Equinox Reflections

                      The Big Thaw

            starts with a trickle

water running through silenceas innocous as breath, a slight relaxationat corners of the mouth.Just when winter has become a habit,an old coat the sun peels off with a touch.Your foot leaves a signature in new mud, shiny as a new skinor fresh, primed canvas.You notice a blade of grass:green, defiantly green.Inhale, you take your coat offa crocus opensin the blue irisof someone's glance.

Vermont, 1982

Somehow the Spring Equinox has arrived, this winter, as other winters, has been survived, the drumbeat of Mother Earth beneath feet is quickening, the hum of life vibrates, the budding of trees is again a cyclical magic. If I still lived in Vermont, I would be hearing the sounds of snow melting in little trickles, a kind of underground, unconscious energy reflected in the eyes I look into. I've pulled up a poem I wrote when I did live in Vermont. Vermont is a place, with it's turning wheel of seasons, that I have always held close to my heart.

So I took the day off. I remember many times when the Equinox was celebrated with large groups of people, in rituals many of which I organized or hosted or collaborated on. Now, I live very quietly indeed in a little town that (at night) really does seem to fall off the edge of the world into some starry pool of the galaxy......and I must celebrate the Equinox alone. It's been a hard winter, a winter of composting so many layers of the lives I've had. So what calls now, what weaving to begin or join if I can, as the world wakes up? What is needed, what is possible?

Here, on this auspicious day, I offer a prayer for my brother, Glenn Greene Pillsbury. Thank you for what you've taught me Glenn, for travelling down the roadways of this life with me in the ways that we have. May you forgive me for all the ways that I failed you, did not understand, was unkind, understood so little. May you be truly at peace now, healed, reborn. It is strange to be thinking of death on the first day of Spring, but that is what is. Death and Life are always joined, yin and yang, Persephone's journey.


Last year it was my privilege to teach a 5 day class at Kripalu, and in the class was Ilana Stein, a professional midwife from NY. Ilana had a serious illness, and was thin from chemo, but luminous in the work we shared. When we tranced to begin our mask work, she had a vision of a white Goddess who came to her, dancing before her in gestures of "gathering" and "offering", an infinity sign. Ilana made a wonderful mask to wear in honor of that vision, and, syncronistically, another member of the group, who was a professional ballarina, had brought a white dancing dress with her. She spontaneously offered it to Ilana..........and it fit her perfectly! Ilana passed away in September - but I have always felt that her poem, and vision, was an extraordinary gift to all of us present. I copy it again below.

Gather and Offer
by Ilana Stein


Gather towards the North
Gather towards the South
Gather towards the East
Gather Above, gather below and gather the great Mystery

Gather what you’ve studied
Gather what you’ve learned
Gather how you’ve lived, and gather what you’ve earned.
Gather what you’ve loved and gather what you’ve lost.
Gather what you’ve soiled and gather what it’s cost
Gather what you’ve wasted and gather what you’ve saved
Gather what you’ve shopped for and gather what you’ve tasted

Gather who your friends are and gather how they’ve cared
Gather your relations and gather how you’ve fared
Then Gather birth and celebrate, gather death and cry
Gather hope, regret and longing and gather up the why

Gather up the waiting, gather struggles, gather challenges.
Gather all the goals you’ve met and gather up the bravery
Gather faceless fear and all the broken promises.
Gather yesterday today, and gather time tomorrow

Gather what you’ve ruined and gather when you’ve failed.
Gather up the personal and gather up the frail
Gather up the culture and gather up the myths
Gather all the songs you’ve sung, and all expressive art
Gather dances gather dreams and gather up your heart

Gather in the garden and gather at the beach.
Gather on the mountain and gather what’s in reach
Gather in the workplace, and gather on the roads
Gather in the home you’ve made and gather all you kin
Gather your impatience, your frustration and your greed.
Gather up the words you’ve said and gather what you need.

