Farewell, America by Bill Moyers

I cannot stop crying. For the America I believed in,  the real "American Dream", the diversity and  freedom that really did make America great. We are grown small, mean, and ignorant indeed if this election means those forces of oppression and hatred now have open season.  I cry for the Earth, in the face of an America with a president "who doesn't believe in climate change". Thank you Bill Moyers, for saying out loud  what many of us are crying for.

Farewell, America

by Bill Moyers 

(http://billmoyers.com/story/farewell-america/)
November 10, 2016

America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.

Whatever place we now live in is not the same place it was on Nov. 7. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently. We are likely to be a pariah country. And we are lost for it. As I surveyed the ruin of that country this gray Wednesday morning, I found weary consolation in W.H. Auden’s poem, September 1, 1939, which concludes:

“Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.”


I hunt for that affirming flame.

This generally has been called the “hate election” because everyone professed to hate both candidates. It turned out to be the hate election because, and let’s not mince words, of the hatefulness of the electorate. In the years to come, we will brace for the violence, the anger, the racism, the misogyny, the xenophobia, the nativism, the white sense of grievance that will undoubtedly be unleashed now that we have destroyed the values that have bound us.

We all knew these hatreds lurked under the thinnest veneer of civility. That civility finally is gone.
We all knew these hatreds lurked under the thinnest veneer of civility. That civility finally is gone. In its absence, we may realize just how imperative that politesse was. It is the way we managed to coexist.

If there is a single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power? Perhaps we had been living in a fool’s paradise. Now we aren’t.

This country has survived a civil war, two world wars, and a great depression. There are many who say we will survive this, too. Maybe we will, but we won’t survive unscathed. We know too much about each other to heal. No more can we pretend that we are exceptional or good or progressive or united. We are none of those things. Nor can we pretend that democracy works and that elections have more or less happy endings. Democracy only functions when its participants abide by certain conventions, certain codes of conduct and a respect for the process.

No more can we pretend that we are exceptional or good or progressive or united. We are none of those things.

The virus that kills democracy is extremism because extremism disables those codes. Republicans have disrespected the process for decades. They have regarded any Democratic president as illegitimate. They have proudly boasted of preventing popularly elected Democrats from effecting policy and have asserted that only Republicans have the right to determine the nation’s course. They have worked tirelessly to make sure that the government cannot govern and to redefine the purpose of government as prevention rather than effectuation. In short, they haven’t believed in democracy for a long time, and the media never called them out on it.

Democracy can’t cope with extremism. Only violence and time can defeat it. The first is unacceptable, the second takes too long. Though Trump is an extremist, I have a feeling that he will be a very popular president and one likely to be re-elected by a substantial margin, no matter what he does or fails to do. That’s because ever since the days of Ronald Reagan, rhetoric has obviated action, speechifying has superseded governing.

Trump was absolutely correct when he bragged that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and his supporters wouldn’t care. It was a dictator’s ugly vaunt, but one that recognized this election never was about policy or economics or the “right path/wrong path,” or even values. It was about venting. So long as Trump vented their grievances, his all-white supporters didn’t care about anything else. He is smart enough to know that won’t change in the presidency. In fact, it is only likely to intensify. White America, Trump’s America, just wants to hear its anger bellowed. This is one time when the Bully Pulpit will be literal.

The media can’t be let off the hook for enabling an authoritarian to get to the White House. Long before he considered a presidential run, he was a media creation — a regular in the gossip pages, a photo on magazine covers, the bankrupt (morally and otherwise) mogul who hired and fired on The Apprentice. When he ran, the media treated him not as a candidate, but as a celebrity, and so treated him differently from ordinary pols. The media gave him free publicity, trumpeted his shenanigans, blasted out his tweets, allowed him to phone in his interviews, fell into his traps and generally kowtowed until they suddenly discovered that this joke could actually become president.

Just as Trump has shredded our values, our nation and our democracy, he has shredded the media. In this, as in his politics, he is only the latest avatar of a process that began long before his candidacy. Just as the sainted Ronald Reagan created an unbridgeable chasm between rich and poor that the Republicans would later exploit against Democrats, conservatives delegitimized mainstream journalism so that they could fill the vacuum.

With Trump’s election, I think that the ideal of an objective, truthful journalism is dead, never to be revived.  Retiring conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes complained that after years of bashing from the right wing, the mainstream media no longer could perform their function as reporters, observers, fact dispensers, and even truth tellers, and he said we needed them. Like Goebbels before them, conservatives understood that they had to create their own facts, their own truths, their own reality. They have done so, and in so doing effectively destroyed the very idea of objectivity. Trump can lie constantly only because white America has accepted an Orwellian sense of truth — the truth pulled inside out.

