Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
The book was meant to document the work of contemporary artists whose visionary work was influenced by their unique spiritual insights and experiences. Travelling across the country not long after graduate school, I met artists who defined their work as spiritual practice in New York City, in Arkansas, in California, and elsewhere. Among them were contemporary artists Rafael Ortiz, Rachel Rosenthal, Alex and Allison Grey, Kathleen Holder, Beth Ames Swartz, and others. Although I was not successful in finding a publisher for SEEING IN A SACRED MANNER as a book and ultimately moved on to other endeavors, I did publish some of these interviews so graciously granted me by these artists, in a number of art journals.
More than 30 years later, as artists continue to seek encouragement for the deeper matrices that drive them to create and seek purpose in their work, I believe these conversations about art and spirituality are more relevant than ever. I take the opportunity in this paper to share the wisdom of these voices again. Most of them I have digitized and they can be viewed at: http://www.laurenraine.com/articles.html
Below is the interview I was fortunate to have with the vibrant visionary artist Lorraine Capparell at her home in California so long ago. It was a pleasure I remember well. She is as creative as ever, and although this interview is not about her current work, please visit her website to learn more about Lorraine's work: http://www.skymuseum.com/
When I met Lorraine Capparell for our interview, it was at her home in Palo Alto, California, where she had developed a following as a sculptor, photographer, painter and free-lance graphic designer. Originally from the East Coast, she studied art at Cornell University, and later at San Francisco State University. At the time of our Interview, her solo exhibitions included "Hands", her extraordinary sculpture that was first shown at the San Jose Museum of Art in 1982, and "Hand Signals", a show of watercolors at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, New York in 1988. Additionally, her work was published and written about in a number of contemporary publications, including the WomanSpirit Sourcebook, and Dreams are Wiser Than Men, edited by Richard Russo (North Atlantic Books, 1987). (3.)
Capparell practices Buddhist Vipassana meditation, and has twice travelled to South East Asia and Sri Lanka to study Buddhist and Hindu art and culture. Vipassana is a meditative technique that teaches close attention to the breath to develop a profound internal stillness, the "spaciousness" below the chattering, reasoning mind, from which genuine creativity and receptivity may arise. In a statement to her work, Capparell commented that "Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is Form" . This quality of attention informs her art process as well as her life. Remembering and recording dreams is an important daily activity as well, one that provides her with a resource from which she draws inspiration, as well as solutions to creative problems encountered along the way. Her dreams introduce her to imagery that is archetypal as well as intimately personal, and her dreams reveal their meanings as she actualizes them in her art. Such was true of her amazing sculpture "Hands", which she saw fully realized within a dream two years before she completed.
Interview with Lorraine Capparell December 11, 1988
LR: You said that you often receive ideas for your art through dreams?
LC: It frees me to pursue the work. I began using my dreams because of a "judge" I had inside, always questioning "what is this you're making, why are you making it, is it good enough?" All of that stressful inner dialogue. If I get a powerful image from a dream, and make a sculpture of it, it's not a problem. It is valid to me, because it already existed in some way within the dimension of dreams.
Sometimes I see them as finished pieces. I saw "Hands" in a dream - I saw it vividly as a photograph in a book! I dreamed that my father gave me an art history book: I leafed through it and saw the piece. "Hands" was written on the page, and it also said, curiously, that it was made by an artist other than myself.
LR: You saw what later became your Sculpture "Hands" in a book within your dream?
LC: Yes. That's why it's been such a joy to see the piece published, the most recent publication being in the Woman Spirit Sourcebook. I saw it in the dream as a picture in a book, went through the process of making it, and now at last see it published in an actual book!
LR" Do you think dreams can be prophetic?
LC: Yes, if you put the energy into manifesting them, if you make the dream a reality not only in the world, but in your consciousness. What's a dream? It's all intricately intertwined. We first have to think of something in order to create it on the physical plane. If you have a dream, your subconscious or super conscious is planting something in your mind, which you can then manifest.
Sometimes, when I'm working, before I go to sleep I'll suggest to myself that I would like to dream a creative solution to a problem. For example, I was trying to figure out how to glaze "Hands". So I asked my dreams to show me the ways. In fact, I finally stopped working on the piece because of a dream. Each torso is separate, and was glazed individually in an electric kiln. I airbrushed and fired each torso about six times, and was planning to do a last bit of firing the next day. That night I dreamt one of the torsos blew up! I was so upset by this dream that I decided it was over, I wouldn't glaze any further.
LR: The dream not only inspired the work, but also told you when to stop?
LC: Yes. I saw it shattering in the dream, which was actually a real possibility. I had fired the torsos so many times, and they are large irregular shapes. But you can be at the end of a long process and not know when to stop. The dream told me it was time to stop.
