Aphrodite and Jalaja Bonheim

 

"Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love "

Leonard Cohen, "Dance Me To The End Of Love"

A friend in Portland is facilitating a ritual performance with masks, and I was a bit amused to learn that the mask of Aphrodite had been chosen by 3 women to invoke, and then each had withdrawn.   In my experience, one does not aspect a Goddess lightly!  When I last heard, they were still seeking a priestess to dance the mask.  I think invoking the energies of Aphrodite especially is no small task!  As I write I  remember a performance in 2001 in which the mask was danced by a beautiful woman with black silk gloves, to the music of "Dance Me To The End Of Love".

Aphrodite was "born from the sea", and without writing about the many sources of the mythic Aphrodite, it seems fitting that the Goddess of love should have her power and source in the vast depths of the ocean.  I also have to say that, considering the blog entry that preceeds this one, I believe Aphrodite........Eros.........is very wounded in our world, and I don't need to go very far to demonstrate my claim.  

 

 "Today, I would describe a priestess as a woman who lives in two worlds at once, who perceives earthly life against the backdrop of a vast, timeless, reality."

  Jalaja Bonheim

Allow me below to introduce one of my personal Heroines,  Jalaja Bonheim, a psychologist, temple dancer, and creator of the Institute for Circle Work in Ithaca, New York who has devoted much of her life to healing that wound.  She is the author of Aphrodite's Daughters: Women's Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul.  After spending her childhood in Austria and Germany, Jalaja studied classical temple dance in India before coming to the United States in 1982. She is the author of three other books as well, which were inspired by her passion for integrating sexuality and spirituality in our world, and empowering women.                                                                                                                            

"I think that every woman should have the opportunity, at some point in her life, to set down her sexual baggage among people who respect and support her, and to unpack it with them.  Our isolation has reinforced the assumption that nobody shares our feelings, or cares about our story, or wants to know.  But our individual baggage is never just ours alone.  Rather it belongs to the collective.  Other women have their own piece to carry.  The time has come to speak of what we know.  In the Temple we now sit in silence, a circle of priestesses.  One by one, each of us has stepped forward to make her offering.  Each one has given her gift, revealing through her story a beauty that made us catch our breath, a courage that renewed our own.  Around us we sense the spirits of many others - mothers and grandmothers, lovers and husbands, teachers and guides, the spirits of the ancestors and the spirits of those who are yet to come."

(from Aphrodite's Daughters)

APHRODITE IN BROOKLYN

Please allow me to take off my shoes,
this faux marble pose 
this modern, pragmatic mask.
Permit me my ruin.

Let us not consider this therapy
 or revolution
do not ask me to give you space
let us not discuss those who came before
and those who might follow.
Let us not talk of past lives.

I have fallen on hard times.
If you come to my temple
 just let me make for you an ocean.

Half seen in the darkness
your body, a mystery
true, tangible, radiant,
lined with the rings of your life.

You are beautiful,
beautiful to be a man.

Darling, even in this era, I will not believe
that love is disposable,
that sex is safe
that lovers are trains, rolling past each other
to some certain station 

  I remember,
  I almost remember my river source

My skin forms the word anew,
     yes,
     enter me
     as if

    you were coming home

             Lauren Raine (1999)

The Handmaid's Tale......

 If you think medievil thinking is a thing of the past, think again.  As we progress into a future of massive over-population, diminishing resources, and global warming,  the wise patriachs have a solution:  let's keep girls  pregnant, barefoot,  ignorant and in their place, as "He" supposedly ordains in the Bible. Remember Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale?

The right-wing has officially gone off the rails. Some have even compared Obama to Hitler - why?  Because the administration approved a rule mandating insurance coverage of birth control.Now Congress is saying they're going to overturn the mandate. "Pro-choice" used to mean abortion.  Now it is also apparently used to mean people who advocate birth control and women's rights to control their bodies.

According to NARAL  since the beginning of the 112th Congress the anti-choice majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has consistently been unleashing legislation attacking women's right to chose contraception.  They tried to eliminate funding for birth control and cancer screening at Planned Parenthood clinics nationally.   They have passed legislation that would allow hospitals to deny women emergency abortion care, even if it means she will die without it.  If this  was happening to people of color, there would be a huge outcry.  But because it's an issue of sexual control and discrimination, instead of racist, few take the time to notice.

