My Muses Hard at Work

 

"With every passing hour our solar system comes 43 thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in the Constellation of Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress."

---Ransom K. Ferm

The Transition Network

 

The Transition Network began in the UK, and has expanded to become global, with a U.S. Transition  Network site that is rapidly expanding as well. (http://www.transitionus.org/about-us)

The work they're doing is extraordinary, and for any who may not be aware of these two organizations, and their programs, I'm pleased to share links here, information about the movie "In Transition", and a little video from one of the founders.

To see the movie:  http://vimeo.com/8029815

"‘In Transition’ is the first detailed film about the Transition movement filmed by those that know it best, those who are making it happen on the ground. The Transition movement is about communities around the world responding to peak oil and climate change with creativity, imagination and humour, and setting about rebuilding their local economies and communities. It is positive, solutions focused, viral and fun.  In the film you'll see stories of communities creating their own local currencies, setting up their own pubs, planting trees, growing food, celebrating localness, caring, sharing. You’ll see neighbours sharing their land with neighbours that have none, local authorities getting behind their local Transition initiatives, schoolchildren making news in 2030, and you'll get a sense of the scale of this emerging movement. It is a story of hope, and it is a call to action, and we think you will like it very much. It is also quite funny in places."

One of the upcoming online events presented for free by Transition USA  is  by Starhawk, a woman who is a true visionary leader. I've been privileged to work with her in the past, and look forward to this:

Heart and Mind of the Circle

Wednesday, October 3, 2012 - 5:00pm - 6:15pm

Note:  All Transition US online events are listed in Pacific Time
Register and you will receive your unique dial-in number and PIN via email.

Description:

Working in groups of equals is the heart of our work to change the world.  We value community, yet groups are often very challenging places to be.  How do we create groups and organizations that are warm and welcoming, that value and empower participants, and that bring out the best in each of us?

In this teleconference, we’ll explore the personal sustainability that is the ground of effectiveness.  We'll consider social permaculture—the principles and agreements that lead to healthy and functional groups—as well as the agreements we make with each other, the way we make decisions, and how we handle the conflicts that inevitably arise.

Check out Starhawk's new book on this subject before the call if you can.

Presenters: Starhawk

Poems

I don't write poetry anymore, which makes me sad sometimes.    I don't know where the poems went.............but it's good sometimes to open old journals and remember younger selves.........

Yellow Sails   

Your fey mark 

glows on your forehead

a brand, a signature.

I have covered you

with my own tokens, with kisses

embedded in you like tattoos, 

each one says

"remember me, remember me"

although I know you won't.

They will dissolve more quickly than memory

in whatever stream

bears you off.

Never really touching you,

still, I regret nothing.

You are that which is worthy,

the pale light of another landscape

a castaway.

I will remember you

as you are now:

a boat, sailing into some brave distance

your yellow sails spread

gladly

on the horizon.

Lauren Raine

1982

 

IN PRAISE OF WATERS

How are we turned

again and again

to find ourselves moving

into the shadowland

where our best and finest intentions

drift out of true,

and into the truly opposite?

   Love becomes hate

   hope turns into despair

   inspiration hardens into dogma.

Perhaps,

we must find our faces again

in dark waters

revealed among fallen leaves,

our reflected sins,

our cherished scars,

the dappled shapes of light and dark

that surface toward a whole.

There is something that wants us to open

Something that pours from the crevices

where we have broken

Something that laughs like a river in the morning

(1997)

         THE RUNE OF ENDING

What can be said, now,

when all words are spent

and the word has finally been spoken

we go now to our separate houses

relieved - at least,

a course has been named.

Our lives are severed, our story is told.

We will each surely tell that story, and  laugh

and talk late into the night, and kiss lips and thighs salty

with tears and love;

but not with each other,

not again.

Here the tearing ends, here ends remorse and reprisal,

here end dreams and plans.

We will not travel to Scotland, to walk among imagined

monoliths in the white mists of our imagination.

We will not walk again on a warm beach in Mexico,

toasting each other with margaritas.

That was once.  It has to be enough.

I will not call you mine,

You will not call me yours.

And our cat is now your cat, our teapot is now my teapot.

I touch a potted plant, remembering its place

on our breakfast table.

We divide the spoils, humane, courteous, fair.

A canyon has opened between us, we are each old enough

to know its name, to view its depths without passion.

There is no bridge to cross this time.

Beloved, I must now forgive myself,

and you,  cast my stone into this abyss

and bless the ghost woman

who has not yet come

to stand by your side

wave with grace from across the canyon's lip

then turn, and walk my own path.

