A Synchronicity.............

 

Back in the summer of 2000 I had moved to Tucson from California, mostly to be of assistance to my mother and brother,  and also a great deal because, like many others, I could not afford to continue to live in the Bay Area.   I rented an apartment and settled back in to living in Arizona, not without some ambiguity, as I had loved living in the exciting environment of Berkeley.

Some mail continued to arrive for previous tenants, and one day a card arrived for "Angel M Grace".  I was struck by the idea of having a "credit card" for "Angel M Grace" and thought of it as good luck - I put it in my wallet, and I've carried the thing around now for 20 some years!  

Yesterday I was cleaning my wallet out looking for something and I pulled out my "Angel Card".  I had never actually read the line that says "Must Activate by 09/08/00."  Then I remembered that exactly 20 years after that "activation date" was when I had my spine operation - September 8th, 2020.   

In July, 2020 I got shingles, and in the course of dealing with this seemingly painful but not catastrophic problem, the doctor had me get an MRI.   A few days after that I found myself with an emergency appointment with a neurosurgeon!  It seemed that I had some dangerous spurs on my neck/spine that could lead to paralysis if not corrected!  They wanted to operate as soon as possible, and I now am recovered, and have a bunch of metal pins in my spine.  

I guess that card got activated!

Spider Woman's Signature: the "Cosmic Spider"

"Spider and Cross", ubiquitous symbol of the prehistoric Mississippian culture

In 2007 I was an Aldon B. Dow Fellow at Northwood University, in Midland Michigan, for the summer, and was pursuing my fascination, indeed, obsession with, myths and symbols related to the Native American Spider Woman, but as She appears in my life, and in our contemporary world as well..  In time my obsession led me to travel across the country, to have many synchronicities

(one of those synchronicities led me to this building, which,

 now that I revisit it, very much looks like being under a giant Spider Web!)

and to create a community arts project I called "Spider Woman's Hands".  

The Project was continued at the Creative Spirit Center the following year (2008). As participants created "Icons" using casts of their faces, their hands (mind and creativity in manifestation), along with symbols of personal sanctity or significance to each participant, they wove a "thread" that unified all of their stories.  In each show that "thread" was "held" by each hand in each Icon, and ran right out the door.  I look back at that time, following the "threads" that Spider Woman cast me as an artist and a person, as infused with magic and guidance.  I do not know if I have fulfilled that quest yet, but I do know that the symbols of the Spider, the Cross representing the union of all directions, and the Great Web are profoundly important symbols not just from the buried past, but for our time now.

Lately I've been feeling the "hand" of Spider Woman weaving in my life again.  I do not know where She might lead me...........

So thinking about this I re-discovered a Blog post from 2015 I found fascinating, information kindly sent me from a gentleman named Eddie Bailey in the U.K. in which he pointed out that the Earth's  magnetic field in its appearance is very similar to the prehistoric spider and cross  symbol found among the Mississippian people of  ancient America (one that, interestingly enough, also occured in 2005 as a crop circle in Wiltshire, England.  I do not see that many people in Southern England, hoaxers or not, would even know about this symbol, and personally feel this is a genuine crop circle.) 

 The "Cosmic Spider".....a  motif, for me, that embodies the concept of Spider Woman as, once again, midwife for a New Age.  

http://geomag.usgs.gov/about.php

As Mr. Bailey pointed out, 

 "The truth will cease to be stranger than fiction when we get used to it."........ "I realise symbols work on many levels or fractally.  It is said matter is condensed light, and Light is an electro-magnetic wave or particle.  The electric field and the magnetic field are ALWAYS perpendicular to each other - like a Cross on a certain level."

2005 crop circle of ancient American spider motif, Wiltshire, England

He also kindly shared comments by Laid Scranton, who believes that the "primitive people" of Africa, the Dogon people, not unlike  the similarity between the  "cosmic spider" of ancient America and the Earth's magnetic field in relationiship to our sun, seem to have created or intuited a complex symbol language as well: 

"The Dogon symbols and concepts relating to atomic structure so thoroughly mimic their scientific counterparts that, if our purpose was to refute their basis in science, we would first need to explain in some believable way the following extraordinary similarities:

• The po, which is defined in terms similar to those that describe the atom
• Sene seeds, which are described in form and behavior as being similar to protons, neutrons, and electrons and whose "nesting" is recognizable as an electron orbit
• The germination of the sene, whose drawn images are a match for the four types of quantum spin particles
• The spider of the sene whose threads weave the 266 seeds of Amma, much as string theory tells us all matter is woven from strings. 

