The Ritual at the Women & Spirituality Conference

 

My colleague Patricia Ballentine and I were very pleased and moved by the Ritual Theatre we created with women from Rochester and other parts of Minnesota for the Women and Spirituality Conference which took place the 4th through the 6th of October in Rochester, Minnesota.  It was difficult working via Zoom with a cast I only met in person at the dress rehearsal the night of the Event at the Chateau Theatre downtown, but Spirit was there indeed:  everything went perfectly, and the Goddess was a felt Presence with every Invocation.  I copy some of the text of the Ritual here, and photographs of some of the cast,  graciously provided by Virginia Cooper, one of the Facilitators of the Conference.

Our beautiful and mystical Music was provided by Nicole Neill Roen  and Friends,  with "She Who Hears the Cries of the World" by Jennifer Berezon.  In addition to myself and Patricia Ballentine our Storytelling was beautifully shared with the poet Esther Marcella.

The performance script was written by myself (Spider Woman Speaks), Erica Swadley (Invocation of the Great Mother), Diane Darling (Bridgit), and the Invocations of the Goddess were by Patricia Ballentine .  With many thanks to Virginia Cooper , Lisa Spiral  and the Conference for making this possible!

"O Great Mother Goddess,  we call on you now.

We invite your presence in circle. Surround and encompass us.

Rise up from your roots.  Hear us, our voices of pathos.

See our dancing feet, how we beat out your rhythms.

With our hearts, we drum you back:

We are staggering toward you.

Will you run one hundred steps to us?

Will you spread your mantle of peace?"

......Excerpt, "Invocation of the Great Mother"   

Bonnie Berquam  as White Tara

"Om Tare, Tu Tare, Tare Soha

White Tara, Bodhisattva

 hear us now………. "

Cathy Peterson  as Bridgit

"I am still with you, children of the children of the children

of The Lost Isles, the Western Shores, children of Tiranog - 

I have not forgotten you, far from the homelands.

Remember Me, when the bard sings:

Raise a glass of golden mead to Brigid, Lady of the Celts"

Patricia Ballentine weaving Spider Woman's Web

"Once, you could see the Web just as plain as day. 

Song lines, ley lines, threads, links, the pattern.

Each shining thread connected to each shining, light woven strand.

You say you can't see it - Well, take a look around!

You don't need to climb a mountain to get the big picture!

All of its snaking rivers 

and twining roots

Are inside of you"

Jurema Silva as Yemeya

“We Call Upon Yemeya, Ocean Mother, “Yey Omo Eja”, She Who is the Mother of the world,She Whose Children are the Fish and the great whales and all the wealth of the sea ... The great tides are your rhythms and moods. Bring to us your gifts of Beauty, Compassion and Protection.”

Susan Langston as The Cailleach

"We Call Upon The Cailleach, Old Woman of Winter, most Ancient Ancestor, Divine Hag who creates the landscape with her giant strides and staff, brings the changing seasons of cold and wind. She whose face is as weathered as the rocks and as blue as ice, Bring us your gifts of Endurance, Wisdom, and Primal Ancestry"

Spider Woman weaving with the Audience

Deb Erickson as Flora 

"We Call Upon Flora, Goddess of flowers and springtime whose steps upon the Earth dance forth the returning fertility of the land. She whose presence infuses the air with the perfume that attracts the bees and teases into expression the blossoming of new love. Bring us your gifts of Playfulness, Imagination, and Inspiration! "

Shawn Vougeot as Quon Yin

 “We call upon Quan Yin, Goddess of Mercy, Bodhisattva of Compassion, holder of the healing waters, who through your arms offer comfort to the suffering of the world. She who hears the cries of the World, Bring us your gifts of Kindness, Honesty and Mercy. "

Raechel Murphy as The Goddess of the Turning Year

"We Call Upon The Goddess of the Turning Year, She who stands at the crossroad of the Wheel of the ever turning year. She reminds us that we are ever changing and ever moving with all living beings, and our lives mirror the Turning of the Seasons, each beautiful, each challenging. Bring us your gifts of the Return of the Sun in the dark of Winter, and the Promise of new life as a new year begins."

Dalia Gamal as Isis 

 “We Call Upon Isis, Lady of Ten Thousand names. Moon and Mother of the sun. Mourning wife and tender sister, you are the culture –bringer and giver of healt. You who have known sorrow and bring the gift of grieving….you who flooded the Nile with your tears, Bring to us your gifts of Restoration….and Renewal!