Gather up your journey and all the time you’ve spent
Gather up your courage and walk inside your tent.
Gather up your secrets and and gather up your wisdom
Gather what you’ve forgotten
Gather what you’ve meant.
Gather faith and Reverence

Gather truth and and gather lies,
Gather secrets great and small
Gather wisdom of the ages and wrap them in your shawl
Gather sickness, Gather health gather tenderness and rage
Gather all your stories and gather on the stage

Gather up your gatherings, and stir the basket’s bounty
Gather all remaining threads and search across the county
Look out among the human beings, look out among relations

Then offer up your gatherings to all nations and creations

Offer to your children and offer to your kin
Offer to the hungry, to the needy and the grim
Offer to the blessed and offer to the prim
Offer to the kings and queens the princess and princesses
Offer to the beggars, paupers, jesters and priestesses

Offer to the little birds the chipmunks and the deer
Offer to the badger, mole, the frogs, and yes the bear
Offer to the green spring shoots, the white and yellow crocus
Offer to the budding trees the bushes and the rushes

Offer to the sand and mud the concrete and the buildings
Offer to the cook and maid the seamstress and the butler
Offer to the farmers - offer to the farm
Offer to the doctors and offer for no harm

Offer to the visionaries offer to the artists
Offer to the frightened, offer to the scared
Offer to the endangered and to the unprepared
Offer to the hurting, offer to be healed,
Offer to your neighbor and offer to the field

Offer grace and offer peace offer possibility
Offer privilege trust and faith
Offer gratitude amazement wonderment and awe
Offer loving kindness, compassion, joy and love

Offer up your story, offer honor and integrity
Offer for community Offer your vulnerability

Offer what you’ve learned and offer what you have
offer what you know
Offer what you’ve shared
Offer both your ears, your shoulders and your tears
Offer all you’ve gathered, offer all your cares

You’ve gathered through the springtime,
the summer and the fall.
And you’ve offered season’s greetings without going to the mall.

Now rest and build your strength up.

Cycle with the moon.

Cycle through the mystery time.

Close your eyes and sleep.

Dream the dreams of where you’ve been.
Dream of where you’re going –

dream the dream that dreamers dream.

Then gather.

(2008)

the "Book of Eli"

The Goddess and the Book of Eli (1) (photo by Georgia Stacy)

Corrisozo, N.M., set of "The Book of Eli", filming 3-2009. (Photo by Georgia Stacy)

I had a wonderful 4 day adventure into the "outback" of New Mexico, visiting a group of women artists who will be putting on a group show in Carrizozo, New Mexico called "The Return of the Mother". It will be opening on April 11th at Gallery 408 in Carrizozo. It was such a pleasure to meet these amazing women, among them sculptor Georgia Stacy, and fabric artist Karen Smith, who is creating a Sanctuary for the Divine Feminine called Kindred Spirits Sanctuary in the mountains of her beautiful home (she also has a labyrinth!).

"The Black Madonna and the Book of Eli"
(composite photo with G. Stacy)

Inanna Champagne had been invited to speak to groups in the area about her work, and I was also invited to bring along my dvd about the Masks of the Goddess project. As we sat having coffee in prior to departure, Inanna and I both noticed that (this is the honest to goodness truth!) a tiny spider had slowly come down on its thread to hang eye level between us. We observed it move up a bit, and then down a bit, and then up a bit......back and forth for over an hour. At last, when we were ready to leave, I took it by the thread and placed the latest envoy of Spider Woman on my altar. We felt well aspected and blessed on our journey, and indeed, so we were! I may talk about a "webbed vision" in the abstract, but when these kinds of little syncronicities happen, well........the mystery of the divine has a great sense of humor. And our lives are always full of everyday Milagros.

Arriving at Carrizozo, which is a small town in central New Mexico, one drives through vast reaches of blond Georgia O'Keefe landscapes with brooding blue mountains in the distance. We saw that we were in time for the town's major attraction - the filming of a motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Denzel Washington. An entire downtown street (where the Gallery my friends' show will be) had been converted into a post-apocalyptic, "Road Warrior" type set, complete with rusting automobiles, foam core burned out buildings, and sad little "cubby holes" where, presumably, desperate children of the apocalypse lived. Dirty, dread-locked young people (extras) milled about, while armored cars raced up and down the street, and the sounds of "snipers" guns echoed in the crisp, windy New Mexico air.