With Trump’s election, I think that the ideal of an objective, truthful journalism is dead, never to be revived. Like Nixon and Sarah Palin before him, Trump ran against the media, boomeranging off the public’s contempt for the press. He ran against what he regarded as media elitism and bias, and he ran on the idea that the press disdained working-class white America. Among the many now-widening divides in the country, this is a big one, the divide between the media and working-class whites, because it creates a Wild West of information – a media ecology in which nothing can be believed except what you already believe.

With the mainstream media so delegitimized — a delegitimization for which they bear a good deal of blame, not having had the courage to take on lies and expose false equivalencies — they have very little role to play going forward in our politics. I suspect most of them will surrender to Trumpism — if they were able to normalize Trump as a candidate, they will no doubt normalize him as president. Cable news may even welcome him as a continuous entertainment and ratings booster. And in any case, like Reagan, he is bulletproof. The media cannot touch him, even if they wanted to. Presumably, there will be some courageous guerillas in the mainstream press, a kind of Resistance, who will try to fact-check him. But there will be few of them, and they will be whistling in the wind. Trump, like all dictators, is his own truth.

What’s more, Trump already has promised to take his war on the press into courtrooms and the halls of Congress. He wants to loosen libel protections, and he has threatened Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos of Amazon with an antitrust suit. Individual journalists have reason to fear him as well. He has already singled out NBC’s Katy Tur, perhaps the best of the television reporters, so that she needed the Secret Service to escort her from one of his rallies. Jewish journalists who have criticized Trump have been subjected to vicious anti-Semitism and intimidation from the alt-right. For the press, this is likely to be the new normal in an America in which white supremacists, neo-Nazi militias, racists, sexists, homophobes and anti-Semites have been legitimized by a new president who “says what I’m thinking.” It will be open season.

This converts the media from reporters to targets, and they have little recourse. Still, if anyone points the way forward, it may be New York Times columnist David Brooks. Brooks is no paragon. He always had seemed to willfully neglect modern Republicanism’s incipient fascism (now no longer incipient), and he was an apologist for conservative self-enrichment and bigotry. But this campaign season, Brooks pretty much dispensed with politics. He seemed to have arrived at the conclusion that no good could possibly come of any of this and retreated into spirituality. What Brooks promoted were values of mutual respect, a bolder sense of civic engagement, an emphasis on community and neighborhood, and overall a belief in trickle-up decency rather than trickle-down economics. He is not hopeful, but he hasn’t lost all hope.

For those of us now languishing in despair, this may be a prescription for rejuvenation. We have lost the country, but by refocusing, we may have gained our own little patch of the world and, more granularly, our own family. For journalists, Brooks may show how political reporting, which, as I said, is likely to be irrelevant in the Trump age, might yield to a broader moral context in which one considers the effect that policy, strategy and governance have not only on our physical and economic well-being but also on our spiritual well-being. In a society that is likely to be fractious and odious, we need a national conversation on values. The media could help start it.

But the disempowered media may have one more role to fill: They must bear witness. Many years from now, future generations will need to know what happened to us and how it happened. They will need to know how disgruntled white Americans, full of self-righteous indignation, found a way to take back a country they felt they were entitled to and which they believed had been lost. They will need to know about the ugliness and evil that destroyed us as a nation after great men like Lincoln and Roosevelt guided us through previous crises and kept our values intact. They will need to know, and they will need a vigorous, engaged, moral media to tell them. They will also need us.

We are not living for ourselves anymore in this country. Now we are living for history.

Election Day.........

Eight years ago I celebrated the election of the first black President of the United States.  Now I am pretty sure we will celebrate the first woman President of the United States, and I am also hoping that the polls will demonstrate that the misogyny, intolerance, utter disregard for the environment and humanitarianism, and  fascism Donald Trump represents is not what the majority of Americans are.

Huzzah Hillary!

Realists of a Larger Reality

"Hard times are coming, when we'll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.  We'll need writers who can remember freedom - poets, visionaries, - realists of a larger reality."

 Ursula Leguin, from  Acceptance Speech of National Book Foundation Award

Recently  I attended a poetry reading at the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona by an acclaimed poet - I love poetry, the "Bards of our time",  and am very pleased that the Poetry Center is in existence.  She received an impressive audience, and an impressive introduction.   But I walked away from this reading disappointed, even a bit angry.  And yes, as I sat to contemplate my response, out popped two of  my favorite quotes from my favorite wise woman of letters Ursula Kroeber Leguin, whose worlds and words I have inhabited for many long years.  

Without introduction last night's poet did a long, very long, free form verse.  I felt like I sat through an hour long tantrum, perfected over a 40 year career, but ultimately elegant in its obscurity and  meaninglessness. Perhaps that was the rather nihilistic point itself, I don't know. Here and there a few good lines/images emerged from the rant, but to me nothing hung together enough to embed them into my mind and heart, nothing ever wove into some kind of basket of meaning, whether dark or light.   Was I "disturbed" by this stream of "raw, disturbing, honest, evocative"..... whatever?  No, I was bored.  

