Lammas - Lughnasadh

Lammas Day - the first day of August, once observed as the first  harvest festival, during which bread baked from the first crop of wheat was blessed.  Lammas, also known as Celtic Lughnasadh (Day of Lugh) was also a traditional celebration of  the Sun God Lugh.  As such, the celebration often traditionally included many games and feats of strength, among them the famous Highland Games, which included sports  such as log throwing and sword dancing.

The Wicker Man was traditionally related to Lammas ceremony - he represented the God who dies (like in the story of "John Barleycorn") and is ever reborn, the eternal "green man" in the next year, next growing season, next cycle, next turning.  This  ancient and ubiquitous symbol of the  sacrificed and resurrected God, related to both the Sun and the Grain is found in numerous myths and religions, among them  Osiris, the Green Man, Dummuzi the shepherd,  even in Christianity where it is found in the death and ressurection of the Christ - born at the Winter Solstice (often called the "return of the light"), sacrificed, and then reborn at the time of the Spring Equinox.     (See the rendition of the traditional folk song "John Barleycorn Must Die" by Steeleye SPan.) 

 In contemporaryneo-Pagan culture the effigy is often created and loaded with offerings of food, flowers and prayers on paper before it is burned - this tradition is carried on indirectly in the creation of beautiful sculptures that are burned in the closing bonfires of Sirius Rising festival in New York.

Originally the Burning Man festival began as a Lammas festival in the Bay Area of California, with the Burning Man representing the Wicker Man, perhaps in its origins the bright Sun God Lugh.  As Burning Man grew in popularity it had to be relocated to the Nevada desert, and became the arts festival it is today. 

 

Lughnasadh

Fields of listening, whispering corn
Ripen in the heavy air
Lugh the Golden dancing forth,
Leaves and sheaves in his wild hair.
In perfect circles bow the stalks,
Mark the path where great Lugh walks,
Mark days and seasons, round they go,
As above, so below.

All that dies shall be reborn
All that dies shall be reborn

 Rev. Raven Spirit 2002

Butterflies...........

I've been painting butterflies again..................

Some older ones..........

The Sacred Mirrors

The Spiritual Energy System

As I probably have posted before, I spent several years after graduate school interviewing artists who were doing spiritual art, and among them was Alex and Allyson Grey.  I return to this wonderful interview to share it again.

To read more about THE SACRED MIRRORS, visit the website of Alex Grey:  

http://alexgrey.com/art/paintings/sacred-mirrors/

 


THE SACRED MIRRORS - The Art of Alex and Allyson Grey

Interview with Lauren Raine August 17, 1988    


The Greys have achieved international recognition as painters and performance artists. Alex is  the author of THE MISSION OF ART, a book about art and spirituality.

 Allyson's intricate paintings are abstract, unlike the visionary figurative work of her husband. Her Spectrum Series shows an underlying grid that runs throughout her work, sometimes visible, sometimes not. Allyson compares the squares that compose her paintings to cells, which like the cells of our bodies make up a living whole.  In her diptych Chaos and Order  Allyson  describes the ever transforming dance of energy and matter. And what lies beneath is Light  from which all colors come, and to which they return.

The Sacred Mirrors   are predominantly painted by Alex Grey, but include  collaborations by Allyson, and are a  group of 22 paintings that took Alex 10 years to complete. They are works of amazing dedication. They were first shown as a complete installation at The New Museum in New York in 1986. and since that time have toured museums around the world, to finally be installed in The Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors. There is also a book, THE SACRED MIRRORS (1990), with commentary by Alex Grey and Ken Wilber.

The paintings are "Mirrors of the Self", each one removing another "skin", another veil, to disclose the physical, social and metaphysical anatomy. Alex compares the progression of the series to the Alchemical Quest - "the transmutation of "base metals; lead (bodily consciousness) into gold (spiritual consciousness)."

The journey begins with the first painting, Material World. Fragments of actual mirrors, sandblasted with symbols for the elements of the periodic table, surround a human figure shaped from a leaden sheet. As you stand before the panel, you regard a distorted reflection of yourself within it ... our unfragmented self is obscured, hidden by the impenetrable density of physical life. The Body is explored through the different anatomical systems. As each skin is removed, another intricate system is revealed. What Alex calls the "Skins" reveal the socio-political dimensions of life. The last group is Spirit, metaphysical anatomy. Skeins of light emerge. Alex calls this the "Universal Mind Lattice", the dissolution of boundaries between self and surrounding as we enter unitive, spiritual dimensions of consciusness.

