Update on the Bosnian Pyramids

 

In 2011 when I went to the Glastonbury Symposium, I was blown away by learning about the work of  Sam Semir Osmanagic, the visionary amateur archeologist who is attempting to excavate what he believes is a pyramid complex in Bosnia.   I admire Dr. Osmanagic's dedication and vision, and have been rather disgusted by the way, as so often happens, he has been pooh-poohed and called a fraud, although in all fairness, there are many who support him, including the President of Malaysia who visited the site.  I love Wikipedia, but their dismissal of his work is very disappointing and I think reflects a prejudice.  The fact is, if he's right,  this is the highest pyramid in the world, and the complex is 10,000 + years old.  Such a discovery would re-write what we think we know about the ancient world, and what we know about ancient Europe.

One of the developments I've been following (oh, to be young, and go volunteer to dig for a summer!  What fun that would be!)  is the discovery of what may very well be a concrete/cement that was used to construct the (as yet unproven) pyramids.  This could mean that not only were the ancients creating intentional geomantic environments that were sacred landscapes***, but they had building technologies some 10,000 years ago that included making cement.

"Results released by the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy of chemical and diffractometry laboratory analysis done on sandstone and conglomerate blocks taken from the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun show that the samples are an inert material with a binding, similar to that found in ancient Roman concrete. These results were confirmed by analysis on the samples done at the University of Zenica,Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Stone terrace made from sandstone plates on top of the Bosnian "Pyramid of the Moon", September 2008  More photos: http://www.bosnianpyramidofthesun.com/

In a separate independent test, Professor Joseph Davidovits,  member of the International Association of Egyptologists and author confirms this claim. “I performed electron microscopic analysis of the sample and I propose the geopolymer chemistry that was used to make this is ancient concrete,”  http://www.davidovits.info/34/the-pyramids-in-bosnia-europe-perhaps-in-roman-concrete

He further adds that the sample is composed of “a calcium/potassium-based geopolymer cement and that although he cannot date the sample, he can discern that it is not modern concrete, but more like the technique used by the Egyptians 3500 years ago.” In his book "The Pyramids: an Enigma Solved" ,Davidovits proposes that Egyptian pyramids were constructed using agglomerated stone (limestone cast like concrete)."

Outside walls of the Bosnian "Pyramid of the Sun" made of the concrete conglomerate blocks, Northern side, July 2008

Christopher Dunn, author of The Giza Power Plant (1996) writes that the pyramids were "ancient energy machines" or power sources that channelled geo-magnetic energy, which is currently a popular theory among researchers. The pyramids of Bosnia have the same elements that define the structure of an ancient "power generator system."

http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2013/04/30000-year-old-bosnian-pyramids-built-with-man-made-cement-2441772.html 

What do we really know?  What knowledge might we have lost?  Fascinating to speculate.  Atlantis rising.......... 

http://youtu.be/f1BOT928Jn4



***A great Blog that follows the Bosnian Pyramids excavation, as well as discussion on related themes is Old Europe   (http://bpblognews.blogspot.com/).  Here I've copied from an article:

"In ancient times architecture was considered not only a creation of form to limit or define space, but also inherently a sacred form that concentrated beneficial earth and cosmic energies and dispersed harmful earth and cosmic energies. The subtle energies of earth and cosmos were taken very seriously in the spiritually advanced societies of the past. The ancients were conscious that certain architectural features transformed invisible energetic fields that exercise subtle but predictable influences on the human body and on the environment.

In spite of our scientific progress in the modern day, we still know very little, in comparison to the ancients, about the relation of forms both natural and artificial to subtle and invisible but potent energies from earth and sky. Since 2006, researchers from many different disciplines have visited the Bosnian Pyramid Valley. These researchers have made pioneering discoveries that have allowed us to dramatically expand our modern understanding of the nature and purpose of the Bosnian pyramids and pyramid structures across the planet. A two-year study performed by biologist Dr. Sulejman Redžić from the Faculty for Natural Sciences at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, has shown that the soil temperature on the Bosnian pyramids and nearby areas is 5 degrees Celsius warmer than elsewhere in Bosnia.

Astonishingly, Dr. Redžić was able to identify several plant species on the pyramids that are typical of warmer Mediterranean climate zones. This means that these ancient pyramid structures create an artificial microclimate in the Visoko Valley. U.K. scientist Dr. Harry Oldfield developed a photographic method similar to Kirlian photography that captures the "shapes" of electromagnetic energy in a two-dimensional photograph.

