Creativity, Art and Shamanism

untitled (1970)

"We slowly pull focus, lifting up and away from being embedded in our lives until we attain an overview.  This overview empowers us to make valid creative choices." 

Julia Cameron, "The Artist's Way"

I've been thinking about the blog entry I wrote on Depression, thinking about it on two levels.  First, I've been considering what the gifts of that depression may be,  what I've needed to look at, change, grieve, or accept.  I haven't made any art since my residency at Wesley 2 years ago, and so I took out The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, intending to begin her course. 


The other thing I considered was the need to remember the  trans-personal nature of creativity - of mind.  Spider Woman's Web.  What came to mind recently is a group I belong to who are mostly practicing and  retired therapists.  Although I have great respect for them, I've been feeling ill at ease in the group.  Psychologists can tend to "pathologize" - they often see others in terms of  an assumed standard of mental health and normalcy.  I understand  why,  and I honor the experience they bring to the group.  And yet..........something is missing for me, there is not enough room in the group for the mystery, I find that I am often censoring myself.........

Untitled (1972)

There's a thin line between trans-personal, trans-formative, "non-ordinary states", and madness.  Sometimes "madness" is also brilliant insight.  Sometimes creativity arises  from a liminal zone that should not be explained away or dismissed because it's outside of an "acceptable emotional spectrum".  Just because we can't see ultra-violet with our eyes doesn't mean it's not there.

Carl Jung, who formed the concepts of synchronicity and the collective unconscious, had "spirit guides" that he considered a source of  crucial insights, aspects of his  psyche, "which he could produce, but which could also produce themselves, as having their own life".  Among his "guides" were  the archetypal mentor figure Philemon, an ancient Vedic scholar, and Basilides,  an early Gnostic teacher in Alexandria., Egypt. It's also not well known that Jung's family included members who were known locally as mediums.

 "Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of sub-consciousness....I wouldn't know.  But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness."

untitled (1985)

Aaron Copeland

Recently I was talking with someone about  artists as shamans, and as in the past,  I both agree and disagree with this comparison.  It's highly presumptuous for most artists to call themselves "shamans".  Traditional shamans, while their practices and symbol systems may vary widely, do universally have a great deal of structure within which they work - they have cultural and tribal support, traditional systems that go back through many generations,  systems of "visioning", containment,  ordeals or initiations,  and means of psychic protection that have evolved for hundreds of years.  They have a  lot of "invisible support"  as well, a "strong container" within which their responsibilities are clear,  often hereditary, and they are generally expected to be mature and richly experienced before they can  begin practicing as shamanic healers.  It's not a random, chaotic process at all.

"In the case of the Sami, my Shaman teacher was trained in her culture for thirty-five years before she could practice hearings on people outside of her extended family. When I pondered this, given the fact that she was born into a prestigious lineage of Shamans and that her talents were obvious when she was a child, I wondered why she had to study for so long before treating those outside of her kin group............My Shaman teacher was not only a healer, but she was also a student of folklore. This is important, because she always insisted that the three principal sources of her shamanic knowledge were Sami folklore (tales, legends, and so forth); teachings from the ancestral lineage-from her father, who was her mentor, and from other ancestral spirits, who spoke to her from the spirit world; and teachings from spirit entities (what we might call "spirit aides" or "power animals."

THE PLACE OF SHAMANISM IN ECOFEMINISM, Gloria Feman Orenstein

I was once privileged have a conversation with one of the founders of Eco-feminism,  Gloria Orenstein.*  Dr. Orenstein is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at USC in Los Angeles.  In the 80's she became friends with, and worked with,  a hereditary  Sami shaman.  (I have an article about her work with the Sami, and can't seem to find it on line - I'll try writing to her and see if she'll let me print it  in this blog.) I always remembered the story she told me about the first time she went to visit her mentors' family in Finland.  It was winter, very dark, and they had driven for many miles into the countryside, at last arriving at a house where she was given a room to sleep in.  She said that she lay in bed wondering if she was crazy,  coming all the way from Los Angeles in the dead of winter.   Then she heard voices outside the window.  They seemed to be calling for  "Caffe, Caffe".  In the morning she asked her hosts why people were outside in the freezing  night, asking for coffee.  They responded that this was a good sign, it meant she would receive help.  It seems that in Samiland, like flowers and food in Bali, or whiskey to the Orishas of Cuba, coffee was an offering made to the spirit world.