1997

The Rainbow Bridge Oracle

“Rainbow Bridge consciousness is a way of thinking and acting that allows us to hold multiple perspectives in our minds simultaneously....As the saying goes, there are always two sides to a story. Rainbow Bridge consciousness is unity consciousness.”

           Brent N. Hunter,  The Rainbow Bridge Project

I'm pleased to announce that I've finally (20 years getting here!) self published  a limited edition of my 64 card deck    "The Rainbow Bridge Oracle".  The  deck comes with a velvet bag, and has an accompanying text.  Because I'm self-publishing, the book and the cards must be ordered separately.
 
THE RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE DECK  is $30.00 plus shipping,   and can be purchased through PayPal at my website, www.rainewalker.com.    

I hope that I can make the deck less expensive in the future, as I continue to investigate publishers.
 Please allow up to 30 days for delivery.


To view the accompanying book:

THE RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE

Softcover   $27.95
Hardcover, Dust Jacket   $41.95
Hardcover, ImageWrap   $45.95

118 pages

 Limited edition  book is only available through
Blurb.  For a preview of the book please visit this LINK

                                                 

"I've always conceived of the Rainbow as actually being a circle. Half disappears into the ground, into an underworld realm, hidden, but present. Like the Goddess. Perhaps what she gives us now is the means to seed a rainbow vision."

Christy Salo, Artist

 In the Tarot, the Higher Arcana is a progression through what mythologist Joseph Campbell called the "Hero’s Journey".  The first card in the traditional Tarot deck  is The Fool .  The Fool represents the utterly open innocence, and infinite possibilities,  with with we incarnate into this world.  The Arcana progress through different  experiences, revelations, trials and initiations. The last card of the Journey is The World, the return Home. Although my Oracle Deck is not a Tarot, I have still used this metaphor in its creation.

The journey is a Circle.

           
 Some of the cards:


MANIFESTATION

 Remember that not getting what you want
is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck."

The Dalai Lama

"Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it" is an old folk saying that has much truth to it.   We have all dreamed of having great wealth, or being with the best looking boy in school, or any number of  wishes.  And sometimes we do get what we think we want, but in one of the great ironies of life, our happiness can soon turn to misery and disappointment.  Sometimes getting what we think we want can be the worst thing that can happen to us, because what we want is concentrated on desires that are  immature, addictive, vindictive, greedy, or even unconsciously self-destructive. 

 The "Law of Attraction" demonstrates that we attract that which we focus upon,  and consciously (or unconsciously) what we  concentrate upon can manifest.  Loving and generous wishes attract loving and generous results. Negativity and pessimism just manifests more negativity and pessimism, creating a self-fulfilling cycle.  Bearing all of this in mind, now is an excellent time to begin to manifest!

Reversed:  You're not able to manifest what you want because of either a lack of belief in yourself, or you are too negative in your worldview. 

VISION

 In this immeasurable darkness,

 be the power that rounds your senses 

 in their magic ring,
 the sense of their mysterious encounter

 Rainier Maria Rilke

Among the Lakota, long preparations were made for the Vision Quest.  Those who sought  initiation fasted, prayed, and prepared themselves  to  "call for vision".  They then went to a special place in the wilderness.  When a young man returned with  a vision it was shared with the tribe,  and sometimes examined to see if it had prophetic or ceremonial significance for not only the individual, but for the entire tribe.

This is a tool we have largely lost.   True visionary experience is "soul language"; like dreams and synchronistic experiences, a vision has multiple layers of meaning, and transcends  time as we understand it.   Visions, like dreams, communicate universal and personal truths, and whether unintended or intentionally induced in some way, can  catalyze a spiritual path or a life's work.  You are encouraged to "call for vision" in your own way. Do it in a sacred manner, and share and discuss your vision with others of like mind.

Reversed:  Visions can be profoundly significant.......but sometimes there is also a fine line between spiritual revelation and highly subjective schizophrenia.  Practice discernment.

All  artwork  is copyright Lauren Raine MFA (2011)

What they found on Mars.....

Thanks to Charles Spillar for this one.....it's all his fault.

Strange Stats....."Caterpillars and Black Butterflies'

"The caterpillar spins or weaves the cocoon, and in that cocoon, what the caterpillar is creating is his own tomb. We don’t know if he knows that or not. And he crawls into it, and his body liquefies. Complete disintegration of caterpillar. But in that caterpillar soup are these cells that have been in the caterpillar’s body all along, called imaginal cells. Isn’t that a fabulous word? Imaginal cells. It’s called imaginal by botanists because the adult form of that creature, the butterfly, is called imago. So these are imaginal cells, but to me those cells are ‘imagining’ flight. And these imaginal cells know how to take the soup and reconfigure  that into a butterfly, an adult. I believe nature has designed us humans to go through a similar experience."