Images: rising energy fields of the Bosnian pyramids

Dr. Oldfield's photos of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun showed that the electromagnetic fields above the pyramids are oriented toward the vertical rather than the horizontal. This is unusual because the electromagnetic patterns above natural features such as hills and mountains are normally vertically oriented. Vertically oriented electromagnetic fields are characteristic of artificial (manmade) structures. In addition, Dr. Oldfield recorded more activity than expected, with strong electromagnetic fields above the Bosnian Pyramid of The Sun.

Corroborating Dr. Oldfield's findings, Dr. Slobodan Mizdrak, a physicist from Zagreb, Croatia, led a team of experts who measured both electromagnetic radiation in the Bosnian pyramid complex in 2010 and 2012. The team also measured an unusual 28 kHz ultrasound phenomenon exiting the top of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun. A two-day experiment in April 2012 demonstrated that the source of the ultrasound "energy beam" is beneath the pyramid at a depth of 2440 metres (1.86 miles). Analysis of collected data has shown that a metallic plate located deep under the pyramid in combination with underground water flows and unexpectedly high concentrations of negative ions generates electric power of more than 10 kilowatts. 

Image: artistic reconstruction of the Central Fire

The presence of high concentrations of negative ions has also been detected also in other locations of the valley, namely inside Ravne tunnel labyrinth. Different measurements performed during the past six years have shown a tremendous increase in negative ions inside the tunnel system, reaching levels of up to 40,000 ions per cubic centimeter 200 meters inside the tunnel system. Negative ions are atoms or molecules that have more electrons than protons in their nuclei. Series of analyses in the last 120 years have proven that negative ions clean the air of dust, spores, mold and pollen and provide numerous health benefits to human beings. Thousands of people who have visited the underground tunnel labyrinth during the past six years have been able to experience the healing power of this negative ion-rich location.  

Janez Pelko, a Slovenia researcher who studied the effects on the human aura of a short stay in Ravne tunnel labyrinth, demonstrated that the human aura increases and reconstitutes itself significantly in almost 80% of cases among people after a one-hour stay inside the tunnel labyrinth. Janez Pelko's research is mainly inspired by the work of Prof. Konstantin G. Korotkov, a renown Russian scientist who invented the Gas Discharge Visualization technique (GDV), which represents a breakthrough beyond Kirlian photography, allowing direct, real-time viewing of human energy fields.

Thus we come to the conclusion that ancient cultures had developed an understanding of the subtle effects of various invisible life energies and created structures to both generate and magnify them."

February 21, 2013, The Invisible but Vital Life Energies of the Bosnian Pyramid Valley

Pagan Humor.........

 

The Great Tunisian Kiss-In

Photo by Said Koriche 

There are times when I'm amazed at how human beings can turn reality on its ears.  It is illegal to kiss in public in Tunisia, where fundamentalists are becoming prominent (ever notice how so many governments, in various flavors, always seem to attract people who love guns and hate love in any form?)

The good news for Tunisia is that after a couple was arrested for kissing hundreds of young people defiantly turned out en masse for a kiss-in on Bourguiba Avenue, under the slogan, "Let them arrest all the lovers in Tunisia".  Bravo!  There's hope yet!

Chautauqua and the "Burned Over Land"

"What is in my mind is a sort of Chautauqua - like the traveling tent-show Chautauqua’s that used to move across America, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster -paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply to dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale, and platitudes too often repeated.

There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and “best” was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for."

Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

Robert Pirsig wrote the above in the 60's, long before the internet.  I wonder what he would say about that over-flowing river now.  

I began this blog in June of 2007,  when I went to Midland, Michigan on a Fellowship from the Alden Dow Creativity Center to pursue my project "Spider Woman's Hands". It's hard to believe almost 6 years have passed, and reviewing those early posts, I try now to see who I was, where these trails have lead me.  I saved the quote above almost from the beginning of this blog, because I have spent many years in Chautauqua County, New York, and because I felt my creative journey was not just a "personal vision quest", but, in creating a blog and having a show, also my own "kind of a Chautaqua".  It arose from a desire to share my discoveries in the course of my wanderings.  I see that I wrote in August of 2007,

"But this has, now that I think about it, been a Chautauqua for me. Bringing forth what I know and have to share to a new community. It hasn't been easy, and one leaves not knowing what I've left behind.  You have to let it go, and not concern yourself with how many people care about what what you're doing, not care about how much money you make or don't make, not care about what any institution or magazine or even colleague thinks art "is". Ultimately, it has to become your spiritual path, your meditation, but also your voice in the Conversation, your thread that seeks to weave you you into harmony and gathering  depth."

