces of the Goddess".  So many from around the country participated in the Project - please know that your spirit and contribution will be there, in every mask and photograph.   

The Opening will be May 5th, and I'll give a small slide presentation, and afterwards I'm delighted that there will several performances, including Evelie Delfino Sales Posch to sing her beautiful songs, and mask wearers Drissana and Vibra to invoke the Goddesses.  Perhaps we'll see you there!

I have also just revised and added a great deal of new material to my book 
"The Masks of the Goddess", which is available at  Blurb.com.
 You can turn pages in a "Preview" at this link:
 http://www.blurb.com/b/9380795-the-masks-of-the-goddess

Thank you once again for sharing your creativity and love of the Goddess with so many, and especially, with me.  May the Masks  continue their work. 

Lauren 
www.masksofthegoddess.com
www.laurenraine.com

Show of the Masks of the Goddess: The Morrigan Mask

In May, 2019 I will be exhibiting the entire "Masks of the Goddess" Collection, along with photos of participants, at HerChurch in San Francisco (details and announcement of opening to follow soon) as part of the closing of this 20 year project.  Giving a talk and performance, as well as donating some of the masks to the Temple of the Goddess in Glastonbury, U.K.  was the first part of my formal closing.    I have been very privileged indeed to share this work with many people:  Storytellers, Priestesses, Dancers, Actors, Communities.  No artist could ask for more.

Some of the masks, over the years, have been donated, sold, or lost, so I'm having a grand time right now making new ones.  This is the first new one, the Morrigan, Celtic Goddess of war, lamentation, and also justice.  Celtic warriors went into battle believing that She would bear their souls to the Summerland in honor if they fought well and bravely.  Her totem was the Raven.  I tried to get the expression of "battle lust"........ I hope I succeeded.  

This performance piece/poem I wrote in 1999...........I honestly sometimes think I "channelled" it because it came forth so fast and with such strength and passion.  Goddess of Justice She is, and a very, very fierce compassion.

THE CURSE OF THE MORRIGAN

You who bring suffering to children:  May you look into the sweetest, most open eyes, and howl the loss of your own innocence.

You who ridicule the poor, the grieving, the lost, the fallen, the inarticulate, the wounded children in grown-up bodies:  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.

You tree-killers, you wasters: 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.

And those who are greedy in a time of famine:  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.

Those who mistake power for love:  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.

Those passive ones, those ones who force others to shape them, and then complain if it's not to your liking:  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.

And you who delight in exploiting others, imagining that you are better than they are: 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 yourSelf.  

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.

         (1999)