The audience, after she finished, looked rather blank as they clapped.  I found myself wondering, how many felt moved by (what I experienced as a  tirade) or how many, like me, were secretly  happy it was finally over.   I wondered how many sat there nodding while inwardly feeling confused, a bit depressed.  

And I thought of the times I've been at poetry events that brought tears to the eyes of those present, of how poets like Drew Dellinger, or Mary Oliver, Alice Walker, or many  far more obscure and local as well...........can bring us into a far greater sphere of meaning,  of connection, of empathy, of awe, of grief, of magic, even, heaven help us, that of Hope and Beauty.  

These are among  the "realists of a larger reality" we so ardently need now.  In this time of the calcification of  soul to capitalism, the loss of species and habitat, this time "before the flood".......we do not need artforms  that teaches nihilism, despair, or ennui.  We need visionaries, we need pathfinders who can help us see and connect the links, who can help us to  weave the "medicine baskets" of new stories.    There, I said it, a highly subjective, politically incorrect, comment.   

We live in a time when the arts continue to be eliminated from primary education, when students are pressed into the universities (and lifelong debt) desperate for educations that will "get them a job" instead of the fortunate liberal educations my generation enjoyed, when the art districts are disappearing to be replaced with trendy restaurants and no one seems to notice, when actual conversation with people and the actual immediate and physical  environment around them  cannot possibly compete with  the instant and consuming  escape of cyberspace........those moments before a painting, those quotes that linger from a poem for a lifetime, may be fading into obsolescence.

All the more need for translators of the imaginal language.  Poetry, art, are often a language that many need to be taught in order to ignite an appreciation, and I sense that more and more people are not learning to  speak that language.  Sometimes I feel that  few people have even noticed that it is disappearing from the common vocabulary, consigned to obscure enclaves like the Poetry Center.  As an AIRBNB host, I have had many people come into my home, which is also a gallery, over the years, and it's been disillusioning to see how very few of them notice the art; certainly they do not engage me in conversation about it.  I've often joked to friends that I could just as easily hang mops on the walls for all that most people would notice  (Tom Wolfe, author of The Painted Word,  might reply that such an exhibit would be more  "conceptually significant"..........)

Well, I wander off somewhere here.  Masks  aren't for everyone.  But I  do believe the for most people, without a  meaningful education in the arts  it is hard to have an appreciation or even curiosity about what is "spoken in a language one doesn't know how to speak" .  And so the conversation is left one sided, or unanswered.  And very lonely sometimes.    But..........this does not let artists, the poets, the visionaries and shamans and myth makers of our time.......off the hook.  

You are needed, you have work to do.   Even if it seems like  no one is noticing.  Even if you don't get paid in dollars.    You have heard the Call, and for better or worse in your personal or financial  life, responded.  

Last, I have to reflect that  the ubiquitous celebration of the dark,  the "shocking", the naively cynical,  has become predictably  "de regueur"  in our jaded, de-sensitized world.  In the halls of the High Art world, the word  "beauty" is almost an obsolete anachronism, something we think of as too fluffy to be serious art.  But if not Beauty, what?  Beauty is not just a saccharine flower painting in a dollar store, beauty is the vitality, poignancy, and power of the lifeforce endlessly creating itself, in the world, in our own lives.  

If I were to create a Manifesto that anyone would ever listen to,  I would say as Leguin said:  "Become a Realist of a Larger Reality".  

 “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.

This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” 

― Ursula K. Le Guin,

 The Ones Who Walk Away from  Omelas

La Mariposa....a few new Butterfly Women

Butterflies (2016)

It's butterfly season here, a brief spell when butterflies are seen flitting about my yard, and mysteriously fluttering across the busy intersections while one waits for the light to change, somehow miraculously not getting hit by passing cars........a reminder, to me at least, of the numinous and ephemeral in the midst of all this urbanity.   I've written so often about butterflies, I can only repeat myself, but they are an appropriate kind of subject for this time of Samhain, and Dia de los Muertes, the upcoming All Souls Day procession.  The word for "soul" in ancient Greek, "psyche" also meant "butterfly".   And I think of the "Labrys" of ancient Crete as well, the axe that is a butterfly shape, perhaps each "wing" representing the balance of form and opposition that creates a true whole, a Winged Being.

the butterfly's shape.

Whole, winged

always going home.