I have always disliked the cliche about art "You do it for yourself".  That's a convenient way to dismiss artists, along with other cliches I've heard a million times.  And a convenient way to justify the  laziness and disrespect of the general public for innovative arts, which often treats artists as somewhere between cute, useless, great for real estate agencies that want to gentrify neighborhoods, and vaguely unpatriotic.  Artists don't get multiple degrees, make economic and other enduring sacrifices, and dedicate their lives to the pursuit of expression  just to "do it for themselves".  They don't congregate in art districts (which are increasingly diminished, thanks to all those real estate agencies who monitor arts districts for profit) because they just want to be isolated.   They congregate for creative discourse, and innovative art districts of the past, and places like the "West Banke" to Soho to the Haight Ashbury were  seminal points of cultural transformation and dissemination, engines of creativity on the cutting edge of culture that reflect and germinate seeds that become an emerging paradigm 20, 30, or 50 years hence.  Artists make art because they want to communicate. With their inner life, spirit,  their communities, their nations, the world. It's a discourse continually seeking response and enlivenment. 

So why am I having this rant?  Well, I don't exactly know, except that 6 years down the road from my fellowship about the Great Weaver, Spider Woman, I find that I myself am increasingly "dis-connected", without the desire I once had to talk about my art or show it.  I don't know if all places are as indifferent as Tucson seems to be, but it's time to cut loose and head for Chautauqua County, to see what  the fertile "burned over lands"*** can germinate in my spirit again, to hang with the mediums at Lilydale, sit around a bonfire at the Pagan Festivals in Brushwood, hear a concerto at the Institute, walk once again in magical Leolyn Grove, and find the Chautaqua spirit again.  And, come July, that's exactly what I will be doing, Goddess willing!



 For anyone not familiar with the term Chautauqua was an adult education movement popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I think the word, which is native American, means something like "place where the fish are".  The first gatherings, and the title of the Chautauqua Institute which is still very active, were named after beautiful Chautauqua Lake. Chautauqua assemblies spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s, and from rural Pennsylvania to Colorado town had their Chautauqua tents raised close by the railroad stations. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture, from violin concertos to storytellers like Mark Twain,  for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day.  President Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that Chautauqua is "the most American thing in America."  And I think it was............the Chautauqua embodied that a generosity that is one of the very good things about America, a  desire to share and disseminate  that is in the American character. 

And somehow I think it's important, as our world becomes both more frenetically "connected" and also more strangely  isolated ...to remember the Chautauqua.  Both our personal  "Chautauquas",  as well as the generosity and enthusiasm of Chautauquas of another era.

***For a good article in the Huffington Post about Lilydale Spiritualist Community (I love Lilydale)
see:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/lily-dale-a-gated-communi_n_1834972.html

***The "Burned Over Land" refers to the area of Western New York where Chautauqua County is where for the past 200 years all kinds of Utopian experiments and communities, spiritualist and religious movements have come and gone. In the 19th century  the "burned-over land," in  upstate New York saw the strange origins of the  Mormons**, Seventh Day Adventists, the Shiloh Community, as well as the beginnings of American Spiritualism and Lilydale Assembly, and of course the Chautauqua Institute.  The past century saw the first encampments for the Suffragettes, and many of the underground railroads for escaped slaves as well.   Continuing in the tradition of exploration, it's also the home of the  Brushwood Folklore Center.

**OK, I can't resist this bit of strange information, which to me is as weird  and as ironic as the ancient Goddess Yoni Stone at the center of the pilgrimage to Mecca. .    Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the Prophet of Mormonism:

"Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, the predominant branch of which is Mormonism. At age twenty-four, Smith published the Book of Mormon, and in the next fourteen years he attracted thousands of followers, established cities and temples, and created a lasting religious culture.
Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, and by 1817 had moved with his family to an area in western New York later called the burned-over district because it was repeatedly swept by religious revivals during the Second Great Awakening. The Smith family was not united in their religious views, but they believed in visions and prophecies, and participated in folk religious practices typical of the era. According to Smith, beginning in the early 1820s he had visions, in one of which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization."

One of the "revelations" of Smith concerned the appearance of Christ among the native Americans just before the coming of the white men, and of course the famous Golden Plates.  What most people do not know is that 1) the Burned Over zone was ripe with prophets and vision in that era,

2) there was a pervasive religious motif and legend among the native peoples, including the Seneca and the Iroquois, of "Peace Maker", a great spiritual leader who came, like White Buffalo Woman among the Lakota, to unify the tribes and teach the ethical codes.  No doubt Smith interpreted this existing legend to mean Jesus.