The journey to Self is, ultimately, a return to the world, to compassion and love within embodied existence. The Bodhisattvas are the next group, the illuminated ones. In 1989, Alex and Allyson collaborated on another painting they added to the original series of 21 - Sophia. The Sacred Mirrors close with a life-size mirror, with a sunburst inscribed at the level of the viewer’s heart. Within it is one word: "God".

Lauren:   Allyson, would you talk about your painting, The Jewel Net of Indra?

Allyson:   Indra is the Hindu god of space. The Net is a metaphor for the Net of space, the unity of being. At each point where the net intersects, there is a jewel, with infinite facets. And each facet reflects every other jewel in the Net. It's an infinitely reflected inner space.

I became an abstract painter with this series. In a sense, the work is Tantric. Much of the visionary art people are doing these days is narrative or allegorical, but mine is pretty purely abstract. It's based on units of linked squares, a spectrum made up of cells. The cells are unified into a system, just as we are. So, it models our life systems into small cells that fit together, and are also individual and distinct.

"Order" Allyson Grey

Alex: The idea of the Jewel Net is similar to the notion of a hologram; each part reflects the whole and an infinite progression is created.

Allyson: Chaos is also a major aspect of my work. One painting is a diptych, one side being Chaos, and the other Order. There is entropy - you can see there is order in the universe, but chaos is also very evident. The painting is composed of units of 100 squares, which are just constantly falling apart and coming together again.

Alex: Allyson's Chaos paintings are a kind of freeze frame, a momentary look into a chemical reaction that may be attaining a new level of order.

Allyson: It's like clouds. A cloud has a kind of solid form, yet if you watch one for a while, it always seems to be dispersing. Form exists, and the constant dissolution of form.

Alex: Allyson's Jewel Net is about something we both experienced a long time ago. It changed our work.

We did a psychedelic meditation together. For myself, there was a progressive infinitizing of space. I felt like I went out of my body, into what I can only describe as a network of interlocking cells. They were like energy cells within a grid that expanded infinitely. I was a cell, a kind of fountain and drain of energy, connected with all the other fountains and drains in the entire network, in the grid. And the energy moving through us all was love.....

I felt it was a resolution of the "one in many". We're all connected, on some level, and that level seemed more real than anything physical. This table does not seem as real to me as that experience. It was a kind of bedrock reality of the interpenetration of all beings and all things.

We were merged, and yet distinct. Each unit had a job to do, each being was separate, and at the same time was united by its similarity to all other beings and things, because the energy flowing through us was all the same energy. I felt that each resonating little node in the network was conscious of every other node, aware it was interconnected with all the other nodes.

The Universal Mind Lattice

Lauren: Was it frightening?

Alex: No, it was total bliss! It was an eternal place, a heaven realm.....I felt that this was integral to the universe, the way it really was. But it was inexplicable, and to try later to portray it as art was a mind numbing task.

Lauren: And you shared this experience together?

Allyson: Yes.

Alex: That was the other strange thing.

Allyson: We knew it had changed our work and our lives. It was the most important thing; we felt that was what we should make our art about. For me, and for Alex also, it was about energy. I felt energy flowing out of me, and flowing into Alex. We were like two nodes in a network, and as we got further and further along it, there was a whole vista of nodes, and we became part of all the vistas in the network - which is everybody and everything. We experienced it simultaneously. We both came out of it drawing pictures that were very much alike.

It was a vision, because it was visual. But it was also an experienced reality. It wasn't implanted, so much as we were opened to something already existing. As if the door opened, and there it was. That was what was real.



"The Spiritual Energy System" Alex Grey

Alex: As if the Curtains of Maya were pulled back for a moment, and we could see the furnace room of what is actually behind everything! I think the experience initiated us onto a spiritual path. It didn't mean we knew how to do anything at that point. We were given it in our ignorance, it changed us, and somehow our model of reality changed to accommodate the experience, and has progressively expanded through our readings and pursuit of various spiritual paths since.

The esoteric core of every religion talks about that dimension. The Tibetan Buddhists have words for it, Madame Blavatsky talked about the Monad, there is the Hindu Atman within the Brahman, Christ Consciousness......I think they're all metaphors for the same thing. I went looking for descriptions, you know, who else has been to this country? And I found numerous descriptions in esoteric and Yogic literature.

I later found an almost exact description of our experience in a Readers Digest from the 60's - an account from someone who died from a heart attack, and was brought back to life. He described a grid. Allyson's painting, the Jewel Net of Indra, speaks of that grid.