Joyce, a local visionary, was our tour guide. She had been there since the beginning of the town's transformation, watching the sets being built over facades of the existing buildings. They took 2 months to create, and next week it will all come down, revealing again the gallery where "The Return of the Mother" will be in April, after the foam core and plaster is peeled away.

There is a splendid metaphor in here! It was weird to see this contemporary nightmare made so vivid that I could actually walk around in it. Life and art are sometimes seamless.

To read about the movie see THE BOOK OF ELI . I don't think they have a trailer yet......... Try also this link: Book of Eli, which describes the movie as:

"A post-apocalyptic Western, in which a lone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind."

It's interesting that there are two post apocalyptic movies scheduled for release ( the other is The Road, with Viggo Mortenson) within the next year. Like the "Road Warrior" of the '80's, our world has a fascination with images of a future in which all that remains of our civilization is a grim landscape of warlords shooting it out with each other, grimly pre-occupied with power, guns, and unceasing violence. That's the mythos of a dominator, hierarchy culture.

Yet in reality, many people right here in New Mexico live in a world of enormous cooperation and generosity. That is also a part of the human spirit, the future's challenge and potential. I know many, many communities all over this country who participate in a "webbed" life-serving consciousness, envisioning sustainable futures. Cooperation, negotiation, and a collective means is actually the basis of any civilization.

We are capable of enormous violence, yes. Perhaps, the ultimate violence. But we are also capable of enormous, vast, cooperation. As we approach 2012, we approach the next evolutionary step for humanity, wherein we must understand and participate in the larger life of our planet, of Gaia the Mother, or we will face the possibility of extinction.

I am saddened to think so many are conditioned by the media to think that a violent world is our only possibility. How poorly what Gloria Steinam has called the "Cult of Masculinity" prepares us for the real challenges of the future. Because our survival can only be achieved through cooperation. But I doubt we'll see a movie about the "end of days" wherein heroic people get together to vision quest where the best place is to settle might be, or gather to share their food supplies, or figure out a way to dig a new community well, or for that matter, hold healing rituals and prayer circles. And yet, that is what people do together, all over the place.

So, I am pleased (and amused) by the synchronicity of a show called The Return of the Great Mother rising from the ashes of the movie set, a bright alternative to the current paradigm's dark vision. Georgia saw a Goddess shape in one of her photos of the Book of Eli set, and I couldn't help but play with the images myself a bit. Artists are myth makers.

We're weaving the future with the stories we tell. So what are they?

Spider Woman's Hands

I wanted to put up, in haste, these few new works, all in terra cotta clay. I've had some wonderful conversations this past weekend with an amazing group of women in the "outback" of New Mexico, living and creating up in Nogal, and Sierra Blanca, wild and vast country to weave their webs of a new vision. More to write soon............

These are actually cast from my friend Inanna, who is a reiki master, massage therapist. I have been fascinated for a long time with the "eyes and hands" ...... to me, it represents conscious manifestation, to "see with our hands", to see the Divine manifesting within our creative acts.

Tse Che Nako, Thought Woman, the spider
named things, and as she named them
they appeared. She is sitting in her room
thinking of a story now:
I'm telling you the story
she is thinking.

Keresan Pueblo proverb

Earth Shrines

"Gaia", 2005

"I who am the beauty of the green Earth and the white moon among the stars,
and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your soul to arise and come unto Me."

The Charge of the Goddess, Doreen Valiente, adapted by Starhawk

I was very kindly invited today to have a show here at T or C, beginning in March at PARISI on Broadway, by Jerry Trumbull the proprietor. I am delighted to have a chance to show my "Earth Shrines", mixed media sculptures I did mostly in 2005 that will be right for Earth Day. I ecstatically created them at I Park Artist's Enclave in Connecticut that year. It was during the time of the summer Solstice, and I feel that in my rambles in that green, vibrant place the "numina" graced me with a daily conversation.

"She will rust us with blossum,
She will forgive us, She will seal us with Her seed."