I don't mean, of course,  to negate the work of many contemporary shamans, such as Sandra Ingerman ("Soul Retrieval") or Michael Harner, who have studied  traditions from around the world and evolved  new forms of contemporary shamanism.   

'St. George and the Dragon" (1969?)

 I think I'm digressing.  I wanted to demonstrate that making even the most visionary art does not make one a shaman, however, art process can be shamanic within it's healing capacity, and the way it can reveal the seamlessness, the weaving,  of our inner lives.  There is a liminal dimension to the creative process one can hardly fail to notice.

Going over some of my very old drawings, I was amazed to find the one above, which I did when I was about 18,  of "St. George and the Dragon".  I knew nothing whatsoever about feminism, the Goddess,  or mythology ...... and yet I can read what became my life purpose, like hieroglyphics, in this little drawing.  Here is a divine female figure, which I symbolized with wings, who seems to have a snake around her waist and in her hand.  She's merged into the rather tragic looking figure of the dragon about to be slain by George, who looks nothing at all like a saint to me.  (In fact, he looks kind of like my abusive boyfriend of the time.) This is a classic heroic tale - so why did I make "George" so un-noble?  Behind him is a barren, rocky land, in contrast to the depths below the dragon figure, with vegetation bubbling up from the dark earth, and even  something that looks like a dark moon shape as well.

The meanings I can now draw from these symbols represent many years of study and discussion as I became a feminist, and became involved in Eco-feminism and Goddess theology.  In 1968 or so there might have been people like Merlin Stone thinking about the banished Goddess, the Earth Snake***, and the development of patriarchal religions, but I sure wasn't exposed to it until well into my 30's.

The drawing really is a kind of "future memory".

"Skin Shedder Mandala" (1985)

 **"Synchronicity and The Shaman of Samiland" in UNCOILING THE SNAKE: ANCIENT PATTERNS IN CONTEMPORARY WOMEN'S LIVES (A Snakepower Reader). Edited by Vicki Noble. Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1993. 

***I just noticed that the article above is a "SNAKEPOWER READER"..........!

Halleluiah!

I just had to post this again!  Happy Holidays!

Depression - visiting Saturn's Shrine

"Age", 1986

 "Today we seem to prefer the word depression over sadness and melancholy.  Perhaps its Latin form sounds more clinical and serious.  But there was a time when melancholy was identified with the Roman god Saturn.  To be depressed was to be "in Saturn", and a persona chronically disposed to melancholy was known as a "child of Saturn"......melancholic thoughts are deeply rooted in Saturn's preference for days gone by, for memory and the sense that time is passing.  These thoughts and feelings, sad as they are, favor the soul's desire to be both in time and In eternity, and so in a strange way they can be pleasing."

Thomas Moore, "Care of the Soul"

"The Well of your Joy is as deep as the Well of your Sorrow."

           Kalil Gibran

The past week or so I slipped into a depression.  I've been so busy taking care of everything for so long, it was "unexpected".  As if such things could be expected, put into the calendar.  I became depressed because I'm living in a house alone where my mother and brother once lived, their cats and noise and lives, and they will never return.  I became depressed because I remembered that tigers, and polar bears, and so many creatures are leaving the world, and it suddenly was very real to me.  I became depressed because a lot of people have come to my house recently, and not one commented on my art, or even my orchids,  but all of them talked, exhaustively, about money, and it sickened me.  I became depressed because........

My depression fell over me like a heavy grey blanket, making it hard to move.  What I found depressing as well was how very little permission I had from others, or myself, to experience it. Spiritually oriented acquaintances I tend to avoid at such times, because depression is not very positive or uplifting, and you can feel like a leper.  Even my former therapist (seemed) to look at me like was a kind of lapsed alcoholic, and suggested a self-help book by a popular psychologist, and to begin her exercises right away. 

To be honest, I thought wistfully of a long ago bar I used to go to in a long ago town, and the fine therapy of crying in one's cups with a fellow sympathizer.  In retrospect, there was some real use to that.

 In a culture that demands an impossible standard of  constant economic growth and individual productivity, where pharmaceuticals promise relief, and a better, newer, probably more expensive self-help workshop to transform your higher consciousness and find lasting bliss is in order........I miss  simpler times when I had the Mole's Eye Bar, and a vodka tonic.