Allyson: The Spectrum is a system of color. Being a painter, I looked for the basics. I was looking for the underpinnings of painting as well as consciousness. In order to bring those two aspects together, the spectrum was, to me, the basic system. Rather than choosing one color over another, I chose the entire spectrum; and one shape, the square, which is a human-made shape, very rarely found in nature, because I'm a person, and I didn't want to create organic shapes. At any rate, I mixed formal aspects of painting, color, shape, composition of design, with actual systems that exist in life.

Also, a spectrum is white light broken down into its various components. So, there is a white light that runs through the work, uniting everything. The squares are units of light......playing and dancing.

Alex: And breaking down and coming together. Maybe we're all light, the world is made of light, and the nature of light is completely mysterious. So Allyson's paintings may be accurate representations of what's really going on.

Allyson: Because the light is what binds, and also what separates. That's my grid. And that's how things stay separate and together. Chaos and Order exist simultaneously without conflict, as does each color. It's just all these polarities joining in.

Alex: We're actually doing the same paintings, but they come out differently.

We've studied Tibetan Buddhism, and have been initiated into various initiations. We both found Tibetan Buddhism to be an important path. Their ability to visualize sacred places is inspiring. We love Tankha paintings, and different kinds of devotional arts, and feel we are devotional artists in a secular society. That involves having to discover your own icons or symbols.

If you reach down far enough, we're all made up of the same archetypes. Since our experience of transpersonal space, I believe there are structures that are universal. Joseph Campbell talked about what he called "core myths". As did Jung. If you go deep enough into yourself, you find yourself in a noisy place with a lot of other people. And if you draw symbols from there, you plug into a collective form of consciousness.

Any art object has a physical form, an emotional statement, and some kind of mental concept behind the work. Some artworks express an emotional mode, some are more cerebral; but even cerebral work has a "feeling tone", and even the most expressionistic works were painted on a rectangular canvas, and have some structure to them. Along with these qualities, there are other level, like awareness of the heart, and higher insights of psychic and spiritual reality. The most profound works of art, to my mind, reflect all these dimensions, they play on all of them.

I think many artists feel they are weaving some form of energy into their work. It's what psychometrists see when they "read" objects. There is an aesthetic psychometry each person does as they look at a work of art. Artworks are like batteries - if we're receptive, they can charge us. I've always felt all art contains some form of consciousness, because it has been manipulated by people. It's just the question of what awareness the artist and the viewer bring to it. My idea of reality is that there are many, many interpenetrating dimensions.

Allyson: What really touches you is work that operates on those many levels, including the material level. People with great ideas who don't know how to implement them are as badly off as those with great implementation, and no ideas. Visual art has to be implemented and formally produced in a communicative way.

I think a genuinely spiritual art has to be based upon experience. People who haven't had a transcendent experience usually refuse the entire subject. It's good to have a vocabulary, to be able to communicate on an intellectual level, but one needs to experience art arising from some inner source that is true, that is authentic.

Alex: There is a kind of "light weight" New Age painting - you know, luminous angelic beings floating around, glowing castles....it's nice, and its intention is to counter the abrasiveness in our daily lives. But sometimes the baby is thrown out with the bathwater, and all the deep cords that pull your heart are taken away. You can't eliminate the suffering of the world, and the experiences of death and mortality that give us reason to seek higher sources. When you eliminate the so-called negative aspects of life, concentrating only on positive images, you remain mired in the unintegrated experiences of darkness within yourself. I don't think genuine spiritual art can be based on saccharine imagery....it has to integrate more than that. This returns to what we were saying before, about functioning on various levels.

Lauren: Alex, how did the series of paintings The Sacred Mirrors come about?

Alex: The inspiration came from the mystical experience I described. I experienced what I call "The Universal Mind Lattice". I wanted to take the viewer there, but I felt I had to move through different dimensions of reality before arriving there.

The first panel in the series is called The Material World. It's a lead sheet, shaped into the silhouette of a person. The body's biochemistry has been hammered into the lead. Leaded mirrors surround it, containing the Periodic Table of the Elements. You see, we're welded into the material world by our relationship to the elements, all our bio-molecular interconnections with the world. And space and energy, time and matter - all are aspects of the material world.

These are material boundaries. The painting has actual mirrors in it, which are fractured, so when you look at yourself, you see a distorted image of yourself. If you try to get an entire glimpse of yourself, it's obscured by the leaden figure. Metaphorically, you cannot see yourself undistorted or unobscured in the material world.