Imagine your Imago - Liberating the Imaginal Cells of the Human Psyche
Bill Plotkin

When I began this blog in 2007 to document my project "Spider Woman's Hands" as an Alden Dow Creativity Fellow I never really expected anyone to read my journal.  I've been delighted ever since to meet many kindred and inspiring souls through Blogger - thank you!

"la Mariposa"

I've also sometimes wondered at the statistics Google presents me on its stat page.  What is surprising are the posts that month after month attract the most attention.  Number one is always one I wrote about purple Jacaronda trees, and after that, consistently, a post about a "Green Caterpillar Synchronicity"(2010),  "Black Butterflies"(2011), and several posts about "The Butterfly Man".

I noticed these were at the top of the list today, which is especially funny, since I'm currently doing paintings about butterflies. 

I think often of sychronicities as spirit contact, affirmation, and sometimes as "living metaphors", as dreams made visible and hence open to interpretation on a multitude of levels.  Dreams and sychroncities are personal.....but they also reflect what is collective and archetypal. So I've pulled up again these two posts out of sheer curiosity,  this strange clustering of butterflies that is going on in my life these days, and apparently, in the life of the internet as well. Which, come to think of it, is one of Spider Woman's latest appearances.

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

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Green Caterpillar Synchronicity

(it looked kind of like this)

This morning I went to my mother's house to prepare her breakfast, and beside the door, on a "cat rug", was a strange looking fat green thing, curled into a little spiral. At first I thought it was a bit of plastic the cat had dragged home, but then it moved! Keep in mind that I live in Southern Arizona, where it is currently about 102 degrees, and there are very few leafy trees. I've never seen a caterpillar like this here, although obviously they are around.

I put it on a potted plant, the only thing I could find it might like to eat, although, sadly, the poor thing looks none too well for its encounter with a cat. Can't get over the fact that just yesterday I was writing about, and reading about, Phillip Slater's book  "The Chrysalis Effect"** in my previous post!


I think caterpillars represent, to me, what we are as a global humanity, adolescent, trying to mature, to transform. We're presently, like a caterpillar on a leaf, mindlessly gobbling up our world, eating up everything in sight. The hopeful thought is that there is an impulse, a greater force, within our collective instinct that will lead us into, and eventually through, the Chrysalis, the "imaginal" stage. So that we might become, at last, "winged, whole". Pollinators.......

"Butterfly Man" Netherlands, August 2009

 

**The Chrysalis Effect: The Metamorphosis of Global Culture

by Philip Elliot Slater

"The Chrysalis Effect shows that the chaos and conflict experienced worldwide today are the result of a global cultural metamorphosis, one which has accelerated so rapidly in recent decades as to provoke fierce resistance. Many of the changes that have taken place in the last fifty years - the feminist movement, the rapid spread of democracy, the global economy, quantum physics, minority movements, the peace movement, the sexual revolution - are part of this cultural transformation. Contrary to accepted opinion, the conflict it engenders is not a struggle between Left and Right, or between the West and Islam, but one taking place within the Left, within the Right, within the West, within Islam, within everyone and every institution." "Currently, the world is in the middle of an adaptive process, moving toward a cultural ethos more appropriate to a species living in a shrinking world and in danger of destroying its habitat - a world that increasingly demands for its survival integrative thinking, unlimited communication, and global cooperation." Today our world is caught in the middle of this disturbing transformative process - a process that creates confusion over values, loss of ethical certainty, and a bewildering lack of consensus about almost everything. The Chrysalis Effect provides an answer to the question: Why is the world in such a mess?"

Paperback, 242 pages

Published November 1st 2008 by Sussex Academic Press

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

Black Butterflies

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

"The Ancient Greek word for “butterfly” is “psuché/psyché”(ψυχή, 1st.declension) which is used in the meaning of ‘butterfly’/ ‘moth’ by Aristotle and Theophrastus, though its usual meanings are :  breath, spirit, life, soul, departed spirit, ghost, living being, person."  In Ancient Greece the butterfly was a symbol of the soul, because it changes from caterpillar to a beautiful winged creature. Plus it has a shape of a double ax which was an Minoan symbol of the Great Goddess. Greek paintings often showed a 
small butterfly - "soul" - flying free from the mouth of the dead."

Yahoo Answers.com

What I'm trying to approach with my capture net of words is the magical butterfly, a black one at that, a creature that clearly exists on such an elusive multitude of dimensions and metaphors........that it's impossible to consider her mysterious flight without a "holographic" approach. Butterfly is a creature that flies right into the Dreamtime as she so chooses. So, I'll begin by slipping, momentarily and gratefully, back into mythic time and mythic place, the life-renewing, fluid land of the Fey, the imaginal.