So I stayed home alone, and let my depression be, and invited Saturn and Hecate to visit.

That intense time before the Solstice, it seems to me, is "Saturnine", the month of endings, celebration of the dead, composting of the year, going underground, dreaming, life review.........age. What does "age" mean?  Memory, slowing down, reflection, loss.  Sometimes wisdom, sometimes depression. 

Why must we always "keep up"?  Should we feel shame, failure, if we "fall behind"?  I recognize that we have responsibilities, obligations.......but inner life doesn't always respect such timetables.  Where can people "falling behind" go? Retreats, dream temples, monasteries, where the "fallen" can go to rekindle their souls?  Is there a garden shrine at least, a compassionate space, a psychic allowance within  the whirlwinds of our lives where we are not punished for "falling apart" just a little, for being "depressed", where some inner or outer voice isn't telling us we're "losers"?
 
I find myself in increasing retreat from the continual "stimulation" of our time.  Some days I look at my computer with a kind of terror, because it represents such an overwhelming vista of possibility.  I now allow that.

And  I don't despise my depressions anymore, rather, I consider them worth listening to.  In fact, they sensitize me, restore my empathy, and compassion.

As everything seems to accelerate and accelerate, I, at least, find it harder and harder to touch things.   To touch the depths of the stories of our lives, to touch anyone, to relish and taste within the onslaught.  Somewhere beneath the pavement there are still those layers of history, layers that belong to lives that preceded us, old bones, old trails, leys and currents and the ghost of the hidden sea.   I sleep on all these stories, they want me to dream them, to open the conduit.

The pace, and of course the urban disconnect from natural cycles........leaves little room for the kind of Saturnine composting of spirit that a good depression can give, the  cyclical return to the dark that is, I believe, reflected in all organic systems...........to "compost". To rot, fall apart, not know, slow down, fall by the wayside, re-form, be re-formed by the organic, collective forces we are woven into within the cycles of the planet, and within our souls.


Roman gardens used to have lots of little shrines, and  a special shrine was devoted to the morose god, Saturn. A place, it was understood, one went to be alone, to brood, perhaps to grieve. A place to be melancholy.  The word "melancholy" derives from a word that meant "black bile", believed in the  middle ages to be one of the four "Humours", the four (like the four directions or cardinal points) whose balance was believed to determine one's emotional and physical state - those humors were:  blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.  So here is the idea of balance, and that balance must include the dark as well as the light, the depressive as well as the enlivened.  
As I get older, and my personal energy reserves are more concentrated and precious, I have come to believe that giving melancholy its due, discovering what the gifts of depression, taking time to allow the uncomfortable depths sometimes, not always, revealed in Saturn's solitary corner of the garden - is essential to nourishing, indeed sustaining, my spirit. Just as Romans understood the need to have a shadow-dappled seat dedicated to Saturn in the gardens of their lives, I have my own seat devoted to Saturn, devoted as well to Hecate, goddess of the underworld.  To make offerings before a shrine is a  invocation, and invitation.  To "take a seat" is another kind of opening. 

Hecate, like Saturn, represents age.  She's an old woman, past menopause, past ambition, close to the door that separates this world and the other world.  In the story of Persephone, Hecate is the one who bears a torch, illuminating her passage through the dark caverns of the underworld.  I've always loved that metaphor.

"In us is also a dark angel (Hekate was also called "angelos") - a consciousness (she was also called "phosphoros") that shines in the dark and witnesses such events because it is already aware of them a priori.........Part of us is not dragged down but always lives there, as Hekate is partly an underworld Goddess."

"The Dream and the Underworld", James Hillman


Hecate is the patroness of women (and men) who are no longer producing hormones. Hormones are very potent drugs that induce us to want to reproduce, and thus carry on the evolutionary, planetary urge. When estrogen or testoserone is gone one's consciousness changes.  I've heard lots of women say that  life's illusions seem to peel away. Veils that have muffled all kinds of personal illusions, beliefs, and ideals and drive fall away ..........and there you are. Depressed sometimes.  Revealed. Clarified. Ignorant. Thankful. 

Occasionally, I even notice phosphorescent threads of wisdom, gleaming, candid in the dark and lovely mystery of it all.  I think any new mask of Hecate might be both black, and white.  Maybe Hecate, in her mask and role as old woman, may represent the SOUL aspect of self.  "Part of us is not dragged down, but already lives there........." as Dr. Hillman said.

