Earth Mind

If anyone asked me what my theology was, I think I would have to say it is Gaia-ism. Since the first time I read about James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis (with collaborator Lynn Margulis). 

Encountering a proposal that said, in essence, that the planet we live within is alive, I felt affirmed in something I intuitively sensed since childhood. That the whole world was alive, conscious in some amazing way, responsive, conversant. With their revolutionary work, the Gaia Hypothesis (now, more generally accepted, it has been called the Gaia Theory), a name was chosen from both science, and mythology. My paradigm, as they say, shifted like the Teutonic plates, and I've been seeing the world I live in through that lens ever since. My notion of God ceased to be not only male, but human-centric, and my art sprouted roots, vines, and webs in every background, always going "off the picture plane".

Sometimes a book, or an event, is the beginning footprint of a lifelong "Marga", the hunt for divine purpose or meaning. Gaia Theory set me to wondering about the mythos of "Gaia", the Great Mother, as well. I learned about the work of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas in her excavations of prehistoric Europe, and I read "When God Was a Woman" by Merlin Stone. I read Joseph Campbell (The Way of the Animal Powers), Riane Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade), and later, as a graduate student in the arts looking for the "roots" of the Goddess in visual history, Gloria Orenstein (The Re-Flowering of the Goddess), Elinor Gadon (The Once and Future Goddess) and many others. I found I was not alone in my quest to uncover earlier perceptions of deity, my fascination with the idea that to ancient peoples the Earth was a Great Mother with many children, to imagine worlds where where deities like Crow and Turtle, the lion headed goddess Sekhment or the generous Roman Numina of place had something to teach and tell.

Prehistoric Mississippian "Hand and Eye" gorget 

The eye and hand  fascinates me and has occured in my art process numerous times.   We can integrate symbols into our being so deeply that we forget where they come from, they are simply a way we speak to ourselves about the world. The hand of the Great Spinner and Weaver, the hand of Spider Woman, the hand of Gaia. Within my own hand, as I create my life, if I'm lucky enough to contact that divine essence.

As I work on my "Icons for the Earth", I see the Eye represents the intelligence, awake and aware and creative, within what we so blithely call "nature", as if we were somehow not part of it, as it "nature" was something "out there".

"We are living IN the Body. Not ON the Body, but IN the Body. And what we do to the Earth, we are doing to ourselves."

........Rachel Rosenthal, Performance Artist

The eye keeps re-occurring, and is the spirit of place I have so often felt in the mystery of the woods, the dapple of shadow on water, the bones of lives abandoned in the desert heat. I felt it without words when I was a child, observing a lizard that was also observing me. The Eye is the world awake and

 aware, the conversation

 I think this has been a prologue to something. I was inspired by the talk on Crop Circles I enjoyed in Roswell, by Freddy Silva, an Englishman who has spent many years researching the Crop Circle phenomenon in his native country, and around the world. He has found that they have unique magnetic and energetic properties, that they are increasingly complex, they can occur unnoticed within as short a period as 20 minutes, and that they often occur near prehistoric sacred sites and standing stones, places of "energetic power" where ley lines cross and underground water domes occur, etc. Freddy believes they are not only communicating through the universal language of symbol and mandala (a symbol of wholeness), but they are also, speaking in terms of subtle energies, changing the land and water in some

 way - perhaps, an infusion, a "pollination".

 I need to learn more about this..............as an artist, they are not only mysterious, but stunningly beautiful, Mandalas that incorporate sacred symbols drawn from all human cultures.

