Gaia - beautiful video (and new masks)

As I make masks for Goddesses that are multi-cultural personifications of the  "faces of Mother Earlth", a friend forwarded this extraordinary video to me.

"Skadi", Scandinavian Goddess of Winter & Ice

"Oya", African Goddess of storms

The Independent Eye

From "The Descent of the Goddess Inanna" (2008)

I wanted to introduce two extraordinary people who have been a mythic team for over 45 years, Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller, the Independent Eye.  Actors, playwrights, directors, singers, composers, and master puppeteers, they have had an extraordinary career.  I take the liberty of sharing here a brief video excerpt from their website, and have copied below their most recent newsletter.  Thank you, Conrad and Elizabeth, for inspiring and teaching me!

EyeSight The Independent Eye                             March 1, 2012

In Perpetual Spring... Mistrusting Paradise?      Our plum trees and feral cats are confused.  Our wall furnace is asking questions.  It's dry shirt-sleeve weather in February, when in Sebastopol it should be rainy and chill.  What gives?      Well, can't help but think "climate change" and expect the worst for the human race.  And with the rumbles of election time, it's hard to frolic out into the spring.      But let us not hold back from stepping out into the day, breathing in the air, and saying "Ye gods, what a gorgeous day!"  We need those in-drawn praises of life to hold through the dark times.  More and more, I hold the irrational thought that we have to feel the spring before it's willing to come.      Co-Creation...      Our reading and performance tour of Co-Creation continues on.  See the calendar to the right, and join us.  Email us about hosting us in your living room, coffee house, arts center, gallery, or wherever you can assemble fifteen friends. Late June in Denver/Boulder, late summer or early fall in the Midwest and East, most any time in the greater Bay Area. Our Duo Show...      First draft is finished, and we start rehearsals this week.  First showings late summer.  It might even have a title by then.  Several old pieces are incorporated in it, including "Freeway," which has reappeared in several shows, but now revisited in a new context.  More as we go.    Strange Evolution...      How things catch fire.  In 2003 I created a solo story-telling show, Survival Tips for the Plague Years.  I played a couple of performances in Sebastopol, adapted it to radio, then canned it.  It seemed to have strong audience response, maybe too strong: several friends found it highly depressing, especially one story, "Galahad's Fool."  For all practical purposes, it was dead meat.      Recently, a friend who makes puppet films sent me a first-draft script for comment.  It was on the theme of St. Joan, and as a framing device he used a filmmaker struggling to cope with that theme.  Later, he went a different direction, but the spark struck.  Now, I'm launched into work on a novel about an artist wrestling with a Sir Galahad journey, both of them on their quests for the Holy Grail, whatever they conceive it to be.  Damned thing about novels:  there are so many words.       Sometimes an idea lies fallow until someone empties the slop bucket, and suddenly it's the magic catalyst.  Right now what's emerging is a big, messy tsunami, but a very personal one.  We'll see.      At Play...      Our daughter Johanna and her mate have just bought a 14th Century stone mill house in Tuscany, and now launched into the process of making it their own.  Our son is beginning work illustrating  a fantasy graphic novel to be serialized on the Web.       We gave readings of Co-Creation this month for the San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild and the Sonoma County Pagan Network — diverse audiences indeed — and performed short sketches for a local Valentine's "Love Salon" cabaret and for Arcata Playhouse in Professor Willikers’ Puppet Slam, a thorougly jovial affair.      We're not wild social beings, but gradually we've evolved a bit more contact with the rest of humanity.  We attend a periodic poetry salon and Shakespeare reading group, quarterly meetings of the SF Bay Puppetry Guild, a small full moon circle, Sunday morning coffee at Hard Core Espresso, and recently lots of friends' parties, which have resulted in both of us gaining five pounds, despite faithful trips to the gym.  Life is good. Peace and joy— Conrad Bishop Featured this Month... {with a bonus} Descent of the Goddess Inanna— A full-length DVD of our 2007 staging. The Queen of Heaven and Earth begins a fateful descent to meet her sister, Queen of the Underworld, as a New Jersey wedding photographer finds her images turning into nightmares. Based on 5,000-year-old Sumerian myths, this dramatic revisioning features compelling music, masks & puppets, and the dazzling richness, humor and erotic imagery of the ancient texts.  It's $16.95 plus shipping.  Order through our website.    * * * Bonus:  Order Inanna this month through our website and receive a free 72-minute CD of Diana's Gifts — six of our favorite audio-dramas, the most "visual" of all our dramatic work. Upcoming Gigs... Concert Readings of Co-Creation— Saturday, March 3 7:00 pm House Concert - Los Angeles, CA Email for invitation.   Sunday, March 4 2:00 pm House Concert - Long Beach, CA Email for invitation.   Friday, March 5 8:00 pm House Concert - Van Nuys, CA Email for invitation.   Saturday, March 10 6:45 pm House Concert - Menlo Park, CA Email for invitation.   Monday, March 12 7:00 pm Arcata Playhouse - Arcata, CA Free.   Thursday, April 5 7:00 pm Pegasus Theater, Monte Rio, CA Free.   Thursday, April 12 7:00 pm The Imaginists, Santa Rosa, CA Free.   Wednesday, April 18 7:00 pm Main Stage West, Sebastopol, CA Free.     — more to come —   [Email us for info on hosting a reading]   and performing a short sketch as part of An Evening of Puppet Obsession 6:00 pm, Sunday, April 1st The Garage, 975 Howard St., SF www.975Howard.com Explorations... Enter the Labyrinth...      ... of our website.  Many treasures.  To mention a few: All 92 episodes of our radio series Hitchhiking off the Map for free listening (See "Media"). Full scripts of 29 of our original plays for free online reading (See "Print"). Photos, reviews, video samplers, and a chronicle of 38 years of work (See "Stage/Chronicle"). Our library of play anthologies, CDs and DVDs for sale (See "Media" and "Print").      Much else besides.  START HERE.

