Homicide, battering, and rape statistics overwhelminglhy demonstrate that women and girls suffer great violence in this country, and thoughout the world. But apparently these patriarchs don't think it's worth passing a bill to protect them, or even make a passing comment on the problem. But the good news is that the bill passed. The bad news is that these people are still in Washington.
Sheryl WuDunn, co-author of "Half the Sky", which became a powerful documentary aired on PBS last year, said that gender violence and discrimination is the "Injustice of our century", and I believe she is absolutely right. So deeply embedded in our culture is the oppression of women, that it was some 70 years after freed black male slaves were given the vote that women were allowed to also vote in the U.S. - and only because courageous women made that possible through great sacrifice. We have a Martin Luthor King Day, but there is no day devoted to the Suffragettes, to Susan B. Anthony or Lucy Burns, or Margaret Sanger, who first made birth control available to women, or innumerable others who worked to give to women the same rights over their lives, finances, and bodies that men took for granted. Nor is the work over.
I love TED talks, and was delighted to hear this one by Jackson Katz, Ph.D., who points out that addressing gender based violence is not "just a women's issue", but a profound human issue. I think all boys and men should hear him.
"If we don’t become aware of both our personal myths and the cultural
myths that act upon us like gravitational forces, we risk being wholly
overpowered and controlled by them. As the maverick philosopher Sam
Keen has written in Your Mythic Journey, ‘We need to reinvent them from
time to time. . . . The stories we tell of ourselves determine who we
become, who we are, what we believe."
Phil Cousineau was a colleague of Joseph Campbell, and I recently re-discovered this article in my files, which I haven't read since 2001 (time to go through my files again). It's important, especially now, for artists (and everyone) to remember that they are Myth Makers, people who imagine the templates for each new era. It's work that matters.
I was raised on the knee of Homer, which is an Old World way to describe growing up on stories as old as stone and timeless as dreams. So I see myth everywhere, probably because I am looking for what my American Indian friends call “the long story,” the timeless aspect of everything I encounter. I know the usual places to look for it, such as in the splendor of classic literature or the wisdom stories of primal people.
Valerie James as "Sophia"
I want to explore the aspect of myth that most fascinates me: its ‘once and future’ nature. Myths are stories that evoke the eternal because they explore the timeless concerns of human beings—birth, death, time, good and evil, creativity and destruction. Myth resembles the god Proteus in the Odyssey, a shape-shifting creature who knows the secret that the lost Greek sailors long to hear—the way home. But they must learn how to get a grip on him, if only for one slippery moment, so he might surrender his hidden wisdom.
This is what I call ‘mythic vision.’ The colorful and soulful images that pervade myth allow us to step back from our experience so that we might look closer at our personal situations and see if we can catch a glimpse of the bigger picture, the human condition.
" The new myth coming into being through the triple influence of quantum physics,depth psychology and ecology suggests that we are participants in a great cosmic web of life, each one of us indissolubly connected with all others through that invisible field.It is the most insidious of illusions to think that we can achieve a position of dominance in relation to nature, life or each other. In our essence, we are one."
Anne Baring
But this takes practice, much like a poet or a painter must commit to a life of deep attention and even reverence for the multitude of meaning around us. An artist friend of mine calls this ‘pulling the moment,’ a way of looking deeper into experiences that inspire him. In the writing classes I teach, I refer to this mystery as the difference between the ‘overstory,’ which is the visible plot, and the ‘understory,’ which is the invisible movement of the soul of the main characters. In this sense myth is a living force, like the telluric powers that stream through the Earth. It is this mythic vision, looking for the ‘long story,’ the timeless tale, that helps us approach the deep mysteries because it insists there is always the stories we really live by, rather than the one we like to think we are living, and moreover, decide if our myths are working for or against us.
If we don’t become aware of both our personal myths and the cultural myths that act upon us like gravitational forces, we risk being wholly overpowered and controlled by them. As the maverick philosopher Sam Keen has written in Your Mythic Journey, ‘We need to reinvent them from time to time. . . . The stories we tell of ourselves determine who we become, who we are, what we believe.’
"What is the new mythology to be, the mythology of this unified earth as of one harmonious being?"
I am a lover of the steady earth and of her waters
she says:
let the light be brilliant to one who will cherish color; what if there be no heaven? she says: touch my breasts the fields are golden
her songs are all of love life long every blue yonder her grass harp rings
unlettered in her rivers our cherished sins our musts drift voiceless in her clouds
she will rust us with blossom she will forgive us
She will seal us with her seed
~~Robin Williamson
For Mother's Day I remember Gaia, Mother Earth, whose unlettered love and generosity and endless creativity gave birth to all of us. And there is no greater Bard, in my opinion, to celebrate Her than Robin Williamson, whose song above (and sung below!) celebrates Her with the long and sweet magic of his poetry, and his own Celtic lineage.
"She will seal us with Her seed."