So, I'll meander with this, because this is a mystery, serpentine by nature, as all "earth mysteries" are. What I remembered as I was listening to Freddy's lecture was an experience I had many years ago, something I always wanted to share, but didn't know how to, or what it meant.** I have had a few real visions in my life. By that I mean, I was not asleep, I wasn't dreaming, I experienced an "altered state of consciousness" that was lucid and visionary. When this occurs, I consider it big, something I've been graced with. One of the most extraordinary "visions" occurred in the spring of 1989, when I pulled off the interstate at a rest area near the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. At the time, I owned a little red Toyota truck. I shut my eyes, and immediately found myself in the back of my truck.....which much to my surprise, began to fly! Looking tentatively over the side of the truck, Virginia was gone, and I seemed to be flying above a misty, very green landscape with rolling hills. Below me I could see a circle of standing stones. They were really more like a kind of spiral that culminated in a circle. Up the hill came a procession of people, most clad in white clothing, and many carrying flowers and baskets; they seemed to be preparing for a ceremony of some kind.

  Then I was peering down at an entirely different kind of landscape, as my magical truck transported me to a Southwestern terrain. The red earth had bluffs and mesas, and as I looked, I could see that there were many, many layers of petroglyphs within the rocks - they seemed to recede infinately into both human and natural patterns.

  Then I was flying high over Los Angeles, where I grew up! Below me was a familiar, vast pattern of freeways - and as I watched, they formed the "figure 8" infinity sign. And then I opened my eyes, seated at the wheel, pulled over at a rest area, with a map on the seat next to me. The whole experience was too vivid to have been a dream, nor did I have any memory of being "sleepy" before it happened. What does it mean? I don't really know, even now, but seeing those crop circles, I remembered this vision, and thought of it's message of pattern, language, deep within the processes of the earth, the speaking, dreaming earth. Deep within the past, universal human language and ritual and art, deep within us even in our contemporay world. I still find this vision somehow encouraging. We stand on the razor's edge, poised for global community and maturation as a species, as well as in dire danger. To me, the freeways that formed an infinity symbol across the land could mean that, even in our ignorance and hubris, the mind of Gaia still speaks beneath and through the works of our hands and minds - there is a larger pattern, an evolution we participate within. The pattern, the template, Earthmind. ***

 

*** EARTHMIND: Communicating With the Living World of Gaia is a book by John Steele, Paul Deveraux, and David Kubrin (1989) that I highly recommend. It was another one of those "paradigm shifters" for me. **There is so much I have said in the past about the shamanic function, the visionary function, of art - something we so little understand, and yet is basic to the understanding of archaic and indigenous cultures.

Syncronicity and the Butterfly Man

In the process of researching something, I ran across these photos from 2003 in my file, and felt like quickly sharing this lovely synchronicity story before I forget it.

I used to be friends with the inspired, visionary, and very eccentric, founder of the Butterfly Gardener's Association in California, Alan Moore. Alan is the one who got me so interested in Butterfly syncronicities, which seem to be a world-wide phenomenon, and we shared a number of events together, including marching together in San Francisco against the war in 2003 (there were 300,000 people in the streets, just like I remember it was in 1970, when I marched against Vietnam. An amazing thing to see, if sad to see it repeated. And Alan, I, and his lady friend, Nicole, were fortunate to be right at the very front of the march. Once again, with 30 years between, I heard Joan Baez sing. )

I wore the Mask of Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom, whose emblem is the dove. Alan brought his "Butterflies not Bombs" banner. The picture above was from the San Francisco Chronicle, where we appeared with our "Icons". What makes this a synchronicity is that Nicole (with her back turned to the camera) was locally famous as well for her "Cosmic Cash", which she created and passed out to everyone wherever she went. It says "One Love, One World" on the other side.

Notice the "cash" sign on the right of the photo at top? I think Nicole's "Icon" was in the Peace News that day as well.

Life and art at the ranch

I can't get to the Internet easily here - so my blogging is somewhat delayed. I want to thank friends for their kind and thoughtful comments......in my previous post I'm a bit embarrassed to let my "psychic underwear" show.

But I do question what I'm doing these days - everyone I know is in some kind of similar transitional phase, it seems. And I am weary of the aloneness of it sometimes. I would like to say that, in the previous posts comments, I especially appreciated what Valerianna had to say about art being a spiritual practice, a way to "pollinate".

Rachel Rosenthal once said that our creativity was "compost for the Earth", the highest and best of what we are, feeding the planetary mind and creating fertile soil for those to come.