La Mariposa (2016)

LITANY FOR THE LOST: the 6th Extinction for the Day of the Dead

              

 

 

 ............The Green Turtle, The Hawksbill Turtle, Kemp’s Ridley Turtle, The Leatherback and Loggerhead Turtles.  Sperm whales, the Bottlenose Dolphin, The Brown Pelican, The Barrier Tern and all migrating Songbirds in the Gulf.   The Pancake Batfish, Bluefin Tuna. Piping Plover, Gannets.  The Polar Bear. The Trumpeter Swan, West Indian Manatees, the White Rhinoceros,the Whooping Crane , Caspian Tigers,   The pygmy owl, the Sonora tiger salamander, the American jaguar, the African gorilla, the African rhino, the Mexican grey wolf,the Bengal tiger the White tip Shark the Yangtze river dolphin, the western black rhino, the Pyrenees ibex, the red colobus monkey, Egyptian Barbary sheep the Spanish wolf, the English wolf, the Mexican grey wolf.  The black footed ferret, Moorean tree snail, the little bush moa, the new Zealand coastal moa. Central California steelhead salmon, the Passenger Pigeon, Stellars sea cow , Bachman’s warbler, and the The Ocelot, the Indiana bat, the San Clemente sage sparrow, the Western Snowy Plover, the Short Tailed Albatross, Yellow Billed Cuckoos, San Diego Mesa Mint, Blunt Nosed Leopard Lizards, San Francisco Garter Snakes, Santa Cruz island mallow bushes, the island rush rose, Irish hill buckwheat plants. Old growth coastal redwoods. The Palos Verdes blue butterfly.......................the new Zealand black fronted parakeet, the Jamaican green and yellow macaw, the Jamaican red macaw, the grey parrot, the Solomon island crowned pigeon,the Hawaiian thrush, the Norfolk Island ground dove, the elephant bird, and the great Moa.  The African Elephant, the African Wild Ass,  the Asian Elephant,  the Asian Lion, Atlantic Salmon, Black Lemurs, Black-footed Ferrets, Blue Whales, Bowhead Whales, Cheetahs, wild Chimpanzees; the Dodo.  Eastern cougars, and the Mexican Grey Wolf.  The Eskimo Curlew, the Fin Whale,  Flightless Cormorants, the Giant Anteater, the Giant Armadillo, Greater Prairie Chickens, and the Spotted Owl.  The Indian Rhinoceros, the Japanese Crested Ibis, Eastern Lady Slipper, the lesser koa finch, the Javanese lapwing, the slender billed grackle,the St. Helena petrel, Bruno mountain Manzanita, the desert pupfish, the hawksbill sea turtle, the Wyoming Toad,

And many more  RELATIONS.

Real Time Heroes in a Disillusioned Time.........

 

I felt like sharing a few  real time  "Heroes" - people who are quietly living lives of amazing generosity every day.  People like Mark, or Dana, or Kathe you rarely hear about.   They are quietly going about helping others in extraordinary ways, and for me, they  lead the most interesting lives of all, because they show us about our profound capacity for love.  It's been my privilege to meet a few of these  "quiet heroes" personally.  But the truth is, Heros and Heroines like this are all over the place, doing kind, transformative, generous work.   

First,  Marc Gold and the 100 Friends Project.  I met Marc when he came to Tucson for a fundraiser ...he is a retired teacher from California, who now devotes all of his time to raising money and travelling around he world to distribute it where he finds it is needed.  Here's what one of the original "100" has to say:

"My good friend Marc Gold has built one of the most captivating projects (and one of the most interesting lives) that I know of. While traveling in the Himalayas in 1989, Marc (probably) saved the life of a destitute woman by pulling a few dollars from his pocket to fund her emergency medical care. Struck by Actually Experiencing the huge difference that small sums of western money can make in so much of the world, Marc, before his next trip to Asia, wrote a letter to one hundred of his friends. He told them the story of the destitute woman, told them that on his upcoming trip he was going to share more of his money with other impoverished individuals, and promised that if any of his friends would like Marc to give away some of their money too, he would gladly do that -- and report back on the whole adventure. Marc guessed his friends and family might send $300-$400, but they sent over $2,000.

From that beginning Marc has spent the past two decades building The 100 Friends Project. His current goal is to distribute, person-to-person, a total of $1 million (I joke to Marc, a 59-year old teacher who has lived "paycheck-to-paycheck" his entire life, that his goal is to become a "reverse millionaire"), and it seems that he is well on his way." (http://www.100friends.org/)

I met Dana Dakin when I taught a "Masks of the Goddess" class at Kripalu in 2008, and sat open mouthed while she shared her story over dinner.  Inspired by Olga Murrey's work, she decided she would start a micro-lending program to help impoverished women when she turned 60.  She put her intention out into the universe, and was led on an amazing adventure that became Women's Trust of Ghana;  now a model program that  won the prestigious Purpose Prize Award.  Here's a little bit of her story.....

"In the 1980s,  I met a woman named Olga Murray celebrating her sixtieth birthday. To mark the occasion, she was heading off to Nepal to start an orphanage. Her vision, courage, and determination left an indelible mark on me. In 2003, the orphanage and Olga were still going strong and I turned sixty. Based on the adage that life is lived in thirds, the first third you learn, the second third you earn, and the final third you return, and with Olga as a role model, I decided to greet the youth of old age with my own way to give back. I also knew that whatever I did it had to benefit women and girls. This was reinforced by the information I repeatedly uncovered that all social indicators are positively impacted when you help women to help themselves; their families and their communities are the beneficiaries. The next step was to decide where to begin a microfinance program. 