LR: In "Hands" each figure has three faces. Did you relate that to the three aspects of the Goddess (Mother, Maiden and Crone), or Trinities such as Shiva, Brahma and Vishnu?
LC: No, not really. I had heard of the three faces of Eve, and the myth of Janus. That was about it. Of course, in the process of working, I learned a lot more.
LR: Yet "Hands", along with the sculptural installation you created which you titled "The Three Ages of Women", are very closely related to the symbols associated with the Goddess. It's interesting that you saw the image in your dream in a "history book". The re-emergence and re-discovery of the Goddess in the Women's Spirituality movement, along with the work of Marija Gimbutas (4) is also about the surfacing of "buried history". You also mentioned that you saw the sculpture rising out of the Earth?
LC: I dreamt the entire image just once. What I saw in the book was a photograph of the piece. But n dreams you can look, it's a photograph, and you look again, and it comes alive. So I also saw it emerging wet, as if it came from within the Earth.
LR: When did you have this dream?
LC: In 1980. It was my first major sculpture. I worked on "Hands" for two years. I haven't sold it, because I feel it needs a special environment. It could be a fountain - I've thought of plumbing it so that water will come out horizontally, at the waist level of the figures, flowing over the platform. I would like to make it active, make it wet.
Each time I've exhibited it I've also created a ritual for it, or one was created by others. When I showed it in 1982 at the San Jose Museum of Art I asked two dancers to design something for it. I also asked the women who posed for "Hands" to do a ritual, and we choreographed a simple circular ritual, our hands pushing and joining to music. I have a videotape of that.
LR: The hands in the sculpture, in gesture and placement, resemble flames. Did you realize that?
LC: Yes. I found out that that position, the gesture of pushing forward, is equated in Tai Chi with the hexagram for fire. So I learned the gesture related to fire, and I glazed it as fire. The open hand is also a gesture of Buddha. "Hands" also has to do with the possibility of enlightenment, because it rises from the Earth, from the dark, moving through the flame of the senses, the flame of physical life, of passion and transformation.
LR: And the gesture itself - are the women pushing out?
LC: Pushing forward. Pushing out, to me, is about exclusion. Pushing forward is dynamic growth. In Tai Chi you push and then bring back.
LR: How did your sculptural group "The Three Ages of Women" come about?
LC: It began as a possible commission for a woman who had a home in Big Sur, with a beautiful Pacific view. She wanted a column to hold up the branch of a tree. I began designing columns based on Greek columns. From my reading about Ionic columns I learned there were certain shapes that were considered masculine and certain shapes that were feminine, and I created a number of designs based on the classic feminine styles. I made studies, and sent them to Big Sur. She eventually decided she didn't want to continue with the project, but by that time I was so turned on by the idea I kept going anyway. I chose three different shapes that I particularly liked, and made 26" models of them.
I later met a woman who is interested in the Goddess, and she arranged for us to install some sculpture in the yard of a woman who is a psychologist. She was planning a weekend retreat for women, and she wanted to exhibit sculpture as a part of it. When I showed her pictures of my columns, she said "Those are the three ages of women, didn't you know that?" I said "No, tell me about it!" That was how I learned about the Maiden, the Matron, and the Crone. That sort of thing seems to happen a lot. I'll work on an image, especially if it comes from a dream, and later find out is connected to something.
LR: You often access your art form your dreams, but your art also allows you to access meaning and symbolism - while you didn't dream the columns, it wasn't until later you learned what they represented.
LC: Right.
LR: Why do you call the Circle of five figures in the installation the "Temple of the Crones"?
LC: Actually, it's a Temple to the wisdom of old age. The gate is formed by the Maiden and the Matron columns, each standing opposite the other. You progress through the stages of Maiden and Matron in order to enter the Circle of Crones.
When I showed it, I asked Chloe Scott, a dancer in her 60's, if she would choreograph something for the "Three Ages of Women". She has a troupe of women dancers called Dymaxion, who have been working together for years. Her performance began with the Maidens running into the space, very sprightly. The more sedate Matrons then entered, rounded up the Maidens, and brought them back. Then Chloe entered alone, in order to dance the Crone's Dance - it was slow and stately. Finally she led the group into the Temple, and they performed a ritual of hands crossing, based on my sculpture "Hands".
You see, as I worked on the piece I realized we are lacking in reverence for elders, particularly for elder women. We don't honor the Crone, the "Saga". I made five Crones in a circle, representing five wise old women. The circle represents the wisdom of old age, and in particular, the wisdom of mature womanhood.
LR: Do you keep a record of your dreams as a resource?
LC: I keep a dream journal. I have volumes of dreams from over the years! Periodically I'll go through them. I'm currently working on a series of ceramic figures; gold leafed, enclosed or framed in boxes. I ran across the image of a torso in a box in one of my dream journals, and I began to work on the idea, and did two or three of them.
