"The Masks of the Goddess" at the Women & Spirituality Conference

 

Photo by JJ Idarius

                                   I am deeply honored to be the Keynote Speaker at this years 

40th Annual Women & Spirituality Conference

                  October 4th, 5th & 6th 2024

              St. Mary’s University,  Cascade Meadows Campus,

                                       Rochester, MN

Over 36 workshops to choose from, vendors, exhibitors and more. The Masks of the Goddess Collection will be on Exhibit!  Along with many women’s voices sharing their wisdom, offering their healing, together in community since 1981.  Explore the beauty of the land, experience art in the Maker’s Space, find solace in the Chaplain’s Corner.

And.......... there will be a special Ceremonial Evening 

Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Conference

with a Community Ritual  Performance and the Masks of the Goddess 

                        Friday October 4th, 2024 at 7:00 pm

                         at the Chateau Theater in Rochester,  Mn  

 We are still seeking Participants to Invoke the Goddesses with the masks!  If you live in Rochester area and would like to be part of this offering for the Divine Feminine, please contact Laurenraine9@gmail.com.  We would love to have you join us!

                                                  

“What the audience saw when a dancer looked through the eyes of the mask was the Goddess Herself,  ancient and yet contemporary, looking across time, across the miles.”

           Diane Darling, Director, Playwright                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Sherry Glaser takes on Gaia

 I've posted this before, but this brilliant comedic voice never grows old, nor especially does the message she makes.  Sherry Glaser lets Gaia tell it like it is: 

https://youtu.be/xkztSqqBSO4?si=84P-UtYB6gNuh2o_

Portfolio: "A Work in Progress" .... a Presentation at 2022 Pagan Studies Conference

I was embarroused to see that I never shared on this Blog the Presentation I was honored to give at the Conference on Current Pagan Studies ** (via Zoom) in January of this year.  Their Theme for 2022 was "Pagans and Creativity" so I offered a presentation on my own 50 years of being an artist, with (obviously visible) Pagan roots and Pagan iconography even in the very beginning.  It seems Gaia and Myth and the Goddess have been with me almost as soon as I could pick up a crayon, and it't been so ever since.  

https://www.slideshare.net/laurenraine/lauren-raine-portfolio-a-work-in-progress

Lauren raine portfolio a work in progress from Lauren Raine

** There will be another Conference this year January 14- 15, 2023

For information on the upcoming Conference:  https://www.paganconference.com/

Verity" - Roman Goddess of Truth

 

I've felt compelled to make this mask (it's also a sculpture in progress).  I hope in time someone will come who wishes to use it, and create a story for it.  It seems to me that we live in a time of such disregard for Truth, for Verity, that it is very hard to move forward, to approach the real collective problems we face as a Global society, which are truly urgent and present.  And it is also hard to be a competent, functioning adult, I do believe, without access to as much as is possible, and a dedicated personal commitment to, the Truth. 

I think of what Jesus said in the New Testament of the Christian Bible: 

                                         "The Truth shall set you free". 

That is so right, spiritually and functionally.  Seeking personal truth is a profound, and unending, endeavor, but the rewards of living without delusion, self-deception, false belief systems, and unaccountability are important to moving forward in our evolution.  

In Roman mythology, Verity (Veritus) is the Goddess of truth.  Veritas is also the name given to the Roman virtue of truthfulness, which was considered one of the main virtues any good Roman should possess.  She was the mother of Virtus, from which the word "virtue" comes.  Part of Her myth was that Verity  was elusive, because She  hid in the bottom of a holy well.  That, it seems to me, is a perfect metaphor for the sacred quest for Truth.  Often Truth must be sought in the depths, in dark waters of the self.  And yet, like the waters of a Holy (Wholly) Well (as in Wellness and Welling forth from the depths) that quest is transformative and life sustaining.