I had a personal trainer Tetteh, a delightful young Ghanaian man, whose father lived in Ghana. My  reading  indicated that Ghana was a relatively safe place to travel with English being the language of the government. These were very important criteria. Being a woman planning to travel alone and not being much of a linguist, I began to talk to people I knew about my idea of going to Ghana to find a village where I could start a microfinance program. I contacted my alma mater Scripps College to speak to a professor who had been featured in an article in the alumni magazine about her research on Mami Waters, a West African goddess. All were helpful and moved me to another contact. Making the plane reservation was the hardest part. 

On March 2003, with my stomach in knots, I boarded my flight for Accra. The following day I explored Accra, got my feet under me somewhat, and wondered in my jetlagged state what I would do next. My feeling all along was that the village I would adopt would be in the northern part of Ghana where the poverty was particularly acute.

 I received a call from the front desk that there were two gentlemen to see me. Passing through the lobby I noticed two men – one elderly in a flowered shirt, pants, and sandals, and the other in a long white caftan, bearded and barefoot, and carrying a staff. “Well,” I thought, “that’s not them.” And, of course, it was “them”. The older man was Tetteh’s father, and his companion was a fetish priest from a village just north of Accra. They were to bring me to Pokuase village where they had located a room in an inn run by the only white person in the village. Checking out of the hotel, with suitcases in tow, I got into their car and away we went."

(http://www.womenstrust.org/content/dana's-story-founding-womens-trust-inc)

And here's the story of the woman who inspired Dana, leaving for Nepal to start an orphanage at the age of 60.  

Olga Murray and the Nepal Youth Foundation :

Broken Leg, Broken Children

Olga Murray had fallen hard for Nepal – so hard, in fact, that she slipped and fell on a trek in the Himalayas. Carried for days in a basket on the shoulders of a Nepalese porter back to Kathmandu, she consulted a young Nepali orthopedic surgeon who had just opened a small hospital for children.  Day after day, she saw kids with the most terrible disabilities being brought to the hospital, often carried for days down mountain trails, accompanied by dazed relatives, many of whom had never been out of their villages and had never seen a car or electric lights.

Some of these children were abandoned at the hospital by families too poor to feed a child who couldn't contribute to their survival. Others were so badly disabled that they couldn't get to school over the mountain trails when they returned to their villages. Still others had intolerable home situations.

With friends, Olga began giving scholarships to some of these kids.

The Nepal Youth Foundation was formed in 1990. Two years later, Olga Murray retired from the practice of law after 37 years, and  began to devote all her time to the welfare of Nepali children.

 (http://www.nepalyouthfoundation.org/aboutnyf/olgamurraystory1.html

And last, a local Heroine, Kathe Padilla, who I met while she sat with her very modest brochures at a card table at the 4th Avenue Arts Faire.  Recently I ran into her at a thrift store - always she is humble and self-deprecating.  You would never guess what she has done  if you met her.  Yet Kathy spends part of her time in Tucson, and part of her time in Zambia at the orphanage and school she helped found near Lusaka.  In Zambia, a recent census shows that as much as 60% of the population may be under 20 years of age.    Her story is simple;  she learned that there were thousands of orphaned street children in Lusaka, and being a mother herself, decided she just couldn't stand it.  She went to Africa to learn what she could do.

"In 1999, Kathe Padilla flew to Zambia to see how she could help the growing number of orphaned children living on the streets of Lusaka. With a group of concerned Zambian professionals, she organized the first Board of Directors of what came to be the Chishawasha Children’s Home of Zambia(CCHZ)."

  http://www.zambianchildrensfund.org/about.html

Hecate (Revisited)

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

The Dream and the Underworld,  James Hillman

It's that time of year again, that LIMINAL TIME  when the world prepares to go into the darkness of winter, the last Harvest Festival is almost here.  Hecate's Time, and I felt like it was appropriate to pull out this previous post about that Great Goddess of the Underworld. Because even under the veneer of the commercial Halloween frenzy going on, as the Veils thin, there she is still.......standing at the Crossroads of Time, illuminating the darkness  with Her two Torches.  


I have  made a number of paintings throughout my life that portrayed myself as Hecate (strangely, now that I reallly am a "crone" I haven't had that impulse).  It wasn't until later that I began to realize, as Hillman above comments, that I was invoking and calling forth this quality within myself by so doing, asking for the inner guidance I needed as I moved through a divorce, through menopause, and later being a caretaker for members of my family as their lives ended.  

Hecate is the Underworld  aspect of the Triple Goddess  Persephone/Demeter/Hecate.  This archetype of the "power of three", the sacred Triad, is very ancient indeed, with roots that go back and back and back into prehistory.   The Triad represents the eternal cycle of nature, the Earth  which from the most ancient of human beings seem to have universally revered  as  "Mother Earth".  Early peoples observed that the Earth, like women, gave birth, nurtured, and finally "took back" life into some mysterious underground realm (Womb/Tomb)  to return again in the springtime.  