And below Robin's Homage to Gaia, I could not resist placing his best known, and truly magnificent poem "Five Denials on Merlin's Grave", that winds and meanders among the silent standing stones and the green meadows and the roaming stories of the ancient Celts....if you have not heard this poem, especially if you are of Celtic descent, it is so much worth hearing, and will evoke something "Older yet, and Lovelier Far......." that
still ghosts to the vitality of our most early and unwritten forebears whose wizardry still makes a lie of history whose presence hints in every human word who somehow reared, and loosed, an impossible Beauty enduring yet............and I will not forget.
Representations of Gender in Media is a school project that was
created for a Women and Gender Studies class at the University of
Saskatchewan by Sarah Zelinski, Kayla Hatzel and Dylan Lambi-Raine. The group wanted to show how the media portrays gender roles and stereotypes in advertising.
And it’s absolutely hilarious. I love these guys!
The Fifth Sacred Thing is the fifth element, Spirit, at the center of the union of the Four Elements of Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. It represents unity and balance, and is represented by the color white. In the illustration above, Starhawk and her collaborators have chosen the wheel of the 4 elements with a spiral in the center, the "fifth element".
Starhawk is a powerful writer, activist, community facilitator, and true visionary for our time. She is also a Witch, one of the founders of Reclaiming, and her book was my first introduction to the realm of the Goddess. I use the term witch in the sense of the actual roots of the word: "witch, wick, wicca" - weaver, woven. She is a true Weaver.
I read Starhawk's book back in 1995. As a native Californian who lived in Los Angeles, but attended Berkeley, I remember well the prejudices between progressive Northern California and materialistic Southern California, and had to laugh when Starhawk imagined an utopia in San Francisco with Southern California becoming an autocratic, fundamentalist corporate state. Starhawk has been a terrific inspiration in my life - in 1986 her book "The Spiral Dance" was the inspiration for a show I had at the University of Arizona. More than a decade later, when I moved back to Berkeley, I joined Reclaiming, Starhawk's collective, and created the Masks of the Goddessfor the Spiral Dance in San Francisco. Once again she and her colleagues set me on a path of powerful inspiration.
So I was delighted to learn that Starhawk's book THE FIFTH SACRED THING is in the process of becoming a movie, which as she herself says, is a long process. Here's the video introduction to the Project which I received recently below.
"The novel describes a world set in the year 2048 after a catastrophe which has fractured the United States into several nations........The story is primarily told from the points of view of 98-year-old
Maya, her nominal granddaughter Madrone, and her grandson Bird. Through
these and other characters, the story explores elements from ecofeminism and ecotopian fiction." ......Wikipedia
"Making
a movie is a long, long process!But
along the way we’ve created a video, to quickly explain the story to those
who haven’t read the book, and to show off some of the art and music we’ve created.Pictures
speak louder than words—so here it is: http://www.fifthsacredthing.com Also
on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lROCSDQg9WM. I
wrote the narration, Olympia Dukakis speaks it and our lead producer Philip Wood
put the video together and edited it.Joshua
Penman did the music.Yes,
it’s a long haul, but we’re all feeling the growing momentum!"
"When we form
heart-centered beliefs within our bodies, in the language of physics
we're creating the electrical and magnetic expression of them as waves
of energy, which aren't confined to our hearts or limited by the
physical barrier of our skin and bones. So clearly we're "speaking" to
the world around us in each moment of every day through a language that
has no words: the belief-waves of our hearts. In addition to
pumping the blood of life within our bodies, we may think of the heart
as a belief-to-matter translator. It converts the perceptions of our
experiences, beliefs, and imagination into the coded language of waves
that communicate with the world beyond our bodies. Perhaps this is what
philosopher and poet John Mackenzie meant when he stated, "The
distinction between what is real and what is imaginary is not one that
can be finely maintained ... all existing thing are ... imaginary."
Gregg Braden
I enjoy the quote above by philosopher and New Mexico visionary Gregg Braden........except at the end of the last quote, I might change "imaginary" to "imaginal". Because, as Braden himself so fully argues in his life work, that's really where we are collectively now - at the "imaginal threshold" of our species evolution.