Already lives there, the gestalt, the storyteller as well as the story. Looking at the yin/yang symbol I wear on a ring, I remind myself that somehow the various parts of my being are, like the dark teardrop and the white teardrop, in flux and co-creation. This weaving of story is not only enlightenment, it is also "endarkenment", the self that waits, is circular, un-named, yin. That "already lives there."

I think to honor her, to honor Saturn, we have to stop blunting the descent, which is hard in a culture that so powerfully rejects the idea, no longer even has a recognizable "god" or a "goddess" to help initiates find their way.  We don't see "melancholy" as about balancing the humors, we see it as something inconvenient, wrong with us, we're ashamed, we're guilty of being "negative", we want it to go away as quickly and efficiently as possible so we can "get back in the race". 

History of The U.S. Dept. of Peace

We all know where a whole lot of our national resources go.  That's right, the Department of Defense, which, judging from the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, isn't all that "defensive".  And even though we're in deep financial trouble, and Obama promised to end the war(s) when he was elected, the wars go on, and still get a big, big piece of the pie that might fund the environment, schools, the jobless and homeless, etc..  I'm not going to rant about patriarchal mythos (yet), but in asking why we don't have a "Department of Peace", I was kind of amazed to learn the history of people and times who have, in fact, tried to create just that.  It was first proposed in 1793, along with the founding of the Constitution..............It looks to me like this is an idea whose time has come - and gone - and come - and gone - and come.....***

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The history of legislation to create a Department of Peace

The peace movement in the United States has a proposed legislative history that dates to the first years of the republic:

1793: Dr. Benjamin Rush, Founding Father (signer of the Declaration of Independence), wrote an essay titled "A plan of a Peace-Office for the United States". Dr. Rush called for equal footing with the Department of War and pointed out the effect of doing so for the welfare of the United States in promoting and preserving perpetual peace in our country. First published in a 1793 almanac that Benjamin Banneker authored, the plan stated (among other proposals):

--Let a Secretary of Peace be appointed to preside in this office; . . . let him be a genuine republican and a sincere Christian. . . .Let the youth of our country be instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in the doctrines of a religion of some kind; the Christian religion should be preferred to all others; for it belongs to this religion exclusively to teach us not only to cultivate peace with all men, but to forgive—nay more, to love our very enemies.
--To subdue that passion for war . . . militia laws should everywhere be repealed, and military dresses and military titles should be laid aside. . . .

1925: Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of the League of Women Voters, at the Cause and Cure for War Conference, publicly suggested a cabinet-level Department of Peace and secretary of peace be established.

1926/1927: Kirby Page, author of A National Peace Department, wrote, published and distributed the first proposal for a cabinet-level Department of Peace and secretary of peace.

1935: Senator Matthew M. Neely (D-West Virginia) wrote and introduced the first bill calling for the creation of a United States Department of Peace. Reintroduced in 1937 and 1939.

1943: Senator Alexander Wiley (R-Wisconsin) spoke on the Senate floor calling for the United States of America to become the first government in the world to have a Secretary of Peace.

1945: Representative Louis Ludlow (D-Indiana) re-introduced a bill to create a United States Department of Peace.

1946: Senator Jennings Randolph (D-West Virginia) re-introduced a bill to create a United States Department of Peace.

1947: Representative Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois) introduced a bill for “A Peace Division in the State Department”.

1955 to 1968: Eighty-five Senate and House of Representative bills were introduced calling for a United States Department of Peace.

1969: Senator Vance Hartke (D-Indiana) and Representative Seymour Halpern (R-New York) re-introduced bills to create a U.S. Department of Peace in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The 14 Senate cosponsors of S. 953, "The Peace Act", included Birch Bayh (D-IN), Robert Byrd (D-WV), Alan Cranston (D-CA), Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Edmund Muskie (D-ME). The 67 House cosponsors included Ed Koch of New York, Donald Fraser of Minnesota, and Abner Mikva of Illinois, as well as Republican Pete McCloskey of California.

1979: Senator Spark Matsunaga (D-Hawaii) re-introduced a bill to create a U.S. Department of Peace.

2001: Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) re-introduced a bill to create a U.S. Department of Peace. This bill has since been introduced in each session of Congress from 2001 to 2009. It was re-introduced as H.R. 808 on February 3, 2009 and is currently supported by 72 cosponsors. In July 2008, the first Republican cosponsor, Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD) signed on.