About that time I was rejected from an art gallery. They rejected a piece called "Dream Shower" and "Hands" because of nudity. So I began using classical paintings as a basis for the figures I put in the boxes. I used Titian, Raphael's "Three Graces", Ingre…..I made sculptures from the paintings because I wanted to validate my use of the body. I was reacting to being rejected! Hey look, nudity occurs in the classics!
I showed them to a friend, who said "Oh, those are Hindu temple pieces! Don't you see that?" Well, no, I didn't. Sometimes I feel I'm blindly manifesting these things, and have no idea of where they come from or what they are. I just like them. So now I think of them as "Temple pieces", and I want to display them in that context. I'm to show them in February, 1989, in conjunction with the Women's Caucus for the Arts. I want to place them at different levels, all these niches, to suggest an altar.
My friend Rhodessa Jones is an actress. One of her characters she calls "Lily Overstreet". She and I planned to do collaboration - I would create a room or sculpture, and she would do a performance. She wanted a table to put things on, so I decided to make the table actually her - her figure is the base of the table. The "Lily Table". The set will also include a giant bed shaped like a hand, which also might represent the "Hand of the Mother". I seem to pursue the hand image again and again and again. In the last year I've done a series of watercolors I call "Hand Signals". They are different hand gestures; some are mudras, like the mudras for wakefulness and fearlessness.
LR: You mentioned that you make yourself do at least one painting each day?
LC: It's a good way to access your unconscious, to get ideas. Some days I don't know what to do for my daily painting - so I'll paint my dreams, or mandalas, whatever comes to mind, because there is a void to fill. "Hand Signals" came from my daily painting practice. I ran out of ideas, and felt like tracing my hand, but it seemed too plebian. I finally gave in, and that led me to the idea of gesture as a window to a scene. This became a series. I would never have hit on those ideas otherwise. I did about 70 paintings, and now have a show of them.
LR: What kind of intention do you think you have in your work?
LC: The first time I displayed "Hands" I received a letter from a docent, who said that she loved going to the room it was in, just to sit during her lunch hour. I couldn't have asked for more! I would like the work to evoke serenity, contemplation about your place in life. In the 70's I remember talking with a friend, a discussion about what art meant to us. I decided I wanted my art to be essentially religious, which then provoked an argument, because that word is so loaded. "Religious" meant dogma of some kind - but at that point in my development I didn't know any other word to use.
Now I can say that I want my art to convey something that is archetypal, something that transcends everyday life. I would like to point to the unity we all belong to, and perhaps thus provoke others to work on their awareness of that as well.
Although, in truth, it doesn't ever start out that way. With an intention or a purpose. If I have an original idea I just let it grow in myself and in the art process. I don't have an goal. I didn't begin with a specific idea when I made the columns for the "Three Ages of Women" or the framed figures I'm working on now.
LR: And yet you did make what became a Temple, and altarpieces for contemplation. What is a sacred space or a religious object - or for that matter, what is a myth, a ritual? Aren't they really objects or spaces or stories or images to……………..
LC: Trigger something! You can't call it religion - what it's about is working on your awareness. As an artist, I work on something I may not be clear about, I just work on it, and in the process go through every imaginable state of liking and hating and doubting and desiring, but there is a bonus. My artwork allows me to learn along the way. I learn by trying to make these pieces real, trying to make them tangible and physical. I haven't always understood them, but along the way I learn their meanings.
LR: Sometimes the inspiration precedes the comprehension?
LC: They unfold. In other words, don't stop! There is an opportunity to learn more, always. Any time you work, you're actually working on yourself as well.
REFERENCES:
3. https://www.amazon.com/Dreams-Are-Wiser-Than-Men/dp/0938190946 "Edited by Richard A. Russo, this anthology of essays, poems, and short stories recounts dreams, analyzes dreams, and celebrates dreams. Dreams, like human experience, have intrinsic value apart from any interpretation we make of them. Instead of asking what dreams can do for us, ask how we may honor the dream."
4. https://www.belili.org/marija/aboutmarija.html "Agricultural people's beliefs concerning sterility and fertility, the fragility of life and the constant threat of destruction, and the periodic need to renew the generative processes of nature are among the most enduring. They live on in the present... The Goddess-centered religion existed for a very long time... leaving an indelible imprint on the Western psyche." -- Marija Gimbutas
"As a Jungian analyst and a historian, I would like to offer an archetypal overview of why the current crisis may have come into being; showing when, where and how the masculine and feminine archetypes – reflected in the image of a God or Goddess – became separated, and why this separation has had such a deep impact on Western civilization. I am not speaking only of the pandemic but the far greater challenge of climate change."