I began this journal almost 6 years ago, as a journal for the evolution of my project "Spider Woman's Hands", which I received a Fellowship at the Alden Dow Creativity Center in Midland, Michigan to pursue. In 2009 I was resident artist at Wesley Theological in Washington, D.C., and continued the project. My fascination with ubiquitous myths and symbols of Spider Woman, from the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, the Navajo weavers, the prehistoric Mississippian people, even the Maya......began with a deep realization of the significance of this metaphor of the Great Weaver for our time on multiple levels: ecological, social, spiritual, and quantum. We live in the participatory universe of Spider Woman, weavers and woven. One of the names for Spider Woman among Pueblo peoples is Tse Che Nako, "Thought Woman", because She made the world with the stories she told about it. There is a great Keresan Pueblo proverb that says,
"Tse Che Nako, Thought Woman, the Spider is sitting in her room thinking up a good story. I'm telling you the story she is thinking."*
Pueblo legends hold that it was Spider Woman who led the people through the cosmic Kiva at the end of each age into the new world. According to their calendar, the 4th World is now ended, and we are entering the 5th World........and I believe that once again, it is Grandmother Spider Woman who is showing the Way, offering us the opportunity to pass through the Kiva, the Birth Canal, into a new world, with the truth of Her great Web at the very center. We all know the Precipice we hang on as a common humanity. Our technology and technological connectivity will either be the end of our evolutionary promise, or we will become a truly global humanity. The new World, or "New Age", will be an age that puts into practice the great truth of unity within the great co-creative diversity of life. What I would like to pursue in future posts is not only how this is being demonstrated by science as well as metaphysics, but how we can, and are, putting the "New Paradigm of Connectivity" into pragmatic practice. Because that's ultimately the good news we need.
As I return to Spider Woman's Web, I find Greg Bradon, in "The Science of Miracles", makes an eloquent discussion of how Quantum physics and metaphysics now agree on a "conversant world".
“The act of focusing our consciousness is an act of creation.
I've had a lot of synchronicities for several years around Turkey, and last year I was given two kittens, both white and each with odd eyes, one blue and one yellow. Lulu and Lucy became my Muses, sometimes following me around the house talking to me in a mysterious cat language. Then a well travelled friend of mine, said "Oh, Van
Kedisi!". Lulu and Lucy were Van Cats! And it turns out that's rather special - for many people in the ancient land of Turkey or Anatolia, they are very much the "spirit of place".
Lake Van (Turkish: Van Gölü, Armenian: Վանա լիճVana lich or Vana Lij, Kurdish: Gola Wanê ) is the largest lake in Turkey, located in the far east of the country in Van district. It seems that Van cats have a very ancient lineage indeed, as does the region, and are very much loved by Turks, Armenians, and Kurds, so much so that there are all kinds of legends about them, they are mascots for teams, there is a Van Kedisi research center in the capital of the Lake Van region, and even the government protects them.
Not far from Lake Van is the excavation of Gobekli Tepe, a Neolithic site that is 12,000 years old, which I've been fascinated with. Göbekli Tepe means, literally, "Belly" or "Navel Mountain", and is composed of some 22 megalithic stone circles (only two have been excavated) which were intentionally buried 8,000 years ago, located 2500 feet above sea level at the top
of a mountain ridge in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Artist and scholar Lydia Ruhle writes:
"Gobekli
Tepe means "navel mountain" in Turkish. It is on top of a hill that is
the highest point on the windswept Urfa Plain, between the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers. This is the area where emmer wheat was domesticated
and hunter gatherer cultures settled into agricultural communities. As
early as 12,000 years ago, humans spent much time and effort to cut
stone and create circular structures with twelve foot tall pillars with
carvings of animals, vultures, snakes holding up a roof..........In 2006, I created a
Goddess Icon Banner of (a Sheela-na-gig image from the site) and named her Gobekli Tepe. She has
been flying around the world ever since. My banner description states:
"Gobekli
Tepe is a Neolithic Sheela-na-gig incised into stone on the floor of a
rock cut temple which appeared to have ritual purposes.Two standing
pillars with lions sculpted in relief protect one of the earliest known
Sheelas. Gobekli Tepe, which means navel mountain, is in eastern Turkey
near the source of the Euphrates River. Emmer wheat was domesticated in
the area. All life comes from and returns to the mother".
"Navel mountain and navel of the world" indeed. I wrote an article about Gobekli Tepe .........and I felt blessed to be given two magical cats, with such ancient origins, from that ancient part of the world where agriculture began, the "belly of the Goddess".
It's interesting to look for information about Van cats on the internet, and learn of all the peoples who claim them.....almost like living "numina", they truly belong to a Place, and are loved because they are magical, living embodiments of that Place by the peoples who call it home or homeland. Perhaps for me too, my magical "muses" give me a bit of a sense of belonging to the Homeland of the Goddess, that place of ancient origins; when I see their topaz and sky blue eyes looking at me, I remember. And Lake Van...........how wonderful it would be to go there and see the Van Kedisi, along with everything else.
It's been really interesting to see how passionate different groups in the area are about the cats. For example, from the Turkish Angora Cat website:
"About
2 years ago, a disagreement between municipalities of Van and
Ankara occurred. And it still continues. Ankara city proudly
displayed their logo with odd-eyes “a smiling Turkish Angora’’. This was
very insulting for Van municipality and Van cat lovers, as every folk
knows that odd eyed cat is a Van, not Angora! Certainly, a problem arose because both of cities see ‘’their’’ cats in very identical ways. Maybe white odd-eyed cat has deep roots in Turkish culture in general? Although both Van and Angora are thought to be odd-eyed white cats, Van municipality feels that Ankara city has no right to claim different eyes for ‘’their’’ Angoras."