Kay Rydeen as Green Tara  

“We Call Upon Green Tara, Goddess of immediate action, remover of obstacles, She who is of youthful face and peaceful presence yet poised for quick movement and encouragement as we aspire toward enlightenment. Bring us your gifts of Presence, and the Removal of Fears."

Kva Mary Wajer as Hagia Sophia 

We Call Upon Sophia, Mirror of Wisdom, You who are the first and the last, honored one and scorned one….whore and holy one, wife and virgin…Mother and daughter, the Silence beyond comprehension. Bring us your gifts of Self Knowing and Expanded Consciousness”

Tina Cotterman as Gaia

"We Call Upon Gaia, the Mother of All, Eldest of all beings. She births and sustains allthe creatures of the world, all that go upon the land, and all in the paths of the waters, and all that eek the skies, and all that grow under the Sun: She feeds all of Her vast generosity, and Her beauty that sustains and evolves us. Hail, Mother Earth. Bring us your gifts of Beauty, Ecology of Soul among All Beings, and the ability to cherish our Source in Gaia."

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.

"Sedna" and a syncronicity

 

"In the archaic universe all things are signs and signatures of each other. Inscribed in the hologram, to be divined subtly."

Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, Hamlet's Mill

Every time I sit down to write, I always feel like it entails constructing articles complete with footnotes and addendum.......which is one of the reasons my articles have been not very inventive or prolific lately. Having said that, I'm going to loosen up, maybe make a few subjective statements and meandering surmises, and stop feeling I have to write as if I was defending my ideas at a podium.

Currently I belong to an online group that meets once a month to share and discuss synchronicities, or meaningful coincidences.  Because of that, I've been wanting to collate or review some of the many synchronicities I archived in this Blog.  Below is one from 2012 that involved a good friend of mine, the sculptor Georgia Stacy who lives in Nogal, New Mexico.  

Erica Swadley as "Sedna's Shaman" in Restoring the Balance (2004)

 In 2009 I sent out an email about an article to be published in   Coreopsis : A Journal of Myth and Theatre    for their Summer/Autumn Issue of 2009.  The theme for that edition was  ironically themed "Mask, Mirror, and Muse".  My article was about my ritual theatre event/performance at the former Muse Community Arts Center:  "Restoring the Balance: the Mask of Sedna" .  

I'm proud of that article. Restoring the Balance was the last event I personally directed using the Masks of the Goddess collection, although they did travel to other producers.  It was also an event wholly infused with, for lack of a better word, a kind of numinous presence, and synchronicities abounded in it's production.  I even found myself after the event with spirit photographs!

Katherine Josten as "Sedna" 

I have always felt I had a responsibility to document and share the stories participants created, told, or re-told with the masks.  Not just the ever-evolving myths themselves, such as the "Story of Sedna", Inuit Mother Goddess of the Ocean,  but also the stories of the rituals, the performances, the insights that arose for those who were involved in the productions.  In the hope that those archives may inspire others to carry on the work.  These were collective re-mythings: prayers and celebrations of the multi-cultural Divine Feminine through the medium of story, performed within the liminal landscapes of ritual, theatre and sacred space.

As members of the neo-pagan Collective Reclaiming used to say when a Circle was cast for ritual work: 

"We are between the worlds now, and what happens between the worlds can change the world."  

To be "between the worlds" is to be in that zone between the secular and the sacred, a circular "wholly" place that is fertile and imaginally fluid. ("Imaginal cells" is the actual scientific term for the cells that are responsible for transforming a caterpillar, immersed in its chrysalis, into a butterfly. They are alchemic agents of biological change.)

"I think many artists feel they are weaving some form of energy into their work. It's what psychometrists see when they "read" objects. There is an aesthetic psychometry each person does as they look at a work of art. Artworks are like batteries - if we're receptive, they can charge us. My idea of reality is that there are many, many interpenetrating dimensions." .....Alex Grey

 "What happens between the worlds", fashioned with individual and collective intention, occuring with or without the form of conscious ritual or pilgrimage,  is a generative place, ripe with syncronicities, because therein the  boundaries lessen.

"Wind Borne" by Georgia Stacy

So, what this is leading to is an email I received, after forwarding my article about the Myth of Sedna, to Georgia in New Mexico. Recently, Georgia has begun to include whale flukes instead of wings in her wood sculptures. Here's a new piece from that series and an email she sent me back.

 Lauren, This is more than a coincidence. I was reading the "Inuit Imagination". When I came to the sculpture carved for Sedna, with a whale fluke, I cried for the second time. I cried the first time I heard the story, many years ago. But, the clincher...right before I turned on the computer to find your email, a friend called and wanted to read me the story of Sedna, because I had just finished a sculpture with bones for arms. Life is so interesting.