I remember, years ago, recording an interview with performance artist Raphael Montanez Ortiz. In the 60's, he was famous for his "De-Construction Performances"; in several of them, he ritualistically destroyed a sofa and a piano. For Rafael, these works were not just about him, but also shared rituals about both personal and collective "Shadow Work". Here is another dimension of art process.....one that is psychologically self-revelatory. As Rafael pursued his art in later years, he integrated shamanism, healing, and indigenous cultural traditions into his work, with "Physio-Psycho-Alchemy", and "Waxworks". Re-reading that interview recently, I found this:

Rafael: "Do you remember the movie, "Forbidden Planet"?"

Lauren: "Yes, their "id creature" destroyed their civilization. So, in order to integrate these internal forces, one must see it and be it?"

Rafael: "Or find a safe haven for it, and art can be a haven, a solution."

I was sitting on the stoop of the back porch a few days ago, looking out into the desert, when suddenly I was joined in my morning coffee by a black dog. Wagging her tail, her company was most welcome. Looking at her tags, I saw a phone number, and had to laugh when I learned that my new friend was called "Shadow"! So Shadow and I hung out all day, until her owner came to pick her up........I think there's a living metaphor in there somewhere worth noting as well.
How can we know the whole of anything without the friendship of what Jung called "shadow"? I make room these days for "both sides now", and when Shadow turns up at the door wagging her tail, it's not a bad idea to sit down on the porch and share your hamburger.


So, I've been busy making ICONS in clay and in paintings, but I think I'll make a "Shadow Box" or two, just to make sure I keep the balance.

Carrizozo

I've been given a fabulous old adobe house in Carrizozo, New Mexico, and a studio to pursue my residency here (until mid August). I wake in the morning with this kind of vista before me, watch the stars at night from a kind of platform in the back yard that, surely, was built for the purpose of getting a little closer to the vast skies of this landscape. Air is the element of New Mexico.

Air and Fire, here..........below are images from the "Valley of Fires", huge lava fields not far from here. I've found myself drawn there, more so than the mountains surrounding the Carrizozo valley (Capitan, Riudoso)...............there is a numinosity in that raw, primal black rock, so recently spewed forth from the fiery heart of Gaia. It fascinates me.

To be honest, as enthralled as I am with this amazing landscape, and this strange, charming town, I seem to be dealing with a depression I brought with me. Wherever you go, there you are. I hope this mood passes soon. There are many wonderful images in my mind, but I can't sometimes seem to get beyond the yammering of my personal demons. Maybe its worse that I've been given this wonderful opportunity, and they followed me here.......***

The Valley of Fires

I also, in search of art supplies, blundered into Roswell, NM, right in the middle of the annual UFO Conference at the UFO Museum (yes, there is a UFO Museum), and wandered back to Carrizozo two days later. What a hoot! I found the speakers there fascinating, intelligent, and well informed - some of them were well known researchers who had dedicated many years of their lives to proving that UFO exist, and also that there had, indeed, been a crash of an extraterrestrial craft outside of Corona, NM, in 1947, which was covered up by the U.S. military. Their arguments impressed me.

But the most fascinating presentation there was by Freddy Silva on sacred sites and crop circles. More on this later...................

***
It goes something like this: does anyone really give a damn? What's the point of churning out more stuff that will end up in a storage locker? If I'm really lucky, I'll sell a few prints that will pay for a show I may have. When I leave here, I may be able to get a few friends to stop talking about their money or health problems long enough to look at my latest collection for about 15 minutes, although half way through the presentation someone will invariably start talking about how it reminds them of their aunt Susie's macrame pottery project, and I'll get mad without saying anything, and quietly close the book, or the portfolio, or I'll turn off the laptop. No one will have noticed that I did. I won't attempt to share it again.

And then back in the studio, more loneliness, more contemplation of my artistic navel, more increasingly trying to justify my life at 60. More well meaning observers occasionally telling me that "you do it for yourself" (No, you don't. You do it to communicate. That's another way that art, and artists, and creativity in general, is trivialized in our materialistic world.) Or that "artists are visionaries" (Another way to say they think you're a lunatic.)