After this, there are paintings about the different anatomical systems, the Skeletal System, the Nervous System, the Cardio-Vascular System, the Lymphatic System, and the visceral, the Muscular System.

These are beautiful real systems constantly at work inside of us. I thought of Jackson Pollock when I first saw the cardio-vascular system exposed; there were all these interconnected skeins and networks, all emanating from the pump of the heart. And there is the duality of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, the carbon-dioxide-oxygen exchange with the planet that is always going on, feeding each cell.

Lauren: I'm reminded that all this activity is going on "under the skin", constant activity of which we aren't even conscious, so even physically, we are veiled from ourselves.

Alex: Yes, or the processes that allow our consciousness to manifest are veiled.

Next I moved to the "skins", female and male, Caucasions, Africans, and Asians; because whenever you put skin on the anatomical systems, they become very distinct and individual, which is why there are so many problems. We see our differences, instead of our similarities. I wanted to give a tacit nod to those differences, and also invite the viewer to see himself or herself reflected in others, which is the intention of The Sacred Mirrors.

I broke the Series down into Body, Mind, and Spirit. The first seven paintings are The Body, the physical dimension. The Skins are the socio-political level, the dualities that exist on that plane.

We move to metaphysical anatomy with the Life Energy System, and the Psychic Energy System. The Psychic Energy System is the crux of the Series, because it shows inter-penetration of the physical body with the more esoteric energy systems. It has the acupuncture meridians and points, the chakras, and the Kabbalah Tree of Life - all of which are keyed to various aspects of the body. The Hebrew and Hindu physical-to-spiritual hierarchies are overlaid.

The Spiritual Energy System shows a more progressive dissolution between the Self and surrounding, which is reminiscent of the experience Allyson and I spoke of, the loss of boundaries. From there, the Series moves to the Universal Mind Lattice, where there is interconnection with infinite spheres of light. The figure is connected to all other beings and things.

The backdrop The Universal Mind Lattice is played upon is The Void, which is what the next painting is about. Buddhists speak of the Void and Clear Light existing together. I wanted to make this image, but at that point it had to veer into archetypal representation. There was no way to symbolize it as an actual experience. I had to resort to symbols. So I used the Tibetan
symbol of the Kalachakra in the center, which is about transmutation of the elements by the principle of emptiness. That's why it is surrounded by the elements of earth, fire, wind and water.

The next painting is Avalokitesvara. Tantric teachings say that the infinite compassion of the Bodhisattva is the same as Voidness. This is one of the highest teachings, the understanding that boundless love is the ground of being from which all things come. The Void represents how far one can go to get off the Wheel of Life. You can go to Voidness and dwell there, or the Universal Mind Lattice, and dwell there.....to me, the highest teachings are those that speak of returning to aid the suffering of the world. That's what Avalokitesvara did, sprouting a thousand arms and hands to help the world with an eye of unobstructed vision in each palm.

The Sacred Mirrors hopefully takes one on a journey. Through various levels, back to the world, with a revised notion of oneself and ones surroundings. Because, if you understand the spiritual energy systems, and the social manifestations of people, the "skins", and physical being, you still won't understand life's purpose. The great teachers of the spiritual traditions, the Bodhisattvas, provide a moral anatomy, systems allowing us to know our life paths, what is right and what is wrong. They elevate us in ways simply knowing about your cardio-vascular system cannot.

The final painting in the series is a Mirror, on which has been inscribed a sunburst. Inside the sunburst I engraved a word: "God". It's located in the heart region. The meaning of The Sacred Mirrors is, in essence, very simple. To see ourselves, and the world around us, as sacred.

I hope people can be affected by the work in some way that catalyzes their own spiritual growth. That's what makes a work of art "transformative"; it has an intention towards transformation locked into its structure. But the reason we're making art is as a devotional practice - it's a way to demonstrate the unity we feel with all other beings.

Lauren: You have also done, and continue to do, performance art, including a performance I saw a documentation of called Burnt Offering.

Alex: Burnt Offering was about burning through layers of myself. In it, I enacted three different "Fire Sculptures". The first was a big picture of my face with a third eye. It started with a propane torch behind the picture, which burned through the third eye and eventually burned the whole face away.

In the second Sculpture, I read from three different sacred books: the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, and the Bible. After reading a passage from each, I put the book in an urn to burn it. So, I burnt the holy books together in the same urn, and mixed the ashes together to form sacred ash. I was trying to "burn down to the essence" of all these different teachings. I then rubbed the ashes all over my body, which was already covered with blood.