“Truth (Victoria Memorial)”
 by Sir Thomas Brock

Verity was often shown as a young virgin dressed in white. Veritas was also  depicted nude, representing the "naked truth".  She is shown holding a mirror helping those who seek Her to "Know Thyself".   The Goddess holds the mirror before Her,  confronting others with the irrefutable truth of their reflection. Sometimes she is also  shown with scales as well with a sword to cut away lies and deception.  Sometimes she is shown blindfolded. 

In this well known sculpture by Sir Thomas Brock, I find it also fascinating that the Goddess, in a Victorian era sculpture yet,  is shown offering both a mirror and a snake.  As the snake is a very ancient symbol representing the forces of nature, the cycles of life/death/rebirth, and the regenerative power of the Earth Mother,  I can't help but wonder if the sculptor knew this, or at least intuited it when he added his snake.  The story of Verity's roots are ancient indeed, as are pilgrimages to sacred wells, which are places of healing and vision.  

Another, much more recent and contemporary sculpture named Verity is the monumental 2012 stainless steel and bronze statue created by Damien Hirst.

The 66.4 foot tall sculpture stands on the pier at the entrance to the harbour in Ilfracombe, Devon, in the U.K., looking out over the Bristol Channel towards South Wales.   It has been loaned to the town for 20 years. The name of the piece refers to "truth" and Hirst describes his work as a "modern allegory of truth and justice".^[1]

 ^{(from Wikipedia)}

The statue depicts a pregnant woman holding aloft a sword while carrying the scales of justice and standing on a pile of law books.  The other side of the monumental stature  shows the "skin" peeled away from the figure to reveal the unborn child within.

For me, here again is a truly perfect metaphor for Truth:  because the Truth carries within the birth of a new life, a new evolution, a precious Child to protect and nurture.  

"The Goddess of the Turning" and Reflections

 

I made this mask for Nanette,  Director and creatrix of Zuzi's Dance Theatre in Tucson, Arizona.  I've worked with her and her collaborators before and it's a pleasure to create a mask for her.  This mask is for her annual Winter Solstice event, and she requested an image that symbolizes the turning of the year,  Light into Dark,  Dark into Light.  So this mask became "The Goddess of the Turning", or "The Goddess of the Turning Year" to be more precise.

Masks keep turning up in my imagination!  Just when I thought I was done with all that,  the Goddess keeps nudging me with visions of masks and those unknown ones who might dance in them, who might tell their stories.  But I have no such community at present, so all I can do is make the masks.  In some other posts I'll show some of the new ones, including "Verity", which I'm quite proud of.

Artists never retire, although sometimes we get retired whether we like it or not!  But lately I have been ........... reclaiming a few things from the Saga of my life.  One is that a long time ago I went to Bali, and learned about their Temple Mask traditions.  It inspired me and gave me a whole new way to look at mask making (I had a lively business at that time as a mask artist for Renaissance Faires).  When I returned to the U.S. I was invited to make masks for Reclaiming's  20th Annual Spiral Dance at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco as the Invocation of the Goddess.  

And later it occurred to me that I had been given an opportunity thus to create Temple Masks within the American world I lived in.  To create sacred  Temple Masks dedicated to the Divine Feminine, to the Goddess with  all of Her many faces and names.  As the Balinese say, masks are "vessels for the gods".   How blessed I was when I saw the first ritual performance of my first collection of Masks of the Goddess at the Spiral Dance in the form of a Procession of costumed and masked women,  embodying Goddesses from 30 different cultures and times.  And that became a journey of some 20 years, a journey that, it seems, isn't entirely over yet.  

We will see as the Wheel of the Year Turns, and the Lady of the Turning presides overall.

EARTHSPEAK - Video Presentation for ASWM

 My Presentation for the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, made into a  video.........

https://youtu.be/cetufD32xfY

Two New Masks...........

After watching my students produce such wonderful masks at my recent workshop, got inspired to make a new Goddess mask myself.  Then another......... One for Quon Yin,  "She Who Hears the Cries of the World",  and Ceres,  Roman Goddess of the harvests. 