2005: Senator Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota) introduced legislation in the Senate to create a cabinet-level department of peace a week after Dennis Kucinich introduced a similar bill in the House.

And we still don't have a Department of Peace. 

***

Here's in remembrance of Peace Pilgrim, who devoted her life to peace. 

Healing with Masks in New Zealand

I wanted to introduce some wonderful people in New Zealand who are using their "Multi Mask" system to heal and renew hope..........I take the liberty of just copying their ezine, since they can describe what they do better than I.

Website   :   Subscribe   :    Unsubscribe   :   Forward to a Friend   :   Web Version
About Maskworx Home of the Multimask System since 2004...Maskworx is a "one-stop-shop" for Anyone who wants to make an articulate mask - a vivid mask that speaks volumes visually!! A user-friendly system based on the Multimask, a neutral face shape made from paper with embossed cutting lines on the back.   Find out about our 9 step Mask Making System and our range of Multimasks How-2-Guides Resource and Tool Kits Visit our Website Showoffs Photo Gallery Be inspired now! View a stunning array of masks made by our community of mask makers – young and never-too-old. Visit our Photo Gallery The Maskworx team has developed a ‘family’ of Blogs for user-support and for sharing mask ideas from around the world. Visit our Mask Blogs   Contact Details Crown Road Paerata Auckland New Zealand T: 64 9 272 2981 F: 64 9 274 0142 E: Email W: Web Site		MULTIMASK eNEWS  Emerging from Emergency:   Mask-making transforms kids, classrooms and communities in Crisis Butterfly Quake Mask by Manning Intermediate More and more we are discovering the value of making masks in times of crisis, stress and loss...   And when personal loss (Loss with capital 'L') starts leading us around on a leash, then it's time to do something practical and mindful... Research shows it may take up to two years before symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder show up in survivors following a traumatic episode or disastrous event.  To address the largely unseen "aftermath injury" (the emotional fallout that remains long after the physical injuries have healed) why not make a mask to tell your story?   Bus image supplied by Tall Poppies Mask-making works like a tour bus - you revisit what has happened (whatever the devastation may be), you plot a pathway through it (using the Multimask® starter base, plus a map of the creative pathway), then you arrive at some form of resolution (a step closer to recovery).  This final enews for 2011 samples some of the "emerge from emergency" mask projects covered thus far in classrooms and communities here in New Zealand and overseas... Quake Masks in Canterbury Treasured Quake Mask by Riccarton Primary This year a good proportion of our mask-making projects were done in the Canterbury quake zone where, in February, "a giant eraser" earthquake wiped out the central business district as well as much of the eastern suburbs of Christchurch.  Through making Debrief & Development Masks in schools we have learned so much we put together a not-boring-or-sad-guide to emergency mask-making (publication pending).  "Congratulations on developing and delivering the emergency mask-making model to Christchurch school children. The earthquakes have inspired a great variety of creative responses, which has brought real comfort and support to our city." Bob Parker, Mayor, Christchurch City Top Black Saturday Bushfires in Victoria   Bushfires Story by Mount Martha Primary   Eighteen months after the tragic bush fires of 2009 in Victoria, 7 Australian schools made myths & legends masks, and whilst not strictly 'crisis masks', some of these mask stories referenced the terrible bush fires.  Studying local myths and legends is a good way to prepare for the next natural disaster.  Disaster preparedness is a HOT topic right now! Top At Risk Girls in Cambodia   Mask-making in Phnom Penh Cambodia was once the heart of a great empire in South East Asia but the Khymer Rouge communist regime lead by Pol Pot from 1975-78 changed all that with the savage deaths of 21% of the Cambodian population in "The Killing Fields".  The regime destroyed the protecting framework of traditional Khymer life leaving young girls easily preyed upon.  Today Cambodia is emerging and the image above shows young women are bringing a new face to the reconstruction.  Even the security guard made a mask in this class! Top Goddess Masks in India   Mask-making in Jaipur Early marriage, early pregnancy, illiteracy and life-long poverty all contribute to an early death, issues still continuing to face young Indian women today.  The above image shows a class in one of the slum districts of Jaipur making "goddess masks". Annette's sister Lynne is the project leader. Top Domestic Violence in Nicaragua Mask-making in Nicaragua A group of Nicaraguan women were each given two Multimasks® with which to portray how it feels to be on the receiving end of abuse.  The image above shows how abuse leaches the colour out, diminishing one's potential.  We can also see how creative expression brings back the vibrant colour.  The mask is a larger than life representation, and it's through this kind of symbolic work that women begin to show and grow their potential again (after abuse renders them smaller than life meant them to be).  Top Gang Wives in Christchurch  Mumzy Mask in Christchurch The Mumzy's Group in Christchurch make 'identity' masks together. Top Lifting the lid on Pandora's Box Pandora's Box Mask by Meadowbank School While Canterbury was sifting through the "rubble of trouble" following real life disaster, Meadowbank School in Auckland made Pandora's Box masks to portray disease, sadness, despair and death.  Students chose dark colours, black, grey blue, purple and brown to symbolise SADNESS (above).  Some children chose the tear drop as symbol of despair, while others chose the rainbow as symbol of HOPE (below)...     Pandora's Box Mask by Meadowbank School Top Hands-on Practical & Emotional Literacy When grief and loss, fear and uncertainty come into the classroom it is possible to look deeply at "curly topics" not covered by the curriculum.  If left unexamined these curly topics may morph into a "hidden curriculum".  And yet the 'monster' force melts quite easily if tackled early with the creative force! Children prefer to get their issues out into the open. When we offered quake kids the option of expressing their feelings on the reverse side of the mask so no-one could see it, none took up this offer. Totally unabashed they all wanted to strut their stuff! The Mask is the primary hands-on practical and emotional literacy tool for "facing the unthinkable".  Just because IT is unthinkable, does not mean it is unpicturable!  Mask-making activities can capture the complexities of the difficulties being faced.  Recovery is just around the corner...where you can put your "happy face" back on!!    Pippy the Hippie by Columba College If your class or community needs a helping hand to face the 'unthinkable' email Annette at multimask@orcon.net.nz and she will put a Starter Pack together to help you kickstart the creative response to crisis.  Alternatively, visit our website maskworx.co.nz/shop.html Don't be shy, anyone can do it (with a good measure of support from us)!!  Melanie and Annette wish you a happy summer holiday break and look forward to assisting many more smart mask-making projects in 2012...

