Aurora, and the Roman Matralia

 "In practical terms, whenever one invokes the aid of a God or Goddess, what is asked is that the deity will project His or Her special numen so that whatever task is to be attempted shall succeed in accordance with the Gods. The two most basic prayers in the religio Romana are Do ut das, "I give so that You may give," and the formula: bonas preces precor, ut sis volens propitius, "I pray good prayers in order that You may willingly be propitious."*

It was my great privilege to participate in a Ritual Performance using Masks of the Goddess,  organized by Annie Waters and  and in Collaboration with Mana Youngbear,  Meredith Melvin, Diane Smalley,  Christy Salo, Kara Hagedorn,  and  Brianna Wunderlin at the INNER EARTH TEA HOUSE in Willits, California in July.  I apologize that it's taken me this long to write about it in the Blog.  I know we all felt the presence of the Divine, dancing with us. 

My part was to create the Introduction, which would also be choosing the mask that Annie would use.   So weeks before the event, I tried to imagine what aspect of the Great Mother we were celebrating and calling upon,  what masked image and story  came to mind from the many years, and many Colleagues performances, behind Annie and I.  Surprisingly, what came to mind was the photo above of the Roman Goddess of the dawn, Aurora,  performed by Annie in 2013 in her play The Awakening.   

And so I did a little research about this Goddess, and found there was a great deal I did not know about Her, importantly, that She was not only the bringer of Dawn, but She also had another evolved aspect:  She was Mater Matuta, the Great Mother in her form as the evolved, mature and freeborn Queen, celebrated on June 11 each year. 

I have sometimes felt, when working with the masks, that I joined a mysterious network of invisible collaborators.  Synchronicities occur in that creative field,  synchronicities that seem to be are part of that grand mythic Conversation. Or, sometimes I think of them as Spider Woman's way of saying Hello.

We included in the event a  spoken word piece about  Grandmother Spider Woman, performed by Briana Wunderlin.  A day before the performances,  I rummaged in my open suitcase and a rather large spider jumped out!  It sat beside the suitcase for a few minutes, and then slowly walked away, disappearing into a curtain.   I took that as yet another Blessing, and Encouragement.

“Aurora, Keeper of the Dawn, Your touch paints the world anew. With your morning winds you whisper hope.”  Ovid

                                          Aurora

 Liminal Goddess of the Dawn,   and  Herold of the Mature Power of the Divine Feminine            

(play Finnish “yoik” Call) https://youtu.be/hFjwW8Ranrg?si=m5AZ9bZ_lB60Tzkd )

What you just heard was something Sami shamans do when they call or sing “the Yoik.”  I know because I once heard a Sami shaman do exactly that (but that's another story).  It’s a call to the Divine, to the Ancestors, to the Protectors.

I wanted to begin this gathering  with just such a Call to the Goddess, who is returning powerfully into the world now just as She is powerfully needed.  The world we have trusted in seems to be vanishing before our eyes, dissolving in chaos, political turmoil, and crisis.   And yet, I believe we are living in the chaos of a profoundly liminal time, in the transformative  hour  before Dawn. Light is emerging, a light each one of us has worked toward in our own unique ways.

Birth is painful, and rarely gentle. So together  we make our  Call, loud and strong, as Dawn, called Aurora by the Romans and Eos by the Greeks,  brings light to us all.  

Aurora was the Roman Goddess of the Dawn.   She is the Herald of each ascending cycle  - the Herold of new days, new life, and new paradigms. She is a truly "liminal" Goddess,  existing  in the generative "between" zone between day and night, between her siblings Luna and Sol, the light of the Moon and the light of the Sun. The light that Aurora brings is the light of hope, of possibility, of non-duality.

In Greek myth, Eos was also the mother of the Anemoi, the winds of change.   In exploring Roman mythology, I learned some interesting things about Aurora. She was also identified with  the Roman “great mother” Goddess Mater Matuta. Mater (from which we get both the words “Mother” and “matter”) and Matuta (from which the word “mature” comes) was associated with ripening:  the ripening of grain, the ripening of Dawn’s New Day, and the ripening  of women. “Matutinus” was also a Roman word that meant “early morning or dawn.”  Mater  Matuta was the goddess of female maturation, and I believe, archetypically speaking, we can see that what is “dawning” is the maturation of female power in the world.

The Return of the Goddess.  And the empowerment of women in a world in which, frankly, we have been marginalized, demonized, invisible, trivialized, and usually forbidden to participate in patriarchal world power.  In a nutshell:  enslaved,  for a long, long time.  

