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

Cereus Milagros

The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

Denise Levertov

Here is another old post worth sharing as I hopefully recover the use of my hand, which makes it hard to write anything new.   I couldn't help "updating" it a bit, but I still like it. 

One of the loveliest secrets of the desert is the mystical Night Blooming Cereus. This cactus only blooms for one night. To encounter a Cereus on a velvet hot desert  night is a magical event...........they were made to bloom in moonlight, to be seen with "night vision", which is very different from day vision.  

Rare, wonderful, how can there be such  "Milagros"?  I remember a man named Brian Bean saying to me, at a summer barbeque, "This is it.  It's July 17th, 1996.  This will never come again."  He pointed to the ground, the sky, and himself.   And he was profoundly right.  Each day will never, ever come again. I'll never see Brian Bean again, or that place, or that time.  His comment causes that particular day to re-surface, both its gift and its loss.  Even as I remember that day,  I see all the lost  domestic magnificence of a summer day in upstate New York, humid light filtering through red maple leaves, the smell of barbecue, my ex-husband's voice as he pressed my shoulder and handed me a plate of corn on the cob.  All of that is gone, long gone now, irretrievably gone except within the reservoir of  memory......even "my" husband, who is someone else's husband now.  What, and where,  is the "I" indeed?

Living in this extraordinary time when so much is endangered, and so much is also possible.............I find I have less and less use for abstractions.   The world is too full, and too precious, to waste in abstractions that remove us from the shimmering web of life in the here and now.  I know full well that my own life continues to become shorter, that my sight or smell or hearing will no doubt diminish, that those Goddess given pleasures are, as Denise Levertov wrote, to be "tasted and seen".  Because it will never be July 22nd, 2020 again.

 "Grief, mercy, language, tangerine, weather, to breathe them, bite, savor, chew, swallow, transform into our flesh....." All a privilege, all an exchange, all about reciprocity.  All a pilgrimage, if you chose to look at it that way.  What are the touchstones along the way..

I've had a dream of walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain as a  Peregrino for many years.  My pilgrimage would (maybe) end at the great Cathedral in Compostella, or maybe at Finisterre, "the end of the world", and I think I would not be making it to visit the bones of Saint James, but rather, to follow the ancient path of the Black Madonna.   I would go to Compostella to be "composted".   I don't actually think a goal, or a purpose, is all that necessary to the Way anyway, which is why I loved the film "The Way" with Martin Sheen.    The Journey is the Reward. 

It seems to me that extraordinary events are going on all around us, miraculous occasions of great beauty, or astounding mystery, of supernatural and wonderfully natural solace, all the time.  My injury, and age, and of course the Corona virus quarentine has forced me to slow down, listen and look, be contemplative, re-member.  One is often so busy being somewhere else, preoccupied with "abstractions" about life, that we miss the everyday Milagros, given, and given, and given. These are the days of "miracles and wonder, the long distance call" as Paul Simon put it..  I think there is great solace in seeing that, even now, even here, in a time that is in such chaos, we are still daily blessed  "on the Camino".

Earth Speak: Envisioning a Conversant World

I was looking forward to presenting this at the Association for Women and Mythology Conference in New Mexico, but unfortunately I have had to cancel because of illness.  But I just felt like posting it again anyway................brings back the revelations of that wonderful trip!

Earth-speak:

Envisioning a Conversant World

By Lauren Raine MFA

""Speak to the Earth and it shall teach thee"

Job 12:8

In 2018 I attended a conference on sacred sites and dowsing at Pewsey, in Southern England, called the Gate Keepers Conference (1), an annual conference of dowsers, mythologists, and Earth mysteries researchers who have been investigating sacred sites throughout the United Kingdom, as well as intentional pilgrimage to them, for many years.  I also undertook my visit as a personal pilgrimage, visiting in the course of my time in the U.K. Avebury, Silbury Hill, Glastonbury, Arbor Low, and other sites.