Magic....

"Magic" painting by Rob Schouten

 "If you do not believe in magic, your life will not be magical.  Magic like the power of Stonehenge is part of the unknowable - that which you cannot describe, but which exists and makes your life extraordinary.  It is that mysterious and intriguing part of your spiritual life.  Magic is what we are all looking for, but if you try to hold it and name it and describe it, you will lose it.  You must talk around magic, describe what led you there, and give thanks for that part of the universe that is unknowable and full of color and strength and magic.  Out of relationship comes magic.  Out of the friction of forgetting and remembering comes magic.  Out of the mists of dawn and the mysteries of creation comes the magic that we call life.  Out of your passion for existence comes magic."

The Power Deck by Lynn V. Andrews   
with paintings by visionary artist Rob Schouten. 

 
Recently I've had a (bevy? myriad? cluster?) of synchronicities around "magic".  Last night I found myself telling a friend to see a movie called "The Color of Magic".  In my last email with Prema Dasara  she closed by saying "magic sometimes happens".

I have always prayed to  Tara when I'm in trouble.  How I "met" Tara is a magical story.  So, prior to my surgery in early November to remove a tumor, I prayed to Tara.  The day before going to the hospital, I was delighted to receive an email from Prema Dasara.  More than a year and a half ago we had discussed making masks for her Mandala Dance, "The 21 Praises to Tara".  She was inquiring if I still wanted to make them. I took this as great encouragement  before I went "under".  All is well now, and I feel I kind of have a promise to fulfill to Tara, although, unfortunately, Prema  has had to put her project off because of health problems.



Prema Dasara and "The 21 Praises to Tara" Mandala Blessing Dances

But the idea came to me - why not do a second collection of my own  Masks of the Goddess?  Ever since 2008, when  the masks were sold at a Benefit Auction, many people have contacted me wanting to use them for events, rituals, dances.   I have thought about creating another collection,  in new ways and forms, to be held in trust for those wishing to use them "in a sacred manner."I do not believe I have the energy to create community events myself anymore, but there are many who would use them to do so.