 And 3) throughout the Mississippian, as well as more northerly tribes, there was high religious status associated with copper objects, including sacred copper and brass plates, which were probably derived from early contact with Spaniards or French explorers.  Native tribes had not yet developed metallurgy (although there is some evidence of copper axes found among the mound builders), so copper and brass plates would have been highly prized, even considered magical.  Smith, being surrounded by earlier native American lore, would have been aware of the importance of "sacred brass plates" in tribal lore.  (http://www.academia.edu/823368/The_North-South_Copper_Axis)    

"Toxic Masculinity" & Gender-Based Violence

Homicide, battering, and rape statistics overwhelminglhy demonstrate that women and girls suffer great violence in this country, and thoughout the world. But apparently these patriarchs don't think it's worth passing a bill to protect them, or even make a passing comment on the problem.  But the good news is that the bill passed.  The bad news is that these people are still in Washington.

Sheryl WuDunn, co-author of "Half the Sky", which became a powerful documentary aired on PBS last year, said that gender violence and discrimination is the "Injustice of our century", and I believe she is absolutely right.  So deeply embedded in our culture is the oppression of women, that it was some 70 years after freed black male slaves were given the vote that women were allowed to also vote in the U.S. - and only because courageous women made that possible through great sacrifice.  We have a Martin Luthor King Day, but there is no day devoted to the Suffragettes, to Susan B. Anthony or Lucy Burns,  or Margaret Sanger, who first made birth control available to women, or innumerable others who worked to give to women the same rights over their lives, finances, and bodies that men took for granted.  Nor is the work over.

I love TED talks, and was delighted to hear this one by Jackson Katz, Ph.D., who points out that addressing gender based violence is not "just a women's issue", but a profound human issue.  I think all boys and men should hear him. 

Jackson Katz, Ph.D for TEDxFiDiWomen.



http://youtu.be/KTvSfeCRxe8

On Myth and Mythmaking

Linda Johnson as "Bridgit"

"If we don’t become aware of both our personal myths and the cultural myths that act upon us like gravitational forces, we risk being wholly overpowered and controlled by them.  As the maverick philosopher Sam Keen has written in Your Mythic Journey, ‘We need to reinvent them from time to time. . . .  The stories we tell of ourselves determine who we become, who we are, what we believe."

Phil Cousineau was a colleague of Joseph Campbell, and I recently re-discovered this article in my files, which I haven't read since 2001 (time to go through my files again). It's important, especially now, for artists (and everyone) to remember that they are Myth Makers, people who imagine the templates for each new era.  It's work that matters. 

 
 On Myth and Mythmaking
 excerpt from book by  Phil Cousineau
 Once and Future Myths: The Power of Ancient Stories in Our Lives (2001)

I was raised on the knee of Homer, which is an Old World way to describe growing up on stories as old as stone and timeless as dreams.  So I see myth everywhere, probably because I am looking for what my American Indian friends call “the long story,” the timeless aspect of everything I encounter.  I know the usual places to look for it, such as in the splendor of classic literature or the wisdom stories of primal people. 

Valerie James as "Sophia"

I want to explore the aspect of myth that most fascinates me: its ‘once and future’ nature.  Myths are stories that evoke the eternal because they explore the timeless concerns of human beings—birth, death, time, good and evil, creativity and destruction.  Myth resembles the god Proteus in the Odyssey, a shape-shifting creature who knows the secret that the lost Greek sailors long to hear—the way home.  But they must learn how to get a grip on him, if only for one slippery moment, so he might surrender his hidden wisdom.

This is what I call ‘mythic vision.’  The colorful and soulful images that pervade myth allow us to step back from our experience so that we might look closer at our personal situations and see if we can catch a glimpse of the bigger picture, the human condition.

" 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

 But this takes practice, much like a poet or a painter must commit to a life of deep attention and even reverence for the multitude of meaning around us.  An artist friend of mine calls this ‘pulling the moment,’ a way of looking deeper into experiences that inspire him.  In the writing classes I teach, I refer to this mystery as the difference between the ‘overstory,’ which is the visible plot, and the ‘understory,’ which is the invisible movement of the soul of the main characters.   In this sense myth is a living force, like the telluric powers that stream through the Earth.  It is this mythic vision, looking for the ‘long story,’ the timeless tale, that helps us approach the deep mysteries because it insists there is always the stories we really live by, rather than the one we like to think we are living, and moreover, decide if our myths are working for or against us.

If we don’t become aware of both our personal myths and the cultural myths that act upon us like gravitational forces, we risk being wholly overpowered and controlled by them.  As the maverick philosopher Sam Keen has written in Your Mythic Journey, ‘We need to reinvent them from time to time. . . .  The stories we tell of ourselves determine who we become, who we are, what we believe.’

"What is the new mythology to be,  the mythology of this unified earth  as of one harmonious being?" 