 My introduction to this adventure took some fortitude.   After a 15-hour flight from Los Angeles, I waited in line 2 hours in Customs, then made my way to Paddington Station in London, then to Swindon by train, and finally to Avebury by bus.  By the time I stepped off the bus, I was, perhaps, in an altered state of consciousness from utter exhaustion.  I stepped from the bus to see, perfectly aligned with my sight, rising from the morning’s mist, the great prehistoric monument of Silbury Hill, the mysterious Omphalos of an ancient world. 

When I saw Silbury through the mist, what opened before me was a vision of a time when the entire landscape was the sacred body of the deity, a cyclical mythos of an animated Earth that ensouled and enlivened and enstoried every hill, spring, river and forest within a cosmology of conversant belonging.  I will never forget that moment of revelation.

Situated just south of Avebury, Silbury Hill is Europe's tallest prehistoric structure.   Michael Dames, in his book THE SILBURY TREASURE (2) demonstrates persuasively that Silbury, like other "Neolithic Harvest Hills" associated with nearby henges and standing stones, literally represented the pregnant belly of the Great Mother, and was associated with a certain time of the agricultural year, in particular, the harvest of July/August. 

Silbury Hill is part of the great Avebury ceremonial complex, and has been excavated over the centuries, never once finding the “great chieftain’s treasure” which, Dames points out, it was assumed “must” be there.  We now know, at last, that its interior does not hold gold or the bones of a mythic hero king and his unfortunate slaves.  Rather, it simply holds grains, turf, and animal bones, with no evidence of human burial at its core.  Silbury is also surrounded by a henge or moat, once considerably deeper than it now is, and which would have been full of water, at least at certain times of the year.Dames points out that this henge actually forms the shape of a squatting or birthing woman in profile.     He likens the "Goddess form" of the henge to similar ubiquitous Goddess sculptures and sites associated with Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland, the Orkney Islands, the Hebrides, the Isle of Man, Brittany.........as far as the mysterious Temples of Malta, or the barely excavated stone circles of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey.

Why has this interpretation of Silbury never been seen before?  Because, Dames points out, to do so one must make a kind of paradigm shift into an alternate view of his-story.  “Silbury “Michael Dames writes,

“Conveys a philosophy which is of exceptional relevance to the modern world.  Silbury has been reduced to an enigma because of the attempt to impress upon it concepts such as kingship, personal property, and individual male glory. Who put “King Sil” into Silbury?  We did, because we wanted him there - a superman chieftain with a super treasure and hundreds of slaves, so vain, so aggressive, so acquisitive, so preoccupied with eternal fame, that he could provide us with a monumental tomb and treasure.  All treasure finding attempts have failed because the builders belonged to a society for which such concepts had little importance, or even meaning.  And yet, since their compelling priorities are not entirely absent from our values, we can appreciate something of what the original Silsbury treasure was, especially since the future of our own civilization may give us urgency and humility to tender our investigation.” (3)

 

When I walked the Avebury complex, I experienced the intensification of life force vitality I have come to recognize in places of numinosity and telluric force.  There is no doubt in my mind (or body mind) that these sites marked places of intrinsic geomantic power, and that the placement of stones also served to intensify or channel the animating Earth energies present.   Sacred landscapes also augment their healing or consciousness elevating properties through the interaction of generations of people with the "spirit of the land” through what researchers such as Paul Deveraux (4) have termed "geomantic reciprocity".

 Geomantic reciprocity occurs as human beings bring intentionality and focus to a particular place, making it a holy or sacred place.  This  communion with place becomes more active as place itself accrues story or mythic power  in the memory of the people, and in the memory of the land.   Sacred places have both an innate and a developed capacity to bring about altered states of consciousness, especially if people come prepared within the open, liminal state of pilgrimage or ceremony.  And myth   is the language spoken to engage the numinous presence.

I also went to Glastonbury in Somerset as part of my journey to visit the famous Chalice Well.  Glastonbury is Avalon - the source of the Arthurian legends, the land of Merlin, Arthur and the Lady of the Lake.  Once the hill now called the Tor was surrounded by a lake.  During the Middle Ages Glastonbury was the home of the great Gothic Cathedral of Glastonbury and its community of monks, a place of universal pilgrimage.  The Cathedral was destroyed by Henry the VIII, and the Abbot executed, after the Abbot refused to leave the Catholic church.