         

 

It Rome, Mater Matuta's festival was called  the Matralia, celebrated on June 11.  Yellow cakes were were offered,  and also consumed.  The festival was exclusively for women:  men were not allowed.  Many images have been found of Mater Matuta, and She was probably found in household, much as Catholics today will keep a beloved image of the Virgin Mary in their homes.  These statues showed Mater enthroned, and usually holding multiple infants in swaddling clothes on her generous lap.  Could there be a more direct image of the Great Mother, nourishing each new generation, holding them steadfast in Her wise and strong arms?  Stumbling on this discovery, I found some interesting metaphors there indeed, both for women of this deeply troubled time,  and for women many years hence. 

“There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.”

― Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

The Festival was a celebration of the Maturation of Womanhood and only free women were allowed to attend.  No woman who was enslaved could be allowed.  In fact, symbolically, a slave woman was “driven forth” to further demonstrate the power of free women. Women who had reached, like their Goddess, the fullness of their mature life and power, and would not tolerate anything else.

I’d say that’s a pretty good metaphor for our time as well, for the arising of women and the celebratory  arising of the Goddess in Her many manifestations. We are bringing forth a new world, a world in which no woman is a slave, not in any way. 

  

*  http://www.novaroma.org/nr/Numen

Dalias............. Extraordinary!

 I had the privilege of seeing the Dalia Garden in full bloom when I was there at the Mendocino Coastline Botanical Garden,  near Fort Bragg, California.  It was so wonderful to see the ocean again, and an extraordinary vision of the Great Artist Nature is.

 

   

On the Persistence of Butterflies, and the Emanation of Beauty

                   

Beauty above me, 

Beauty below me,

Beauty before me,

Beauty behind me,

I walk in Beauty.

Navajo (Dine`) Prayer

I am approaching my 76th birthday next week.  Wow.  I've had a long life.  And for some reason, perhaps the threads of synchronicity Spider Woman has been throwing me lately, I've been thinking about Butterflies.    

I love the painting above (which I did not create).  I don't know how I found it, and I have not bee successful in finding out who the artist is, even when I did an image search.  I loved it enough that I even made my own version of the painting - and if I ever find the artist, I would hope she or he would not see this as plagerism, but rather deep appreciation.

An old woman is walking, just a silouette in the distance, her name and identity unknown.  Or perhaps, with the passage of time and her long life walk, names just aren't important to her anymore.  The road, I imagine, is dusty.   Her back is a bit bent..... she is tired, it's been a long walk.  But........she keeps on walking.  Maybe it's a pilgrimage to her, or maybe a mission.  Maybe getting somewhere isn't important any longer - its the walk itself that matters.  

But as she  walks butterflies emanate from her out into the world.  To do their work of bringing  Beauty.  And to do their work of Pollinating the future.  

As an artist,  I think this is the legacy many of us would like to leave behind us as we progress on our own, often dusty, often long, roads.  We want to think our work has  flown forth, to bloom as it will,  in other's  imaginations, in another time perhaps.  Looking again at the painting, I think maybe that old woman doesn't think about such things.  She just keeps on walking.   But in the end, no one could ask for more. 

Pollen:  agent of new life, new hope, transformation. 

My prayer:  May we have butterfly minds, pollinator hearts.

Peace March against the war in Iraq, San Francisco, 2003

Peace March against the war in Iraq, San Francisco, 2003

The ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ψυχή (psȳchē), which means "soul" or "mind".  And I have often found them mysteriously "soulful", as they seem to flit in and out of mystery and of synchronicity.  The picture above, for example - it was from the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the great peace march against the incipient Iraq war, and shows three friends with their "soul icons".   Me in the mask of Sophia, Alan Moore, founder of the Butterfly Gardeners Association with his sign, and Nicole, an artist who created "Cosmic Cash".  Note that her icon, also,  occurred in this synchronistic photo behind her.  

Transformers, pollinators .......... they begin their lives as caterpillars, build a crysalis and generate imaginal cells.   Imaginal cells (what a fantastic name) are cells in the evolution of a butterfly from caterpillar to winged butterfly that activate within the Crysalis, and the butterfly literally becomes mush as it is deconstructed and changed.   As the visionary psychologist  Anodea Judith explains it:

"When a caterpillar nears its transformation time, it begins to eat ravenously, consuming everything in sight. The caterpillar body then becomes heavy, outgrowing its own skin many times, until it is too bloated to move. Attaching to a branch (upside down, we might add, where everything is turned on its head) it forms a chrysalis—an enclosing shell that limits the caterpillar’s freedom for the duration of the transformation.....Tiny cells, that biologists actually call “imaginal cells,” begin to appear. These cells are wholly different from caterpillar cells, carrying different information, vibrating to a different frequency–the frequency of the emerging butterfly. At first, the caterpillar’s immune system perceives these new cells as enemies, and attacks them, much as new ideas in science, medicine, politics, and social behavior are viciously denounced by the powers now considered mainstream. But the imaginal cells are not deterred.  They continue to appear, in even greater numbers, recognizing each other, bonding together, until the new cells are numerous enough to organize into clumps. When enough cells have formed to make structures along the new organizational lines, the caterpillar’s immune system is overwhelmed. The caterpillar body then become a nutritious soup for the growth of the butterfly."

from Imaginal Cells and the Body Politic by Anodea Judith Ph.D.

Photo from: http://www.fishersville-umc.org/classes/nac/Pics/week0401.htm

If we can see that our thoughts participate in  pollinating the future, we can  perhaps find ways of living with simplicity and honor, even in a time so very out of balance.  Regardless of where one is, there is a profound need to "walk in Beauty".  To be "on the Pollen Path".  

                                 

Without the grace of the pollinators, the butterflies and hummingbirds and bees, there will be no future.  This idea is fundamental to spiritual traditions of native peoples of the Southwest, including the Pueblo peoples, the Navajo and the Apache.  As shown above, when this young Apache woman came of age and entered into her fertile years, she was blessed by the tribe with symbolic pollen.  Imagine what it would be like if young women in our world were so honored.  

 "The Pollen Path" is a healing and initiatory ceremony/concept among the Dine` that variously enacts a mythic journey, and demonstrates a cosmology of non-duality.  "Pollen Path" art and sand paintings often show the union of opposites, such as red sun and blue moon, as well as the directions and associated stories, representing the cycles that form a whole.  

As I imagine the metaphor of a  "pollen path" for our time,  as I consider the "emanations of  beauty" in the painting at the top of this essay,  I reflect as well that some butterflies, like the Monarch or the Painted Lady, are migratory.  Monarch butterflies will migrate over very long distances, as amazingly frail as they seem.  Some travel from Mexico to the norther parts of the United States and into Canada, a distance of over 2,500 miles.  Tragically, because of climate change and loss of habitat, they are among the endangered species.  

Lastly, I always seem to return to one of my favorite storytellers, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, on the work of the Butterfly Dancer.  May we all, women and men, young and old, become Butterfly Dancers this May Day.

  "The (Hopi) butterfly dancer must be old because she represents the soul that is old. She is wide of thigh and broad of rump because she carries so much. Her grey hair certifies that she need no longer observe taboos about touching others. She is allowed to touch everyone: boys, babies, men, women, girl children, the old, the ill, and the dead. The Butterfly Woman can touch everyone. It is her privilege to touch all, at last. This is her power. Hers is the body of La Mariposa, the butterfly."

"La Mariposa" from Women Who Run with The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Clarissa Pinkola Estes  tells the story of waiting to see the "Butterfly Dancer" at a ceremony.  Tourists, unused to Indian Time, wait throughout a long, hot, dusty day to see the dancer emerge, expecting, no doubt a slender, ephemeral Indian maiden, and they are no oubt they were shocked out of their patronizing cultural fantasy to see at last the grey haired  Dancer/Pollinator emerge, slow, not young, with her traditional tokens of empowerment.

"Her heavy body and her very skinny legs made her look like a hopping spider wrapped in a tamale. She hops on one foot and then on the other. She waves her feather fan to and fro. She is The Butterfly arrived to strengthen the weak. She is that which most think of as not strong: age, the butterfly, the feminine."

Because in the agricultural ritual these dances symbolize and invoke, call in, the forces that initiate the  vital work of pollination, this is no job for for an inexperienced girl, no trivial token flight for a  pretty child. It's a job for one who has lived through many cycles, and can seed and generate the future from a solid base. Again, I take here the liberty of quoting Dr. Estes again:

"Butterfly Woman mends the erroneous idea that transformation is only for the tortured, the saintly, or only for the fabulously strong. The Self need not carry mountains to transform. A little is enough. A little goes a long way. A little changes much. The fertilizing force replaces the moving of mountains.

Butterfly Maiden pollinates the souls of the earth: It is easier that you think, she says. She is shaking her feather fan, and she’s hopping, for she is spilling spiritual pollen all over the people who are there, Native Americans, little children, visitors, everyone. This is the translator of the instinctual, the fertilizing force, the mender, the rememberer of old ideas. She is La voz mitológica."