I find this, and the very idea of government determining the availability of birth control........scary.  This pushes the envelope towards theocracy, a theocracy of the religious  right that, ironically, also reacts violently to any suggestion of "socialism" and a "welfare state".  It seems that girls may not protect themselves from becoming pregnant, but after conception, they and their children are on their own.....punished, just like the good days, for the great sin of not having been "chaste".

I know from first hand experience what it's like to be a very young girl, pregnant, and alone. I have great compassion as well for children born to children themselves.    I know  how hard women have fought for the right to vote, to work, to own property, and to control their own bodies, rights only available within the relatively recent past. Remember:  It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that a woman could own property, or control her own assets.   Black men were given the right to vote in 1870.  But women (of any color)  were not allowed the right to vote until 1920, 50 years later!  Until very recently, birth control was still illegal in some states, including Connecticut ( in 1965, the Supreme Court  ruled in the case Griswold v. Connecticut  that prohibiting the use of contraceptives violated the "right to marital privacy"). In 1972, the case Eisenstadt v. Baird expanded the right to possess and use contraceptives to unmarried couples.  1972!
Here's a petition circulating to support birth control today:

http://act.weareultraviolet.org/sign/congressbc/?referring_akid=a418651.99468.hFKWrT&source=copy_thanks_email

Masks for the Numinous

"Ocean"

"O fountain mouth, giver, you, mouth, which
speaks inexhaustibly of that one, pure thing,—
you, mask of marble placed before
the water's flowing face..."

from Sonnets to Orpheus
by Rainer Maria Rilke 

In our proposal  Macha wants  masks that are elemental, allowing "voice" to goddesses that have their origins in places...the land, the waters, the forests -  the true wellsprings of myth.    To our ancestors, as to  indigenous cultures today that have been able to preserve their traditions like the Aborigines of Australia, or the Hopi in Arizona, the entire world was alive and conversant.  One way the "mythic conversation" occurred was by personifying the spirits of place.  As Macha  (and I) believe, the experience of communing with the elemental powers is grounded and woven into myth, but the experience is  real. The Pythoness or Oracle drew her visions from the heightened energies, the "mind" of sacred Delphi.   Hawaiians tell traditional stories about Pele, the Goddess of Kilauea - but many modern people, visiting the great volcano, have come away with personal stories of transformation, wonder, and mystery.  

"Volcano Spirit"

We feel the numinous power of special places, the  "anima", be it a life giving spring, a cave with oracular potency, or the generous "devas" that infuse an orchard with fruitfulness.  How many rivers bear the names of Goddesses, for example the river Avon in England, derived from the Celtic goddess Abnoba?  How many mountains are called a Goddess, or a God?

How, in other words, do we "talk with the Earth", and what might the many voices of Gaia have to say, voices garnered from sacred places throughout his/herstory?

'The River Face"

Myths (and masks) are portals that can open possibilities of  "communion with the invisible realms", because myths (like masks) open windows into the country of the mythic imagination.  In other words, giving a "face", a "voice", and personae to the elemental powers isn't  just about creating  fairy tales.  It's about finding a human face for the ineffable,  so the conversation, generations long,  can be more readily translated into human language.  Does that make sense?
  
"Numen ("an influence perceptible by mind but not by senses", pl. numina) is a Latin term for a potential, guiding the course of events in a particular place or in the whole world, used in Roman philosophical and religious thought. The many names for Italic gods may obscure this sense of a numinous presence in all the seemingly mundane actions of the natural world." (Wikipedia)

"Fey"

I've always loved the notion of "numina", the local deities of early Rome.  Pomona is one such Roman goddess who derived from simple shrines placed near orchards, revered as the lady who helped the apples and grapes to grow.



When I made my pilgrimage to Glastonbury this past summer I visited again and again the sacred springs -  the White Spring (which is in an underground chamber, and they wouldn't let me publish the photos I took), and the Red Spring (the Chalice Well).