Joseph Campbell

Icon by Bets

Mother's Day with Robin Williamson and Gaia

I am a lover of the steady earth
and of her waters

she says:

let the light be brilliant 
to one who will cherish color;
what if there be no heaven?
she says:
touch my breasts
the fields are golden

her songs are all of love
life long
every blue yonder
her grass harp rings

unlettered 
in her rivers our cherished sins
our musts drift voiceless
in her clouds

she will rust us with blossom
she will forgive us

She will seal us with her seed

~~Robin Williamson

For Mother's Day I remember Gaia, Mother Earth, whose unlettered love and generosity and endless creativity gave birth to all of us.  And there is no greater Bard, in my opinion, to celebrate Her than Robin Williamson, whose song above (and sung below!) celebrates Her with the long and sweet magic of his poetry, and his own Celtic lineage.

 "She will seal us with Her seed."

And below Robin's Homage to Gaia, I could not resist placing his best known, and truly magnificent poem "Five Denials on Merlin's Grave", that winds and meanders among the silent standing stones and the green meadows and the roaming stories of the ancient Celts....if you have not heard this poem, especially if you are of Celtic descent, it is so much worth hearing, and will evoke something "Older yet, and Lovelier Far......." that

still ghosts to the vitality
of our most early and unwritten forebears
whose wizardry still makes a lie of history
whose presence hints in every human word
who somehow reared, and loosed, an impossible Beauty
enduring yet............and I will not forget.

FIVE DENIALS ON MERLIN'S GRAVE

http://youtu.be/iuRUVzqAfgk

Funny! Gender Representation in Media

 
 Representations of Gender in Media is a school project that was created for a Women and Gender Studies class at the University of Saskatchewan by Sarah Zelinski, Kayla Hatzel and Dylan Lambi-Raine. The group wanted to show how the media portrays gender roles and stereotypes in advertising.
And it’s absolutely hilarious.  I love these guys!

 

 http://youtu.be/HaB2b1w52yE

Starhawk's "The Fifth Sacred Thing" becoming a movie

 

The Fifth Sacred Thing is the fifth element, Spirit, at the center of the union of the Four Elements of  Earth, Wind, Fire and Water.  It represents unity and balance, and is represented by the color white.  In the illustration above, Starhawk and her collaborators have chosen the wheel of the 4 elements with a spiral in the center, the "fifth element".

Starhawk is a powerful writer, activist, community facilitator, and true visionary for our time.  She is also a Witch, one of the founders of Reclaiming, and her book was my first introduction to the realm of the Goddess.  I use the term witch in the sense of the actual roots of the word:  "witch, wick, wicca" - weaver, woven.  She is a true Weaver.

I read Starhawk's book back in 1995.  As a native Californian who lived in Los Angeles, but attended Berkeley, I remember well the prejudices between progressive Northern California and materialistic Southern California, and had to laugh when Starhawk imagined an utopia in San Francisco with Southern California becoming an autocratic, fundamentalist corporate state. Starhawk has been a terrific inspiration in my life - in 1986 her book "The Spiral Dance" was the inspiration for a show I had at the University of Arizona.  More than a decade later, when I moved back to Berkeley, I joined Reclaiming, Starhawk's collective, and created the  Masks of the Goddess for the Spiral Dance in San Francisco.  Once again she and her colleagues set me on a path of powerful inspiration.

So I was delighted to learn that Starhawk's book THE FIFTH SACRED THING is in the process of becoming a movie, which as she herself says, is a long process.  Here's the video introduction to the Project which I received recently below.

"The novel describes a world set in the year 2048 after a catastrophe which has fractured the United States into several nations........The story is primarily told from the points of view of 98-year-old Maya, her nominal granddaughter Madrone, and her grandson Bird. Through these and other characters, the story explores elements from ecofeminism and ecotopian fiction." ......Wikipedia

"Making a movie is a long, long process!   But along the way we’ve created a  video, to quickly explain the story to those who haven’t read the book, and to show off some of the art and music we’ve created.  Pictures speak louder than words—so here it is:   http://www.fifthsacredthing.com  Also on YouTube:   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lROCSDQg9WM.     I wrote the narration, Olympia Dukakis speaks it and our lead producer Philip Wood put the video together and edited it.  Joshua Penman did the music.  Yes, it’s a long haul, but we’re all feeling the growing momentum!"

In gratitude,

Starhawk

Greg Braden and "The Science of Miracles"

"When we form heart-centered beliefs within our bodies, in the language of physics we're creating  the electrical and magnetic expression of them as waves of energy, which aren't confined to our hearts or limited by the physical barrier of our skin and bones.  So clearly we're "speaking" to the world around us in each moment of every day through a language that has no words:  the belief-waves of our hearts.