Likewise, there seems to be a relationship between Dogon cosmological drawings and the shapes of various Egyptian glyphs, yet among the Dogon, these drawings have never taken on the status of an actual written language.

Dada, the Dogon spider who weaves matter and whose name means "mother" in the Dogon language, exhibits many of the classical attributes of the Egyptian (and Amazigh) goddess Neith.  In fact, other ancient goddesses, like Athena, who are traditionally associated with Neith also are associated with spider symbolism similar to that found in Dogon cosmology. Such consistencies suggest that the Dogon system of myth could represent an early incarnation of the Egyptian myths."

A PAGAN ICON: "Asherah"

 

I've been interested in Catholic Icons for a long time, as well as Hindu and Buddhist Icons.......so I thought, since I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with painting again after so many years of not touching the scary gessoed  surface...........that I'd make some Icons of my own.  This one, dedicated to Asherah, or the "World Tree", is my first attempt, although I've done this image so many times in the past, the woman who is rooted in the Earth, the Tree of  Life, the great primeval Mother Earth.  But it was fun doing this because I could just paint from my imagination, unconstrained by the sometimes tedious process of being skillful, realistic, commercially viable, etc.  I look forward to doing more, these Icons for just myself!

Concerning Asherah, I copy below from a previous post:

                              Asherah and the Tree of Life

 Asherah  was often represented as a tree, among them the ubiquitous  "Asherah poles" (ashirim)  associated with Her worship in early (pre-monotheistic) Judaism. *** There is evidence that these wooden icons, and possibly, actual trees intentionally planted as icons or shrines)  were meant to be representations of Asherah.  Asherah is  sometimes  referred to as the wife of Yahweh,  whose name became something that could not be uttered, only represented as "the Lord".  The Asherah poles, and eventually the name of Asherah, were banned from worship as Judaism became monotheistic and established the sole deity as male.

Interestingly, with the early advent of Gnostic Christianity, Asherah is perhaps re-born in the form of Sophia, the feminine face of deity, often called the "mother" or sometimes "wife" of Yaweh.  The emblem for Sophia was often a dove.   

I never would have associated the Tree of Life archetype,  which has been a part of my spiritual vocabulary for more years than I remember,  with  Asherah had I not investigated just recently  because of a visionary experience during a healing session.  

I had some energy work done last week with an alternative  healer. Not unlike Reiki practitioners, although her system had a different name, she worked with me for over an hour, helping me to enter into an altered state of consciousness, kind of like a meditation, while she, in channelling energy to work with me, also entered into an open, meditative  state.   As I closed my eyes, the session began for me with the appearance of a white dove that visually manifested right  before my (closed) eyes.  But not a literal kind of bird, more like a sacred emblem, what one might see in a church.   I immediately thought of the "Dove of Sophia",  which is of course associated with  Peace to this day. And as a Christian icon representing the Holy Spirit, it may very well be that the origins of the Dove go all the way back to Gnosticism and Sophia. 

Who, like Asherah, was removed from patriarchal monotheistic theology, Her symbols often co-opted to support the later mythos of a strictly male deity without a wife, mother, or, for that matter, a daughter either.

The healer, after the session was over, told me that she clearly saw a Goddess form present during the healing.   The healer, who is not much familiar with Goddess archetypes,  said that the name she got was "Ashara".  She also mentioned that somehow trees or wood were associated.  I couldn't think of what that meant, until I looked it up on the Internet later, and then (of course!) discovered the Hebrew Goddess  "Asherah".   

Visions, like dreams, have multiple layers of meaning, and like dreams, exist outside of time.  In my experience Spirit communicates in visionary, symbolic, mythic ways, often from the great "library" of  human archetypes.  This visioning was a blessing for me, and something I will continue to contemplate and ask to understand.  

"Asherah" (Artist unknown)

*ASHERAH POLE

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   *** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah_pole

An "Asherah pole" is a sacred tree or pole that stood near Canaanite religious locations to honor the Ugaritic mother-goddess Asherah, consort of El. The relation of the literary references to an asherah and archaeological finds of Judaean pillar-figurines has engendered a literature of debate.  The asherim were  objects related to the worship of the fertility goddess Asherah, the consort of either Ba'al or, as inscriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom attest, Yahweh, and thus objects of contention among competing cults. 