"Mandorla of the Spinning Goddess"
 by Judith Anderson**

 

Hecate, from "I Am The Goddess, ALL are The Goddess",
 facilitated by Lena Grace, (2012)

Hecate  lives at the crossroads between conscious and unconscious, dream and waking, life and death.  She stands at the apex of the  liminal zones.  It was  Hecate who   heard the cries of the naive maiden Kore as she was carried by Hades into the underworld, and it was Hecate who bore a torch for Kore as she evolved into the mature Persephone, Queen of the dead and also Queen of life's rebirth. 

Hecate is the guide of souls through deep, unfathomable places of the psyche. When the time is ripe, Hecate stands quietly at the threshold with her two torches, unseen until She hears the soul-cry of those who ask Her to light the way.   

I copy below a short interview I did with Damira Norris, in 2002 a woman who performed Hecate in a 2001 performance produced by Diane Darling.  I found Damira's reflections on working with Hecate through the passage of menopause very moving.    I reflect, re-reading some of the ancient lore of the Triple Goddess, how far contemporary theologies have removed us from reverence for the Earth and all of  Her cycles, and especially, the renewal and mystery that comes from the darkness.    Which is now a  very critical concern.  

Hecate
by Damira Norris

Hecate was my guide as I traveled through the tunnel of menopause, my appointed time to do my "shadow work". At menopause I entered a profound depression. I was forced to plunge into recesses of my life history I hadn't begun to negotiate. What I felt, in essence, was deep emotional shame. All of my internalized stories of being a victim arose for examination. And I was also forced to examine the side that is a tyrant, that always insists on having it's own immature way.

I remember lighting a candle each day to symbolize my daily commitment to my journey through the despair I felt. I carried that candle with me, and when I felt lost, I relit it. That's Hecate to me. She will not help you to avoid a thing, but She will bear a light for you on the path, the path to mature empowerment. "It's time", She says, "to know the inside of yourself, to know all that is there". I believe that at certain passages in our lives, our souls cry "I want to get rid of this, I want to move on". And it's not easy.

"Go down into it" my counselor would tell me, "bring it up and let's look at it". That's Hecate country. I remember a visualization I did while in therapy. She had me look behind a curtain, and what I saw was an emaciated, unloved creature. I was given the opportunity to "meet" a part of myself that symbolized the inner voice that daily recited a litany that went something like this: "I can't do this right, I can't do that".......I had to meet this sad, frightened creature and open my heart to her. Now, I recognize that persona when I'm driven by unconscious fear. I can determine to bring her into the whole circle of who I am.

We see Hecate as scary. But that comes from a culture that denies aging, the so-called shadow side of life. 

We are preoccupied with youthfulness, which translates as a childish self-absorption that insists "I will do what I want to do, when I want to do it".....regardless of the consequences to ourselves, our communities, to our world. Shadow work is about soul retrieval. I had to become a mature, empowered woman at menopause, and so, whether I understood it or not, I had begun to bring home parts of myself that were lost. Unexamined childhood wounds, so many "underworld" storylines. That meant going inside to meet the ugly, the uncomfortable. Hecate was the force guiding me through the hard times. When I performed Hecate, I was doing it to thank Her.

The Dark Goddess is about learning genuine compassion, full circle compassion. It's so much easier now for me to recognize what is going on with others, because I can see into the once opaque depths of myself. We speak of women who've gone through menopause as being "more in their power". This is because the other side of disintegration is the retrieval of enormous reservoirs of energy. We're asked to clean out the book of our lives, so we can become guides for those who will follow us. To become our Hecate selves."

"Hecate" (1997)

I also take the liberty of copying a wonderfully insightful and well researched  article by  Danielle Nickel - for further insight, visit her site   (http://home.comcast.net/~subrosa_florens/witch/index.html) .

Hekate:  Moving Through Darkness
by Danielle Nickel
Hekate is primarily a goddess of the Underworld, holding dominion over death and rebirth. This is meant both in the literal sense and in the metaphorical as well. For life is filled with many deaths and rebirths aside from that of the flesh. Because of this the Dark of the Moon especially is her time of the month, since it is a time of endings and beginnings, when what was is no more, and what will be has yet to become.

Hekate guards the limenoskopos (the doorstep), for she is a goddess of liminality and transition. Of being on and crossing boundaries. This includes not only the boundary between life and death, but any boundaries, such as those between nature and civilization, waking and sleep, sanity and madness, the conscious and the subconscious minds. Indeed, any transition can be said to be her domain. As such she is also goddess of the crossroads, where the paths of one's life fork and a person must choose which future to embark upon. In ancient times these were believed to be special places where the veil between the worlds was thin and spirits gathered.