I take the liberty of posting this important article by psychologist and mythologist Anne Baring Ph.D because it so eloquently and succinctly describes how Western culture evolved patriarchy, how we forgot that God was ever also a woman, and why patriarchy's values must end and the Goddess must return to the world, if we, and our fellow Beings on this beautiful planet, are going to continue.
A personal note: I keep intending to make this Blog more "autobiographical". But each time I sit down to write, I am struck with the increasing tempo of the great world crisis, and I remember the voices of such great thinkers, philosophers, herstorians, theologians, and activists as Dr. Baring; and suddenly, my story just merges in my mind with the greater collective story.
"Asherah"
ERASURE OF THE FEMININE
Ann Baring
Owing to the research that I and others have conducted over the
last 40 years, we now know that in the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras, the
principal deity worshiped was the Great Mother. In this forgotten cosmology,
there was no Creator beyond creation. Creation emerged from the womb of the
Great Mother. All species, including our own, were her children. Everything on
Earth and in the Cosmos was connected through relationship with her.
Then, around 1,500 BC, there was a change so great that its
repercussions are keenly felt in all aspects of Western civilization. This
change was the replacement of the Great Mother by the Great Father. As the
monotheistic Father, God brought creation into being as something separate and
distant from Himself, so nature became split off from spirit and was no longer
sacred. Simultaneously, the rise of powerful city states in the Middle East led
to the creation of a succession of vast empires, territorial conquest, and war.
Although the architectural, artistic, and literary creations of
these empires were extensive, the suffering created by them was also
widespread. Millions of young men lost their lives to war and died in atrocious
pain. Millions of women and children were killed, raped, or sold into slavery.
Deep traumas were created in the collective psyche of humanity that are
unhealed to this day. During millennia of war, we forgot about nature and our
relationship with her. Gradually, we developed the idea that we were above
nature, entitled to control and dominate her for the benefit of our species
alone.
Another event contributed to the loss of the sacredness of
nature—a forgotten event that also had a devastating effect on women and the
planet.[1]
The Jewish people once worshiped both a Goddess and a God—a Queen
and a King of Heaven—who together created the world. But in 621 BC, under a
king called Josiah, a powerful group of priests called Deuteronomists took
control of the First Temple in Jerusalem. They removed every trace of the
Goddess Asherah, the Queen of Heaven, who was worshiped as the Holy Spirit[2]
and Divine Wisdom, and also as the Tree of Life—a Tree that connected the
invisible and visible worlds, and whose fruit was the gift of immortality. The
shamanic rituals of the High Priest which had honoured and communed with the
Queen of Heaven were replaced by new rituals based on obedience to Yahweh’s
Law.[3]
But the Deuteronomists didn’t stop there. They also created the
Myth of the Fall with its punishing God and its grim message of guilt, sin,
suffering, and the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.[4] They
demoted the Goddess—whose title was Mother of All Living—into the human figure
of Eve. They blamed Eve for the sin of disobedience that brought about the Fall
and for bringing sin, suffering, and death into the world. Henceforth, all
women would be contaminated by Eve’s sin and would have to be under men’s
control lest they create further disasters. From it there developed the idea
that the whole human race was tainted by original sin, punished for a
primordial act of disobedience. The created world was no longer a manifestation
of the Tree of Life but was viewed as contaminated by the Fall, no longer
sacred. Woman’s long oppression, even persecution, stems directly from this
myth. Her voice was silenced for millennia.
Yahweh was left as the sole transcendent Creator God; The Divine
Feminine aspect of God was deleted from the image of deity. The only place
where the concept of the sacred marriage survived was in the mystical Jewish
tradition of Kabbalah, known as the Voice of the Dove.[5] The Divine Feminine
was not only banished from Judaism, but also from Christianity which took its
image of God from Judaism. Islam also had a sole male creator god. The
end-result of this new polarizing cosmology was that life on earth was split
off from the divine world; nature was split off from spirit. Men came to be
identified with spirit and women with nature. Body was split off from mind and
mind from soul. Sexuality was sinful. Woman’s only role was to obey and serve
man and carry his seed. All this was a complete reversal of the earlier
cosmology focused on the Great Mother.
There is one further factor that needs to be included in this
story: the deliberate decision by the Roman Church to wipe out all trace of
Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene. Think what it would have meant for the
development of Western civilization if the union of Jesus and Mary Magdalene
had been celebrated by the Church founded in his name. Had their marriage been
recognized and Jesus not turned into the celibate Son of God, Christianity
would have had a totally different history without a celibate male priesthood
and without the terrifying persecution of women in the witch trials that
scarred Europe for five centuries. We might have been spared the disastrous
association of sexuality with sin and the misogyny and mistrust of women that
affects our culture to this day.