Dowsers Caroline Hoare and Gary Biltcliffe (5) write of the “crossing of the Michael and Mary lines” at the Tor, a prominent point of interest to those investigating Earth energies.  The Tor also features a tower, once part of the destroyed Abbey, visible from miles away, that stands atop the famous hill.  They also speak of the more mutable “Dragon lines” of serpentine force that weave throughout this highly energized area.  Underground springs originate in the area of the Tor, springs that have been renowned for their healing powers since long before the advent of Christianity.   Now called the "Red Spring" and the "White Spring”, where these springs emerge, at an underground chamber and at the Chalice Well Garden, are still revered by pilgrims who come to them from around the world.   The red color found at the Chalice Well is from iron oxide deposited by the spring.  The White Spring deposits calcium, leaving a white residue.

 The Avalonian springs are famous as part of the ancient mythic landscape of Avalon…………. but in truth, there are hundreds if not thousands of once revered historical and prehistoric wells and springs throughout the UK, many of them still named for St. Brigit, the ancient Goddess of the Isles of Britannia.  The Chalice Garden, for me, is infused with presence, with the Goddess local  devotees call the Lady of Avalon. She is the Genus Loci of Avalon, what the Romans called Numina. (6)

The garden of the Chalice Well looked different, as the last time I had visited had been high summer.  It was deserted, and I was able to sit before the Well in meditation alone.   I took water from the springs to bring home, and then walked around.  What popped into my mind,  as if I heard it spoken, was odd - the words "Covenant Garden". When one is on a Pilgrimage, it is important to pay attention to whatever occurs, internally or externally.   As I walked among winters sleeping apple trees and bright red holly berries, I wondered:  what could "covenant garden" mean, and why had I thought of it? 

I remembered the name of the English Goddess Coventina.  According to Wikipedia,

Coventina was a Romano-British goddess of wells and springs. She is known from multiple inscriptions found at a site in Northumberland County, an area surrounding a wellspring near Carrawburgh on Hadrian’s Wall. (7)

A Triple Goddess of wells and springs was certainly appropriate for the Chalice Springs  of Glastonbury.  Interestingly,  the word Covenant, like "coven", "convening",  etc.  refers to a gathering of people to reach a harmonious agreement, which can include an agreement that is holy in some way.   

Such musings then led me to imagine  the famous  "Ark of the Covenant", which was said to hold writings and objects of Biblical veneration, as well as containing  "God's sustenance for man" which was called Manna.   Manna was the food, variously described as different substances or grains, which was provided by God to feed the people.  "Manna" has also come to mean a kind of inherent numinous power that may be found in a place or an object.

 The Ark of the Covenant, described in the Book of Exodus, was a gold-covered wooden chest containing the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments.  It also was supposed to contain “a golden jar holding manna, and Aaron's rod, which budded". (8)

Interesting:  holy food and a budding rod or tree.  The Garden is indeed a "harmonious agreement" between earthly beings of all kinds.  And "Manna" is the food provided by the Garden, which I view as the sustaining power of nature.  Aaron’s  "rod that blooms “could also be seen, from the viewpoint of a feminist mythologist like myself,  as a symbol originally belonging to the ancient Hebrew and Middle Eastern  Goddess Asherah, who was often  represented as a tree.  In the days of the Old Testament, She was an important deity, and was represented as a rod, or "Asherah pole”. (9)  The practice of carrying "Asherah poles" was apparently fairly common in the early days of the Semite tribes, although the Patriarchs later eliminated this custom, along with the Goddess, as the Hebrew deity became exclusively male. 

I reflected that a Garden represents a "Covenant” between human, animal, plant, soil, air, rain, water.......A successful garden is a harmonious Ecosystem in balance with all of its components.  A garden thrives through a network of inter-dependant relationships.  Trees communicate with each other through a vast underground weaving of roots and fungi.  The bees and other pollinators bring new life; the worms, microorganisms and other insects assist in the decay process.  And the birds assist in distributing seed as well.  Not to mention humans that may plant, sow, admire, and occasionally eat the stray apple or strawberry as well. 