Robin Williamson

"The Black Madonna" Mixed Media

I am always fascinated with the Black Madonna, the Earth Mother hidden beneath Catholic iconography. The Black Madona of Compostella is in the famous Spanish cathedral to which pilgrims walk on the "Camino". I would love to walk the Camino, if I had the stamina to do it.....but the Camino is found in many places, and not only in Spain, and there are times in all of our lives when we find it necessary to seek out sanctuaries of the Black Madonna, to "compost" our lives and find ways to re-dedicate ourselves.

"Green Hands V", cast paper

I seem to work with hands, over and over, hands that are rooted in the Earth, hopeful expressions of both our roots in Gaia, the living being that is our planet, and our need to be co-creators with Gaia.

"The Five Elements" Cast Paper

This was created from found objects on my wanders across the land.

Detail

"Persephone" Mixed Media (2005)

The myth of Persephone has always fascinated me, because Persephone is such a profound metaphor for the life/death/rebirth cycle of nature. And since we are also a part of nature, our lives as well.

"Earth Shrine II" (2005)

Winter Star

"Animus" by Denita Benyshek

We need to see ourselves again as part of a brilliant, shimmering web of life. An artist at some point has to face that issue. Is the art connecting us and others in some way, or is the art disconnecting ourselves and others? I think it's not enough to just realign ourselves personally either - our art should also do that for others, and further, it must happen outside of the abstract. It must be a process that in its form and content joins us with the life force in ourselves, and in others.

Dr. Raphael Montanez Ortiz *

I just returned from WINTER STAR, the wonderful 4 day event held by ACE at the Atwood Resort in Ohio. Such inspiring people - and I was amazed as always that I could pull off another "guerilla Mask Making" workshop. This time we discussed the spiritual, metaphorical, theatrical and psychological possibilities of the mask in the first talk, and in the second 2 hour period, somehow managed to get almost 20 people to cast faces and hands. Plaster flew, laughter and chaos rained, and success all around! It was also a great pleasure to spend time with my friend Judith who lives in a community in Pennsylvania that has been around for 30 years, with many permutations. Sitting around the dinner table with her friends, who've been sharing resources and land for many years, reminds me of what is possible when people share cooperation, affection, and a dream. The highlight of the event for me were presentations by SIDIAN MORNING STAR JONES, who is the grandson of Rolling Thunder, and by artist DENITA BENYSHEK

Denita is pursuing a Ph.D. about the artist as shaman in contemporary society (with the Saybrook Institute in California). During 15 years of teaching in remote, Native American villages in the Alaskan bush, Denita Benyshek's paintings developed far from the coastal art scenes. Her artwork was included in Redefining Visionary Art, New York City, curated by Suzi Gablik and Ehud Sperling. In addition, she received numerous grants, exhibited widely, and is represented in many public art collections including the Glasmuseet (Glass Museum) in Ebeltoft, Denmark. She taught at the College of Folk Arts and Culture in Pskov, Russia, worked on films, and created multi-media performances. See her WEBSITE. (http://www.denitabenyshek.com)

"I CREATE BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS THAT PROVIDE A WINDOW FOR VIEWING THE SOUL AND THE GREAT SOUL OF ALL NATURE AROUND US AND WITHIN US, THROUGH WHICH WE ARE TOGETHER TRAVELING."
Denita Benyshek

Denita's art and presentation were inspiring, evocative. Perhaps what I am most grateful to her for re-opening a conversation I entered more than 20 years ago, and have not re-entered for a long time. Artists are marginalized in our world, and artmaking is within popular culture regarded as a "hobby" more often than a meaningful career or a spiritual path, and this takes a toll on the profound creative dialogue possible between artist and society, let alone the healing and integrative potential of art. I was reminded by Denita that the Shamanic Function of art is vital to cultural evolution, vital to the creation of a language that can address the "other realms" of being. Reclaiming the sacred function of art, I believe, is more important now than ever, as we stand collectively on the precipice of becoming a global humanity. It is essential that those who are practitioners of the arts affirm their endeavor.