Because of this history, we have been on the wrong path for more
than two thousand years, out of alignment with the Earth and the Cosmos. It has
led us to this time of crisis and of awakening, and to the need for a new, yet
very old story that tells us we are the life and breath of the Divine in human
form and that all life is infused with Divinity.[6]
Materialist or reductionist science is built on the flawed
foundation bequeathed to it by patriarchal religion and has dispensed with both
God and the soul. It tells us that the universe is without life, purpose, or
meaning. When the physical brain dies, that is the end of us. The highest
authority is the rational mind. We are separate from the world around us. The
master story is technological progress and unlimited growth.
I think this explains why, in a worldwide culture influenced by
the secular philosophy of science, we have come to believe that it doesn’t
matter what we do to matter—that nature and matter are not sacred, that we are
not part of that sacredness. This is why there is no foundation for morality in
our relationship with the Earth. What we think we need, we take.
from "The Red Book"
Jung could see the dangers of this materialist philosophy and
commented:
"As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become
dehumanized. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer
involved in nature and has lost his emotional “unconscious identity” with
natural phenomena… No voices now speak to man from stones, plants, and animals,
nor does he speak to them believing they can hear. His contact with nature has
gone.[7]"
Once, long ago, the world was experienced as alive with spirit.
Nature was part of a sacred cosmic whole. In spite of horrendous persecution,
Indigenous peoples of the world have kept alive this awareness of the
sacredness of nature and the idea of our kinship with all creation.
The new story emerging in quantum physics tells us that the
universe is a unified field. Our lives are part of a cosmic web of life which
connects all life forms in the universe and on our planet. Every atom of life
interacts with every other atom, no matter how distant. A new vision is
struggling to be born—a vision of our relationship with an intelligent, living,
and interconnected universe.
We are called to a profound process of transformation that is
manifesting as a new planetary consciousness: a consciousness which recognizes
that we are part of a Sacred Web of Life. We need a science and a technology
that does not seek to dominate nature but works with nature, humbly respecting
its harmonious order. We need women who truly embody the Feminine to guide
us,[8] working with enlightened men, to restore the values and the practices
that can transform our relationship with the planet into one of love and care.
This pandemic carries an urgent message for us to wake up to the
small window of opportunity we have to change course before it’s too late. This
means change in every sphere of life: change in the very concept of what it
means to be human and living on this extraordinary planet—change above all, in
our relationship with the Divine Feminine. We tread a path which is on the
knife-edge between the conscious integration of a new vision on the one hand,
and the virtual extinction of our species on the other. Which path will we
choose?
[1] See Betty Kovacs, Merchants of Light (Claremont: The Kamlak
Center, 2019)
[2] This loss of the Holy Spirit was repeated at the Council of
Nicaea in 325 CE when the Hebrew feminine noun for the Holy Spirit—ruach—was
translated first into the Greek word pneuma which is genderless, and then into
the Latin spiritus sanctus which is masculine. The Christian Trinity was
rendered entirely masculine and the former feminine gender of the Holy Spirit
was permanently lost to Christianity.
[3] The books of the Old Testament Scholar, Margaret Barker, give
the facts of this story in detail.
[4] Genesis 2 & 3
[5] See Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos, rev. ed. (UK:
Archive Publishing, 2020), chapter 3.
[6] See my talks on Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity
[7] Carl G. Jung, Man and His Symbols (New York: Random House,
1986), p. 95
[8] By this, I mean women who are not taken over by the will to
power.
ABOUT ANNE BARING
Anne Baring b. 1931. MA Oxon. PhD in Wisdom Studies, Ubiquity
University 2018. Jungian Analyst, author and co-author of 7 books including,
with Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image; with
Andrew Harvey, The Mystic Vision and The Divine Feminine; with Dr. Scilla
Elworthy, Soul Power: an Agenda for a Conscious Humanity. Her most recent book,
The Dream of the Cosmos: A Quest for the Soul (2013, updated and reprinted
2020), was awarded the Scientific and Medical Network Book Prize for 2013. The
ground of all her work is a deep interest in the spiritual, mythological,
shamanic, and artistic traditions of different cultures. Her website is devoted
to the affirmation of a new vision of reality and the issues facing us at this
crucial time of choice. www.annebaring.com
"We
slowly pull focus, lifting up and away from being embedded in our lives
until we attain an overview. This overview empowers us to make valid creative choices."
Julia Cameron, "THE ARTIST'S WAY"*
I have been thinking about the trans-personal nature of creativity, the way it can sometimes seem to express
dimensions of perception that transcend time or even one's
"individuality" as the vision or the poem dips its roots into the
collective mind.