As I rolled this around in my mind yesterday, I thought I'd pull a card from one of my decks - and behold, up came "Stonehenge and Magic".   Ancient monuments, the womb of the Great Mother, seem to be what I write a lot about these days..........and what happens in the womb?  Well, things get incubated prior to being born.  Or re-born.

I love what Lynn Andrews wrote about magic above.  Perhaps magic is like the Dark Matter that surrounds and penetrates everything, the infinite backdrop upon which we're all unknowing organizing our lives, filling out our weekly calendars. Synchronicities, like dreams, are sometimes hard to understand. But......I think I'll initiate the birth of a new collection of masks.  It won't be the same as the old project, because I'm not the same.  But I'm going to trust in a bit of Magic.



My project (1998-2008) "The Masks of the Goddess"

In the Belly of the Goddess - Gobekli Tepe

Since posting about the Bosnian Pyramids, I received an email from my friend Susan about another megalithic mystery I was not aware of,  the buried temples of Turkey, Gobekli Tepe,  a ceremonial  landscape that may very well be 12,000 years old.  Gobekli Tepe  means  "Belly Hill" or "Hill With A Navel".   According to Wikipedia, 

"Göbekli Tepe is the oldest, human-made religious structure yet discovered. The site is located on a hilltop, and contains 20 round, (now) subterranean structures, four of which have currently been excavated. Each building has a diameter of 10–30 meters, and is decorated with massive (mostly) T-shaped limestone pillars that are the most striking feature of the site.  That neolithic people with such primitive flint tools quarried, carved, transported uphill, and erected these massive pillars has astonished the archaeological world, and must have required a staggering amount of manpower and labor.  In the structures, two pillars were placed in the center of each circle, possibly to help support the roof, and up to eight pillars were evenly positioned around the walls of the room.  Many of the pillars are decorated with carved reliefs of animals and of abstract enigmatic pictograms. The pictograms may represent commonly understood sacred symbols, as known from Neolithic cave paintings elsewhere."  Wikipedia

The structures on this site were built about 12,000 years ago (10,000BC) during the last ice age,  and intentionally buried about 8,000 years ago. No one knows who these people were, what the massive buildings were for, or  why they were buried. After 13 years of work only an estimated 5% has been uncovered.  Amazing........pyramids in Bosnia, and stone circles in Turkey, of such great antiquity.***

Turkey is near the area called the Fertile Crescent, until recently regarded as home to the earliest human civilizations of Mesopotamia, the "Cradle of Civilization".  These lands now so disturbed by conflict, revolution, war  and the struggle for  diminishing reserves of oil ,  the source of power for our civilization......are also the homeland of the ancient Great Mother, the lands of Innana, Ishtar, Astarte, Lilith, and the Shekinah, the feminine face of God in Judaism. 

As so often happens, a synchronicity, a thread from the Great Web,was thrown my way when I received an email from a colleague, Israeli artist Dorit Bat Shalom, inviting me to join a group of artists exploring peacemaking in the Mideast on the same page with Susan's link to "Belly Hill".  What came to mind immediately was a conversation Dorit and I had long ago, a conversation that has a resonance for me with this mysterious site. 

We were speaking of  the degradation of the feminine throughout western culture, religion, language.  When even God is gendered male to the exclusion of the other half of the human psyche, and further, defined primarily as a warrior god,  we are split and divided.  Humanity is divided against itself, and the Mother archetype is degraded.   Speaking beyond politics to an ancient wound,  Dorit asked,  

"How can there ever be peace without the Shekinah?  The Shekinah, the Goddess,  has been driven away from the holy lands. We  can not heal without Her."  

The Goddess has many faces - the Trilogy of Maiden, Mother, Crone, the Divine Feminine, the Dark Goddess, and Mother Earth.  Archeologist Marija Gimbutas pointed out the cultural bias of our time when she suggested that so called "fertility fetishes" (read that "paleolithic pornography") such as the famous Venus of Willendorf were not

 just fetishes, but probably represented instead the prime Deity, the "Great Mother".   Here is the immeasurably ancient womb/tomb idea, the original source of burial ritual, as well as death/rebirth ordeals of being buried alive  in shamanic societies.  New life, the primal mystery,  our ancestors observed, comes from women,  thus, life comes from Mother Earth as well, and returns to her womb again for rebirth. The Belly of the Mother.