Georgia

Why this confluence of syncronicities?  I personally, having worked for years with myths as an artist, and with Collaborators who are "activating" the myths through art and drama - I personally believe that the archetypes are alive in our collective consciousness, within the "dream body" of humanity. The story of Sedna is a very important story for our time.  It is about the suffering and sacrifice of the  Sustaining Mother, what happens when Mother Earth is disregarded and abused,  and the rites of at-one-ment the Inuit did to regain balance and good relationship with Her. It recognizes the interdependency of all beings, and the need for honor, and Balance.   It is also about the suffering of women at the hands of men, the imbalance that occurs when the feminine is not honored, and what must arise in order to restore the Balance. 

It's about exactly what we lack in our industrialized, climate imperiled  time: a deep ecological understanding of reciprocity with the living Earth and all the mutually inter-dependant beings we share our lives with.    The "Story of Sedna" is an old myth that belongs to an indigenous people most Americans have never heard of - yet it is a myth that has universal and contemporary significance.  The telling that occured in our event was ripe with synchronicity because it was a story that needed to be told again. 

SEDNA https://terragenesis.fandom.com/wiki/Sedna

 Interestingly (synchronistically)  "Restoring the Balance" was produced at All Nations Hall at the Muse Community Arts Center  on April 9th, 2004.  I did not know it at the time, but just a few weeks before that NASA announced the discovery of a new planet beyond Pluto which astronomers named "Sedna".  *  (I learned about the new planet shortly after the event.  It seemed, to my personal poetics, like a synchronistic and grand metaphor for the concerns of our time, and I thought of my fascination with another indigenous Goddess, the "midwife of the New Era", Spider Woman.**)

When we step inside the magic Circle "between the worlds", when we enter the "fissures", we find we are not alone. Here's another quote from Alex Grey, in an interview I did with him and Allyson in 1989: 

"If you reach down far enough, we're all made up of the same archetypes. Joseph Campbell talked about what he called "core myths". As did Jung. If you go deep enough into yourself, you find yourself in a noisy place with a lot of other people. And if you draw symbols from there, you plug into a collective form of consciousness." 

Well, back to the studio now, and hopefully, the Cracks will continue to open, even if I'll never understand why.

"There's a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in." 

 .....Leonard Cohen

Painting by Tyler Gore

* "March 15, 2004: NASA-funded researchers have discovered the most distant object orbiting the sun. It's a mysterious planet-like body three times farther from Earth than Pluto.

 "The sun appears so small from that distance that you could completely block it out with the head of a pin," said Dr. Mike Brown, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif., associate professor of planetary astronomy and leader of the research team. The object, called Sedna for the Inuit goddess of the ocean, is 13 billion kilometers away. Sedna will come closer to Earth in the years ahead, but even at closest approach, about 72 years from now, Sedna is very far away. Then it will begin its 10,500-year trip back to the far reaches of the solar system. "The last time Sedna was this close to the sun, Earth was just coming out of the last ice age. The next time it comes back, the world might again be a completely different place," Brown said.

Mysterious Sedna: Astronomers have discovered a mysterious planet-like body in the distant reaches of the solar system.

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/16mar_sedna

** In some Pueblo mythologies Spider Woman (Tse Che Nako, the Thought Woman) is a Creatrix Goddess.  She also is a Midwife to each new Age.  

"The end of the Hopi calendar, and entry into the "5th World", is thus also about the "Return of Spider Woman", the cosmic weaver who is also, in the Pueblo mythological universe, the midwife who guides the "new people" through the Sipapu (or birth canal) in the sacred Kiva, offering a thread (or a ladder) to rise up into each "New World"...... I reflect that in the Circles I've participated in, there are 5 directions: North, South, East, West, and Center. The Center is that which unites everything, the breathe, the dark space, ecological interdependency, the Web.  Integral."

The Spiritual Significance of 2012,  12/7/2012

"Every atom of your body is connected to every other atom in the universe, as it exchanges energy and information with the vacuum"...Nassim Haramein

Telling the World in a Time of Drought" - Reflections on Art, Myth and Ritual

“What might we see, how might we act, if we saw with a webbed vision? The world seen through a web of relationships…as delicate as spider’s silk, yet strong enough to hang a bridge on.”
 Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web

Recently I travelled cross country, joining conversations that always seemed to end with a question.  Since many of my friends are artists (I include writers, performers, ritualists, dancers, storytellers, and a number of shamans in the category as well) the question seemed to come down to "what do we do now?"  How do we, in a time that seems bent on eliminating education, free speech, environmental preservation, social ethics, and possibly even any kind of consensual truth…..as practitioners of the arts, increasingly marginalized by society, how do we find meaningful identity? 