I've spoken with many people over the years who have had mystical Butterfly stories, among them my friend Fahrusha (her name, in Arabic, actually means Butterfly), who recounts an amazing synchronicity with a black butterfly in her blog.  Out of curiousity, I looked up "Black Butterfly" on Amazon.com recently, and was stunned to find there were 27 books with that title. I think a black butterfly is about the transformation that happens when the Shadow, in Jungian terms, is also given wings, transmuted.  It is a perfect symbol of integral consciousness.

I have met many people who have told me about butterflies appearing in connection with the loss of a loved one, or at times of personal despair. I list below a site that is devoted exclusively to "miraculous butterfly experiences". **To me,  butterflies wonderfully participate in the interface between dream and waking life, flickering on the wings of synchronicity with their multi-dimensional messages, disappearing into the field of dreams just as mysteriously. A "Butterfly Experience" can be  intimate in the meanings they bear, and equally, universal and impersonal. 

Perhaps the most dramatic "butterfly experience" I had occured more than 10 years ago. Since this experience had to do with both dream and synchronicity, I don't know if I can tell it very cohesively, but I'll try.

It began with a disturbing dream. I dreamed I was on a ship, and on the deck many people sat in deck chairs, all of them playing with masks, taking them on and off. I seemed, in the dream, to be two people at once. I knew that there was, down in the lower decks of the boat, a demon. One of the women that "I" was was a kind of priestess or missionary - she was about to descend into the depths of the boat, where the demon below would torture and kill her. She thought that if she did so, offering herself as sacrificial victim, she could save the people above.

The other "me" was a cynical observer who thought she was a ridiculous martyr, and knew everyone, especially her, was doomed. I woke up as the "martyr self" began her descent.

Without going into the circumstantial and psychological meanings of this important dream, I'll skip ahead in real time. About 6 months after having this dream, I actually found myself, with a lot of actors, and a few masks, on an old decommissioned ocean liner (the "art ship"), which was anchored in the industrial harbor of Oakland. I was acting in a movie, TRAGOS, written and directed by  Antero Alli,  and he had decided to do some of  his filming in the very bottom of this 5 level boat; the old, cold, dark, dank, cargo bay.

Descending into the bottom of the boat brought my dream back vividly, and every superstitious notion of prophetic dreams I ever had came right to the fore.  I was going to die in some way! I didn't like it there!

Between shoots, the cast hung out in what must have once been the crew's cafeteria - located in a middle deck, it had round portholes, all of which were closed because it was a cold day in March. As we waited, the Director offered everyone a card from his own fascinating deck of oracular cards (with his artist wife, Sylvie Alli), and there was lively interest as each person contemplated his or her card.  I took a card from Antero with trepidation, and sure enough, damn if it wasn't the "DEATH" card.

Not five minutes later, as I stood with the card of doom in hand, a small orange butterfly landed on my shoulder.

There was absolutely no explanation for how that butterfly could have gotten into that closed room. I had lots of witnesses - and after the miracle revealed itself, several of them helped to catch the butterfly and get it upstairs where it could be released.
 

As a kind of synchronistic post-script, in 2005 I was back in the Bay Area for a two-person show (with Rye Hudak) at Turn of the Century Gallery, in Berkeley. The movie "Mirror Mask" was premiering, and I remembered how, when I opened my gallery in  Berkeley in 1998, the first thing I was inspired to do was create a mask made of a mirror.  I was also surprised that, of all the works in the show, the gallery owner chose to put on the card announcing the show  "The Butterfly Woman". 

When I arrived in Berkeley to hang the show, I went to nearby Cafe Trieste for a cup of coffee. Two stacks of cards were on the table there, side by side.  One was the card for my show with the image above. 

The flyer next to it was an announcement of the premiere of a new movie by Antero Alli called "The Greater Circulation" (inspired by the life of poet Rainier Maria Rilke). The image on his announcement was a face encased in a skull - a Death's Head.

  

More Carnage in America - Bill Moyers on Gun Culture

Gabrielle Giffords vigil, 2011

"Now at least 12 are dead in Aurora, Colorado, gunned down by a mad man at a showing of the new Batman movie filled with make-believe violence. One of the guns the shooter used was an AK-47-type assault weapon that was banned in 1994. The National Rifle Association saw to it that the ban expired in 2004. The NRA is the best friend a killer's instinct ever had."
 