Hekate is also the goddess of psychological transformation. Her Underworld is the dark recesses of the human subconscious as well at that of the Cosmos. Many have accused her of sending demons to haunt the thoughts of individuals. What they fail to understand is that the demons are not hers, but their own. By the light of her twin torches Hekate only reveals what is already there. These are things which the person needs to see in order to heal and renew. However, if they are not prepared for the experience of confronting their Shadow then it can truly feel like they are being tormented. Hekate is not motivated by cruelty, nor is she seeking to harm. But her love can be tough love. She will prompt a person to face the things that they must, whether they like it or not..........Hekate goes with them. While she may not be the deity many people would like, she is the one whom they need. Because of this I believe that she comes to those who require her, whether or not they were looking for her.

"Dream Weaver" (2009)                               

In modern Neo-Pagan practice Hekate is typically identified as an aspect of the Crone, and as such is most often portrayed as an old woman. This is in contrast to ancient vase murals which depict her as being an adult woman in her prime. As with many things about this goddess, this is a perception that has changed over time. However, the Crone aspect of the modern Triple Goddess is not truly defined by her age, but rather by the powers her age represents (that of wisdom, magical potency, annihilation, and the transformative journey through the Underworld), and those indeed fall under Hekate's domain. So while perhaps not historically accurate, this is not a demotion or devaluing of her, but rather the way in which modern Neo-Paganism fits her into its philosophy (this difficulty with integrating her into their cosmology is something that we will see Neo-Pagans share with the Ancient Greeks as well).

Hekate is more often than not portrayed as carrying two torches and is known as "The Torch-Bearer". She carries these because of her role as a guide through the transition of the Underworld. One torch shows a person where it is they currently stand, the other where they might go. In this manner she reveals the mysteries of transformation to those who enter her realm of darkness.

.......Hekate is also associated with a curious wheel shaped design, known as Hekate's Wheel, or the "Strophalos of Hekate". It is a circle which encloses a serpentine maze with three main flanges, that in turn are situated around a central, fiery spiral. The symbolism refers to the serpent's power of rebirth, to the labyrinth of knowledge through which Hekate could lead humankind, and to the flame of life itself: "The life-producing bosom of Hekate, that Living Flame which clothes itself in Matter to manifest Existence" (according to Isaac Preston Cory's 1836 translation of the Chaldean Oracles). The three main arms of the maze correspond with her being a triple goddess, as well as goddess of the three ways, and that she has dominion over the earth, sea, and sky.

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A Goddess of Crossroads and Transitions 

As earlier stated, Hekate is a guide for people who are in transition. While she is most famous in her role as a psychopomp, guiding the spirits of the dead in their journey through the Underworld, she also aids those who cross boundaries or otherwise travel from one condition to another, particularly when that crossing involves danger.........For more than anything else she is a deity of liminality.

She is a goddess of the crossroads for this reason. In the ancient world a crossroad was a point where three roads met to form a "Y"-shaped intersection. It was believed to be a place where spirits gathered, including those of the Underworld and those of Fate. It is also a metaphor for the divergence of possibilities in an individual's future. Their life will bring them to the crossroad along one of the roads, and they will be met with a branching, where they must choose one path or the other to continue onward. As goddess of transitions, Hekate rules this place where the roads separate and differing futures are possible.

However, it is important to remember that Hekate is a guide. She points out where a person is currently heading and where else they might go if they change their path instead. She does not choose a person's fate herself. That is always left to the person to decide. She is a torch-bearer because of this illumination she sheds upon one's life. That is also one reason she is a lunar-deity, for while a torch brings light to the darkness of night, so too does the moon on the grandest possible scale. This reflects both her link to the night-realms and to her role as an illuminator of ways..

Hekate is often portrayed as  three torch-bearing female figures standing in a circle looking outward, with their backs joined so that they are in fact one being. This exhibits her dominion over the triple-crossroads and her ability to see in all directions simultaneously. The road a person had come from, and the directions they might take in the future. These hektarion (or hekataion) were placed at crossroads. Their earliest forms consisted of a pole upon which three masks were hung, with one facing each road. In more recent times these became statuary, sometimes of three figures standing with their backs to a central pillar, other times a similar portrayal without the column in the center.

The Romans knew Hekate as Triva, which means "where the three roads meet".

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Hekate Triformis - The Triple Goddess

Hekate is a triple-goddess, serving as the Crone aspect in more than one triumvirate of deities. Perhaps most commonly we see her partnered with Kore-Persephone and Demeter. Where Kore takes the role of the Maiden (indeed, the word kore means "maiden" in Ancient Greek), Demeter the Mother, and Hekate the Crone. This triumvirate plays a central role in the myth of Kore's descent into the Underworld and her re-emergence as Persephone.