In translations that render the Hebrew asherim into English as "Asherah poles," the insertion of "pole" begs the question by setting up unwarranted expectations for such a wooden object: "we are never told exactly what it was", observes John Day.[4] 

Though there was certainly a movement against goddess-worship at the Jerusalem Temple in the time of King Josiah, (2 Chronicles 34:3) it did not long survive his reign, as the following four kings "did what was evil in the eyes of Yahweh" (2 Kings 23:32, 37; 24:9, 19)[citation needed]. Further exhortations came from Jeremiah. The traditional interpretation of the Biblical text is that the Israelites imported pagan elements such as the Asherah poles from the surrounding Canaanites. In light of archeological finds, however, modern scholars now theorize that the Israelite folk religion was Canaanite in its inception and always polytheistic, and it was the prophets and priests who denounced the Asherah poles who were the innovators (of monotheism with an exclusive male god).

Asherim are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, the Books of Kings, the second Book of Chronicles, and the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Micah. The term often appears as merely אשרה, (Asherah) referred to as "groves" in the King James Version, which follows the Septuagint rendering as ἄλσος, pl. ἄλση, and the Vulgate lucus, and "poles" in the New Revised Standard Version; no word that may be translated as "poles" appears in the text. Scholars have indicated, however, that the plural use of the term (English "Asherahs", translating Hebrew Asherim or Asherot) provides ample evidence that reference is being made to objects of worship rather than a transcendent figure.

The Hebrew Bible suggests that the poles were made of wood. In the sixth chapter of the Book of Judges, God is recorded as instructing the Israelite judge Gideon to cut down an Asherah pole that was next to an altar to Baal. The wood was to be used for a burnt offering.

Deuteronomy 16:21 states that YHWH (rendered as "the Lord") hated Asherim whether rendered as poles: "Do not set up any [wooden] Asherah [pole] beside the altar you build to the Lord your God" or as living trees: "You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of the Lord your God which you shall make". That Asherahs were not always living trees is shown in 1 Kings 14:23: "their asherim, beside every luxuriant tree".  However, the record indicates that the Jewish people often departed from this ideal. For example, King Manasseh placed an Asherah pole in the Holy Temple (2 Kings 21:7). King Josiah's reforms in the late 7th century BC included the destruction of many Asherah poles (2 Kings 23:14).

Exodus 34:13 states: "Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherim [Asherah poles]."  Some biblical archaeologists have suggested that until the 6th century BC the Israelite peoples had household shrines, or at least figurines, of Asherah, which are strikingly common in the archaeological remains.

Raphael Patai identified the pillar figurines with Asherah in The Hebrew Goddess.

Beautiful.............Tribal Fusion

 https://youtu.be/1q-k1Ev8fVc

Four Years Ago: Remembering the Women's March!

 

The March in Tucson - "Sophia", "Quon Yin", and "Spider Woman"

"6,000 years of patriarchy, and the best you can come up with is Donald Trump?"

Oakland, California - thanks to Annie Waters and Friends

And elsewhere:  New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and all around the World.

 (All photos below from  The New York Times)

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/21/world/womens-march-pictures.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1

"Joanna Hearing Music"

"Joanna Hearing Music" (2021)

 

My continuing efforts to "get my hand back" - I'm  pleased with this painting, as it has been in my mind for a long time.  I wanted to make a painting to honor my friend the Composer  Joanna Brouk, who passed away in 2017.  She used to tell me that she "heard the music" first, and often her composing happened afterwards.  She was one of the most extraordinary and brilliant people I have ever known, and hardly a day goes by that I don't miss her.  

Wherever you are, Joanna, I hope you like this painting.

"I still see shapes when I hear music

It was never my desire to be “out there”

It was just my joy to do it

I hear music still

I write every day.

The writing and the music come from the same place.

There’s a lot of stuff coming through still

Last night I was awoken by Goddess dreams

And that happens a lot."

Joanna Brouk 

as told to Douglas Mcgowan, August, 2015

Silly Paintngs

I can think of nothing profound today to note in my Blog (well, there is so much profound going on all around me that, in truth, I am speechless)..........so I'm just going to post a couple of my experiments.  I'm trying to find my way back to painting,  braving the blank faces of all these canvases I've collected.  Wow, I am rusty.  So I've just been making silly paintings, and not worrying about whether they are good or not or have any "meaning".  But here's a few I find I like anyway.  

It is good to find my friendship with paint again!  I have so many old paintings that have either been destroyed, lost, mostly given away, or sit in a dusty closet...............I think I shall review them and make their aquaintance again.

Painting is the most challenging art to me, and those who master it are truly remarkable people.  It's also very sad that art in general is not valued, and particularly now painting is a doomed end for most people who do it.   People only value paintings if they end up in some kind of museum or gallery that says "they have value", and reduce the aesthetic experience to a dollar sign instead of a window into another world................... I think, to honor my "lost children" my next post will be all the paintings I've done  and have a record of that were destroyed or lost.