In addition to pumping the blood of life within our bodies, we may think of the heart as a belief-to-matter translator.  It converts the perceptions of our experiences, beliefs, and imagination into the coded language of waves that communicate with the world beyond our bodies.  Perhaps this is what philosopher and poet John Mackenzie meant when he stated, "The distinction between what is real and what is imaginary is not one that can be finely maintained ... all existing thing are ... imaginary."

Gregg Braden

I enjoy the quote above by philosopher and New Mexico visionary Gregg Braden........except at the end of the last quote, I might change "imaginary" to "imaginal".   Because, as Braden himself so fully argues in his life work, that's really where we are collectively now - at the "imaginal threshold" of our species evolution. 

I began this journal almost 6 years ago, as a journal for the evolution of my project "Spider Woman's Hands", which I received a Fellowship at the Alden Dow Creativity Center in Midland, Michigan to pursue.  In 2009 I was resident artist at Wesley Theological in Washington, D.C., and continued the project.  My fascination with ubiquitous myths and symbols of Spider Woman, from the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, the Navajo weavers, the prehistoric Mississippian people, even the Maya......began with a deep realization of the significance of this metaphor of the Great Weaver for our time on multiple levels:  ecological, social, spiritual, and quantum.  We live in the participatory universe of Spider Woman, weavers and woven.  One of the names for Spider Woman among Pueblo peoples is Tse Che Nako, "Thought Woman", because She made the world with the stories she told about it.  There is a great Keresan Pueblo proverb that says,

"Tse Che Nako, Thought Woman, the Spider
is sitting in her room thinking up a good story.
I'm telling you the story she is thinking."*

Pueblo legends hold that it was Spider Woman who led the people through the cosmic Kiva at the end of each age into the new world.  According to their calendar, the 4th World is now ended, and we are entering the 5th World........and I believe that once again, it is Grandmother Spider Woman who is showing the Way, offering us the opportunity to pass through the Kiva, the Birth Canal, into a  new world, with the truth of  Her great Web at the very center.  We all know the Precipice we hang on as a common humanity.  Our technology and technological connectivity will either be the end of our evolutionary promise, or we will become a truly global humanity.  The new World, or "New Age", will be an age that puts into practice the great truth of  unity within the great co-creative diversity of life.  What I would like to pursue in future posts is not only how this is being demonstrated by science as well as metaphysics, but how we can, and are, putting the "New Paradigm of Connectivity" into pragmatic practice.  Because that's ultimately the good news we need.

As I return to  Spider Woman's Web, I find Greg Bradon, in  "The Science of Miracles", makes an eloquent discussion of how Quantum physics and metaphysics now agree on a "conversant world".

“The act of focusing our consciousness is an act of creation.

 Consciousness creates!” ~~~ Greg Braden

 http://youtu.be/otdAAm30lT0


** Patterson-Rudolph, Carol, " On the Trail of Spiderwoman" , 1997, Ancient City Press

Van Kedisi and "spirit of place"

Lulu and Lucy

I've had a lot of synchronicities for several years around Turkey, and last year  I was given two kittens, both white and each with odd eyes, one blue and one yellow.  Lulu and Lucy became my Muses, sometimes following me around the house talking to me in a mysterious cat language.  Then a well travelled friend of mine,  said  "Oh, Van Kedisi!".   Lulu and Lucy were Van Cats!
  And it turns out that's rather special - for  many people in the ancient land of Turkey or Anatolia,  they are very much the "spirit of place".

Lake Van (Turkish: Van Gölü, Armenian: Վանա լիճ Vana lich or Vana Lij, Kurdish: Gola Wanê ) is the largest lake in Turkey, located in the far east of the country in Van district. It seems that Van cats have a very ancient lineage indeed, as does the region, and are very much loved by Turks, Armenians, and Kurds, so much so that there are all kinds of legends about them, they are mascots for teams, there is a Van Kedisi research center in the capital of the Lake Van region, and even the government protects them. 

Not far from Lake Van is the excavation of Gobekli Tepe, a Neolithic site that is 12,000 years old, which I've been fascinated with.  Göbekli Tepe  means, literally, "Belly" or "Navel Mountain", and is composed of some 22 megalithic stone circles (only two have been excavated) which were intentionally buried 8,000 years ago, located 2500 feet above sea level at the top of a mountain ridge in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Artist and scholar Lydia Ruhle writes:

"Gobekli Tepe means "navel mountain" in Turkish.  It is on top of a hill that is the highest point on the windswept Urfa Plain, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This is the area where emmer wheat was domesticated and hunter gatherer cultures settled into agricultural communities. As early as 12,000 years ago, humans spent much time and effort to cut stone and create circular structures with twelve foot tall pillars with carvings of animals, vultures, snakes holding up a roof..........In 2006, I created a Goddess Icon Banner of  (a Sheela-na-gig image from the site) and named her Gobekli Tepe. She has been flying around the world ever since. My banner description states:

"Gobekli Tepe is a Neolithic Sheela-na-gig incised into stone on the floor of a rock cut temple which appeared to have ritual purposes.Two standing pillars with lions sculpted in relief protect one of the earliest known Sheelas. Gobekli Tepe, which means navel mountain, is in eastern Turkey near the source of the Euphrates River. Emmer wheat was domesticated in the area. All life comes from and returns to the mother".