Lauren: Why blood?

Alex: I don't always know why I do these things! But looking back, I think I can say that it was about being physical. The "Fire Sculptures" were rituals about the burning away of ego and form, through the revelation of the third, or "inner eye". Flames represent the consciousness that engulfs all of the wisdom teachings, and reduces them to a similar substance. By rubbing the "residue" or ashes of those teachings all over oneself, one's "bloody physical ness" is transformed into a more metaphysical nature.

In the last "Fire Sculpture", I had seven skulls surrounding me, which symbolized the different chakras. They were in a semi-circle in front of me, and above me was a skeleton I lit on fire. It was the final burning away and illumination of a kind of surrogate self.

Lauren: In your painting Holy Fire, you make much use of the element of Fire.

Alex: The Flame is consciousness. Any experience that expands awareness can be a purifying experience - bathing in the "holy fire". It's kind of funny, by the way, but when I work with fire imagery, I do seem to get feverish! When I was working on Holy Fire, I spent two weeks in a hot, feverish state, because I was suffering from an infection. Allyson made all the sculptures for the Burnt Offering performances, because I had a very high fever then too!

Lauren: The two of you often do performances together. In Prayer Wheel, you were tied together, and performed a walking meditation in a circle, making a living "prayer wheel".

Allyson: We've done a number of performances in which we set up a tableau, and activate it by being in it.

Alex: A Prayer Wheel is an engine for spiritual energy, that's what it symbolizes. It's meant to radiate an affirmation of the source of Spirit: "Oh Hail the Jewel in the Lotus, Om Mani Padme Hum", the jewel of spiritual being in the lotus of the unfolding mind. By repeating the mantra in the context of a huge prayer wheel, we felt like a generator. Allyson and I represented male and female polarities, and we were flanked by symbols of birth and death. Because everyone has both elements within them - and at every moment we're somewhere between birth and death, moving around the Wheel.

Copyright 1989, 2005 Lauren Raine.

Visioning and Reflections on Visioning

 "Vision that responds to the cries of the world and is truly engaged with what it sees is not the same as the disembodied eye that observes and reports, that objectifies and , enframes. The ability to enter into another's emotions, or to share another's plight, to make their conditions our own, characterizes art in the partnership mode. You cannot define it as self-expression - it is more like relational dynamics.......Partnership demands a willingness to conceive of art in more living terms. It is a way of seeing others as part of ourselves."

.........Suzi Gablick (The Re-Enchantment of Art)

Entering into a meditation the other day, I was blessed (and that is the appropriate word) with an influx of Visions.  This is not something that happens to me often - not lucid, sequential, vivid visions.   There have been times in my past  when I was blessed with several significant  visions (by visions, I mean visionary experiences had while in a conscious or voluntary trance state, and not while asleep, although of course dreams can be lucid and profound as well).  Even decades later these images are potent in my mind, and continue to inform my life and my art.

“I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

As a visual artist,  when I get a "download" from the Muses, I tend to feel that it's a job opportunity.  So what I saw was a series of life-size paintings, done with reference to  traditional and historical Church icons of saints.  Life size figures, with gestures of offering or blessing, would confront the viewer, painted on a gold leaf (well, gold paint) backdrop, perhaps framed with words and/or symbolic forms that relate to them specifically.  The figures would be clearly archetypal Goddesses, but they would be painted in contemporary terms, from real people, and wearing contemporary clothing.  Because the Goddess is returning to the world, and manifests in today's world, in the forms and language and guise of today.  If She is not within us and among us, where else could She be?

Lithograph from 1986

Except.............the first painting, which I saw and felt quite clearly, would include the Tree of Life - and the Goddess would be a human form within the tree.  Roots below, canopy and crown above, as above so below.  The energies of the Earth and the light of the Sun and the Stars, gathered into the tree to the level of the heart, and the hands both taking in and giving forth, which, by the way, is exactly what trees do.  They are nourished by the earth and the sun, their roots are connected to every other tree in the forest, and they make oxygen, exhaling our atmosphere.  Trees make oxygen.  Trees eat our CO2.  And so might we conceive of ourselves doing, participating within - taking in sustanance, and giving forth life-sustaining breath in our own lives.  Inspire and be inspired..........

.......Should keep me busy for  a while......

A friend asked why not Gods as well?  The answer is not that I don't love men as well as women, and recognize that the Divine is both male and female, but I, like many of my colleagues, have devoted myself to "restoring the Balance", to empowering women and bringing the symbols and energies of the Divine Feminine throughout religions and mythologies back into the world.  That's been what I said I would help out with, and it's for others, men and women,  to do other things that restore Balance and Sanctity.  

