threads of the spiderwoman: 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.

A stone statue of a person

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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.