Jared Loughner

I grew up with it, just as I grew up with television.  Guns, guns, guns.  Westerns and gangsters, toy guns my brothers received for Christmas, on and on.  The romance of the gun.  Today, not even a month since Colorado, yet another young man (and it's always a young man) has taken his lethal arsenal and destroyed the lives of many in Wisconsin.  I felt like copying Bill Moyers' recent article about gun culture as I feel, once again, great sadness that nothing is ever going to be done about it, except that the President will have to rush around the country regularly making speeches to decimated communities.  I also have to refer to an early article I wrote on this blog about violence and gender imbalance, the "elephant in the room" that virtually everyone, including Bill Moyers, ignores when speaking of the continuing carnage.  "We" does not, overwhelmingly statistically, include women, children, or men over 50.

James Holmes

 

The NRA fights, and pays handsomely, for the right for any vicious psychopath to easily buy a weapon of mass destruction in the neighborhood store - so how come the rest of us, like sheep, just passively accept the carnage, year after year, hoping that it won't happen in our town, that it won't be our wives, children, grandfather.........


The NRA's Dark Gun Culture
By Bill Moyers
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, July 23, 2012

The United States has emerged to become the most violent nation on earth where millions are equipped with lethal weapons to massacre brutally as many people as they wish. In spite of its military might, the US government cannot do anything about it since it functions under the ruthless thumb of the National Rifle Association (NRA) whose sole objective is to boost by all means the business of the weapons’ industry.


You might think Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of and spokesman for the mighty American gun lobby, The National Rifle Association, has an almost cosmic sense of timing. In 2007, at the NRA’s annual convention in St. Louis, he warned the crowd that, "Today, there is not one firearm owner whose freedom is secure."Two days later, a young man opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech, killing 32 students, staff and teachers. Just last week LaPierre showed up at the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty here in New York and spoke out against what he called "Anti-freedom policies that disregard American citizens' right to self-defense." Now at least 12 are dead in Aurora, Colorado, gunned down by a mad man at a showing of the new Batman movie filled with make-believe violence. One of the guns the shooter used was an AK-47-type assault weapon that was banned in 1994. The National Rifle Association saw to it that the ban expired in 2004. The NRA is the best friend a killer's instinct ever had.

Obviously, LaPierre's timing isn’t cosmic, just coincidental; as Shakespeare famously wrote, "The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves." In other words, people. People with guns. There are an estimated 300 million guns in the United States, one in four adult Americans owns at least one and most of them are men. The British newspaper The Guardian, reminds us that over the last 30 years, "The number of states with a law that automatically approves licenses to carry concealed weapons provided an applicant clears a criminal background check has risen from eight to 38."
Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. Firearm violence may cost our country as much as $100 billion a year.

Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns. So why do we always act so surprised? Violence is alter ego, wired into our Stone Age brains, so intrinsic its toxic eruptions no longer shock, except momentarily when we hear of a mass shooting like this latest in Colorado. But this, too, will pass and the nation of the short attention span quickly finds the next thing to divert us from the hard realities of America in 2012.

Reliance on Arms Leads to Self-Annihilation
 
We are after all a country which began with the forced subjugation into slavery of millions of Africans and the reliance on arms against Native Americans for its Westward expansion. In truth, more settlers traveling the Oregon Trail died from accidental, self-inflicted gunshots wounds than Indian attacks - we were not only bloodthirsty but also inept.

Nonetheless, we have become so gun loving, so blasé about home-grown violence that in my lifetime alone, far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined. In Arizona last year, just days after the Gabby Giffords shooting, sales of the weapon used in the slaughter - a 9 millimeter Glock semi-automatic pistol - doubled.

We are fooling ourselves. That the law could allow even an inflamed lunatic to easily acquire murderous weapons and not expect murderous consequences. Fooling ourselves that the second amendment’s guarantee of a "well-regulated militia" be construed as a God-given right to purchase and own just about any weapon of destruction you like. That's a license for murder and mayhem and it's a great fraud that has entered our history.

There's a video of which I'd like to remind you. You can see it on YouTube. In it, Adam Gadahn, an American born member of al Qaeda, the first U.S. citizen charged with treason since 1952, urges terrorists to carry out attacks on the United States. Right before your eyes he says: "America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely, without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?"

The killer in Colorado waited only for an opportunity, and there you have it - the arsenal of democracy transformed into the arsenal of death and the NRA - the NRA is the enabler of death - paranoid, delusional, and as venomous as a scorpion. With the weak-kneed acquiescence of our politicians, the National Rifle Association has turned the Second Amendment of the Constitution into a cruel hoax, a cruel and deadly hoax.

Memorial for Gabrielle Giffords, Tucson, 2011