I was recalling a group I used to belong to whose
members were mostly practicing and retired therapists. I often felt
somewhat ill at ease in their company, being without the psychological vocabulary
or training they possessed. In retrospect, sometimes I felt it was the way they,
as therapists, tended to "pathologize" or generalize that made
me uncomfortable. It is, of course, understandable that they should do so, and
that they might often see others
through the lens of their training and practice a standard of mental health and
normalcy. And yet..........something was missing for me. Perhaps what I missed
was a larger room, a room big enough for
the "Mystery". At the time, I did not know how to articulate
that.
Untitled (1972)
There is a thin line between
trans-personal, trans-formative, "non-ordinary states", and madness. Those
separations, of course, can have something to do with the cultural matrix one
is living in. But sometimes "madness" is also brilliant insight. Sometimes
creativity arises from a liminal zone that should not be "explained"
too comprehensively or dismissed because it is outside of an "acceptable
emotional or psychological spectrum". Just because we cannot see
ultra-violet with our eyes does not mean it is not there. But we can imagine
ultra-violet: perhaps we could imagine
what it sounds like, or how it tastes, or what it "feels" like.
Untitled
Lauren Raine (1985)
Carl Jung, who formed the concepts of synchronicity and
the collective unconscious, had "spirit guides" that he
considered a source of crucial insights. He described them as aspects of
his psyche which he could produce, but which could also produce
themselves. Were they "Aspects" that had their own life? Or were they
discrete entities themselves? Among his
"guides" were the archetypal mentor figure Philemon, an ancient
Vedic scholar, and Basilides, an early Gnostic teacher in Alexandria.,
Egypt. Also one thing about Jung's background that is not well known is that
his family was deeply interested in Spiritualism, and included members who were
known locally as mediums. This would have pre-disposed Carl Jung to the
possibility of "spirit guides" that could communicate with him and
advise him.
untitled Lauren Raine (1985)
"Inspiration
may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of sub-consciousness....I
wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness."........... Aaron Copeland
There is a continuing
dialogue within the arts community about artists as shamans.
I both agree and disagree with this comparison. We are a culture that by and
large has lost its shamans. I do not mean, of course, to negate the work
of reclamation and innovation contemporary
shamans, such as Sandra Ingerman (Soul Retrieval) or her mentor Michael
Harner, who have studied universal traditions and evolved new forms
of contemporary shamanism, have contributed to today's world.
Artists have been
marginalized and displaced in the contemporary world and seek meaningful
identity and purpose in a society that at best patronizes them, and at worst
disregards them altogether. How many times have people asked me what I do, and
having told them that I am an artist, their response is "What's your real
job?". I do not tell a lot of people I am an artist. Claiming or seeking a meaningful identity as
a contemporary Shaman in the arts is entirely understandable.
Yet it is presumptuous for
many artists to call themselves "shamans", thus co-opting a word and
a primal practice associated with it that has a very long lineage indeed.
Traditional shamans, while
their practices and symbol systems may vary widely, universally have a great
deal of structure within which they work - they have cultural and tribal
support within traditional systems that go back through many, many generations.
They have systems of
"visioning" and healing, ordeals or initiations, rituals, and
practices for cyclical auspicious occasions, and means of psychic protection that have
evolved for hundreds of years. They have visible and "invisible
support" that provides a strong container within which their
responsibilities and experiences are clear, honored, are often hereditary, and they are generally
expected to be mature and richly experienced before they can begin
practicing as shamanic healers. It is not a random, chaotic process at all
(although certainly Heyoka or Trickster Shamans have their place in worldwide
cultures).
"In
the case of the Sami, my Shaman teacher was trained in her culture for
thirty-five years before she could practice hearing on people outside of her
extended family. When I pondered this, given the fact that she was born into a
prestigious lineage of Shamans and that her talents were obvious when she was a
child, I wondered why she had to study for so long before treating those
outside of her kin group............My Shaman teacher was not only a healer,
but she was also a student of folklore. This is important, because she always
insisted that the three principal sources of her shamanic knowledge were Sami
folklore (tales, legends, and so forth); teachings from the ancestral
lineage-from her father, who was her mentor, and from other ancestral spirits,
who spoke to her from the spirit world; and teachings from spirit entities
(what we might call "spirit aides" or "power animals."
I was once privileged have a conversation with one of the founders of
Eco-feminism, Gloria Orenstein.** Dr. Orenstein is a
Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at USC in Los
Angeles. In the 80's she became friends with, and worked with, a
hereditary Sami shaman.
I will always remember the story she told me about
the first time she went to visit her mentors' family in Finland. It was winter,
very dark, and they had driven for many miles into the countryside, at last
arriving at a house where she was given a room to sleep in. She said that she
lay in bed wondering if she was crazy, coming all the way from Los
Angeles in the dead of winter. She tried to sleep but was disturbed by voices speaking outside the window. They seemed to be calling
for "Caffe, Caffe".