"La voz mitológica". The mythic voice.  The voice that shows us the place where the Butterflies go, the voice that sings the threads of synchronicity as they weave into our lives and become visible.   The Mythic Voice re-enchants the world around us, lending luminosity to each footstep, and pollinates, energizes, en-chants those who hear.   

   

Some of my own butterflies

For August

  

August is my birth month,  which I guess makes me a Leo, something I actually identify with.   Generous,  uncomfortable with cold or dark, prone to Big parties and Big ideas which often gets me in trouble, self-absorbed and often over confident........... all of the above.  I re-found this poem, written in praise of August, among my archives and felt like sharing it again.  For the Fullness of Summer that is August!  

AUGUST

I best love 
my lost and wildish 

girl heart
reborn surprised
among the blonde grasses of August

running for no reason
among the dusty gaiety of daisies,
bending knee, foot, flower
for the sun,
for the sun

for the Sun!

just this day, to put aside
subtle things

accumulations 
of creaking age, 

duty and reason.

Just this day, dear friends,
dance with me
on the generous Earth

making Her 

Circle Dance

Let this be all that matters today:
this blue exaltation
of  summer skies

given and given to all

and praise,
praise the day,
the colors and taste of it

(1998)

LAMMAS: Mass of the Bread

 

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

The Wicker Man was traditionally related to the Lammas ceremonies - he represented the God who dies and is ever reborn, the eternal "Green Man" in the next year, next growing season, next cycle, next turning, the lover of the Goddess, the Earth Mother.  This  ancient and ubiquitous symbol of the  sacrificed and resurrected God, related to both the Sun and the Grain is found "resurrected" in numerous myths and religions, among them  Osiris, the Green Man, Dummuzi the shepherd,  even in Christianity where it is found in the death and ressurection of the Christ - born at the Winter Solstice (often called the "return of the light"), sacrificed, and then reborn, appropriately  at the time of the Spring Equinox.   

 In contemporary neo-Pagan culture the effigy is often created and loaded with offerings of food, flowers and prayers on paper before it is burned - this tradition is sometimes carried on indirectly in the creation of  sculptures that are burned in the closing bonfires of Starwood Festival on the East Coast.  

Starwood Bonfire

         

           Lughnasadh

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

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

 Rev. Raven Spirit 2002

 John Barleycorn Must Die is a traditional English song very much related to early traditions of Lammas and Lughnasadh - records of its origins go back as far as the 1300s, and it is probably much older than that.    Over time, many variations have arisen, and the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote his own  version of the story.  In the 70's, John Renbourne, Traffic, and Steeleye Span popularized the song, along with many folk artists during the Folk Revival of the 60's and 70's. 

John Barleycorn is a very prime myth indeed  - the Great King who is sacrificed, dies and is reborn in the agricultural cycle.  The motif is found as the story of the  Sumarian myth of  Dumuzi, the Shepherd husband of the Goddess Inanna who goes into the underworld for part of the year to be with the Queen of the Dead, and returns to Inanna in the Spring.  The same idea of the dying and reborn King is found with the Egyptian Osiris, who is reborn in the Sun God Horus.  And of course, the later evolution of this mythic cycle in the tale of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades, which became the basis of the Elysinnian Mysteries pilgrimage and ritual cycle.  

John Barleycorn is the personification of the grain, and the life of the grain from planting to harvest, its  transformation into bread and  beer, the staples of agricultural life.  After Barleycorn’s "first death"  he is buried, and laid within the ground.  In Midsummer he grows a “long golden beard” and “becomes a man”.  The song goes on to describe threshing and harvesting. Then the grain is shared: some is taken to the miller to make flour for bread. And some is saved and brewed in a vat to make ale. And some is planted, so that the whole cycle can begin again.   Some of these rituals survive to this day in modified folk traditions, as well as in neo Pagan revivals,  most famously the sacrifice of the wicker man "the burning man".   

Here is a rendition of the folksong "John Barley Corn Must Die" by Green Crown, a wonderful group I remember from my days at the Renaissance Faire:

https://youtu.be/9IIr6vjn3ZY

  Photo with thanks to  Avalon Revisited

It might be noted as well that John Barleycorn is also the God of Ecstasy - because he provides celebration and ecstasy as the barley becomes the source of beer and the beloved malt whiskey of the Highlands.  The malting and fermentation is also a part of his "life cycle" and transformative  divinity. Perhaps one of the most famous "ecstatic"  manifestations of the Wicker Man, his rituals of sacrifice, rebirth, and  celebration,  is Burning Man, the  festival that happens in Nevada every fall.  Originally associated with the burning of the Wicker Man at the Lammas Harvest Festival by neo-Pagans in the Bay Area, it's grown to become a fantastic art event.  I'd be willing to bet however that  the majority of people who attend  Burning Man don't know about its origins in a resurrection of a  traditional European  myth.