The Red Spring (Chalice Well), Glastonbury, England

I profoundly felt the power of these holy springs, as well as the Tor, which is (I believe) the source of the two springs.  People have been coming to Glastonbury for millenia on pilgrimage, the site of Avalon, and Arthurian lore, and the famous Glastonbury Abbey.  One of the first things I encountered in "Avalon" were many works of art devoted to the "Lady of the Lake", and everywhere, violet, amethyst, and purple.  Here's a photo I took inside the Tor - notice the "purple haze" that the camera consistently recorded in my photos there.

"That two springs, one red and one white, should rise together and flow out from one of the most remarkable hills in the British Isles strikes a profound chord in the imagination.  In esoteric tradition, the Tor as world centre and axis mundi provides the means of passage between the mundane world and the spiritual realms.  In such a place, the veils separating ordinary reality from spiritual planes can thin or dissolve, allowing those who are receptive to receive the guidance and blessings of the otherworld.  The guardian spirits of the Avalonian soul-portal invite all those who are drawn here to pass through the symbolic gateway that is the Tor.  The interplay between the subtle energies of the Red and White Springs is a vital key to understanding the impact of this experience upon the individual soul-body."

 THE RED AND WHITE SPRINGS OF AVALON , Nicholas R Mann and Philippa Glasson

52 fully illustrated pages available from  http://www.thetemplepublications.com/

The monastery in Glastonbury gradually drained the lake and swamplands around the Tor with a system of irrigation channels to create farmland, but in earlier times the Tor must have been visible as a mysterious island in the mists, the "isle of Avalon".  Today the deep springs still pour from the slopes of that island - the iron-rich red waters of Chalice Well which arise from beneath Chalice Hill and flow out through the Chalice Well gardens; and the waters of the adjacent White Spring, arising from beneath Glastonbury Tor. 

So, today I'm working on a mask dedicated to "the Lady of the Springs of Avalon".  Although there is so much lore and mythological legacy connected with this ancient place of pilgrimage, I'm going to just go with my own intuitive vision, and hope I produce a mask that will, like the ever-flowing waters of Avalon, be used to dance new stories about this sacred place into the world.

Barbara Ehrenreich on the darker side of positive thinking

Artwork by Catherine Nash

It's got nothing to do with masks or my Goddess project (although a trickster mask, black and white, seems to be evolving on the worktable.  Wonder what she has to say?) but I felt like sharing this fascinating animated video in which acclaimed journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich explores the "darker side of positive thinking", with an emphasis upon the corporate world.

At the movies recently Coca Cola announced some kind of program whereby they're going to save the polar bears, and we saw some happy, singing polar bears leaning against an iceberg drinking Coca Cola.  Was I the only one  stunned by the hypocrisy?  Coca Cola addiction has produced millions of diabetics.............and is it really so easy to forget that the reason polar bears are becoming extinct is because our civilization, including the factories that produce Coca Cola, is changing our climate?  Wouldn't it be better for children (and adults) to at least experience the truth, rather than soothing images of dancing polar bears?

I am not really a "positive" person by nature, and often have to work very hard to shift my consciousness away from habitual dark tracks. Sometimes, I don't want to. A good depression can inform one of authentic needs, a tantrum releases blocked or stagnant energy, getting pissed off is sometimes not only appropriate but absolutely necessary.  Don't get me wrong..........I absolutely agree with the necessity for positive thinking and affirmation......but not at the expense of empathy and reality.

Sometimes the soul needs a wailing wall,  sometimes  spirit needs to ferment and incubate in its depressions, and sometimes the heart needs to tell its dark story in order to heal.  Sometimes we need to face the truth, which gives us the power to be present.

The Global Art Project

 Katherine Josten,  for almost 20 years now,  has been creating peace through the cultural exchange of art.  In 2004, the "Masks of the Goddess" were used in a performance that were part of the Global Art Project (Katherine also danced the title role) and an exchange was made with a wonderful dance group in Cameroon, Africa.  Katherine is, truly, a local Heroine.

10th Biennial International Art Exchange for Peace 

http://www.globalartproject.org

Registration Deadline... February 29th

Anyone can participate - adults and children, individuals and groups.
In March/April 2012, participants will create, exhibit and exchange art expressing their ideas of a peaceful global community - resulting in thousands of messages of peace and goodwill simultaneously encircling the Earth during the week of April 23-30.