Quote of the month... From Co-Creation... Great demands require great patience.  In a rehearsal, you learn gradually that the sudden breakthrough, the perfect solution, that moment of blinding truth won’t necessarily come today.  Maybe it won’t come tomorrow or till you’re halfway through the run of the show.  You push as far as you can, and then you lie back and wait.  Sow seeds and wait for the sprouting.  Truth, oneness, trust — they likely won’t come as lightning bolts.  As the Christ-like space alien teaches in Stranger in a Strange Land, “Waiting is.”  Meanwhile, celebrate.

Visit our website for four decades of photos, playscripts, radio shows and chronicles of life, plus a catalog of our published books, CDs and DVDs. www.independenteye.org The Independent Eye - 502 Pleasant Hill Road, Sebastopol, CA 95472 eye@independenteye.org Copyright 2012 The Independent Eye.  All rights reserved.

Pachamama Mask (almost) finished

"Pachamama"

 I'm almost finished with this mask, "Pachamama".  Macha has gathered a great "Mask Council", with an online discussion group, and great minds are circulating ideas about how these masks might look, be performed, and their stories told even as I write.

Freya, who has explored South America has inspired me to make the mask with the bright colors of the indigenous peoples art and clothing.  We envision the performer in the handwoven garments to be found among peoples of Bolivia and Equador, and Freya suggests that she hold a spindle, because that is a common sight.  With her spindle, the performer might offer threads to the celebrants/audience, encouraging them to "assist in the spinning" of a new way of understanding our relationship to Mother Earth.

I wrote about Pachamama, and introduced the Pachamama Alliance, in a recent article:

http://threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com/2012/02/pachemama-and-rights-of-mother-earth-in.html

Mything Links and Mythic Resources

 
Since I'm neck high again in mythology as I work on masks, I felt like re-introducing one of my favorite sites,  Kathleen Jenks "MYTHING LINKS"
site.  And here are a few more links to Mythology sites I've enjoyed. 