This myth appears to have been the basis for the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which initiates relived the experience of Kore and like her returned forever changed, reborn with a new understanding of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

 In the earliest tales, Kore willingly descends into the Underworld, while in the later and more well-known versions she is kidnapped by Hades. The latter being indicative of the rising patriarchy of Ancient Greece. In either version, her mother Demeter - who is the goddess of agriculture -  withholds her blessings from the Earth and causes the first winter to come about. It is Hekate who spies Kore within the Underworld and guides her back to the surface to be reunited with her mother. She emerges not as the maiden Kore, but as Persephone, a powerful woman in her own right, and with her comes the warmth and promise of spring. Persephone however, has become inextricably tied to the Underworld and returns there for four months every year, one for each pomegranate seed she ate while there. Her leaving is accompanied by the onset of winter, and while she holds her court in the Underworld she is joined by Hekate. In this myth we not only see a metaphor for rebirth, but also of coming of age and into one's own power and place in the world.

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The Invincible Queen Of The Dead


While Hekate is a versatile deity, she is best known as a goddess of death and the Underworld. However, it is important to remember that her Underworld is not the place of terrible suffering popularized by patriarchal Greece and later Christianity.*** Rather it was a place of divine transformation, like the cocoon where the caterpillar becomes the butterfly. This was the primordial Underworld, the place from which all life ultimately derives. Death and Birth stand back to back in the great spiral of existence, while Hekate and her Underworld lie between the two.

Our ancient ancestors saw that many things sprang from the earth, not just plants, but animals such as snakes, bears, rodents, and others as well. Even the sun and moon appeared to rise from the earth and later sink back down within it every day and night. To their eyes, it seemed that something magical was taking place in the darkness below the ground. This idea was further reinforced when they learned that plant life originates from seeds buried within the earth. They saw that if a person kept a seed in - for example - their pocket, it would never grow into a plant. It had to be buried in the soil. Our ancestors reasoned that something magical must take place down there. Some transformation hidden away from the eyes of people and the rays of the sun.

This was their Underworld. A place of renewal and rebirth where buried seeds sprouted into life. Because they saw the generative power of the Underworld, they buried their dead deep within the earth so that they too could transform into new life, just as a seed does into a plant. Being thorough people, they also dyed the bodies with red henna to symbolize menstrual blood (and in some cases did use menstrual blood), in order to capitalize upon the regenerative power believed to exist in that as well. 

This is why how so many Pagan deities such as Kali, Hekate, Freja, et al. are associated with both death and life. Our ancestors saw that death and birth were interconnected, standing back to back in an ever-turning spiral. In this manner Hekate is both child-nurse of all life as well as harbinger of death, and thusly it was to her that the ancients prayed to ensure both long life and eventual rebirth. Interestingly enough it is also in this manner that Hekate might be considered the goddess of compost. For it is the decomposition of plant and animals that insures the fertility of the earth, which in turn ensures the creation and nurturing of new life.

These views of the Underworld would change as religion became politicized, a tool for power. The Underworld became a place of terror in order to frighten people into obedience. So too were its denizens altered in public perception to become the monsters such a place needs to be populated with. This is one of the dynamics by which Hekate was increasingly negatively portrayed............

Keeper of the Unconscious


As Goddess of the Underworld, Hekate is not only the guide to the spirits of the dead, but also the keeper of each individual's own personal Underworld, the benighted territory of their unconscious mind. She lives within each of our inner worlds, and is there to guide us as we transition from inner to outer realms of consciousness. When accepted, her blessings enrich our lives with vision, healing, inspiration, and magic. She brings light to the darkness and empowers us with creativity, confidence, and strength. However, when we deny her it manifests in our Shadow-Self. She holds the key to both the treasures and terrors of the unconscious mind.......

Hekate is the light that reveals the Shadow, like the light of the moon at midnight. Her goal is not to destroy, but rather to illuminate. However, it is no accident that we have buried these things so deeply within our psyches. We are often not ready to face them when revealed. In such cases it may indeed appear that Hekate is bringing demons to terrorize us. We must remember that the demons are ours and reclaim them as our own. For with that revelation we also take back our power over them. That is the only way in which the Shadow can be truly defeated. By accepting it as our own. Learning that is the key which turns the lock of the person's emotional healing and rebirth. Hekate is there as a guide to help us, her twin torches shining our way through the darkened recesses of our unconscious.........

.............We must come to understand that Hekate and the darkness she exemplifys are not terrible, but rather natural forces within us and the world around us which are necessary components in the process of healing and regeneration. We must trust to her as our guide and give ourselves over to our journey through the Underworld, rather than resist the sacrifices we must make in order to grow. For one can only heal by moving through darkness. This requires courage and insight on our parts, but thankfully she is there to show us where to find both these qualities within ourselves as well.

**Judith Anderson has passed away, and her powerful work is not well known.  She was an extraordinary artist whose prints emerged from the depths of the sacred Earth and the realms of the Soul.  For an excellent article about Judith Anderson:  http://www.crosscurrents.org/Madsen2.htm


***This is true as well of the Nordic Goddess Hella (also part of a triad), Underworld Goddess whose name became the source of the Christian "Hell".