The Feast of Samhain (1.)

"Skin Shedder" 1986

Where do the dead go?

The dead that are not corpses, cosmetically renewed
and boxed, their faces familiar and serene.
Or brought to an essence, pale ashes
in elegant cannisters.

I ask for the other dead,
those ghosts that wander
unshriven among our sleep,
haunting the borderlands of our lives.

The dead dreams,
The failed loves.
The quests, undertaken with full courage
and paid for in blood
that never found a dragon,
a Grail, a noble ordeal
and the Hero's sacred journey home.

Instead, the wrong fork was somehow taken,
or the road
wandered aimlessly, finally narrowing
to a tangled gully
and the Hero was lost,
in the gray and prosaic rain,
hungry, weary, to finally stop somewhere, anywhere
glad of bread, a fire, a little companionship.

Where is their graveyard?
Were they mourned?
Did we hold a wake,
bear flowers, eulogize

their bright efforts
their brave hopes

and commemorate their loss with honor?
A poem?
An imperishable stone
to mark their passing?

Did we give them back to the Earth
to nourish saplings yet to flower,
the unborn ones?

Or were they left to wander
in some unseen Bardo, unreleased, ungrieved.
Did we turn our backs on them unknowing,
their voices calling, whispering impotently

behind us
shadowing our steps?

Lauren Raine 1997

As Samhain approaches (Halloween to many), I feel a sharp kind of loneliness that has it's own brand of sweet melancholy. This is a new community for me, and I don't really know much of anyone to celebrate even profane Halloween, so I'll make my own Samhain remembrances alone. Although I do see some Dia de los Muertes posters, so the outlook for a celebration may not be that grim. I remember the Spiral Dances in San Francisco that I've participated in and created the masks for..............

Traditionally this was the time to celebrate the "Witche's New Year", the last Sabbat or sacred day (which is why it's called "Halloween", or "Hallowed evening". It is the closing of the old year, the last harvest festival, a time to honor the ancestors and all the events and gifts of the dying year as they prepared for the entry into the darkness and the long dormancy of winter. The veils between the worlds were very thin, and places were set at the banquet table for the spirits of those beloved dead who had passed on. You might see in any number of ancient Celtic communities people enjoying the last fresh apples, honey mead and beer, toasting and remembering the invisible ones, seated at the table, their plates heaped high as well. "Welcome, Welcome". Inherent in this celebration was a profound respect for the wheel of the year, always cycling, through human generations and through natural cycles of death and re-birth.

This, of course, is the real sacred origin and meaning of Halloween, which, although fun for kids to be scared and for adults to stage masquerade balls, has slid far away from it's sacred potency. Spirits, coming close to this world to join the feast, sometimes like to play tricks, hence, "trick or treat"..........it's not good, of course, to fail to leave a place at the table for Uncle Angus on such a high holy day! And of course, the skeletons and ghosts and witches................how funny it is to me sometimes that people love these things so much on Halloween, while they have no understanding of their origins or meanings.

Like the "Witch and her broom". The Broom is associated with many folk traditions of "sweeping away the old bad energies" - purification rituals for the home and Hearth (Heart).

Here is my gratitude to the year that is soon to pass away, and to all of those who have passed away from my life as well, people who have gifted me and created with me and evolved me - among them:

Peter Hughes, the photographer whose photos of my masks I am eternally grateful to.

Judy Foster, whose face became the mask of "Hecate", and who so magically gave me a home and community years ago, when my wandering spirit found its way to Berkeley.

Sequoia, fiery redhead activist I knew there.

Ilana Stein, who I met in my April class at Kripalu, and whose vision of the "White Goddess", and her poem and masks ....... was a true gift to all of us from the divine.

Dellie Dorfman - Cranky mentor and friend from my days as a psychic reader.

Bob Meyer - beloved friend from Vermont, who always gave me a couch and good advice.

and so many others: Here's lifting that glass of mead to all of you. A place is set at the table.

"So much in American life has had a corrupting influence on our requirements for social order. We live in a culture that has lost its memory. Very little in the specific shapes and traditions of our grandparents pasts instructs us in how to live today, or tells us who we are, or what demands will be made on us as members of society. The shrill estrangement some of us feel in our twenties has been replaced by a hangdog collective blues. With our burgeoning careers and families we want to join up but its difficult to know how or where. The changing conditions of life are no longer assimilated back into a common watering trough.

Now, with our senses enlivened – because that’s the only context we have to go by – we hook change onto change ad nauseum."

Gretel Erlich

Artist's Art Park Trailor Park?