* Mythic Passages
* Mything Links
* Mythic Mojo: Catherine Svehla
* The Imaginal Institute-
* Joseph Campbell Foundation
* Mythopoetics
* The Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts
* The Journal of Mythic Arts
*The New Stories Foundation
* Parabola Magazine
* Black Earth Institute 
* Mythic Musing Blog

* Immanence:  A Journal of Applied Myth, Story and Folklore

"Our challenge is to bring the Goddess back to life, to envision, create, and inhabit the re-membered living  body of the Earth."

Starhawk

And just as the false assumption that we are not connected to the Earth has led to the ecological crisis, so the equally false assumption that we are not connected to each other has led to our social crisis.

--Al Gore, EARTH IN BALANCE

Spider Woman's Hands (PP)

I can't resist some of the free offerings on the Web. This one is  www.slideshare.net,  a free service that allows you to post power point presentations to the Web (it looks best if you make it "full screen") - so my experiment here is to post the presentation that I gave last year at the Conference at the Claremont School of Theology on Spider Woman.

We're weavers all - so may we rub a bit of Spider Web into the palms of our hands in 2012!

Spider Woman's Hands 

                                              View more presentations                                                 from Lauren Raine.

Soundings of the Planet? Gaia's Voice?

  My friend Fahrusha gave me permission to reproduce the fascinating article she recently posted on her Blog  about the strange phenomena of rhythmic sounds heard in different parts of the world, which she suggests could "Gaia's Voice".  Although there have been quite few "copy cat" fakes since the video  from Kiev was posted, there seems to be fairly good evidence that the video below is genuine.  My  thanks to Fahrusha, who is a noted psychic in NYC, for her article below and her blog.

Weird sounds and Earth changes

On August 23, 2011 between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. I was traveling on a ferryboat from Fire Island N.Y. to Long Island N.Y. after a too short holiday. There was a small girl about four years old who was also on the boat with a group of relatives. We were both riding on the open top level of the ferry. Towards the end of the ride I was gazing at the shore in anticipation when the level of the Earth seemed to shift. The sea was very calm. The child noticed it too and pointed and cried out to her fellow travellers who had not seen it. I mentioned it to my companion with a bit of anxiety but he hadn’t noticed it either.

Soon I was in a car driving west toward Manhattan. The event on the ferry probably would have passed totally from memory had it not been for the news I heard on the radio when I returned to the car after lunch: THERE HAD BEEN AN EARTHQUAKE IN NYC!!! Totally surprising, and as it turned out the actual epicenter of the quake was in Virginia, but it was clearly felt in New York City. The visual anomaly seen by myself and the child had been approximately an hour before the earthquake struck. Was there any connection? I do not know.


On Monday, February 02, 2009 at 10:34:19 PM and Tuesday, February 03, 2009 at 03:34:19 two earthquakes were felt just to the south of the location where I had been. I was not present for either of them but was told by several persons who were, that the sound was like that of a large truck that had been dropped from a great height.  Recently I have become aware of the mysterious sounds which a variety of people from many places around the world have heard. There are purported recordings of these sounds on YouTube, some of which are probably hoaxed, but I think not all.

What I personally think may be happening is related to global warming.  As the Earth’s temperature is rising quickly (in geologic terms) perhaps on average a degree a decade, the polar ice caps and many glaciers are melting causing a displacement of water. Simply put, large amounts of water in the form of ice are melting and the water in liquid form is going elsewhere. In the North Arctic/Atlantic region the melting fresh water being dumped into the sea seems to have affected and diverted the Gulf Stream causing Europe to have a record cold winter. With the Himalaya glaciers melting there is abnormal flooding in Pakistan and Bangladesh in the rainy monsoon season.  In other places the lack of snow/ice/glaciers are causing the land to rise very slowly and unevenly causing some of these sounds and earthquakes. Water is extraordinarily heavy even when it is only a few feet thick. Think of massive amounts of rock under considerable pressure shifting against one another for perhaps miles on a seam under the surface of the Earth. Granted, this explanation is somewhat simplistic, but generally speaking this is what I believe to be happening.

It would seem that it is The Mother Gaia speaking to us.

For an interesting compilation of these trumpet-like mechanical sounds heard worldwide and some back stories from experiencers go to http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1940&category=Environment which is Linda Moulton Howe’s Earthfiles website.