Or, "You'll be famous when you're dead". (Gee, now that is an incentive. How nice to think that art investors will make a killing after I'm dead. And......that has to be the most rediculous, ever re-occuring comment I hear. Do you really want a life like Vincent Van Gogh? Hell no. I'd much rather be a bartender in Florida.)

And then there is the all-American comment, "So, what's your real job?". We won't even go there.

Ok, well, I guess I had to get that out of my system. Infantile, I know. But honestly, I took this residency with a tinge of desperation, hoping to somehow re-kindle the passion I once had, a passion for art that has propelled me forward for 30 years. If after this generous residency it hasn't returned, if I can't find a way to feel less isolated and increasingly disillusioned.........then I guess it's time to do something else. I just wish I knew what it was.

Litany for the Lost

"In 1987, the last Dusky seaside sparrow disappeared from the earth. Imagine the people of Merrit Island, Florida, gathering to hold vigil on the marsh's edge each June 15, the anniversary of it's passing. Or imagine the citizens of San Francisco gathering in the spring, beneath rustling eucalyptus trees at the Presidio, to remember the Xerces blue butterfly. That was where the last one was seen, in 1941. Can you imagine the California condor, it's wings circling in the desert air? Can you hear a Mexican Grey wolf, howling in the night? Psychologists have not begun to ponder the emotional toll of the loss of our fellow life. Nor have theologians reckoned the spiritual impoverishment that extinction brings.

To forget what we had is to forget what we have lost. And to forget what we have lost means never knowing what we had to begin with."

Mark Jerome Walters
THE NATURE CONSERVANCY (1998)

There are many times I sit at the computer, and spew out moments of quiet despair, but it never ends up on my blog. I've lived, sometimes, in a rather shallow, if well- intentioned, sphere of people who are dedicated to being POSITIVE like some people are dedicated to low carb diets. Don't get me wrong; positive thinking is essential. However, so is the reality of grief, grief at the mindless and continuing loss of fellow Relations. I remember reading earth activist Starhawk's quote, years ago, when I was feeling my way through the spiritual supermarket: "If we keep going with the flow, we're going straight to hell". This was in 1987.

"The state of Louisiana has identified 210 birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals likely to be hurt by the spill — including about a dozen threatened and endangered species. Another 445 fish and invertebrate species will also be affected. No estimate exists yet as to the number of corals and plants such as sea grass and wetland vegetation likely to be covered in oil, but this area of the Gulf is home to abundant communities of deepwater corals. One recently discovered species, the pancake batfish, could be snuffed out by the disaster. On land, the approaching hurricane season could bring storms that would push the oil into inland freshwater wetlands."

If we can imagine that we are not the only sentient beings evolving upon this great Mother Earth, upon Gaia, if for just one moment we can hold other lives that fly, or swim, or walk on four legs within our hearts as Family, if for just one moment we can hold in our hearts the lives of those humans who are yet to come, and will live in a world that may well be without the beings below............I offer this Litany. To remember what is being globally Lost.