On a prosaic note (especially in light of current economic news) I would like to introduce my new low-energy (at least, when standing), recycled & remodeled (by me), reasonably priced ($3,500.00), alternative energy (solar panels coming), no mortgage, no property taxes, movable HOUSE.

Who says you can't buy a house for under $4,000.00? Her name is "Lucy".

For obvious reasons, motor homes are quite inexpensive these days. While they often don't last long in the demanding weather of the East Coast, my Lucy was created in 1988, and was lovingly cared for by an elderly couple here in the Southwest. I have all the luxuries, of course, microwave, tv, bathtub, refrigerator, oven, air conditioner, etc. The only times my new home gets expensive is when I drive her anywhere, which is something I don't plan on doing very often - soon she will be settled in for the winter in a nice trailor court in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I've had a lot of fun renovating the interior. Maybe not Architectural Digest, but I'm proud.

I was reading recently about a group of artists in England who are converting old trucking containers into affordable community housing.

http://www.containercity.com/container-city-one.html

and the artist's community Cove City in Scotland:

http://www.containercity.com/cove-park.html

I'd like to point out that the same can, and has, been true of trailors and motor homes, especially if they are taken off the road and kept in a more or less permanent setting. Building a roof cover can eliminate the problem of roof leaks, floors can be preserved by mounting on cinder block, etc. I think of some permanently housed 1960's trailors I saw at a community in Mimbres, New Mexico which had been built into larger housing complexes (and still going strong) - one had even been incorporated into a "rammed earth" design.

The advantage of recycling trailors and motorhomes for housing is that they are cheap (and used ones are getting cheaper all the time), ubiquitous, can be moved just about anywhere because they incorporate the marvelous invention of the wheel, and they are already (usually) fully equipped "houses", saving the problem of having to do wiring or plumbing, etc. They are designed to run on propane as well as gas and electricity, and solar panels can be adapted. I once saw a school bus that had been outfitted with a woodstove as a portable sauna.......perhaps something like that could be done to a trailor as well by a creative carpenter.

The point of all this is that for years it's occurred to me it's an option for artists and other cultural creatives, at least for those seeking a place to winter. Imagine what would be possible if there was an "Art Park Trailor Park", and artists were invited to live and work there, provided they did something innovative and creative to the trailors they brought? (as well as some central planning and shared facilities).

Anyway, fun to imagine. I've found nothing like that in my searches. Now to head to New Mexico.

Rainbow in New Mexico (off of Route 25)

Post Script.......

In the liminal landscape of the traveller who can, at moments, be a pilgrim, there is a thin line between synchronicity and dream.

I'm interested in syncronicities, and so I notice them, and perhaps, because I notice, I create a resonance on the web. In other words, perhaps the Web itself "notices" me, and enfolds me in the enormous generosity of the "great conversation"

To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings.

The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. Everything is waiting for you.

-- David Whyte

from Everything is Waiting for You

©2003 Many Rivers Press

Spider Woman at Wickliffe Mounds.........

"Sun Circle" & "Spider Woman's Cross" on gourd
(and "the threads" reflections on the glass case seem to have created!))

I have always felt that my imagination is most open to the ubiquitous, syncronic voice of the Divine when I'm on the road. In other words, like many Americans who grew up in cars (and were probably conceived in one as well), I do my best thinking when I'm behind the wheel of on a highway somewhere. Travelling puts me into the creative liminal state of "between"- free from all the demands and paradigms that "destinations" impose ( the people, duties, reality tunnels, and potent unconscious imprints that "fix" the mind into "place"). Travelling is one of the ways I can hear the "conversation" ...... it turns down the noise.

I went to Paducah, Kentucky, on a lovely bright day full of vast green oaks, and later, heading south, decided to take a detour and visit Wicklife Mounds, an archaeological site that was once the home of a tribe of prehistoric Mississippian Native Americans. Going back as far as 1,000 years, these people built ceremonial areas, chief's houses, and burial houses on earth pyramids and stepped rectangular mounds. Over time, the mounds grew in elevation as houses were destroyed and rebuilt. Art, pottery, and religious and tribal iconography belonging to these diverse peoples are found throughout the Southeast, with iconic associations as far as Central Mexico, the Southwest and the Gulf of California, and as far north as Canada.

I didn't expect to find Spider Woman everywhere! But there She was! Casting her threads my way. I guess I'm not really surprised though - the first thing I encountered as I walked into the little visitor's center was the "Spider Gorget" above. Later, I thought of my "Spider Woman's Hands" piece when I saw the ubiquitous "Hand with Eye", also found on ceremonial jewelry (gorgets made from shells), and pottery.