Once again, one can only ask in awe, why would ancient peoples go to such difficulty to create vast megalithic ceremonial structures, charting and coursing the land with circles, pyramids,  avenues, creating sacred landscapes that were, perhaps, hundreds of years in the making, and thousands of years in use?  Gobekli Tepe, and possibly the pyramid complex being discovered in Bosnia, make Stonehenge, and Avebury, and the strange Callenish stones of the Hebrides.....seem modern.  Still, there seems a continuity.  I speculate that these sacred landscapes  were sited with a knowledge of, and reverence for,  the energies of the earth, the  geo-magnetic and spiritual forces.  They sited them to contain and utilize the "Geomantic Source"  for their spiritual life, which might very well have included the primal mystery or enactment of the   birth-death-rebirth cycle ( a relatively "recent" example of this was the Eleusinian Mysteries which lasted some 2,000 years, and whose origins may go back to Minoan, and even Neolithic times. ****)  The site's Turkish  name,  which means  "Belly Hill" or "Hill With A Navel"  is an interesting coincidence  when one considers this so ancient site in the "cradle of civilization".  "Navel of the World"......certainly, a site with revered circled enclosures,  which could have imitated the circles of planetary, seasonal life, perhaps, the round womb of the earth Mother.   Perhaps, a complex dedicated to the first and most ancient of human rites, coupled with an experiential understanding of the power of earth energies that we need to reclaim.   

"Ancestral Midwives" (2009)

The author of one of the articles about Gobekli Tepe  I read made some (annoying) conjectures about the "Garden of Eden". 

("Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?"

By Tom Knox   Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1157784/Do-mysterious-stones-mark-site-Garden-Eden.html#ixzz1eRkv1W6r)

I wish mythology was a part of all curriculum, because so few people take the time to explore some of the origins of the very mythologies that inform our culture and religions.  But then, people don't like to have their myths disturbed, because, after all, it's quite disturbing.  You just might end up having to change your worldview!

Long before there was a "Garden of Eden, original sin, or snakes that seduced Eve and hence left her responsible for all the miseries of mankind" there was the Great Mother and Her circular rites.  Gimbutas has suggested that before the Goddess was even personified as Hathor, or Isis, or Inanna,  She was the mysterious place and force of birth and death, Mother Earth. 

In Biblical lore, the snake is "Eve-ill".  Sometimes the evil snake is personified as Lilith, the shadow Goddess who is a temptress in the Tree of Life, talking Eve into disobeying God.  When Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland, he drove out the earlier Druidic religion, and their reverence for the magical forces of nature.  But what is the snake in antiquity, why is this symbol so very  ubiquitous, once sacred, then with the advent of Patriarchal religions, profane?  In ancient Egypt we see the snake mounted at the forehead (the third eye or vision center) of all images of gods, goddesses, and royalty.  In fact the most ancient word for "goddess"  in Egypt was the same word as that for cobra. 

The snake (sometimes represented as dragons)  represents the sinuous, serpentine, moving energies of the earth - which move across the land like the passage of the wind, the  passage of water currents, like rivers undulating across a plain.  Since apparently early cultures always identify the Earth with the feminine, with the Great Mother and Her womb/tomb/rebirth cycle - hence the relationship between goddess and snake.  I believe the snake was also identified with geomagnetic phenomena, the leys and  invisible movements or currents of esoteric earth energies.

It may well be that we lost "Eden" not for disobeying  the rather arbitrary rules of a God who often displayed a bad temper, but rather, when human consciousness changed, along with the mythic structures that supported culture.  What might the ancients teach us now, in the 11th Hour of a civilization that is not sustainable, and has lost its primal reverence for the Great Mother, for Gaia? 

*****

"Eleusis" probably derives from a pre-Greek (Cretan)  Goddess of Childbirth, Eileithyia or Ilithyia who was adopted into Greek religion.  "According to some authors her name does not have an Indo-European etymology, which for R. F. Willets strengthens her link with Minoan culture. "The links between Eileithyia, an earlier Minoan goddess, and a still earlier Neolithic prototype are, relatively, firm," Willets wrote. "The explanation is as simple as it is important. The continuity of her cult depends upon the unchanging concept of her function. Eileithyia was the goddess of childbirth; and the divine helper of women in labour has an obvious origin in the human midwife".  Wikipedia

***

I never rains but it pours, and another friend brought to my attention another possibly 12,000 year old monument complex, discovered off the coast of Japan.  What do we really know of  history?