The Green Turtle, The Hawksbill Turtle,
Kemp’s Ridley Turtle,
The Leatherback and Loggerhead Turtles.
Sperm whales, the Bottlenose Dolphin,
The Brown Pelican, The Barrier Tern
and all migrating Songbirds in the Gulf.
The Pancake Batfish, Bluefin Tuna.
Piping Plover, Gannets.
The Polar Bear.
The Trumpeter Swan,
West Indian Manatees,
the White Rhinoceros,the Whooping Crane ,
Caspian Tigers, and the Tasmanian Wolf.
The pygmy owl,
the Sonora tiger salamander,
the American jaguar,
the African gorilla,
the African rhino,
the Xerces blue butterfly,
the Caribbean Monk Seal,
the Mexican grey wolf,the Bengal tiger
the White tip Shark
the Yangtze river dolphin,
the western black rhino,
the Pyrenees ibex,
the red colobus monkey,
Egyptian Barbary sheep
the Spanish wolf, the English wolf, the Mexican grey wolf.
The black footed ferret, Moorean tree snail,
the little bush moa, the new Zealand coastal moa.
Central California steelhead salmon, the Passenger Pigeon,
Stellars sea cow , Bachman’s warbler, and the Carolina parakeet.
The Ocelot, the Indiana bat,
the San Clemente sage sparrow,
the Western Snowy Plover,
the Short Tailed Albatross, Yellow Billed Cuckoos,
San Diego Mesa Mint, Blunt Nosed Leopard Lizards,
San Francisco Garter Snakes,
Santa Cruz island mallow bushes,
the island rush rose,
Irish hill buckwheat plants. Old growth coastal redwoods.
The Palos Verdes blue butterfly,
the Xerxes blue butterfly,
the new Zealand black fronted parakeet,
the Jamaican green and yellow macaw,
the Jamaican red macaw,
the grey parrot, the Solomon island crowned pigeon,the Hawaiian thrush, the St. Helena cuckoo, the New Zealand little bittern, the Canarian black oystercatcher, the Tahiti rail,
the Norfolk Island ground dove, the elephant bird, and the great Moa.

The African Elephant,
the African Wild Ass,
the Asian Elephant,
the Asian Lion, Atlantic Salmon,
Black Lemurs, Black-footed Ferrets,
Blue Whales, Bowhead Whales,
Cheetahs, wild Chimpanzees;
the Dodo.
Eastern cougars, and the Mexican Grey Wolf.
The Eskimo Curlew, the Fin Whale,
Flightless Cormorants, the Giant Anteater,
the Giant Armadillo, Greater Prairie Chickens,
and the Spotted Owl.
The Indian Rhinoceros,
the Japanese Crested Ibis,
Eastern Lady Slipper,
the lesser koa finch,
the Javanese lapwing, the ivory billed woodpecker,
the slender billed grackle,the St. Helena petrel,
Bruno mountain Manzanita, the desert pupfish,
the hawksbill sea turtle, the Wyoming Toad,

And many more

RELATIONS.

“What might we see, how might we act, if we saw, like Penelope the Weaver, the world with a webbed vision? The world seen through a web of relationships…as delicate as spider’s silk, yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.”

Catherine Keller, Theologian
From a Broken Web (1989)

Marga

The "Blog sphere" has been a continuing source of information and inspiration - recently I received a fascinating correspondence from Robur D'Amour, who shared with me his insights about "Marga", having read some of my own posts on synchronicity. Marga is a term I've not run across before, a concept that resonates deeply for me with what I've fancifully called "conversations with the world". Robur   kindly gave me permission to quote some of his insights.

"'Marga' is a term that means following a path of signs or symbols that lead a person to their spiritual self. Marga is a bit like finding one's way through a labyrinth, by reading signs that are given to you by the unconscious."

Jung believed that what mattered in life, to him, was to find his spiritual identity. He believed that a person could do this by leading what he termed a 'symbolic life'. Jung wrote:

“when people feel they are living the symbolic life, that they are actors in the divine drama... That gives the only meaning to human life; everything else is banal and you can dismiss it. A career, producing of children, are all maya (illusion) compared to that one thing, that your life is meaningful.”

I think that this idea is the same thing that Joseph Campbell, who was a great admirer of Jung, refers to as 'marga'. It's a way of living, without following any particular creed or any rules worked out and written down by someone else, other than paying attention to what is presented to you by Fate, the Goddess, God, or the unconscious. In The Hero's Journey (p45) Campbell writes:

"Adolf Bastian, a German anthropologist, has meant a great deal to me with just this main idea. The common themes that come out of the collective unconscious he calls elementary ideas.... In India, in art criticism, the elementary ideas are called 'marga', the path. Marga is from a root word 'mrg', which refers to the footprints left by an animal, and you follow that animal. The animal you are trying to follow is your own spiritual self. And the path is indicated by mythological images. Follow the tracks of the animal and you will be led to the animal's home. Who is the animal? The animal is the human spirit. So, following the elementary ideas, you are led to your own deepest spiritual source." 