I look forward  to experiencing some of that diversity at the Parliament of Religions in October.

 "Everything was made for the greater meaning and use of the the tribe. A spoon was more than a spoon, and a sacred pot was also used to store grain in - because they understood that there had to be a weaving between the material world and the other worlds in order to live right and well. An artist was one of those who did the weaving."

 ...... Sarah Mertz

Among the Lakota, long preparations were made  to invite visions, and when a vision occurred it was often shared collectively, discussed, and determined if it had prophetic or ceremonial significance for not only the individual recipient, but for the entire tribe. Consider the great visions of the "Hoop of the Nations" of Black Elk.  There was an understanding that the Medicine Person was also a great dreamer,  a visionary who could in some way receive information from the other worlds.  This understanding of the mediumistic nature of human consciousness is found in all traditional cultures, from Native American to African to Sami.  And in the origins of western cultures as well - from the Seers of the early Hebrew tribes to the masked Oracle of Dephi (who began as a priestess of Gaia, the Earth Mother, before the Pythoness was supplanted by patriarchy and the Sun God Apollo) .

Respect for the "mediumship" inherent in everyone, and made especially  potent, intelligible, and useful by certain talented or highly trained individuals, is  something we have  lost, or if not entirely  lost, become naive and superstious about, to the great loss of the general population.  Indeed, we often cannot differentiate between someone who has had a true vision (which, in native wisdom, would be considered a gift or a warning), and a schizophrenic.  (You see Mandalas and Ancesters?  There's someone in the room no one else can see?   Quick, give that kid drugs!)

I remember a conversation I shared in 1989  in Brooklyn with Alex and Allyson Grey about the shared vision they had while taking LSD. Their need to communicate that vision resulted in "THE SACRED MIRRORS". And the  need to understand their shared visionary experience  set them on their life long spiritual path.   And since I'm talking about that extraordinary interview, I think I'll post it in my next post as it deserves to be shared again. 

 

I believe that  visionary experience is a gift, very often meant to be shared.  Because when we vision we participate in a communion that  is  both contemporary and  archetypal, personal and collective, existing on multiple layers of meaning and contemplative depth.

“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin

The World Parliment of Religion 2015

http://www.parliamentofreligions.org/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What the audience saw when a dancer looked through the eyes of the mask was the Goddess Herself, an ancient and yet utterly contemporary presence, looking across time, across the miles."

Diane Darling,  Playwright

In Salt Lake City in  October  at the Parliament of World Religions a group of women and men will be  will be literally  “bringing the Goddess to life”.  “Goddess Alive!” is produced and written by M. Macha NightMare (Aline O’Brien), with Mary Kay Landon.  Participants will use my “Masks of the Goddess” Collection to create a ritual theatre event honoring the many faces of the Divine Feminine throughout the world.   

The Masks of the Goddess Project began in 1998, and since then the ever-evolving, multi-cultural collection of masks have travelled around the U.S. to different communities for dance, storytelling, exhibit, and personal invocation, always collaborative.

"The work of our group was not to re-enact the ancient goddess myths, but to take those myths to their next level of evolutionary unfolding. We are the mythmakers.”   

Katherine Josten, The Global Art Project

In 1999 I was invited to create masks for the Invocation of the Goddess at the 20th Annual Spiral Dance in San Francisco.   I wanted to offer the collection as contemporary "Temple Masks" devoted to the Goddess.    It’s been my great privilege to see the masks used in numerous communities, as well as to produce several events myself, and over the years an archive of performances, stories, and interviews has accrued as the Collection travelled, gathering story.  

 

What does the story of Sedna, ocean mother of the Inuit, have to teach us about reciprocity with  nature?   What happens when an audience member stands before the Gnostic "Mirror of Sophia"?   How is the "Descent of Inanna" about a woman’s journey toward wholeness?  What might Spider Woman, the native American creatrix/weaver, communicate to us as she weaves a Web with the audience?

As the Goddess is invoked through the masked dancer’s performance, these stories come alive as a visible Presence.   Through the medium of masks, we have sought to re-claim and re-invent for today the universal, ancient, important stories of the Goddess, as well as empowering women to explore each archetypal presence within herself.   Masks are potent bridges for transformation, and by working with the mask as both performance and invocation the process serves as a blessing for both the audience and the dancer. 