 "Navel mountain and navel of the world" indeed.  I wrote  an article about Gobekli Tepe .........and I felt blessed to be given two magical cats, with such ancient origins, from that ancient part of the world where agriculture began, the "belly of the Goddess". 

Akdamar Island and the Armenian Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Mount Süphan  is in background.

It's interesting to look for information about Van cats on the internet, and learn of all the peoples who claim them.....almost like living "numina", they truly belong to a Place, and are loved because they are magical, living embodiments of that Place by the peoples who call it home or homeland.  Perhaps for me too, my magical "muses" give me a bit of a sense of belonging to the Homeland of the Goddess, that place of ancient origins;  when I see their topaz and sky blue eyes looking at me, I  remember. 

And Lake Van...........how wonderful it would be to go there and see the Van Kedisi, along with everything else. 

Apparently Van Kedisi are related to, and sometimes confused with, "Turkish Angora" (or Ankara) cats.  A great site with lots of information about Van cats was Turkish Angora Cat (from which I also borrowed some of the photographs here).  http://www.turkishangoracat.org/arastirma.aspx?arastirmaId=2


It's been really interesting  to see how passionate different groups in the area are about the cats.  For example, from the Turkish Angora Cat website:

"About 2 years ago, a disagreement between municipalities of Van and Ankara occurred. And it still continues.  Ankara city proudly displayed their logo with odd-eyes “a smiling Turkish Angora’’. This was very insulting for Van municipality and Van cat lovers, as every folk knows that odd eyed cat is a Van, not Angora! Certainly, a problem arose because both of cities see ‘’their’’ cats in very identical ways. Maybe white odd-eyed cat has deep roots in Turkish culture in general? Although both Van and Angora are thought to be odd-eyed white cats, Van municipality feels that Ankara city has no right to claim different eyes for ‘’their’’ Angoras."  

What Lucy thinks about it all.......

Beltane - Happy May Day!

Happy May Day to all!

Since Beltane (May 1) is an auspicious day with a truly ancient precedent, I can't resist a bit of his & herstory to honor the day, and a few May Pole pictures.   May the  RITES OF SPRING quicken the weary sap of all, may you find a bonfire to dance around, may the May Queen bless you!

The birth of spring on May Day in Elizabethan England would send villagers into the woods to collect flowers and boughs, and then they would wait for the sun to rise as it brought the fully opened year flowering into spring.   A few years back  I was fascinated with the origins of the famous legend of "Lady Godiva" in Coventry, England.........with the kind help of scholar and gardener  Robur D'Amour, who wrote a fascinating article about Lady Godiva,    I learned that origins of this legend are probably to be found in the ancient pagan  ride of the May Queen to the sacred tree ( the Maypole), the "coven tree". 

 He wrote:

"The official etymology of Coventry is that it means Cofa's tree. A tree owned by Mr Cofa!  A very early spelling, 1050, is Couaentree.  I found, by chance, a reference to Coventry as bring a rebus for 'a coven round a tree'. Well, it is undeniably a rebus. But that doesn't mean anything conclusive.  There was a widespread practise for dancing round a tree on May Eve, which is the maypole. Perhaps there really was a tree that was used for festivities."

"The story that Lady Godiva was protesting against taxes is untrue.  Apparently, at the time the procession dates from, Coventry was a village, and there were no taxes.  The procession is actually a May-Eve fertility procession, many of which are found across Europe. There is even one at Southam,  a few miles from Coventry, which is no longer celebrated.  What happened at Coventry, was that there was a Benedictine monastery there. The Christian monks did not approve of people watching the fertility procession, and so put some 'spin' on the procession, and invented this story about taxes. "

The origins of the May Queen, the young Goddess, and agrarian celebration of the Rites of Spring throughout Merrie Old England and Europe are very ancient indeed, and probably go  back to the "sacred marriage", whereby a couple, representing the young Goddess and God, would make love in the fields, encouraging and participating in the fertility of the world. 

In villages throughout England, a procession would bear flowers, all the while capering around the new Maypole chosen for the celebration. Only unmarried girls would be allowed to plant the phallic Maypole into the fertile Earth........a lovely dance and ritual based upon pagan practices of sympathetic magic.   In other words, "the world is waking up and making love, so we too wake up and make love, and all will bear fruit".