No one really knows the specific meanings of these symbols to the peoples who once lived, warred and traded throughout the Southeast. Yet within them, I personally find a continuing beauty, a familiarity, a continuing trail. The cross is ubiquitous, the symbol of the balance and ultimate unity of the the 4 directions. The Sun Circle is also completely ubiquitous. I find it interesting that the cross is found on the back of Spider in their (presumably) ceremonial gorgets - perhaps why, when it occurs in Navajo rugs (much later and among a very different people who migrated into the South West) it's still called "Spider Woman's Cross". Yet here as well as in the religious symbolism of the peoples of the South West, it seems that Spider is associated with the Earth Mother, and with creation.

To me, the "Spider Gorget" will always be profound. At the center is the weaver "Tse Che Nako", "Thought Woman" to the Keresan Pueblo peoples. Spider, spinning the world into being with her imagination, in partnership with the illumination of the Sun, spinning and weaving all things together with her "silky essence". From her very own body, from her own substance, she spins and creates.

The cross represents (to me) divine balance within an ever expanding and infinitely interconnected web of life. The Hand with Eye may represent the Divine manifestation, as well as consciousness itself.

I was amazed to see objects with this Hand in circles (and I think of my own obsession with "Spider Woman's Hands". Here is a quote from an anthropologist who studied Zuni petroglyphs in the South West, among them the occurrence of "hand" symbols. (I apologize for the use of "primitives" in the description. A more ethnocentric era.).

".......when hands were so at one with the mind that they really formed a part of it.......to reconstitute the primitives' mentality, he (Cushing, in the 1880's) had to rediscover the movements of their hands, movements in which their language and their thought were inseparably united.......the Zuni who did not speak without his hands did not think without them either." 1

And so the Hand with Eye is a symbol of active consciousness (?) Perhaps, to create (weave) with active intention.


Here's another little synchronicity I found in the course of following this thread, one that is a kind of personal poetic, as I am always fascinated with words and their origins. "Wickliffe" might become "Wick - life", which I have little doubt is it's origin. "Wick", from which we get "wicker ware", "wicca", "witch" and "wick" as in the wick of a candle (this association is with an English word that meant both "weave" and "alive").. ...... so, I'll take WICKLIFFE to mean "Weaving Life" with a double affirmative!

What really matters is the necessity, profoundly so now, to understand that we are all intimately interconnected, entrained, entangled, and woven together into World, interconnected within the processes of manifestation. We absolutely must develop a webbed vision now. And that's what artists can do, provide potent and lasting vision.

Great Mother

Thank you for this day, My life,

My strand on the Web,

The vibration it makes.

Keep me in tune, In harmony

With your purpose.

Let me serve.

Xia

*Here's a lovely article I found by an astrologer about Spider Woman -

http://wisewomaninwoods.blog.ca/2008/03/05/spirituality-love-spider-woman-s-web-3819808

1 Levy-Bruhl 1985: from ROCK ART SYMBOLS OF THE GREATER SOUTHWEST, Alex Patterson, Johnson Books, Boulder, Colorado.

The Artist's Oracular Cook Book

~Recipes to Serve the Muse~

In the summer of 2005 I was blessed with a residency at the Artist's Enclave at I Park, in East Haddam, Connecticut. At the time, I was busy creating my own version of the Tarot ("the Rainbow Bridge Oracle", which I still haven't finished.....)

It has always been an I Park tradition for each resident to come up with a special "cocktail recipe" when they leave. And so, in the course of that truly magical summer, this little book became my contribution. I'm not sure I believe in "channelling", but if I ever have done so, this was probably the most notable example. For myself, I have often wanted to create a bridge, a way to "ask the Muse" a question or two in the course of the often frustrating creative process.

I still open my little handmade book and "pick a card" when I feel stumped. It works for me.

Now my little book is up on Blurb.

I confess, I think self publishing is the best thing since they invented granola.

More than you can Imagine is possible

When you Believe that it's possible.

Respect your Demons.

They are worthy opponents.

They are there to test your courage, your valor,

and your ability to make decisions.

They will force you to fight for your vision,

and for your heart.

Is your studio a sacred space?

Even if, for now, it's just a notebook,
or a table in the kitchen.

Are your art works touchstones,
talismens, field notes, and road maps
gathered from a life-long journey

that sometimes feels like a pilgrimage?

Puerto Rico, Storms, and Doors............

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

David Whyte

Returning, after barely a week, from Puerto Rico, where I went to visit a friend I haven’t seen in over 30 years, who is recovering from cancer, after a long healing process, and no small amount of miracle.