Macha Nightmare and colleagues such as Ann Waters, Mana Youngbear, Diane Darling and others have evolved some simple, and yet very effective ways to work with the masks and community ritual theatre – one such is the use of the “Greek Chorus” to tell each story as the dancers emerge.  They have also included in their performances original music by collaborating musicians, and a ritual component that allows for interaction with the audience/celebrants.
In 2013 I produced a new series I called "Numina - Masks for the Elemental Powers",  for a new play by Ann Waters - "The Awakening - Our Changing Earth".   The Romans believed that places were inhabited by  intelligences they called Numina, and many gardens or springs had little shrines dedicated to them, the "genius loci", of a particular place. I have often asked myself how we can regain this sense of  communion with the elemental powers of place that are the true wellsprings of myth. 

In the past, "Nature" was not  a "backdrop", or a "resource" – it was a  conversation with many voices and many faces.  The "Numina Masks" arise from worldwide Goddesses associated with place, such as fiery Pele of Kilaua in Hawaii, or The Lady of Avalon, felt so strongly at the sacred wells of Glastonbury….. or the deep mystery of the desert, the realm of the ancient “Bone Goddess”.  My masks arise from my imagination, but invite others to  collaboratively "join the conversation".  This year (2015) I continue to create new masks for the Masks of the Goddess Collection, and the collection continues to be available to groups and individuals.  For information:   www.masksofthegoddess.com 

References:

Darling, D. (2000)    Interview excerpt,  “Masque of the Goddess”,  Sebastopol, Ca (2000)
Josten, K. (2004).   Unpublished journal of “Restoring the Balance” cast, Tucson, Az (2004).

Photographs illustrating this article are with permission of  Thomas Lux, Ann Beam, and Jerri Jo Idarius.

Requiem for the Red Apple Rest

 

I’ve been a rolling stone all my life, so I’m understandably haunted sometimes by the different lives I've had, their flavors and fragrances found lingering in familiar places encountered up and down the "road" (Ha! Jack Kerouac had nothing on me). It's sad when “touchstones” from another era are gone, because they are touchstones from my story as well.

I’m sorry to say that this time around the bend on NY 17, I found the Red Apple Rest lying desolate by the side of the road, a hulking ruin.

I can't help but feel the Rest deserves a little requiem, because she represents to me the loss of a landscape I've seen all over the country, as the unique identities of American towns are continually replaced by Walmarts and Home Depots and Starbucks.  I would go so far as to say that most American towns look much the same - a decrepit downtown, with empty store fronts and thrift shops, and then, at the edges of town, the exact same Walmarts, Home Depots, and Burger Kings.  

It's ironic that popular American culture is so preoccupied with "rebel chic", and "no boundaries" individualism. "No boundaries" or "no limits" seem to be buzzwords that can sell anything almost as well as a blonde woman with a low neckline. Yet a good look around shows a remarkably conformist culture, whose tastes and goods seem to be  determined by the interests of global corporate entities instead of the local "spirit of place".  Gone is that unique individualism that only local small businesses can offer to their communities, along with, frankly, the prosperity that once circulated from business to business within those communities.  The money does not circulate when Walmart replaces the many jobs that once made those goods, nor does MacDonalds replace the flavor and love of small town cafes and diners.

I've seen the same thing everywhere I go - from Bythe, California to Beatrice, Nebraska to Herkimer, New York - the old downtown sucked dry,   and  the same megastores on the peripheries of town, sucking up the local economy and character.  Anyway, my story...........

In 1980 I rolled onto the old NY Route 17 just before the town of Tuxedo (that’s where “tuxedo” comes from), and discovered the Red Apple Rest Diner. Before the interstate was built, Route 17 was the highway everyone took out of New York City ("the Borscht Belt") as they headed for the cool summer resorts of the Catskills and beyond. In the 40's and 50’s, station wagons filled with restless kids stopped at the Rest for hamburgers, and teenagers in fast cars had cokes on their way to dance halls up the road.

The Red Apple Rest was a unique building in it’s time – a diner that could accommodate busloads of people bound to and from the city, with lots of room outside for souvenirs, hot dog stands, and an ice cream stand as well. It was pleasantly decrepit by the time I discovered it, much of its business having disappeared, but the Greek couple who owned it still served eggs and toast and rice pudding.

 It was full of stories and friendly ghosts, and a potted vine that grew for at least a mile across the ceiling, perhaps reminding the owners of their Mediterranean homeland.  I was there every summer to live and work at the New York Renaissance Festival as a craftswoman and a tarot reader.   Peter named me "Sophia" and for all my appearances of 15 years he always greeted me with “hey, Sophia”. The Rest was staffed with his children (who kept growing up) and any number of odd relations he seemed to import from Greece.