Gather and Offer: A Story of the Gathering Basket

 

I remembered the other day an extraordinary poem gifted to me by Ilana Stein, who I met in one of the workshops I gave at the Kripalu Institute in 2008. 

Ilana was a retired midwife, renowned in her field, who had been undergoing cancer treatment when she decided to take a workshop at Kripalu.  After the workshop she was on her way to California to spend time with her daughter.   The poem, "Gather and Offer" she wrote during that 4 day workshop, in which she also made several masks that accompanied her work.   Four months after meeting Ilana, I learned that she had died.  I reflected then, as now, how beautiful her poem and my experience of working with her was, this woman who had spent her life bringing souls into this world, and preparing to leave it.

I posted this in 2008.......I think it's well worth copying and sharing again, as it is so much with me today.

Hands of the Midwife (2005)

 2008:

I've been meaning to share this story from the MASKS OF THE GODDESS workshop I taught in April at the Kripalu Institute  - while I always am moved and astounded by the work others do, I found this work especially moving. Ilana has graciously allowed me to share photos of the masks she made, and gave me permission to print the poem she wrote in the workshop. 

Ilana is a well known Midwife and Birth Coach  from New York City.  She is a slight woman with intense eyes, and her hair was gone sparse because she's been undergoing  chemotherapy, which she shared as we began our introductory Circle. 

We begin our four day process with a "shamanic journey" to the Underworld, to encounter the Goddess, in whatever form She may care to appear.  I feel this is important as each participant prepares to create her mask. Often I ask them to  see if She gives them a gift of some kind, and almost always something meaningful is presented.

Returning to the "above world", after our trance, Ilana told  the group she had met a Goddess all in white.   She called Her the "White Goddess".  This Being  emerged from the darkness to dance before her. Her dance, Ilana said,  was like a figure 8, the "eternity symbol" -  Her gestures consisted of gathering on one side, and giving forth on the other, a flowing movement  of taking in and giving forth.

It happened that another of the women in the workshop was a professional dancer (a ballerina, actually!) who was retiring.   She brought with her a dress from her performance years as a possible costume, and in the course of the workshop she gave Ilana this beautiful white dress - which was Ilana's size!

One of the two masks Ilana made was "scarred", to represent the suffering she had been going through in the course of her treatment for cancer.  Yet it  contained a bright red, and very open,  heart.  Above is the other mask she made for the White Goddess she encountered.  A white mask with a basket on one side, and flowing forms with blooming flowers on the other.  A mask for gathering, and for offering.   And here is the poem she wrote - I feel privileged to share it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8/12/08 Postscript:   I am sad to have to add that Ilana passed away 4 months after this workshop.  But when I think of that, I think the  Goddess who came to her, and the poem she wrote, were all about leading the Way.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GATHER AND OFFER
Ilana Stein

Gather towards the West
Gather towards the North
Gather towards the South
Gather towards the East
Gather Above, gather below and gather the great Mystery
Gather what you’ve studied
Gather what you’ve learned
Gather how you’ve lived, and gather what you’ve earned.

Gather what you’ve loved and gather what you’ve lost.
Gather what you’ve soiled and gather what it’s cost
Gather what you’ve wasted and gather what you’ve saved
Gather what you’ve shopped for and gather what you’ve tasted

Gather who your friends are and gather how they’ve cared
Gather your relations and gather how you’ve fared
Then Gather birth and celebrate, gather death and cry
Gather hope, regret and longing and gather up the why

Gather up the waiting, gather struggles, gather challenges.
Gather all the goals you’ve met and gather up the bravery
Gather faceless fear and all the broken promises.
Gather yesterday today, and gather time tomorrow

Gather what you’ve ruined and gather when you’ve failed.
Gather up the personal and gather up the frail
Gather up the culture and gather up the myths
Gather all the songs you’ve sung, and all expressive art
Gather dances gather dreams and gather up your heart

Gather in the garden and gather at the beach.
Gather on the mountain and gather what’s in reach
Gather in the workplace, and gather on the roads
Gather in the home you’ve made and gather all you kin
Gather your impatience, your frustration and your greed.
Gather up the words you’ve said and gather what you need.