2012 Global Art Project for Peace Time-Line

February 29: Registration deadline.
March: Create your art expressing global peace (any medium - visual, literary, performance, etc.)
April 1-22: Exhibit/perform your art locally.
April 23-30: Exchange your art with your Global Art Project partner in the worldwide exchange.
Ongoing after April: Community exhibitions of art received.
 
Since its beginning in 1993, the Global Art Project for Peace has linked 100,000 participants on seven continents! Nominated for a UNESCO Peace Prize, the Project connects people of diverse cultural backgrounds, providing exposure to new ideas and connection to the Whole. 200 Regional Coordinators are helping to organize Global Art Project activities in their area of the world. Participating groups include artist cooperatives, performance groups, churches, corporations, community groups, hospitals, women's clubs, youth and senior programs, and YMCAs. Schools in locations around the world are participating and involving thousands of students from kindergarten through graduate programs.

The purpose of the Global Art Project is to joyously create a culture of peace through art. The Project gives participants in local communities an opportunity to join together to create a cooperative global community. It's an opportunity for you to join your energy with others to seed the future with visions of peace.

The Global Art Project for Peace is a 501(c)3 non-profit, grass-roots organization. For additional information about the Global Art Project for Peace and how to get involved by participating, volunteering and/or funding the Project, visit www.globalartproject.org, or email us at peace@globalartproject.org.

Katherine Josten Founder/Director

Global Art Project
PO Box 40445
Tucson, Arizona 85717

Corn Mother and Collaboration

"Cornmother" mask worn by Kathy Huhtahluta in "Restoring the Balance", 2004

"Indigenous people have always known corn metaphorically in two or more of the four senses, mother, enabler, transformer, healer; that I use throughout this weaving. Although early European settlers took the grain only, there is evidence in America today that the Corn-Mother has taken barriers of culture and language in stride and intimated her spirit to those who will listen, even if they don't know her story or call her by name."

Marilou Awiakta, "The Corn-Mother Incognito. Or Is She?"
from SELU - Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom

 A friend of mine is writing her dissertation on art and shamanism, and wanted to use my story about Corn Mother's Mask.  Since I'm now working with my proposal to create a new collection of Masks of the Goddess, I wanted to share again this story, although I know I published it before a few years ago.  I think it's a story worth re-telling.

**************

I remember a documentary about a famous Hopi potter, who said that she saw patterns and motifs when she went walking in the morning, and they just wouldn't leave her alone until she "wrote" them into her pots. I wondered what it meant to be an artist whose work was attuned to a long tradition of transmission - a purposeful thread woven into the fabric of daily life, not just for one's assertion of individuality, but in service to the tribe, the ancestors, the goddesses and gods..........perhaps not unlike the Icon painters I learned about at Wesley, or the traditional mask makers of Bali, the work is a meditation, a prayer,  a devotional activity. 

This morning I thought about "the greater collaboration", not just among colleagues, but also with what Bill Moyers called "invisible support", the synchronicities that engage others in the creative process.  This story happened when I was working with the Masks of the Goddess collection in 2002.

"Myth comes alive as it enters the cauldron of evolution, 

itself drawing energy from the storytellers who shape it." 

Elizabeth Fuller, The Independent Eye Theatre

"Corn Mother" has many names throughout the Americas - She is the ubiquitious and generous sustainer, the "Demeter" of this continent. The Cherokee Corn Mother is called Selu, and her story is one of sacrifice and renewal, with compassion for her children, who through fear and ignorance  attempt to  destroy the very source that sustains them. It is a myth with significance for our time.

In 2002, I had given the collection of masks to choreographer Mana Youngbear, who was directing a performance in Oakland. I had no idea of what she was creating,  but planned to attend the show. About a month before her event, I attended an unrelated event at the University of Creation Spirituality (now the Naropa Institute) in Oakland.  Organized by Evelie Posche, and supported by theologian Matthew Fox, the ritual event was dedicated to the Divine Feminine, and included a long and  moving meditation about the wounding of the Feminine in Western religions, led by a woman minister. She spoke of the tragedy of the Inquisition, the Burning Times. I sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded in the darkness by people.