Here's an excellent  quote I take from a Druid's Blog called "The Dance of Life" 

about the Wicker Man:

"In English folklore, the folksong representing John Barleycorn as the crop of barley corresponds to the same cyclic nature of planting, growing, harvesting, death and rebirth.  Sir James Frazer cites this tale of John Barleycorn in The Golden Bough as proof that there was a Pagan cult in England that worshiped a god of vegetation, who was then sacrificed to bring fertility to the fields.  It is tempting to see in this  echoes of human sacrifice as portrayed in The Wicker Man film (1973), but that is not really what this time is about.  Whilst there was a Celtic ritual of weaving the last sheaf of corn to be harvested into a wicker-like man or woman, it was believed that the Sun 's spirit was trapped in the grain and needed to be set free by fire and so the effigy was burned........In other regions a corn dolly is made of plaited straw from this sheaf, carried to a place of honor at the celebrations and kept until the following spring for good luck."

It's interesting that in Robert Burn's poem, there are "three kings", similar to the kings from the east in the Nativity story.  Early Christians who came to the British Isles (and elsewhere) often absorbed native pagan mythologies and traditional rituals into Christian theology/mything.   The evolution of the Story of Christ is full of such imagery in order to help the natives accept Christianity:  it is very unlikely that Jesus was actually born on the Winter Solstice, for example. Certainly John Barleycorn shares with the Christ Story the ancient, ubiquitous  theme of the death and rebirth of the sacrificed agricultural King. 

I am a great admirer of the wisdom traditions of  Christianity, but I also believe it is necessary to separate the spiritual teachings of Christianity from  the mingling (and  literalization) of earlier  mythologies absorbed, and often changed or even demonized, throughout the very  long development of the Christian Church. 

For example, I believe the metaphor used to describe Jesus as the "Lamb of God" directly relates to Biblical Hebrew  practices prevalent in his lifetime  of the  sacrifice of lambs and goats to Yahwah.  Indeed, the  sacrifice of animals was common

throughout the Roman world as well.   The later development of  the doctrine that Christ   "died for our sins"   may have some of its origins in the important, and quite ancient,  Semitic Scapegoat Rituals,  wherein the "sins and tribulations" of the tribe were ritually placed on the back of a goat, which was then driven away from the village or tribal enclave  to literally "carry away the sins" into the desert.  

 

Observing recently a Catholic "Communion" ritual ("This is my Body, This is my Blood") I was impressed by the many layers of mythologies and archaic traditions inherent in that ceremony, still important to so many people today.  One of the threads of that Ceremony  may very well originate in the prime agricultural myth of  the dying and reborn God.  A  long tradition from which John Barleycorn arises, with each turning of the year,  re-born  again every spring to be "sacrificed" in the fall. 

Ubiquitous indeed!  This same idea is found in variations throughout the Americas as well, this time with  the story of the Corn Mother (among the Cherokee, Selu) who is killed, dismembered, and reborn in the spring - and when her sacrifice is not honored, misfortune befalls the tribe.     (I myself have had the privilege of encountering the Corn Mother. )

John Barleycorn
by Robert Burns

There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.
They took a plough and plough'd him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead. 

 

 

But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris'd them all.
The sultry suns of Summer came,
And he grew thick and strong,
His head weel arm'd wi' pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong.

The sober Autumn enter'd mild,
When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Show'd he began to fail.
His coulour sicken'd more and more,
He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage.
They've taen a weapon, long and sharp,
And cut him by the knee;
Then ty'd him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie.

They laid him down upon his back,
And cudgell'd him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turn'd him o'er and o'er.
They filled up a darksome pit
With water to the brim,
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.
They laid him out upon the floor,
To work him farther woe,
And still, as signs of life appear'd,
They toss'd him to and fro.

 

 

They wasted, o'er a scorching flame,
The marrow of his bones;
But a Miller us'd him worst of all,
For he crush'd him between two stones.
And they hae taen his very heart's blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
'Twill make your courage rise.
'Twill make a man forget his woe;
'Twill heighten all his joy:
'Twill make the widow's heart to sing,
Tho' the tear were in her eye.
Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne'er fail in old Scotland!

 

And here is Steeleye Span to tell the tale! 

 https://youtu.be/tlL9RCznuU8?si=XpmYSDKxGC2wKbN5