SIDIAN MORNING STAR JONES is the grandson of the Native American Medicine Man and author Rolling Thunder. He was a student of theology and spirituality when he met Stanley Krippner PhD, who encouraged Sidian to write book reviews for the Association of Humanistic Psychology magazine and give talks at universities and events including University of Massachusetts, Amherst, University of Munich, Germany and others. He has founded the Redefine God Project, a network for "Open-Source Spirituality", and maintains a blog called The Daily Cultist. Sidian's ideas and network are very contemporary, and I think the theology and network discourse he is developing is at the heart of the paradigm we are entering. See his WEBSITE. (http://www.redefinegod.com/profile/sidianmsjones)

WINTERSTAR was a wonderful time to reconnect with old friends, and make new ones! And to see a bit of the snow fly over a beautiful frozen lake, remembering the quiet ghost of spring just beneath the surfaces of the land, and our lives.

------------------

* This quote is from an interview done with Dr. Ortiz in 1989 (from an unpublished manuscript "Seeing in a Sacred Manner" )

Raphael, who teaches at Rutgers University, organized the "Art and the Invisible Reality Symposium" at Rutgers that fall, which brought presenters from all over the world to discuss art and spirituality, including Gloria Ornstein and the Sami shaman she apprenticed with in Finland. It was a great privilege to meet him, to be granted an interview with him, and to participate in that important gathering of artists, shamans, and mystics.

More on that later...............the conversation has once again begun within my imagination! Thankyou to Winterstar!

Interstices

I was a hidden treasure and desired to be known:
therefore I created the creation in order to be known.
-- Sufi creation myth

I love that funny little Sumerian stele of Lilith (which is posted on my previous post). I always imagine her in some ancient desert, under a starry sky, suddenly appearing amid the flickering light of a campfire, with her owls and her beehive hairdo. To learn more about Lilith, visit the Lilith Institute, founded by Deborah Gren Scott, who teaches women's studies at the New College of the California. Lilith certainly got her share of mythological scapegoating. 

From the "night side/dream side" aspect of the great Mother Goddess Inanna,as well as the midwife who helped women to give birth at night, she evolved through time to the innumerable Hebrew "Lilits" endlessly tormenting otherwise chaste men in their beds and dreams, even as their wives slumber innocently beside them. Lilith was called the "great whore" - the archetype blamed and punished throughout history in various ways for those "unchaste lustful thoughts" which surely would not arise otherwise. Feminist writers including Susan Brownmiller and Germaine Greer have written brilliantly about this. 

I cannot end this ramble about Lilith without throwing in one of my favorite homilies. The word "Whore" derives from earlier Semitic words that originally meant "Priestess" and/or "Fertile": Hora, Hara. "Hara" is a term still used to indicate the 2nd Chakra, "womb" or sexual/creative center. And to this day, the "Hora", a Circle Dance, is still danced at Jewish weddings. The evolution of this word within our language, from a term of respect and possibly a sacred term, to the worst kind of insult that can be cast on a woman, is telling in many ways. 

Following a Jungian thread, this western Dark Goddess, the "Goddess of the Outlands", cast out into the mythic periphery as fearsome, but ever dangerous demon.... is also the initiator of fertility, priestess of the rich life of the unconscious, as well as the one who leads the "Circle Dance" of integral self-awareness. 

I wanted to thank "Crooked Smilee" for her kind comment. Grief is indeed a strange mate. Her blog is "The In-Between Space" (crookedsmilee.blogspot.com) Here is how she describes her blog: 

"The convergence point between the spiritual, social, & political realms in human awareness::: between illusion and reality...truth and lie.... discernment and denial....reason and intuition....emotion and deep knowing." 