Yet when I closed my eyes, I vividly saw something that had nothing to do with the ceremony I was participating in. I saw a Native American woman, wearing a deerskin costume, dancing with an ear of corn in each hand. I opened my eyes - and there were 300 people, most of them weeping.  Closed my eyes, and there was the corn dancer.  This continued throughout the meditation, and was so strange and vivid to me that I decided to make a mask about her. I placed ears of corn on each side of the face, and as I worked, it occurred to me to paint a rainbow on the mask's forehead, a hopeful symbol of  the "Rainbow Tribe" our world was becoming.

A week before the performance, Mana told me there was one dancer in her cast, Christy Salo, who had no mask. Christy had wanted to create a dance to honor the Cherokee legend of Selu.   Now, it seemed,  she had her mask! And when Christy danced at Mana's performance,  she blessed the audience with corn meal, completing the circle for all of us.***

Here's the interview I taped with Christy after the performance.

Christy as "Selu", (2002)

"I made a bouquet of corn for Mana and Stephen's wedding, with a necklace of rainbow beads on it I bought at a garage sale, the same bouquet I used later to dance Green Corn Woman at our performance. The wedding was at a retreat in California, and after the ceremony, I met a woman walking about the property. She told me she really didn't know why she was there! She had been heading to Oakland, and felt an urge to turn off the road. When she drove by the sign for the center, she impulsively pulled in. And there she was, in a lovely place with a wedding in progress. As we talked, I realized she was the woman I bought the rainbow beads from, the same beads that were decorating Manna's bouquet, even as we spoke! I like to think she was a touchstone on my journey to Cornmother.


Mana is part Cherokee, so perhaps that was why she asked me if I wanted to dance Cornmother when she cast her show. We didn't have a mask for the Corn Goddess, but I was inspired to create a dance anyway. I knew very little about Her, and meant to do some research at the library, but a friend turned up with a wonderful book called BROTHER CROW, SISTER CORN full of indigenous corn legends. I also stopped at a used bookstore, and opening a rather esoteric book at random, discovered I was looking at an article about the Corn Maiden. I was stunned to learn it was illustrated by Vera Louise Drysdale, the first woman I met, years ago, when I lived in Sedona. With that, I sensed I was ready to begin.


I felt I was following an invisible, mythic thread - and the feeling of familiarity continued as I created a costume. I looked for materials associated with Corn Mother, and within a few days, Manna had left me a message. "Christy" she said, "There's a Hopi woman at Isis Oasis you need to meet! She gave me some 300 year old corn meal to give to you!" I felt the spirit of Corn Woman encouraging me indeed!


Corn Mother's story represents the wealth that comes from the hard work of forgiveness. How can we be fed, how can we create peace, if we cannot learn the lessons of forgiveness, if we cannot learn tolerance for our differences? That is the beginning place we will need in order to evolve into a peaceful Rainbow Nation. To me, the Rainbow as actually a circle. Half the rainbow disappears into the ground, into an underworld realm, where it exists beneath the Earth, hidden, but at the foundation never the less. Like the Corn Mother. We're all Her children, especially in America, with our mixed bloodlines. We have "rainbow blood".


We received the new mask at the time of the lunar eclipse, in May of 2002, and decided at that auspicious time to consecrate it with some dried corn. As we did, a flash of light went off in the room! At first we thought it was a light bulb, but looking around, realized there were no electric lights on in that room. We looked at each other amazed, and we felt the presence of Corn Mother."

** Elizabeth Fuller, Conrad Bishop, "The Independent Eye" Theatre

*** There's a funny postscript - in the summer of 2010 I went to Willits to visit Mana, who was having a big yard sale with Christy.  As I walked up to visit, Christy was behind her table selling a tray to someone that was decorated throughout with a corn motif. I guess that's the weaving of our connection to each other!

Seeking Advice from Leonard

MY TIME
from The Book of Longing

My time is running out
and still I have not sung
the true song
the great song

I admit
that I seem
to have lost my courage

a glance at the mirror
a glimpse into my heart
makes me want
to shut up forever

so why do you lean me here
Lord of my life
lean me at this table
in the middle of the night
wondering
how to be beautiful?

Lauren:

What else is there to do?