 It could be said that a Garden is a "Covenant" achieved by many beings to reach a divine agreement.  THE GARDEN OF THE COVENANT.

As I was leaving the Chalice Garden, I saw a tiny metallic heart on the ground.  I was going to take it, but then it occurred to me that perhaps someone left it as a token or as an offering, and it wasn't right for me to take it.  I put it back on the ground and took a picture.  I was amazed to see that the camera showed light surrounding the little shape in the photo!  So I took two more, and they came out the same.   A Green Heart ……… 

Perhaps the Earth is Speaking to us all the time, we’ve just forgotten how to listen.  I believe there are ways to renew that conversation, to attune we once again to the voice of place, and hence, to see Place once again as sacred.  How might we live, how might we act, if we saw the world with such a vision, as both Covenant and Conversation?

"To the native Irish, the literal representation of the country was less important than its poetic dimension.  In traditional bardic culture, every place had its legend and its own identity.... what endured was an ongoing conversation with the mythic landscape."

R. F. Foster (10)

In so many areas of the UK the 21st Century can seem like just another layer atop a pentimento of a much older landscape, one that proceeds our short view of history.   Of course, this is true everywhere, but it seems so much in evidence there.  That "pentimento" visible just below the surface is circular, serpentine, and full of standing stones, henges, magic wells, and ley lines.   What, as theologians and "geologians" for the future, might we recover, re-learn and re-invent from it?

With the evolution of monotheism and patriarchal religions that increasingly removed divinity from both nature and the body, and in the past century the rapid rise of industrialization, we have increasingly looked at the world from a "users" point of view.   Places with their unique qualities and beauties become "resources" instead of living lands.  Renunciate religions have also served to de-sacralize earthly experience, further complicating our crisis.   Yet every early culture has insisted that nature is full of intelligence and intelligences that inform, bless, heal, and communicate, often through the multi-dimensional language of myth and altered states of consciousness.   

Contemporary Gaia Theory, developed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis (10), proposes that the Earth is a living, self-regulating organism, responsive and evolving.  If one is sympathetic to Gaia Theory, and the innate interactive intelligence of ecosystems, it follows that everything living is responsive and conversant in some way, in ways both visible and invisible.  I believe we need to learn to "speak with the Earth" again, not in some abstract way, but intimately, beneath our well-rooted feet, in our creative hands entwined and webbed among a great planetary collaboration. The "Covenant" of the Garden.  

How do we regain our niche in that great “Covenant”?   One answer is through “re-mything” culture.  Myth is, and always has been, a way for human beings to become intimate with what is ultimately vast, deep, and mysterious. Our experience changes when Place becomes "you" or "Thou" instead of "it".    We can renew our conversation, and change our paradigm, by looking back as well as forward, to a time when "nature" was about relationship with the land.  Relationship  in which cultures, individuals and religions were profoundly embedded as both story and as living metaphor.   And some places were places of special power, places of pilgrimage.

References and Notes:

1.  The Gatekeeper Trust,  “Dreaming the Land – Working with the Consciousness of Nature", Annual Conference 2018,  Pewsey, Wiltshire, UK https://gatekeeper.org.uk/2018/05/dreaming-the-land-annual-conference-2018/

2.  Dames, Michael:  The Silbury Treasure:  The Great Goddess Rediscovered, 1976, Thames and Hudson, London

3.  Dames, Michael:  The Silbury Treasure:  The Great Goddess Rediscovered, 1976, Thames and Hudson, London, Page 76

4.  Deveraux, Paul:  Earthmind: Communicating with the Living World of Gaia,Paul Devereux; John Steele; David Kubrin, 1992, Inner Traditions, Vermont 

5.  Biltclilffe, Gary and Hoare, Caroline:  The Power of Centre, 2018, Sacred Lands Publishing, Dorset, UK 

6.  Cambridge English Dictionary (2019): 

   numen ^{/ (ˈnjuːmɛn) /, noun} plural -mina (-mɪnə)             (An ancient Roman religion) a deity or spirit presiding over a place,             a guiding principle, force, or spirit

7. Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia; “Coventina”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventina

8. Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia; “The Ark of the Covenant”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_of_the_Covenant

9. An Asherah pole was a sacred pole (or sometimes a tree) that was used in the worship of the Goddess Asherah. The Asherah pole was often mentioned in the Old Testament as one of the ways the Israelites sinned against their God by worshipping other gods.  The "Asherah pole" was mentioned in the Judeo/Christian Bible a number of times, including Exodus 34:13 (NIV): "Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles." The Israelites were commanded to destroy any Asherah pole they found - however, it seems that the custom, as well as the worship of Asherah, was absorbed and retained nevertheless by Israelites for a considerable time.  For more:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah_pole

10.   Foster, Roy F., Modern Ireland:  1600 - 1972, 1990, Penguin Books, N.Y

11.  Lovelock, James with Margulis, Lynn: 

Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, 1979, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England.

Earth Speak 2019 presentation from Lauren Raine

Sacred Places and Pilgrimage

At the end of November I'll be going to southern England, near Avebury, to attend the Gatekeeper Trust Annual Conference  ‘DREAMING the LAND’:  Working with the Consciousness of Nature,  24 - 25 November 2018.  I'll then be spending some time in Salisbury, and in Glastonbury, where I will be giving a talk about the Masks of the Goddess Project, sponsored by the Temple of the Goddess of Glastonbury.

I spent time in southern England in 2011 when I attended the Goddess Conference, an event that was truly transformative for me.    


http://gatekeeper.org.uk/events/annual-conference-2018

NUMINA:  Sacred Places and Pilgrimage

"To the native Irish, the literal representation of the country was less important than its poetic dimension.  In traditional Bardic culture, the terrain was studied, discussed, and referenced:  every place had its legend and its own identity....what endured was the mythic landscape."

    R.F. Foster

The Romans believed that special places were inhabited by intelligences they called Numina, the "genius loci" of a particular place.   I believe many mythologies are rooted in actual experiences of "spirit of place", the "living landscape", a conversation within which we also participate.  

Myth is, and always has been, a way for human beings to become intimate and conversant with what is vast, deep, and ultimately mysterious. Our experience changes when Place becomes "you" or "Thou" instead of "it".   There are many disciplines now writing about the importance of place, asking, in essence, “how can we renew our ancient conversation with the Earth"?  As pagans I believe we are uniquely able to answer that question, and lead the way into re-mything our culture.  In the past, "Nature" was not just a "backdrop" or a "resource"...........nature was a relationship within which cultures were profoundly embedded.  Whether we speak of the aborigines of Australia, Celtic fey folk, or the agrarian roots of Rome, the landscape was spiritually personified.  Every valley, orchard, healing spring or womb-like cave had its unique quality and force - its Numina.   Cooperation and respect for the Numina was essential for well-being.  And some places were places of special power, places of pilgrimage.

With the evolution of monotheism and religions that increasingly removed divinity from Nature and the body, and in the past century, the rise of industrialization, we have looked at the world primarily from a "users" point of view.  This  screen tends to frame the world as an object.  Yet every culture, including ours, has insisted throughout its pre-industrial stages that the world is alive,  and responsive to what human beings do upon it.   From katchinas to the Orisha, naiads to dryads, the Australian Dream Time to Alchemy's Anima Mundi,  every local myth reflects what the Greeks and Romans knew as the resident “spirit of place”, the Genious Loci.

Contemporary Gaia Theory proposes that the Earth is a living, self-regulating organism, responsive and evolving.  If one is sympathetic to Gaia Theory, it follows that everything is responsive and conversant in some way, visible and invisible.     Sacred places may be places where the potential for revelation, healing, or transpersonal experience is especially potent.  Ancient Greeks built their Oracle at Delphi for this reason, and certainly early Christians knew this when they built churches on existing pagan sites.  There is a geo-magnetic, terrestrial energy concentrated at certain places on our planet that throughout the millennia catalyzes spiritual insight, healing, visionary experience, even prophecy.  Before they became contained and mythologized by  religions or marked by prehistoric monuments, these sites were intrinsically places of numinous power and presence in their own right.  They radiate their powers to all who visit, and ultimately, no practice of a particular religion or belief system is needed for them to have a transformative effect, although human architecture and the accumulation of human psychic energy and visitation may amplify this effect.  