The planting of the May Pole, and the union of the May Queen with the May King (or the Green Man) probably has its origins in very ancient traditions of the Sacred Marriage, going back as far as Sumeria and the marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi - or probably farther even than that, into unknown origins in prehistory.   In ancient times, the spring ritual union of the King with the priestess (representing the Earth Mother) was a very significant rite; in later times, even in Christian Europe, church morality may have been suspended for Beltane, as couples went out into the fields to participate in the ripening fertility.

This celebration of the fecundity of Spring no doubt made many of the early churchmen nervous. In the late 19th century,  May 1 became associated with the growing labor movement, and since then many countries have celebrated May Day as International Workers' Day.  In 1955, Pope Pius XII instituted May 1 as the "feast of St. Joseph the Worker" with the intention of emphasizing the spiritual aspect of labor.........I'm sure the advent of this secondary meaning to May Day came as a belated relief to the Catholic Church, along with Lady Godiva's famous ride becoming folk legend.

For myself, I think the re-sacralization of sexuality, in tandem with the blossoming of the world, that was the original meaning of May Day.....is a wonderful Holy Day, and am often surprised by how little people today know of it's origins.  This  has to do with the de-sacralization of sexuality that has followed closely behind the monotheistic Judeo-Christian-Islamic God - it seems the One God does not approve of sex, or the raucous  turning of the natural year that becomes spring's fertility.   Not a bad argument for polytheism, where, when there is a multiplicity of Gods and Goddesses, things are a bit more tolerant.

Traditionally, the Maypole was hung with garlands and streamers. Dancers took hold of the ends in a weaving courtship dance.

Boys would dance in one direction and the girls in another, and so flower-clad ribbons were woven around the pole in the form of a braid. There might also be a procession led by Jack O' the Green (a variant of the Green Man), fantastically arrayed with flowers, leaves and ribbons, and followed by Morris Dancers with bells jangling on their ankles. Last, there would be the choosing of the May Queen.

 

  

Flora was the Roman Goddess of Flowers and it’s not surprising that her festival was held on the first day of May. The May Dance festivals of Europe have many of their origins in the ancient “Feast of Flora”, the ecstatic Roman Rites of Spring. 

"Whitman says, "And your very flesh shall be a great poem."............That is the message I'd like to offer on Beltane.  Our flesh is a symbol, a microcosm of the earth we inhabit. Our flesh is what connects us to the seasons; it is where we feel the cold of winter, and -- more and more in the Northern Hemisphere -- the warmth of the sun. It is in and through our flesh that we experience our emotions. We feel love in the flesh; anger in the flesh; exuberance in the flesh. The body is a treasure trove of sensation, and our sensations inform our temporal existence. Sensation may not be all of what life is, and the experiences of the flesh may be subjective and passing. But subjectivity and impermanence do not make a thing meaningless. Flowers bloom for but a short time, and when they do they are beautiful.  We bloom, too. 

We are a body full of color and fragrance. We are a cycle of life unto ourselves, and we have good cause to celebrate our body -- our flesh -- for we have no knowledge of what is to come beyond this moment, this life, this body. We are here, alive, and we can, on the day and in the season of Beltane, choose to celebrate the life that we are living. We can choose to honor our flesh, and honor the flesh of others.  (What a world we would live in if the flesh was not seen as evil, but rather a manifestation of something holy and worthy of respect. I wonder if violence would be so commonplace if we recognized the flesh as sacred.)

Love the body you are in! Love your flesh! Celebrate this High Day with a fullness of being!!"

 Teo Bishop on Beltane, 5-1-2013

Woman Shaman: the Ancients - new film by Max Dashu

"That Which is Sacred" by Max Dashu  http://www.maxdashu.net

"This is the wisdom we need now, the far depth,
 the vision and the goodness, the medicine women." 

 http://www.suppressedhistories.net/womanshamandvd.html

I met the artist and scholar Max Dashu, author of the fascinating  "Suppressed Histories"  website and many, many brilliant articles, when I presented at the Women and Mythology  Conference last year.  Max has devoted her life to re-membering the lives and stories of women and Goddesses lost and reclaimed.    Her new video explores the rich cultural record of medicine women, seers, oracles, healers, trance-dancers, shapeshifters, and dreamers round the world. 

To experience the beauty of these spiritual legacies is medicine for the spirit. Her trailer includes the music of Suzanne Teng, Emmalee Crane, and Tiokasin Ghosthorse; scores of other musicians are featured on the dvd, including archival world music from Smithsonian Folkways. See link above for music credits, chapter listings, and more info.

http://youtu.be/-Be9SFJ_vuY