In other words, the Rest was full of human eccentricity and the passage of generations, including, of course, those before Peter and his family bought it.   It was a unique, warm, welcoming place you became a part of by walking in the door. There was no “take-out” - disposable was long before its time, and both Peter and the spirit of the Rest wouldn’t permit that wasteful (or perhaps just plain unsociable) sensibility.

me at the NY Renfair, ca 1989

Dishes were ceramic and bussed by the dishwasher. You sat down for a while at a wooden table, and watched the world go by. The Rest didn’t accrue piles of disposable waste - but it did accumulate characters from the road, as well as locals who were always there to hang out, along with beribboned Rennies like myself, the exotic summer guests, fluttering about with our own costumes and dramas.  In fact, I had my first date with my (now ex) husband there, talking for hours over coffee while the rain fell outside.  I also aquired a beloved cat, Shiloh, from the Red Apple Rest  (the kind hearted cook fed the strays out back scraps, and every year had kittens to find homes for.)

Farewell to the Red Apple Rest, and perhaps, to an era I can't help but feel was slower, but more gracious, much more welcoming.

Red Apple, R.I.P.

Angels in Nebraska revisited..............

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I called my previous post "Angels in Indiana", and felt like posting again a previous story I called "Angels in Nebraska"......... it just seemed to want to be told again.  I seem to become so "mundane" when I land anywhere, that perhaps Spirit waits until I'm in my car and on the move to contact me.  Or perhaps it's just that that liminal zone of travel takes us outside of the preoccupations of our daily lives and brings us full tilt into the here and now, that place where the imaginal can happen, friends in spirit can speak, and angels can give us a  nudge when we need it. 

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My paternal grandmother, who I loved very much as a child, was named Glen. Glen was from Nebraska, and she married my grandfather, who died long before I was born, when she was in her 20's.  He was considerably older than her, and died leaving a young widow in a small farming town with a toddler to raise.  Perhaps she had no other choice but to leave her homeland for economic reasons, or perhaps she wanted to make a new start; but whatever her reasons may have been, my grandmother went west to California.  Settling in Los Angeles she worked as a seamstress.

When Glen developed dementia in old age, my father would not put her into a nursing home, but confined her to a room in our house. When we went overseas  in 1963 (he worked for U.S.A.I.D.) she went with us, and lived her last years in our house in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was stationed.  When she died  in 1966 my father took her body back to the States, to the little town of Dewitt where her husband was buried. It was never discussed again, and  I was never allowed to grieve for her. 

In 2005, I was driving cross country to a residency at IPark Artist's Enclave  in Connecticut. In New Mexico I stopped at a rest stop for lunch. Sitting at a picnic table, I noticed something shiny under the table.  It was a a pair of pliers, Expensive looking pliers ........so, since no one was around to claim them, I threw them in the trunk of the car when I left, and promptly forgot about them.

Somewhere around Missouri, I had the idea of taking a little detour to see if I could visit my Grandmother's grave. No one had been there since my father took her body back for burial  all those years ago, and if I didn't go, no one ever would again. I wondered if the little town of Dewitt even existed still? But there it was on the map, not far from Beatrice. 

So I headed north, visited the Nebraska Prairie museum, found Dewitt, and found at last the little graveyard.  I remembered visiting that graveyard when I was a child. Mostly  I remembered the Black Eyed Susans (a sunflower like wildflower)  that were ubiquitous - so that's what I planted at her grave.

Then I explored Dewitt, a town of about 1,500 people. Dewitt, surprisingly for such a small town in the Prairie Lands, seemed to be prospering, due to the Tool and Die company there, which was founded by a Danish immigrant named William Petersen in the 1920's. There was even a little Dewitt museum there with historical information, and a bronze statue of Mr. Petersen was proudly displayed on the green lawn at its entrance.**

It should be obvious where this is leading, but it was not so to me at the time.  I went on down the road, happy about my detour to my Grandmother's grave, and ended up in Connecticut eventually. Where, when cleaning out my car, I found that pair of pliers on the floor. On each side, they were stamped: "Vise-Grip: The Original".So now I never go anywhere without my "magical pliers", which I like to think my Angel in Nebraska provided for me.

Nebraska Sunflowers

**I was sad to learn (from Wikipedia)  that "On October 31, 2008 the plant was closed and 330 jobs were lost when the manufacturing of Vise-Grips and other tools moved to China.