Roman philosopher Plinius Caecilius commented that:

  "If you have come upon a grove that is thick with ancient trees which rise far above their usual height and block the view of the sky with their cover of intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest and the seclusion of the place and the wonder of the unbroken shade in the midst of open space will create in you a feeling of a divine presence, a Numina."

Many years ago I lived in Vermont, and one fall morning I stumbled down to the Inn for a cup of coffee to discover a group of people about to visit one of Vermont's mysterious stone cairns on Putney Mountain.  Among the researchers was Sig Lonegren, a well known dowser and researcher of earth mysteries.  Before I had my second cup of coffee I found myself on the bus, and then at a chamber constructed of huge stones, hidden among brilliant foliage, with an entrance way perfectly framing the Summer Solstice.  No one knows who built these structures, which occur by the hundreds up and down the Connecticut River, but approaching the site I felt such a rush of vitality it took my breath away.  I was stunned when Sig placed divining rods in my hands, and I watched them open as we traced the ley lines that ran into this site.   Standing on the top of the somewhat submerged chamber, my divining rod "helicoptered", letting me know that this was the crossing of two leys, a potent place. 

Months later 13 friends gathered in the dark to sit in that chamber and watch the sun rise through its entrance way.  We were not a coven, I had not even heard of such a thing, but we all felt the power of the deep, vibrant energy there, and awe as the sun rose illuminating the chamber.   None of us knew what to do, so we held hands and chanted Aum.  We were all as high as a kite when we left, and this was the beginning of a life long journey for me, a journey that led me here. 

Earth mysteries researchers like John Steele and Paul Deveraux in their book EARTHMIND have written that we suffer from "geomantic amnesia".  We have forgotten how to listen to the Earth, to engage in "geomantic reciprocity", instinctively, mythically, and practically, to our great loss and endangerment. 

We disregard or destroy for short term economic gain places of power, and conversely, build homes, even hospitals, on places that are geomagnetic ally toxic.  The ancient Greeks built their shrine for Gaia at Delphi because the unique personality of that place was divined to be especially suited to Gaia residing there. They also sited their healing Dream Temples according to the auspiciousness of place.  Honoring what inspired the early Greeks to decide on a particular place may be important not only to pilgrims, but to something at the base of building future sustainable human societies.

The act of making a pilgrimage is among the oldest human endeavors. Recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey include a landscape of monolithic  temples that peoples journeyed to 12,000 years ago.    The Eleusinian Mysteries  combined spirit of place and mythic enactment to transform pilgrims, and enact the death/rebirth cycle of nature, for almost 2,500 years.  I believe there are both leylines and mythic “songlines" that trace ancient pilgrimages to the Black Madonnas of Europe (which are still going on).One of the most famous is the "Camino" which concludes at the Cathedral of Santiago at Compostella.  Some believe the earliest Camino was to the “Black Madonna of Compostella", a very ancient effigy. Compostella comes from the same root word as "compost",  the fertile soil created from rotting organic matter, the "dark matter"  to which everything living returns, and is continually resurrected by the processes of nature into new life, new form.  Pilgrims finally arriving in  Compostella after their long journey were being 'composted' in a sense.  Emerging from the  dark confines of the cathedral they were ready to return home with their spirits reborn. 

In 2011 I visited the ancient sacred springs of Glastonbury, the Chalice Well and the White Spring as well as participating in the Goddess Conference there.   Making this intentional Pilgrimage was life changing, and I had a profound, personal sense of the "Spirit of Place", what some call the "Lady of Avalon".  Pilgrimage opens one to blessing, vision, and reverence.  