In the morning she asked her hosts why people were outside in the freezing night, asking for coffee! They responded that this was a very good sign: it meant she would receive help. It seems that in Sami land, like flowers and food offerings in Bali, or whiskey to the Orishas of Cuba, coffee was an offering acceptable to the spirit world.
'St. George and the Dragon" (1970)
Does the creation of truly
visionary art make one a shaman? I do not believe so. However, art process -
Flow - can be called shamanic within its healing and revelatory capacity, the way it can reveal the
seamlessness and timelessness of our
inner lives, and the way it can touch collective roots that extend far beyond
our individual perception. There is a liminal dimension to the creative process
one can hardly fail to notice.
Now in my 70's, I am interested in the
synapses and links as I review my long life. Going over some of my very old
drawings, I was amazed to see within them a kind of "code" or touchstone
that repeated over and over throughout the years. I found the drawing above, for example,
which I did when I was about 18 years of age, of "St. George and the Dragon".
I was copying part of the drawing from some old Masters photos - certainly the
"St. George" with the sword was from some painting I must have been
looking at. At 18, I knew nothing
about feminism, the Goddess, or much about mythology either,
although I had looked at various paintings depicting the slaying of dragons by
St. George.
And yet I can read what
became my life purpose, like hieroglyphics, in this little drawing, now, from
the vantage point of age.
Here is a divine female
figure, which I symbolized with wings, who is naked and full breasted. She is no
bound or chaste maiden in need of rescue from a dragon. She seems to have a
snake around her waist and in her hand, she is turning away from the Hero, and
appears to be falling. As she falls she
is merged with the rather tragic, sympathetic looking figure of the dragon about to be slain
by George (who looks nothing at all like a saint to me. In fact, he looks kind of like my abusive
boyfriend of the time.) This is a classic heroic tale - so why did I make
"George" so un-noble?
Behind him is a barren,
rocky land, in contrast to the depths below the dragon figure, with vegetation
bubbling up from the dark earth, and even something that looks like a
dark moon shape as well.
The meanings I can now draw from these symbols represent many years of study
and discussion and ritual and growth and collaboration with colleagues and
mentors, as we became feminists, and as
we mutually evolved Eco-feminism and
Goddess theology. I have come to see over the years a new meaning of the
myth of St. George and the Dragon: wherein the "dragons" of the ancient
pagan earth religions, and the sacred symbols of the ubiquitous snakes of the
Goddess, were banished, slain, re-mythed and de-sacralized in the course of
patriarchal religion and culture.
In 1970 Merlin Stone was
researching and writing about the banished Goddess and the development of patriarchal religions (her
groundbreaking book When God Was A Woman was published in 1976**). Around that time Marija Gimbutas was shaking
up the archeological world with her vision of the World of the Goddess in
prehistory. But I was not exposed to
these ideas until much later. Yet when I was, the work of the Goddess truly
became my life work.
The drawing really is a kind of "future memory".
"Skin Shedder Mandala" Lauren Raine (1985)
*Cameron, Julia: The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, March 18, 2002, JP Tarcher/Putnam NYNY
**Ornstein, Gloria: "Synchronicity and The
Shaman of Sami land" in Uncoiling the Snake: Ancient Patterns in Contemporary Women's Lives (A Snakepower Reader). Edited by Vicki Noble. Harper
& Row, San Francisco, 1993
I am stunned by how almost all the people I tell about my SHRINE FOR THE LOST: THE SIXTH EXTINCTION (currently on display in Flagstaff) have never heard of the Sixth Extinction. A vast number of our fellow Beings are vanishing every day. As they go the complex Ecosystems they are part of become disturbed, then out of balance, and then can begin to fail. We are a foolish species indeed to imagine that this does not also affect us - that we are not a part of those Ecosystems. This is one of the most profound tragedies of our time.
An article I wrote shortly after the election of Trump. Felt like re-visiting it as I continue reflections on the (endangered) role of the artist in our world, and extending that, the role of all of us as visionaries and story weavers.
Recently I travelled cross country, joining conversations that always seemed to end with a question. Since many of my friends are artists, and I include writers, performers, ritualists, dancers, storytellers, and a number of shamans in the category as well, the question seemed to come down to “what do we do now?”
How do we, in a time that seems bent on eliminating or diminishing education, free speech, environmental preservation, social ethics, women's rights and possibly even any kind of consensual truth? As practitioners of the arts, increasingly marginalized by society and now "redefined" by AI, how do we find meaningful identity?
My own response is that I believe it’s vital for artists to remember that we are myth makers. Throughout history, artists of all kinds have possessed the imaginal tools to invent and re-invent the myths that were the cultural underpinnings for their time. They have also, from a shamanic stance, often been those who could "walk between the worlds" and return to speak or illustrate what was learned there. I believe this is a sacred calling.