Gather up your journey and all the time you’ve spent
Gather up your courage and walk inside your tent.
Gather up your secrets and and gather up your wisdom
Gather what you’ve forgotten
Gather what you’ve meant.
Gather faith and Reverence

Gather truth and and gather lies,
Gather secrets great and small
Gather wisdom of the ages and wrap them in your shawl
Gather sickness, Gather health gather tenderness and rage
Gather all your stories and gather on the stage

Gather up your gatherings, and stir the basket’s bounty
Gather all remaining threads and search across the county
Look out among the human beings, look out among relations

Then offer up your gatherings to all nations and creations

Offer to your children and offer to your kin
Offer to the hungry, to the needy and the grim
Offer to the blessed and offer to the prim
Offer to the kings and queens the princess and princesses
Offer to the beggars, paupers, jesters and priestesses

Offer to the little birds the chipmunks and the deer
Offer to the badger, mole, the frogs, and yes the bear
Offer to the green spring shoots, the white and yellow crocus
Offer to the budding trees the bushes and the rushes

Offer to the sand and mud the concrete and the buildings
Offer to the cook and maid the seamstress and the butler
Offer to the farmers - offer to the farm
Offer to the doctors and offer for no harm

Offer to the visionaries offer to the artists
Offer to the frightened, offer to the scared
Offer to the endangered and to the unprepared
Offer to the hurting, offer to be healed,
Offer to your neighbor and offer to the field

Offer grace and offer peace offer possibility
Offer privilege trust and faith
Offer gratitude amazement wonderment and awe
Offer loving kindness, compassion, joy and love

Offer up your story, offer honor and integrity
Offer for community Offer your vulnerability

Offer what you’ve learned and offer what you have
offer what you know
Offer what you’ve shared
Offer both your ears, your shoulders and your tears
Offer all you’ve gathered, offer all your cares

You’ve gathered through the springtime,
the summer and the fall.
And you’ve offered season’s greetings without going to the mall.

Now rest and build your strength up. Cycle with the moon. Cycle through the mystery time. Close your eyes and sleep. Dream the dreams of where you’ve been.
Dream of where you’re going – dream the dream that dreamers dream.

Then gather. 

A PAGAN ICON: "Asherah"

 

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

Concerning Asherah, I copy below from a previous post:

                              Asherah and the Tree of Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Asherah" (Artist unknown)

*ASHERAH POLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Masks of the Goddess: New Slide Show

I will be giving a Salon Presentation next week with the Association  for the Study of Women and Mythology, and put together a new, improved Slide Show!  Here it is below, and the Slide Share link - and I'm most grateful to Slide Share for making their wonderful service available.  And since I'm also doing a kind of "retrospective" here as I  wait for the heavy hand of Bloggers "new look" which may make it rather difficult to access my older posts, I copy below an article I wrote about the "Mythos" of the Goddess, and the creation of masks.

https://www.slideshare.net/laurenraine/the-masks-of-the-goddess-2020

The masks of the goddess 2020 from Lauren Raine

MYTHOS
The Multi-cultural  Divine Feminine

"Western civilization has been overshadowed by the Father archetype, to the exclusion of the Mother archetype.  By suppressing the feminine, we have done enormous damage to our individual and collective psychic health, ​ to say nothing of the health of our planet."   

Jennifer Barker and Roger Woolger, THE GODDESS WITHIN
​

​In 2002, just before the invasion of Iraq, I directed an event with the Masks of the Goddess collection devoted to peace in Oakland, California.   I   remember a conversation I shared with one of my collaborators,  Dorit Bat Shalom, an Israeli artist who brought Israeli and Palestine women together in “Peace Tents” to share their stories in the 1990's.   

Dorit asked: "How can there be peace in the Middle east without the Shekinah?"  The Shekinah is the feminine aspect of God in Judaism.  Dorit explained "The Shekinah has been driven away from the holy lands. We cannot heal without her."