 Surely Lilith is a Goddess of the "In-Between" spaces, the "Interstices". And that is also why she has so much power to transform us. Here's what David Jeffers, an artist and scholar of the Kabala, had to say: "There are references in the Kabala to what is called "breaking the shell". The mind set of "what you believe" is the shell, and Lilith is about breaking the shell. You have to fall apart sometimes to be put back together; because that's the only way you can be reconstructed. You cannot veneer these teachings on top of who you think you are. " 

Syncronicities to me belong to those "Interstices". They may well be, as physicist F. David Peat** suggested in his book SYNCRONICITY - The Bridge Between Mind and Matter breakthroughs that hint of the deeper, integral nature of reality. (see also the Pari Center ) Am I making any sense? Well, I'll continue to blunder around. In other words, here we are living our lives on three dimensional terms, making our plans in space/time as we understand it, and every so often a pebble, a dust mote, a breeze, a conversation from the fifth or sixth dimensions penetrate our perceptions, before vanishing again, leaving one confused, amused, but with just a tiny glimpse of something vastly unfathomable and yet strangely familiar.

"Syncronicities provide a bridge between inner and outer worlds, between our private thoughts and external, objective realities. Within a synchronicity, patterns of external events mirror an inner experience. To distinguish synchronicities from mere chance occurrences Carl Jung stressed that they must always involve "meaningful coincidence" that lie beyond any explanation involving causal links and connections. In this way syncronicities reveal to us an underlying world of patterns, forms and connections that transcend any division between the mental and the material."**

"I believe that all coincidences are messages from the unmanifest – they are like angels without wings, so to speak, sudden interruptions of life by a deeper level"

.... Deepak Chopra

How are we linked, really? What threads are we throwing out and finding resonance with, at any given moment? I was thinking last week of writing about "Between", because last week I read from my new book "A House of Doors", and chose two poems that feature the idea.

 "To Stars" is one of them - I hope it captures a little of those "between" places where other forms of perception live. And, within the awe, a great song of belonging. 

To Stars 

With age, I’ve learned to watch my feet. 

I’ve become cautious of falls, the true frailty of bones, 

and equally fragile, 

the choices found at every crossroad. 

Time, I’ve discovered, makes us bend - 

we learn the habit of looking down. 

After a summer rain, 

the smell of diesel and chaparral

I was blessedly nowhere, 

just between “here” and “there”. 

A truck stop off I-40

I was falling off the edge of the world 

in a nameless little desert town,

my feet disappearing

into a sweet black halcyon midnight:

then you made your puddled, gracious descent: 

Luminous Orion, 

and faithful Sirius,

the dog star Antares, the Scorpion’s tail, 

the Pleiades dancing forever, 

arms entwined in Indra’s shining jewel net,

and the Big Dipper 

offering, offering forever

I heard you singing:

"Wait for me, Wait for me"

**From the catalog (2006) of the Pari Center, founded by F. David Peat and colleagues:

"Synchronicities are those mysterious and inexplicable coincidences that occasionally erupt into a life. At times we may feel that those around us are confined to a narrow world of logic and physical law, a world that admits no hint of mystery. This can give rise to a feeling of isolation within an indifferent universe and an increasing complex society whose members are reduced to ciphers. Synchronicities, by contrast, offer a doorway into a very different world. A world that also has resonances with the deep insights that have been revealed by the new sciences.

True synchronicities are more than mere chance occurrences. They are characterized by a sense of meaning and numiniousness. They provide a bridge between inner and outer worlds, between our private thoughts and external, objective realities. Within a synchronicity, patterns of external events mirror an inner experience; likewise dreams and fantasies may seem to flood over into the external world. To distinguish synchronicities from mere chance occurrences Carl Jung stressed that they must always involve "meaningful coincidence" that lie beyond any explanation involving causal links and connections. In this way reveal to us an underlying world of patterns, forms and connections that transcend any division between the mental and the material.

Synchronicities also act as markers of time, moments of transformation within a life that occur in chairos, when “the time is right”. Thus, while causality ties us to our past, synchronicity can link us to our future. They can also act as significant encounters when a door is opened through which we can pass. One notable encounter took place between the psychologist Carl Jung and the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. This meeting of people from two very different worlds led to Pauli’s series of dreams which caused him to explore the relationship between psyche and matter and believe that the time was at hand for the "resurrection of spirit” within the world of matter.

www.fdavidpeat.com

Conference on Pagan Studies

5th Annual Conference on Current Pagan Studies
Claremont School of Theology,
Claremont, California

February 7th and 8th, 2009
http://web.mac.com/sacreddancer