My own response is that I believe it's vital for artists to remember that we are myth makers.  Throughout history artists of all kinds have possessed the imaginal tools to invent and re-invent the myths that were the cultural underpinnings for their time.  

Phil Cousineau, author of  Once and Future Myths: The Power of Ancient Stories in Our Lives (2001) cautioned that if we don't become aware of both our personal and our cultural myths which "act like gravitational forces on us" we risk becoming overpowered, overshadowed, and controlled by them.  Myths are in many ways the templates of how we compose our societal and personal values, as well as how people organize their religions.  As Cousineau commented further, "the stories we tell of ourselves determine who we become, who we are, and what we believe."  

The human mind has a unique ability to abstract.  A stone is not always a stone - sometimes it becomes a symbol of something, a manifestation of a deity, or it can also become intentionally invisible, even when it stubs our toes.  An interpretation of "God" is something that whole nations have lived or died for.  And depending on the aesthetics of a particular culture, foot binding, skull extension, or bouffant hairdos can be experienced as erotic beauty.  If the worlds we know are, indeed, experienced through the lens of the stories we tell about them, then how are those stories serving or not serving the crucial time we live in?

A renunciate myth of the Earth as "not real" or a "place of sin and suffering" does not serve the environmental crisis facing a global humanity.   Stories that make women lesser beings do not release the creative brain power of half the human race.  A cultural mythos that celebrates violence and competition do not contribute to nurturance and sustainability.   Stories of "rugged individualism" may not be as useful in a time when science, sociology, ecology, theology, and even physics are demonstrating that all things are interdependent. 

I remember years ago participating in a week long intensive with the Earth Spirit Community of New England.  The event took place in October, in celebration of the closing of the year, the "going into the dark" time.  The closing ritual occurred at twilight.  Bearing candles, different groups wove through the woods toward a distant lodge from which the sound of heartbeat drums issued.  Slowly the lodge filled, illuminated with candles.  As we sat on the floor, lights gradually went out, we were blindfolded and the drums abruptly stopped. 

We felt bodies rush by us as hands turned us.  The sounds of wind, and half understood voices, someone calling, someone crying, or a bit of music came from all directions.  As we lost any sense of direction or time we became uncomfortable, frightened and disoriented.  I felt as if I was in a vast chamber, the very halls of Hades, listening to echoing voices of the lost.  And when it felt like the formless dark would never stop:  silence.  And the quiet sound of the heartbeat drum returned, re-connecting us to the heart of the Earth.

As blindfolds were removed I found myself in a room warmly illuminated with candles.  On a central platform sat a woman enthroned in brilliant white, illuminated with candles and flowers.  At her feet were baskets of bread.  Slowly we rose, took bread and fruit, and left the "Temple".  And as we left, on each side of the entrance, stood a figure in a black cape.  Each had a mirror over his or her face – mirror masks, reflecting our own faces.  

Now that was a ritual telling of the myth!  We had entered mythic space, we had participated together in the Great Round of death and return to the light - and none of us would ever forget it.

I am suggesting that artists, troubled as my friends and I have been, step away for a while from the complex questions of identity so beloved by the art world, cast aside as well the dismissal, even hostility of the current anti-intellectual environment.  Instead, let us view ourselves  as engaged in a sacred profession.   We are pollinators of the imagination,  holding  threads in  a great weaving of myth, threads that extend into a time  yet to come, and far back into a barely glimpsed past.  If "the Universe is made of stories, not atoms" as the poet  Muriel Rukeyser famously said, the only real question for us now is "what kinds of stories are we weaving"?     

"The new myth coming into being through the triple influence of quantum physics, depth psychology and ecology suggests that we are participants in a great cosmic web of life, each one of us indissolubly connected with all others through that invisible field. It is the most insidious of illusions to think that we can achieve a position of dominance in relation to nature, life or each other. In our essence, we are one."

Anne Baring 

References:

Keller, Catherine;  From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism and Self,

       Beacon Press  (1988)

Baring, Anne;  "A New Vision of Reality" from her website

       http://www.annebaring.com/

Cousineau, Phil; Once and Future Myths: The Power of Ancient Stories in

        Modern Times,  Conori Press (2001)

The Earthspirit Community, Twilight Covening (1993),   

         http://www.earthspirit.com/ 

Rukeyser, Muriel;  The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser,  McGraw (1978)