I thought I could stay here to housesit for them, write, and see about getting involved with the Ann Wigmore Institute here, in order to do some healing on myself. But after a very short time in their house I went into severe asthma, and had to go to a hotel…….it is clear my own health “challenges” make life under these circumstances untenable here, and return I must from the amazing intensities of this tropic………

Intensities…….that’s what the tropics are, life at its most vibrant, virulent, creative, predatory, colorful………it is impossible to be in the midst of this potency of life and not become intoxicated with it. Intoxicated or terrified, take your choice.

Lately I've been thinking of my experiences as, well, kind of like meals. How do they TASTE?
The more present I become, the more each experience, each day, seems to fill me, nourishing and energizing, or toxic, making me slow, dull, digestive. "The world is not with us enough - oh taste and see!" the poet said, and it's true.

I had a room with a balcony at the top of a hotel called the Lazy Parrot, in Rincon. I’m sure it’s a hopping place in its season, with the two bars below and tiers of balconies looking out over the green hills that wind down to the ocean, famous here for surfing and snorkeling. However, I seem to have arrived at off season, and I felt a bit like a character from Stephen King’s “The Shining”, with a whole hotel to myself at night, not even an attendant in sight, empty bars ringing with the ghosts of bands and booze and laughter and sex, below me, two levels, empty blue pool, palm frond chairs, wind, wind, wind, the wet, heavy tropical air, wind blowing over wicker tables. As the storm progressed, the lights went out, and there were no candles, or even attendant to ask about candles.

So, I sat in the state of Storm, with nothing to do but witness and participate.

I do not think I shall ever forget standing on the balcony, the sounds of the koki frogs, a woman calling for her dog in Spanish “Limon, Limon!”, and watching the sudden illumination of lightning as it revealed an advancing mass of vast clouds, rolling in from the distant ocean. I could not but be awed by the truth of that moment, our lives, our plans, our hopes and petty plans existing in the brief moments between those storms.




Of course, it was all too irrisistable and I had to open the door. Behind it was another door.)

HOUSE OF DOORS (1986)

The house I live in
is made of doors

pretending to enclose rooms
constructed of memories

Some rooms are tombs for the heart,

full of damp bones, old letters
and useless ornaments.
I remember a pink room that pressed me
until I couldn't breath,
and a yellow room, big enough to hold the sky
or a troupe of elephants dancing on a thimble.

Some rooms diminish, some rooms compress.
Rooms can be tricky.
What I chiefly remember are doors.
I live in a house of doors.

Behind one door, I saw her sitting there
The sign on the door said 1969, and it was
February in Berkeley.
The plum trees were red in the rain,
steam rose from an espresso machine
and some kind of smoke
rises from the girl who listens to the boyfriend
whose name I don’t remember:
I close the door and the girl slips away behind me,
riding a train I can see in perspective,
riding to a vanishing point.

An onion, that's it.
All those layers.
Just when you think you can name yourself,
you discover new layers,
you’re forming a new skin,
a new ring.
But there's a core.
And where does that core start?
This room I live in.
These walls.
Today, they seem to be getting thin.
I can almost see through them today
Today I feel
like a Chinese box,
one inside another.
I think I may be the gate
that opens into another room
made of clouds,
or sky,
or something
I can't name.

Sometimes,
you open a door, any door
and you have to walk outside
into something tender:
into a quiet yard
because of a voice you hear
or a bell
or a train
pulling away
somewhere.

The Henry Luce Center for the Arts Residency 2009

(rough scetch - "Hands Altar")

I feel very grateful indeed to share that I have been privileged to receive a fellowship for next fall at the Henry Luce Center for the Arts at the Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. I'm so delighted with the prospect of having this wonderful opportunity to work there.

(very rough sketch - potential exhibit with "icons")

What I would like to engage the student community with there is a dialog in art process about interconnectivity and interdependance, within the continuing metaphor of "Spider Woman's Hands". What I show here are some very rudamentary sketches of how such a piece might evolve into an altar/exhibit. I want very much to do a large circle of participant hands, embedded in an ornate circular frame that consists of individual tiles, representing symbolic qualities of each individual who has contributed to forming the whole.

"Ancestral Hands - the Midwife" (clay & mixed media)

Above is a recent sculptural sketch I made, using cast hands of Lori, a midwife in Pittsburgh I met. I decided to call this piece "Ancestral Hands - the Midwife", recognizing the nameless midwives who have brought each new generation forward into the world, their hands and stories buried in the earth, emerging here with all the power of the gesture Lori made, the gesture of opening a portal into life for those whose time has come to be born.