I never forgot her comment.  Because  indeed, endless strife does takes place in the very heart of what was once the fertile homeland of the ancient Great Mother, of Inanna, Astarte, Isis,  Asheroth, and the Shekinah.   Artists are mythmakers - and myths are the templates of dream, art and religion, the templates upon which both civilizations and individuals name what is sacred, and what is profane. I think the question Dorit raised is profound:  how indeed can there be peace, in the Mideast or elsewhere, when deity, and values, are personified and polarized as almost exclusively male? 

 A mythos that denies “the feminine face of God”, and degrades or belittles the sanctity of feminine experience - has left us a humanity divided against itself.

At the closing of our event participants and audience approached a masked “Sophia”, who held a mirror over her heart. As they drew near the stage, each saw themselves reflected in the mirror, the “heart of Sophia”.  The name of Sophia, the feminine face of God in early Gnostic Christianity, means "wisdom".  Ultimately, to "know Sophia" means to "know thyself". In all our complex diversity, male and female, dark and light, old and young.  The "mirror of Sophia" represented the Gnosis necessary to become true peacemakers.

The Goddess of antiquity and world culture, as well as in contemporary women's spirituality,   has a thousand faces - maiden, mother, wise crone, teacher, warrior, healer, destroyer, lover, nurturer of new life or the flame of creativity. She is found throughout world religions and mythologies, with names like red Kali, Inanna Queen of the stars, Quan Yin the compassionate, suffering Sedna Ocean mother to the Inuit, Aphrodite the capricious goddess of love, and Mary, the Virgin. To me, most of all, she is Gaia, Anima Mundi, the feminine “World Soul”.  As the collective power and voices of women rise now so does the Goddess, often hidden and underground, rising now from the buried past.  

I've found, with many others, that re-discovering and re-inventing these universal stories is important to empowering women.  They are also important on many other levels:  to restore the balance within the fragmented soul of humanity, which includes reverence for nature and the sanctity of embodied existence, and for the affirmation of women’s experience.  It's been my privilege to share some of that telling through the use of masks, dance, ritual and theatre.

SACRED MASKS AND DANCE

When I studied mask making in Bali, I realized the Balinese had no understanding of our western discourse on art....art, to them, is a way to commune with the deities of their Hindu religion. Everyone in one way or another assists in the daily practice of their beliefs,  from creating offerings for ritual events, dancing in performances, participating in Ketchak performances, or many other activities associated with festivals and ritual dramas. Every village has its collection of Temple masks, preserved for specific events, such as the seasonal battle between the Barong (light) and the witch Rangda (dark).   For the Balinese the Temple masks are not "art objects" - they "belong to the Gods", and are imbued with special meaning and energy, just as the telling of their stories is more than entertainment.

"Theater" comes from the same Greek word as "theology" - Theos, or "god". In traditional cultures, masks, drama and dance are about contacting the divine, and refreshing the mythologies that inform their cultures... Masks are never made lightly. Animated by the body, masks are threshold tools that mediate between this world and the realms of spirit. There are many procedures to be followed, including choosing the right materials from the right place, asking ancestral spirits what kind of mask is required for specific ceremonies, and consecrating the finished work. A great deal of preparation was necessary, and masks were activated and de-activated with great respect.

As psychologist Stephen Larsen commented in his 1996 book The Mythic Imagination:

"The primary function of the mask is to unite the indwelling wearer (and the observer) with a mythic being, or as Jung would say, 'an archetypal power'. The mask, as we have found in our own work, becomes a transformer of energy, a medium of exchange between ego and archetype. Thus in traditional societies one finds taboos surrounding the mask, its recognition as a power object.”

Among natives of central Mexico, masks used for corn and rain dances were destroyed after a number of years, because they believed they accrued too much power over time. This sensibility is found in Japanese Noh Theatre. Noh masks are created according to traditions that go back many generations to represent personae that have firmly become animated by the mask. Actors will often sit for days with a mask, creating fusion with the character. An artist I know once told me of an African mask at the Museum of Art in Milwaukee that, legend had it, sweated. She said she went to view it over a number of days, and sure enough, there it was, if carefully observed, sweating away. Unnoticed by hundreds of people, she commented, magic is literally on display. 

"We're really praying" Drissana Devananda, a Tantric dancer, said of her dance practice. "It's a devotional practice. We're not bodies seeking the spirit, but spirits seeking bodily experience. Dance is about remembering to function from our whole bodies, the "body mind". That is the place we remember the Goddess." 

The intent of sacred performance thus is to give movement and voice to multi-dimensional being. What happens when we invite the archetypal powers, the Goddesses and Gods, into our "magic circle"? The answer is, "If you build it, they will come."  I believe there is a magnetic field the dance practice engages, a field of synchronicity and relatedness we step into.

 "When you create within a sacred paradigm", playwright Elizabeth Fuller said "you find a strange thing. You are communicating with, and being fed by, sources you know are within you, but have a much greater reflection somewhere else. You are in touch with something timeless.”

CIRCLE ART

As the group becomes a strong container, it generates energy that flows to the audience and beyond, an expanding circle. "Circularity" is the foundation of evolving Women's Spirituality.   The wheel of the elements, the wheel of the year, circulates. Water and wind move across the landscape like a sinuous snake. All things circle and wind and spiral. So does our creativity as we interact.

Masks are also about circles. To me, masks are an impeccable metaphor for the personae that encircle our souls.

Who are we, really? In the course of our lives we inhabit a noisy council of selves. The metaphor of the mask leads perfectly into that essential inquiry:  “Is this me? Or this? Can I wear this mask, become it for a while, express its unique qualities, feel it in my body, and find its story?  Can I take this mask off, have I become too identified with this mask to my detriment?"

We become, in my opinion, more compassionate beings when we can witness, embrace, and celebrate this "circle of self", from dark to light, mundane to divine, fragile to strong, young to old - as the integral being each of us really is. Not as an abstract concept, but as an authentic experience to be had within our spontaneous, creative imaginations, and in the sensory, visionary immediacy of our bodies. One way to do that is to use the mask consciously - putting on and taking off these many "faces", becoming self-aware shape shifters.

Each mask has its reserve of energy. Women and men exploring mythology with masks and storytelling may chose to work with an archetype for specific reasons; sometimes to call back something they feel has been lost. A woman named Turquoise who participated in a ritual drama in 2001, for example, told me that she discovered a joyful opportunity to reconnect with "the instinctual woman"  she had been in her youth when she worked with the  Artemis/Diana mask.

"I found", she wrote, "renewed love for the animals, the trees, for all living things. I saw my surroundings illuminated with light, the light of nature.  That is the domain of Artemis."

Some may find themselves drawn to a Goddess because she affords them an opportunity to explore something they need to discover.  Enacting the myth of Inanna’s descent to meet her dark twin Ereshkigal has been powerful visioning into the "underground" of the psyche for many who have created ritual events based upon this ancient Sumerian myth. Dwelling in the underworld, Ereshkigal may be understood as the “shadow self”, difficult to meet, necessary to not only know, but to cherish and integrate. The descent of Inanna is among the most universal myths of death, fragmentation, and psychic integration ever told: the shamanic "journey of the wounded healer".  Enacted in ritual theatre, it can represent initiation into mature empowerment; and it is also an enactment of the universal cycle of death and rebirth in the natural world.

The Goddess can also manifest in many intimate or contemporary ways. I remember making three masks for three young women who wished to create a performance about the Biblical Lilith, the "first wife of Adam" who was cast out of Eden because she would not submit to him.    They represented her as three aspects: a dark winged, elemental Lilith, a suffering Lilith cast out of Eden, and finally, Lilith as she appears today - a vamp.

"Mystery" derives from a Greek word, myein, which means "to keep silent". There are Gnostic experiences that cannot be spoken because they are, simply, larger than any word can express. They exist on multiple levels of meaning, and seem to cast us into the field of a consciousness that is greater than our individuality. 

Their expression belongs to dreams, art, myth and ritual. To too literally "describe" them is to diminish them and their potency. That was surely one of the reasons why the Eleusinian rites of Greece and Rome, which endured for 2,000 years, were called "Mysteries".

Ann Weller, an artist and community activist in California, took on the difficult task of invoking the "Dark Goddess" for a community ritual theatre event in 2000. At the approach of the millennium, their purpose was to symbolically transform the violence of the past century into a more just, evolved consciousness. As Ann described her process:

"The Dark Goddess is found in many cultures by many names, and is not aspected lightly. The work calls forth an internal capacity for psychic empowerment, an energy not easy for our limited ego selves to encompass. Because the work is, I believe, ultimately, impersonal. I was a brief vessel for an immense archetypal intelligence manifesting within the drama we created. And yet, the experience did bring personal change. You can't work with sacred theatre and not be changed in some way. I was being re-constructed, whether I was aware of it or not, to better serve Her. I found myself confronting aspects of myself that were just not useful any more. Which meant better serving myself. That's how I look at it. The little overlay of how I imagined myself, which had never been very effective, was now utterly obvious to me. My authentic power began to manifest."

In 1999 and 2006 it was my privilege to see the entire collection of masks used for the Spiral Dance, created by the Reclaiming Collective, in San Francisco. By offering to "aspect" a Goddess, each woman who wore her mask, and entered the Circle that night, was providing a blessing for all gathered, allowing the power of each Goddess to radiate into the world. This practice of viewing masks as “vessels for deity” - the gods and goddesses, the animal powers, the ancestral spirits - is a concept found in virtually all indigenous and early cultures, including the origins of Greek theatre.

There is a way of knowing that we are the artists of our lives, a way of seeing our creative process as participation in a conversation we are having with an infinitely conversant world. We’re dancing the future into the world by the stories we tell: like the web of the Native American creatrix Spider Woman, the threads of myth are spun far behind us, and weave their way far into the futures of those not yet born. May we dance empathy instead of despair, may we tell the stories that make life sacred and loving, profound and reverent.

 Photographs are by courtesy of:  Jerri Jo Idarius, Ileya Stewart, Thomas Lux, Peter Hughes, Ann Beam and Lauren Raine

References:

Bat Shalom, D. 2002:   "The Peace Tent", interview with Lauren Raine.
"The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", self-published  with  Blurb.com,  (San Francisco, California), 147 pages, 2019
.
Devananda, D. 2001:  interview with Lauren Raine. Unpublished  manuscript.

Fuller, E.  2001:  Interview with Lauren Raine, "The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", (2008) self-published  with  Blurb.com (San Francisco, California), 147 pages, p.87.

Larsen, S. Ph.D. 1996:  The Mythic Imagination: The Quest for Meaning Through Personal  Mythology,   Inner Traditions (Rochester, Vermont),  P. 178

Raine, L. 2008:   "The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", (2008) self-published   with  Blurb.com,  (San Francisco, California), 147 pages. 

Raine, L. 1999:   Performance, "The 20th Annual Spiral Dance", The Reclaiming Collective, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, California, Oct. 31, 1999. Community performance of annual event. 

Raine, L.  2004:  Performance, "Restoring the Balance",  Muse Community Arts Center, Tucson, Arizona, April 4, 2004.  Community performance, directed and produced by Lauren Raine. 

Raine, L.  2004:   Performance, "A Thousand Faces",  Black Box Theatre, Oakland,  California, October, 2002.  Community performance, directed and produced by Lauren Raine.  

Darling, D. 2000         Performance,  "Masque of the Goddess", Sebastopol Community Hall,  Sebastopol, California,  May,   2000.  Community performance, directed   and produced by Diane Darling. 

Smith, T. 2001     Correspondence with Lauren Raine.

Weller, A.: 2001:     Interview with Lauren Raine, "The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", (2008) self-published  with Blurb.com  (San Francisco,  California), 147 pages.