As a dowser myself, I've experienced shifts in energy - which means also shifts in  consciousness -many times when visiting areas that are geomantically potent, be it the henge of Avebury,  or the labyrinth at Unity Church in Tucson, Glastonbury, or even a crop circle in Wiltshire.  Freddy Silva is an Englishman who has spent many years researching authentic Crop Circles. He has found that they have unique phenomena, including magnetic and energetic properties, which have been documented to alter consciousness and affect the health of some individuals.  The vast majority of the documented authentic crop circles have occurred near prehistoric standing stones, Silbury Hill, and other places of geomantic potency near by.  Silva believes they are not only communicating through the universal language of symbol and Mandela but they are also, speaking in terms of subtle energies, changing the land and underground water tables  in some way - perhaps, an infusion, a "pollination".  He calls them "Temporary Temples".

Sacred Sites are able to raise energy because they are intrinsically geomantically potent, and they also become potent because of human interaction with the innate intelligence of place.  My teacher, spiritual dowser Sig Lonegren, has spent many years exploring sacred places, and commented that possibly, as human culture and language became increasingly complex, we began to lose mediumistic consciousness, a daily, conversational Gnosis with the "subtle realms". 

 With the gradual ascendancy of left-brained reasoning he suggests the ancients were concerned with how to continue contact with the gods, the ancestors, the numina of the land.  According to Sig, Stonehenge may represent a "last ditch effort" to keep in touch with the spirit world with communal experience.   As the rift between personal gnosis and spiritual contact deepened with the development of patriarchal institutions, tribal and individual Gnosis was replaced by complex religious institutions that rendered spiritual authority to priests who were viewed as the sole representatives of the Gods or God.  

Perhaps this capacity is returning to us now, a new evolutionary balance. As crisis engulfs us, we need, once again, to re-member how to “speak to the Earth", to make pilgrimage to the Source, by whatever name. 

 References:

***Sig Lonegren:

http://www.sacredsites.co.uk  ©1998

http//:www.geomancy.org
http//:www.sunnybankglastonbury.co.uk

*** EARTHMIND: Communicating With the Living World of Gaia, by John Steele, Paul Deveraux, and David Kubrin (1989) 

***Freddy Silva:  http://www.invisibletemple.com/

The Black Madonna

 

 

I am pleased with this, the last of my "Our Lady of the Shards" series.   Over the years I've made quite a few Black Madonna images.  To me, the Black Madonna, and there are many greatly revered throughout Europe, represents the essence of the ancient sacred places that many of these images still "inhabit".  The Black Madonna is Mother Earth, the Source, the Root and Leaf and Fruit that sustain us.   She is felt  most keenly in sacred places like caves and springs.  

The one to the right  I made to install in a tree in 2005, after a numinous residency at I Park Artists Enclave.  Truly, I felt the forest there speak to me, and the "Black Madonna" became my own humble offering to the Numina of place.

The Camino is the ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, a 10th century Romanesque and Gothic cathedral that supposedly houses the bones of St. James, a Christian martyr.  It also once housed a beloved Black Madonna effigy.  Thinking about the Camino, and pilgrimages to sacred places that were once considered to be inhabited by Numina, by what the Romans called "Genious Loci" I  felt like including here  this article I wrote in 2009. 

Black Madonna of Guadaloupe

Reflections on the Black Madonna 

"There was once a vast pilgrimage that took place in Europe. Pilgrims made their way towards the town of Compostella in Spain, where an ancient effigy of the BLACK MADONNA is housed. The word Compostella comes from the same root word as "compost".

COMPOST is the living, black material that is made from rotting fruits, grains and other organic matter. From this compost -- life and light will emerge. When the pilgrims came to the Cathedral at Compostella they were being 'composted' in a sense. After emergence from the dark confines of the cathedral and the spirit -- they were ready to flower, they were ready to return home with their spirits lightened." ~~ Jay Weidner

   

I can't think about European traditions of pilgrimage to sacred places without  revisiting the mysterious "Black Madonnas" found in shrines, churches and cathedrals all over Europe - France alone has over 300. These icons have been the focus of millions of pilgrimages since the early days of the church, and most probably rest upon sites that were places of prehistoric  pilgrimage long before the advent of Christianity.

Why were these effigies so beloved that pilgrims traveled many miles to seek healing and guidance? Why, in a medieval world where European peasants were unlikely to see a dark skinned person was the Madonna black?  Some of the effigy statues are made of materials that are true, ebony black. And why are there so many myths that connect the effigies with trees, or caves, or special wells, and ensuing miracles of healing? 