Phil Cousineau, author of “Once and Future Myths: The Power of Ancient Stories in Our Lives”(2001) cautioned that if we don’t become aware of both our personal and our cultural myths which “act like gravitational forces on us” we risk becoming overpowered, overshadowed, and controlled by them. Myths are in many ways the templates of how we compose our societal and personal values, as well as how people organize their religions. As Cousineau commented further, “the stories we tell of ourselves determine who we become, who we are, and what we believe.”
“We give our mythic side scant attention these days and so a great deal escapes us and we no longer understand our own actions. In most cultures, theatre and dance are considered holy rituals, but in the United States, these arts have become strangely secular.”
Leslie Saxon West, Choreographer, METAMORPHOSES (The myths of Ovid)
The human mind has a unique ability to abstract. A stone is not always a stone – sometimes it becomes a symbol of something, a manifestation of a deity, or it can also become intentionally invisible, even when it stubs our toes. An interpretation of God is something that whole nations have lived or died for. And depending on the aesthetics of a particular culture, foot binding, skull extension, or hair sprayed bouffant hairdos can be experienced as erotic beauty. If the worlds we know are, indeed, experienced through the lens of the stories we tell about them, then how are those stories serving or not serving the crucial time we live in?
"The World is made of stories, not atoms"
Muriel Rukeyzer
A renunciate myth of the Earth as just a "resource" to be exploited, as something "not real", or as a place of sin and suffering to endure until one achieves one's "heavenly reward"...........does not serve the environmental crisis facing a global humanity. Deeply embedded patriarchal stories that make women lesser andsubservientbeings are not only unjust, but also represent an enormous loss to the common well-being of humanity, because they do not release the vitally needed creative brain power of half the human race. A cultural mythos that celebrates violence and competition, that makes guns a symbol of power, do not contribute to the nurturance, cooperation, and sustainability we will need if we are to survive into the future as we confront Climate Change. Stories of “rugged individualism” may not be as useful in a time when science, sociology, ecology, theology, and even physics are demonstrating that all things are interdependent.
"What is the new mythology to be, the mythology of this unified earth as of one harmonious being?"
Joseph Campbell
So what are the new stories arising that can help us to evolve into a wiser, sustainable world? And further, how can they be brought fully alive in comprehensive ways that have vitality and impact? This, I affirm again, is the ancient sacred calling of the artist, the poet, the storyteller, the ritualist.
I remember years ago participating in a week long intensive with the Earth Spirit Community of New England. The event took place in October, in celebration of the closing of the year, the time of going into the darkness of winter. The closing ritual occurred at twilight. Bearing candles, different groups wove through the woods toward a distant lodge from which the sound of heartbeat drums issued. Slowly the lodge filled, illuminated with candles.
As we sat on the floor, lights gradually went out, we were blindfolded and the drums abruptly stopped. We felt bodies rush by us as hands turned us. The sounds of wind, and half understood voices, someone calling, someone crying, or a bit of music came from all directions. As we lost any sense of direction or time we became uncomfortable, frightened and disoriented. I felt as if I was in a vast chamber, the very halls of Hades, listening to echoing voices of the lost. And when it felt like the formless dark would never stop: silence. And the quiet sound of the heartbeat drum returned, re-connecting us to the heart of the Earth. As blindfolds were removed I found myself in a room warmly illuminated with candles. On a central platform sat a woman enthroned in brilliant white, illuminated with candles and flowers. At her feet were baskets of bread. Slowly we rose, took bread and fruit, and left the Temple. And as we left, on each side of the entrance, stood a figure in a black cape. Each had a mirror over his or her face – mirror masks, reflecting our own faces.
Now that was a potent ritual telling of the myth! We had entered mythic space, we had participated together in the Great Round of death and return to the light – and none of us would ever forget it.
People think that stories are shaped by people.
In fact, it’s the other way around. — Terry Pratchett
I am here suggesting that artists, troubled as my friends and I have been, step away for a while from the complex questions of identity so beloved by the art world, cast aside as well the dismissiveness, even hostility, of the current anti-intellectual environment. Instead, let us view ourselves as engaged in a sacred profession, "midwives" (that includes men) who are bringing in the new stories, the new myths that are needed now.
We are pollinators of the imagination, holding threads in a great weaving of myth, threads that extend into a time yet to come, and far back into a barely glimpsed past. If as the poet Muriel Rukeyser famously said, “the world is made of stories, not atoms” (Rukeyser, 1978) the only real question for us now is: What kinds of stories are we weaving?
Lauren Raine (2017)
REFERENCES:
Keller, Catherine. From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism and Self, Beacon Press (1988)
Baring, Anne. “A New Vision of Reality” from her website
Cousineau, Phil. Once and Future Myths: The Power of Ancient Stories in Modern Times, Conori Press (2001)
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