A snippet of that piece can be read on Google books: The Hero's Journey (Marga).

In practical terms, this means paying attention to what we see in the world around ourselves, and in particular to symbols presented to us, in dreams and the things we come across in our daily lives. The symbols we see around us are presented to us by - Fate, the Goddess, God, the unconscious, or whatever name you like to give to the thing that we cannot see, but what determines 'what happens next'.

Following the links in a trail of symbols that are presented to us by the unconscious, amounts to finding one's way through a labyrinth, by reading the signs. Labyrinths and mazes were common features in Elizabethan gardens. 

"The marga (path of symbols) that I seem to have been unwittingly following is a very curious one.  I originally seemed to connect the word marga with Megara." he wrote, "Megara was popularised as the heroine in the Disney version of Hercules. It's 'only' a film for children, but it does, to some extent, bring the archetypes to life. Megara is a very vivid anima archetype."

I personally was somewhat amazed, speaking of my own "Marga", to read his comment that:

"Megara was originally a Greek word for a fissure in the ground used for sacred rites connected with beliefs about the underworld (the unconscious) and Persephone-Hecate."

In 1993 I began a novel (The Song of Medusa), which I wrote with artist Duncan Eagleson and which was inspired by the writings of  Riane Eisler.  It was based on the idea of an ancient shamanic priestess of an old-European, Earth Goddess culture. The priestess was called a "Singer", and she entered altered states of consciousness and prophesy by going into fissures or caves in the earth. The novel was about the conflict that happened as her world was shattered by the invasions of warlike, Indo-European tribes. As the little novel evolved, somehow, and surprising indeed to me, my own version of the myth of Persephone also evolved within the story, so much so that it became the novel's secondary theme. Learning about "MARGA" and "MEGARA" is a revelation for me. It seems, once again, that in the course of opening to the creative process, we do indeed open to the collective mind.

The Summer Solstice

I am a lover
Of the steady Earth
And of Her waters.
She says:

“Let the light be brilliant,
For those who will cherish color.”

What if there be no Heaven? She says:

“Touch my Breasts - the fields are golden.”
Her Songs are all of love, lifelong.
Every blue yonder,
Her brass harp rings.
Unlettered, in Her rivers
Our cherished sins
Drift voiceless in Her clouds.

She will rust us with blossom
She will forgive us
She will seal us
with Her seed.

Robin Williamson
("The Song of Mabon", 1985)

BRIDGIT

"God's abstention
is only from human dialects;
the holy voice utters its woe and glory
in myriad musics, in signs and portents.Our own words are for us to speak,
a way to ask and to answer."

.....Denise Levertov

There are some gifts that come to us
just once or twice in a lifetime,
gifts that cannot be named
beyond the simple act of gratitude.

We are given a vision so bountiful
we can only gaze with eyes wide,
like a child in summer's first garden.

We reach our clumsy hands
toward that communionthat single perfection
and walk away speechless,
blessed.

And breathe,
in years to come,breathe,
breathe our hearts open
aching to tell it well

to sing it into every other heart
to dance it down,
into the hungry soil
to hold it before us:

that light,
that grace given
voiceless light

Lauren Raine (1999)

***********
Robin Williamson has inspired millions for many years - beginning in the 1960's with the INCREDIBLE STRING BAND. His "5 Denials on Merlin's Grave" is still one of the most beautiful ballad/poems I have ever heard: with his phrase

"Older Yet, and Lovelier Far, this Mystery:
and I will not forget"

He evoked a time of ancient magic, and sang me on my way on a wandering course that never really ended. I, like many, salute this great Bard.

Robin Williamson's site: http://www.pigswhiskermusic.co.uk/
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5bo10takGE

A good bio from The Green Man Review:

http://www.greenmanreview.com/cd/cd_robin_williamson_omni.html