Many suggest that the  Madonna with Child originated in images of Isis with her child Horus (the reborn Sun God). Isis was a significant religious figure in the later days of Rome, and continued to be worshipped in the early days of Christianity. In general, when Isis arrived in Rome she adopted Roman dress and complexion, and was sometimes merged with other deities, such as Venus. The images of Isis that survived the fall of Rome were perhaps the origin of later Virgin and Child icons - temples devoted to Isis continued well into the third century. "Paris" derives from the name of Isis (par Isis). 

Whether originally derived from Isis or not, most of these images are connected in place and myth to healing springs, power sites, and holy caves. The Black Madonna is the Earth Mother, reborn as  Catholic Mary, and yet not entirely disguised. She is black like the Earth is black, fertile (and often shown pregnant) like the Earth is fertile, dark because she is embodied and immanent, as nature is embodied and immanent. 

 I really like Mr. Weidner's reference to "compost" in speaking of the great pilgrimage to Compostella.  Compost is the fertile soil created from rotting organic matter, the "Black Matter". The alchemical soup to which everything living returns, and is continually resurrected by the processes of nature into new life, new form. Mater. Mother.

There are many legends and miracles associated with Black Madonna icons.  I suggest that the sanctity of place and intention also contribute to these myths, and phenomena.
 The icon at Guadalupe, Spain, is said to have been carved by St. Luke in Jerusalem, although this is highly unlikely. It doesn't ultimately matter how old the icon actually is. The question is, what does it embody that strikes a deep chord, that speaks to those who come to contemplate the icon? And what does the icon emanate? Can it actually have healing powers, or is the site itself a "place of power", it's energies renewed by millenia of worship and pilgrimage? What resonance does it attune those who come there to? And how significant is the act of making the pilgrimage itself, the long effort to come to a sacred place, a sacred image?

Black Madonna of Czestochowskad (Poland)

In the Middle Ages when the majority of the Black Madonna statues were created there was still a strong undercurrent and mingling of the old ways. Black Madonnas were discovered hidden in trees in France as late as the seventeenth century, suggesting these were representations of pagan goddesses who were still worshipped in groves.

Black Madonnas are also found close to caves (the womb/tomb of the Earth Mother).  The earliest human paintings, some dating back more than 30,000 years,  are found in caves in France, beautiful paintings of animals and birds.  Within these caves were also found the earliest (and only) representations of human beings for many millenia, the little sculptures of seemingly pregnant women, the so-called "Venus" figures.  I agree with archaeologist Marija Gimbutas that these figures were not some form of "neolithic pornography and fertility fetishes" but represented the prime deity, the  Mother deity herself, and the caves were regarded as  sacred wombs where the animals that provided sustenance and power to ancient hunters might be thus born again.  Caves of both return and  becoming.

In medieval Christian churches, it's interesting to note that  the black Madonna statues were sometimes kept in a subterranean part of a church, or near a special spring or well.

"Again and again a statue is found in a forest or a bush or discovered when ploughing animals refuse to pass a certain spot. The statue is taken to the parish church, only to return miraculously by night to her own place, where a chapel is then built in her honour. Almost invariably associated with natural phenomena, especially healing waters or striking geographical features"

  Ean Begg

Black Madonnas, not surprisingly, are also associated with the Grail legends. The Grail or Chalice may represent the mingling of Celtic mythology. Cerridwen's cauldron was an important myth about the womb of the Earth Mother, from which life is continually renewed, nourished, born, and reborn. 

The extent to which people make pilgrimages to these sites is amazing. For example, the Black Madonna of Montserrat, near Barcelona, receives up to a million pilgrims a year, travelling to visit the 'miracle- working' statue known as La Moreneta, the dark little one.

So why am I writing all of this? Well, because it's important to know that the ancient "Journey to the Earth Mother", which exists in all cultures and times, never ended. It just transformed again. (In fact, there is a lot I could say about the black stone (the Kaaba) of Mecca, and its prehistoric origins, but I'll leave to another time.)