 

 Sounds recorded in Kiev, Ukraine, August 3, 2011

Pachemama and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia

“The earth is what we all have in common.” 

 Wendell Barry

The next mask I want to work on is Pachemama, the name for Mother Earth among indigenous populations of South America.  Something really important happened in December of 2010 with the passage of the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia.  In Wikipedia's commentary about this remarkable event, the editor notes that "Mother Earth is sacred to indigenous peoples".  I was saddened to be reminded, again, that in the so-called modern world, Mother Earth is not sacred.  As corporate oil interests (from The   Pachemama Allience below) negotiate for 5 million acres of rain forest in Ecuador......I am reminded again that to that mind, nothing is sacred.  

I just have to say it.   People talk about 2012 and the end of the Mayan Calendar and the "end of days".  Here it is.  I'm never able to forget that this is the reality going on all around us.  Here I am, living in a large city in Arizona, daily shopping for my mother and myself, driving in and out of malls and grocery stores, stuck in the responsibilities and economic realities as anyone else............and meanwhile, I hear always the myriad voices of Pachemama.

 As I pull in to parking lots or enjoy the great privilege and luxury  of sitting down at a restaurant to choose what I want to eat, people in the highlands of Bolivia are being driven out of  ancestral homes by global warming, and the famous snows of Kilamajaro grow less every year, and the blue glaciers of Antarctica fall into the sea, tribal wars intensify in the Sudan as resources become less, another 10 or 20 species becomes extinct ..........and corporate executives in black and white suits sit around expensive tables and discuss cutting down the very lungs of our planet in the Amazonian rain forests.  And then they go to lunch.

WE are the agents of "2012", not some apocalyptic punishing father god, or, for that matter, a mythic galactic mother ship either.  I remember when Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" came out in 2006.........I've seen this arise all my adult life.  The shift in consciousness is also not going to come from some magical source - it's going to come from us, is coming from us, as we understand that we are all a part of Gaia, of Pachemama, and of each other.  As we re-sanctify the Earth.  And what happened in Bolivia is very hopeful from that perspective.

Law of the Rights of Mother Earth

(From Wikipedia)

Law of the Rights of Mother Earth (Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra) is a Bolivian law  that was passed by Bolivia's Legislative Assembly in December 2010. This 10 article law was presented by president Evo Morales at the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference.  The law defines Mother Earth as "...the dynamic living system formed by the indivisible community of all life systems and living beings whom are interrelated, interdependent, and complementary, which share a common destiny" adding that "Mother Earth is considered sacred in the worldview of Indigenous peoples and nations. 

The law enumerates seven specific rights to which Mother Earth is entitled:

• To life: It is the right to the maintenance of the integrity of life systems and natural processes which sustain them, as well as the capacities and conditions for their renewal
• To the Diversity of Life: It is the right to the preservation of the differentiation and variety of the beings that comprise Mother Earth, without being genetically altered, nor artificially modified in their structure, in such a manner that threatens their existence, functioning and future potential
• To water: It is the right of the preservation of the quality and composition of water to sustain life systems and their protection with regards to contamination, for renewal of the life of Mother Earth and all its components
• To clean air: It is the right of the preservation of the quality and composition of air to sustain life systems and their protection with regards to contamination, for renewal of the life of Mother Earth and all its components
• To equilibrium: It is the right to maintenance or restoration of the inter-relation, interdependence, ability to complement and functionality of the components of Mother Earth, in a balanced manner for the continuation of its cycles and the renewal of its vital processes
• To restoration: It is the right to the effective and opportune restoration of life systems affected by direct or indirect human activities
• To live free of contamination: It is the right for preservation of Mother Earth and any of its components with regards to toxic and radioactive waste generated by human activities.
•  

 

**Five Million Acres at Risk for New Oil Development in 2012

Pachemama's lungs are the forests of our planet, and Her lungs are our lungs.  The Ecuadorean government is in advanced negotiations to open five million acres of pristine rain forest in the south central Amazon basin for new oil development in early 2012.  The   Pachemama Allience  is working with indigenous partners to resist this new threat. For more information about the situation in Ecuador: