Carrizozo!

I wanted to share where I'll be this summer (July 1 through August 15) - a little town in central N.M., where I've been given the privilege of a residency with Gallery 408. I can't help but feel that this time, in the brilliant light of New Mexico, nestled between the great lava flow of the Valley of Fire and the mountains.........is going to be one of my most inspired times. I'm very grateful to Gallery 408 for offering me this opportunity. I'll also be offering a class at their studios in creating personal Icons and Reliquaries for those who may be interested. If any of you happen to be passing through while I'm there, please come by for a cup of coffee!

http://www.gallery408.com/air.php

http://www.gallery408.com/

I visited Carrizozo for the first time in early 2009, when the movie "The Book of Eli" was being shot on their main street, the very street that Gallery 208 is on. It was amazing ....... Carrizozo was converted to a post-Apocalypse wasteland. After the film was shot, this harsh veneer was peeled away to reveal the bright colors of New Mexico, and the opening of my friends' show, "The Return of the Mother" ..... This living metaphor so fascinated me that I wrote an article about it (I copy some text and images below).

But even after the show was over, I kept coming back, fascinated with this little town, and wanting to know more about the community, and the land. Now I've generously been given the opportunity.

Gallery 408 and the Studios on Twelfth Street
PO Box 853
Carrizozo, NM 88301
(575)648-2598
gallery408@tularosa.net

www.gallery408.com

Carrizozo is two hours South of Albuquerque. Drive South on I-25 to Hwy 380 East just 7 miles past Socorro at the San Antonio exit. Drive 65 miles east on Hwy 380 to Carrizozo. Turn South on Hwy 54 at the Crossroads, drive 4 blocks, turn left at Wells Fargo Bank building, drive 1 block to Twelfth Street, turn right and the Gallery will be on your right.

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"The Return of the Mother", group show, May, 2009

May, 2009:

The entire set from "The Book of Eli" has been torn down, the gallery restored, and it looks as if the world that Hollywood created in this little town never was. I still can't get over the way this set has dissipated like a dream.

Corrisozo, N.M., set of "The Book of Eli", filming 3-2009. (Photo by Georgia Stacy)

To get here, one drives through vast reaches of blond Georgia O'Keefe landscapes with brooding blue mountains in the distance, and then the vast lava field called the "valley of fire". We were in time for the filming of a motion picture - the entire downtown had been converted to a vision of rusting automobiles, foam core burned out buildings, and sad little "cubby holes" where desperate children of the apocalypse lived. Dirty, dread-locked young people milled about, while armored cars raced up and down the street, and the sounds of "snipers" guns echoed in the crisp, windy New Mexico air.

It was fascinating to see this contemporary nightmare made so vivid that I could actually walk around in it. To read about the movie see THE BOOK OF ELI which describes it as:

"A post-apocalyptic Western, in which a lone man fights his way
across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind."

Like the "Road Warrior" of the '80's, our world has a fascination with images of a future in which all that remains of civilization is a grim landscape of chaotic violence. As we approach "2012" I personally believe we approach the next evolutionary step for humanity, wherein we must urgently protect, as an evolving global civilization, the universal life of our planet, of Gaia the Mother - or we may well face just such a future as The Book of Eli envisions. I am pleased (and amused) by the paradox of a show called The Return of the Mother rising from the ashes of this dark vision.

I couldn't help but play with the images a bit myself.

The Goddess and the Book of Eli (1) (photo by Georgia Stacy)

Mount Shasta

Just returned from a brief visit to Mount Shasta in Northern California - the great dormant volcano that rises impossibly in the distance, dominating hundreds of miles with it's vast brooding presence. In the valley where I stopped to first view Shasta, a marker described many mysterious stone circles native peoples left on the plain. But I reflect that it is not so mysterious - standing before that awesome, snow clad Great One, ancient peoples must have had the impulse to leave some form of offering.

Shasta has long had a reputation as a spiritual center, and stories of ancient Atlaneans and Lemurians abound, as well as native lore. The community of Shasta City is full of artists, healers and metaphysical seekers.........having watched Sedona, America's "crystal capital", lose it's character and vitality from it's earlier, eccentric, mystical years (replaced now with tennis resorts and expensive spas)............it was great to see that Shasta City has not gone down the same path. I wished I could stay for longer.

Here's a photo of Shasta with one of the unusual clouds it generates. It is also a focus for speculation from people who are interested in UFO's.

And by the way, my friend Fahrusha reminds me that the annual MUFON conference is due to meet in Colorado. Whether you believe in UFO's or not, there is no doubt that this conference would be a lot of fun.

Spider Woman Speaks.......

It doesn't matter what you call me.
I've had a lot of names.
Bring your offerings if you wish.
I’ll give them to the Bird People,
to the Mouse People.

Listen,
I’ll tell you something.
Because you came here
with empty hands.
Your spirit has become woven into bad things.
It’ s time to weave a new story now.

Walk out into the desert
and sit beneath a cholla.
Notice the shapes of things:
A hawk against the sky,
the shape of the sky,
the shapes of shadows,
the shape
of your own shadows,

and cracks in the land
like a spider web,
full of light.

Take a deep breath
of the stories that live here.
Stories that wrap themselves
around old bones and pottery shards,
stories that howl at the moon,
fly with russet wings,
hide in the arroyo.
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.

All those threads

come right out of your hands
and out of your hearts
all those threads go on forever.

Into the Earth
and into each other,
into all your stories,
into everyone you'll ever know

into all those who came before you
and all those who will come after you

O, Mitakuye Oyasin.

Big Sur, Threads, and Syncronicities

The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, and not man apart

Robinson Jeffers, "The Answer"

I've just hit the road - a healing stop in the Sur, that magnificent stretch of California coastline beloved to Henry Miller and Robinson Jeffers. Beloved to me, tracing my personal Song Lines, winding slowly up that winding road, remembering some 50 years of such treks to family campgrounds and Love-ins and war protests, finally, motels, heaven help me, how decadent can one get . Now, just to sit by the deep blue ocean, listen to seagulls, be. Sitting by the beach, I got into a short conversation with a jade hunter (there's lots of deep green jade in the Sur), living in his old rv.........he told me about places to visit, and left me with a piece of jade for my medicine bag.

  This past morning, as I got into my car, I noticed the crystalline, shimmering threads of a spider web across the side mirror. Looking closely, I saw a tiny spider spinning her art on my mirror, the very one I use to see where I'm going (hopefully, even when I don't really have a clue). I gave Spider Woman my grateful thanks, and thanked her emissary for her artistry as well, carefully transferring the tiny spinner from mirror to finger to a leaf. A few minutes later, still packing, I saw a spider there again! This, I reasoned, is a persistent spider, and a worthy sign! Who says metaphors only occur in dreams or poetry? For me, perhaps because I"m a visual artist, this is the "conversation" I'm always having with World, or World is generously always having with me, if I have the occasional quietude to listen. After two weeks in L.A. ........oh, so much noise, so much human distraction, so much interference.............I always leave L.A. feeling like someone who has lost their sensory apparatus and must struggle forward half blind, feeling around in the conceptual dark. Anyway, I wanted to remember here another of those syncronistic threads that happened in 2007.........I was reminded because I just, serendipitously, followed up a link to a nature sanctuary and festival site that I never heard of before called Our Haven (www.ourhaven.info) and learned it is in a place called French Lick, Indiana. For those interested in synchronicity this is a good story, and I'm taking the liberty of copying from my 2007 entry. Who casts the threads? Or, do we just unconsciously follow them, occasionally waking up enough to notice the shimmering strands on the mirror? So, strange as it sounds, I'm sitting in a motel on the magnificent California coast, remembering a trip to Indiana 3 years ago............

  September, 2007: The moon is full and the night is very hot, somewhere in Missouri. Cicadas drone their mating calls, an Indian summer chorus. I’m still allergic to everything, wondering if my dignity is forever gone along with the use of my nose. But Magic has been afoot. Quite often I don’t write or talk about days like this, because I doubt the intersections and weave that I see, worse, I'll try to figure out what it all "means".

When synchronicities chose me, or I blunder into them, they flurry about with such literary qualities that I sometimes think its like being inside a novel where the plot is about to become clear. I had my map on the motel bed, ready to open it yesterday a.m. I was thinking about two things. The first was the fact that I was 30 some miles from industrial Gary, Indiana, and the road was apparently flooded there. This could mean hours getting through Gary. And then there was Chicago. The prospect was not appealing. The other item on my mind were my friends Morgana and Phil, who live in Indianapolis. I glanced at my dog-eared map. Now the cover was page two of “Routes of Interest”, and my eye fell on “Indiana” (right in the center of the page, with “Louisiana” below it.) The authors suggested I take a scenic drive through West Baden and visit historic French Lick Springs. The prospect of possibly discovering a new hot spring seemed attractive, and I opened the map to find that I could head on down to Indianapolis, maybe see my friends, and take a hilly route to a possible soak, ending up on 64, which would eventually lead me to route 70. I decided a trip to Indianapolis was a good idea, and headed down the road, taking my bearings at Roseville. I would follow the “rose line”, a fanciful idea I played with as I toodled along in my little pink car. 

I wondered why the place was called French Lick. I later learned that the area, before it was settled by white people, had been an important migration route for buffalo because of salt licks in the area. The new settlers had followed the buffalo to the wells. The first Europeans to settle at French Lick were French Jesuit missionaries, and one of the first businesses established in the area was salt mining. “Routes of Interest” informed me that I could have a soak at the Pluto Baths for $20.00. This is no longer true - any soaking areas where the public might have once taken the curative waters are now replaced with expensive spas. I don’t know why they were called Pluto Waters either, but there on the ceiling of the French Lick Spa were huge, Rococo, paintings of Pluto, Persephone, Orpheus, Eurydice, Cerberus, and the Underworld.

I felt a bit like I was within a personal mythic event, because the myth of Persephone and Hades has been significant to me for many years - my little novel, THE SONG OF MEDUSA, was based on it. 

I have identified with the Persephone archetype strongly in my past - Jennifer Barker and Roger Woolger wrote eloquently about this in their 1989 book "The Goddess Within", a book that informed my interest in Goddess spirituality. It is interesting to note that Pluto means "wealth". The wealth of the below, the hidden, the depths of the earth. 

What the area meant to the native people who lived there, I do not know, although I’m sure it was, like all places where healing waters bubble out of the earth, a sacred, energized place. Maybe it was a place of pilgrimage, in the same way that people still go to the Chalice Well in Ireland. Maybe it was sacred because the buffalo went there. At any rate, my trip was spiritually blessed - Morgana gave me the 2nd degree Reiki initiation. Which I would not have achieved, had I not passed through Indianapolis because I wanted to avoid a flood in Gary. I learned from Phil that he went on his Vision Quest, preparatory to doing the Sun Dance this summer - at the state park in French Lick. So I left with a sense of adventure.

The heart of French Lick is the recently restored West Baden Springs, “The Carlsbad of America”. Although I couldn't afford to stay there, I stopped to admire this amazing architectural feat. I felt the ghosts of a more elegant time, come to "take the waters". This historic building was once called the “8th Wonder of the World” because it boasted the largest suspended glassed dome in the world, and hosted dignitaries such as Teddy Roosevelt. Restored only within the past year to its original turn of the century splendor, 6 stories of guest rooms, spas, restaurants, and bars encircle a huge sunlight center, with inlaid marble tiled floor, and art nouveau statues of the muses. 

Here’s the synchronicity that tops them all. After the stock market crash of 1929, the owners went bankrupt, and actually sold the famous resort to the Jesuits for a dollar. It was a Jesuit seminary until the 60's, when it was purchased by the Whitings of Midland, Michigan, and became a campus of Northwood University until 1983. After that the building sat desolate until it was restored just this year! Northwood, on whose campus I had just spent the summer as an Alden Dow Fellow, and done a community arts project at the Midland Arts Center called "Spider Woman's Hands". This had been their southern campus!

.  

A final note here (I'm in 2010 again, and getting ready to drive to San Francisco)...........when I returned to Tucson that fall, within about two weeks I received a mask order from a woman living in French Lick, Indiana. Honest.

                     Syncronicities are Spider Woman's way of saying "hello"

Pomona revisited..........

I've been in Pomona, California, dealing with family issues and money issues........exhausting. So, needing sustanance, I went to visit the Goddess of abundance, who makes her blessing for all to see, and strangely rarely noticed, in the half abandoned mall of the town named in her honor. I felt like sharing this community painting, which is really a kind of blessing, and a prayer. Here's something I wrote in 2006 about it.

POMONA

Roman Goddess of Fruitfulness, Orchards, and Gardens

Pomona was the uniquely Roman goddess of fruit trees, gardens, and orchards, and her festival, which she shared with her husband Vertumnus, was always on August 13th. Pomona watches over and protects fruit trees and cares for their cultivation, and Her name is from the Latin pomum, fruit. "Pomme" is the French word for "apple".Pomona was among the Numina, guardian spirits of Roman mythology, who watched over people, places, or homes. The Numina are, in essence, the holy spirits of place, from which the word "numinous" derives. Pomona protected and inspired the abundance of the fruitful gardens and orchards. She had her own priest in Rome, called the Flamen Pomonalis. A grove sacred to her was called the Pomonal, located not far from Ostia, the ancient port of Rome.

Pomona has a special personal significance to me, and I made a mask for this Goddess as a tribute, a history, out of the gratitude that is Her due, and perhaps, as a hopeful invocation as well. For She is truly one of the Goddesses of California, fruit basket to America. My family home is in Pomona, California, a town east of Los Angeles that once was the lovely citrus growing valley of Orange county. Now, and for many years, it's a prime example of urban destruction and despair. Long gone are the orange groves, replaced by freeways, smog, crime, and a deserted, almost derelict downtown. I have occasionally returned to Pomona to visit my brother, who still lives there, and always found it sad and depressing.

I was amazed, in 2005, to discover that an arts colony had moved into downtown Pomona, perhaps because it's one of the few places where rent is still inexpensive in Los Angeles. There are studios, galleries, and coffee houses where previously only empty storefronts, homeless people with their shopping carts, and drug dealers had been.

But I was absolutely stunned while walking a street I long have regarded as a reflection of the awful waste of urban blight, to see none other than the Great Goddess Pomona Herself, in all Her glory and at least 3 stories high. The detail above does not show the images of groves growing over composting heaps of industrial waste, or a circle of people sitting in council to the right of the painting, envisioning a new world, overseen and inspired by the numinous, purple clad, Roman Goddess. Art, at it's best, can provide us with those lasting and illuminated moments of revelation that give us the strength to, indeed, envision a new future. Hats off, and heartfelt gratitude, to the artists and community who brought the Goddess to downtown Pomona.

Here's a writeup about the mural from www.pomonaenvisionsthefuture.com

Pomona Envisions the Future is a mural created through a community-based project named Envisioning the Future (E.T.F), which took place in the Pomona Arts Colony from 2002 to 2004 and included over 80 artists. The mural is 140' x 42' acrylic on prepared concrete substrate on the west side of the Union Block building. It consists of four walls at right angles to each other.

The Envisioning the Future project was lead by artist Judy Chicago, photographer Donald Woodman and Cal Poly Pomona. The mural was painted by lead artist and mural project facilitator Kevin Stewart-Magee, and Envisioning the Future artists/participants Lief Frederick, Sandra Gallegos, Cori Griffin-Ruiz, Rupert Hernandez, Lynne Kumra, Yolanda Londono, Amy Runyen, Chris Toovey, Mary Kay Wilson, Erin Campbell, Athena Hahn, Joy McAllister and Fred Stewart-Magee. Artists Magu (Gilbert Luján) and Judy Baca consulted on the project. Cheryl Bookout was the Envisioning the Future project coordinator.

It depicts the history of the City of Pomona from its pre-European past, through its agricultural and industrial ages into its bright future which restores the land in balance with humans. The mural was restored and finally finished in 2008 with funds from the City of Pomona Board of Parking Place Commissioners. A bronze plaque from the Downtown Pomona Owners Association was added on October 4, 2008 at the re-dedication ceremony. The mural is located at the intersection of Thomas and Second Streets in downtown Pomona, California in the Pomona Arts Colony.

Tongva Indian prepares food

It begins by depicting the pre-European landscape with the indigenous Tongva people in the dark sepia color palette. The image of a by-gone natural open landscape rounds the corner and transitions into the historic past of rolling hills and open land erased and replaced by the familiar citrus groves established by the first European settlers.

Early Hispanic farm laborers working the fields

The color palette remains a restrained monochromatic blue-green. This is atypical of the traditional portrait of time as depicted in the multitudes of idyllic brightly colored packing house labels. Instead the muted colors signal the coming Industrial Revolution and environmental dark days to come. At the reveal wall recesses to the main wall the decline of the citrus industry is represented by dead citrus trees that stop abruptly with the landscape at the twenty-four foot figure of the Goddess Pomona. Pomona, originally the Roman Goddess of orchards, was selected as the name for the city in the late 1800s.

The Goddess's arms are outstretched as doves leave her hands in flight towards a hopeful future. The background behind the goddess figure is turbulent, murky and orangey-brown. The landscape turns to a congested urban-suburban sprawl of industrial pollution and over crowded housing tracts. As the narrative moves along to the right, mountains and blue sky emerge from the bleak present and the misty outskirts of a glowing city at the portal of a new age. In the foreground is a school of the future.

Students are seated on a luminous ring or "learning circle" which hovers over serene and lush rolling hills in an environment that has been restored to near primordial conditions. In the distance is a vision which is millions of years away from the actual event, the galaxy Andromeda is seen in the morning sky as it approaches our own Milky Way.

Throughout the mural along the bottom is an undulating wave representing subterranean strata. The wave contains artifacts and objects that represent the ages up to a time where the human species has achieved balanced health and harmony, with a vision of the future which encompasses the universe.

Last, let me share another one of the gifts of the Goddess........the astounding Jacaranda tree, which blooms wholly purple in May, dropping it's lavender snow everywhere among the unheeding smog and traffic............ever generous. Pomona, casting her purple blessings.

White Tara Mask finished

"The 21 Praises to Tara" celebrates the Bodhissatva Goddess of Tibet's many aspects. Among them, Red Tara, Green Tara, wrathful Black Tara, and White Tara are all manifestations to assist those who call on Her for help. White Tara is "She Who Hears the Cries of the World", the embodiment of unconditional love. Tara sees beyond all veils, all dualities, to the ultimate unity, the perfection within all Beings. With infinate compassion, Tara as Bodhissatva abides to ease the world's suffering. She bears a lotus blossum, the flower that symbolizes perfected mind, rising from the murky depths of illusion, to bloom in transcendant beauty.

This was a poem I wrote in 1997 about White Tara. It was actually based upon a dream that "pursued me" for several years........a dream in which I was relentlessly pursued by a terrifying, smoky, amorphous creature. Finally, being exhausted with running, I turned to face the monster, no longer caring what the outcome might be. From the fire and smoke emerged a young boy, who quietly came forward and lay down with his head on my lap.

WHITE TARA

I went to meet that savage creature I have run from,
lifetime after lifetime,
the shape within the shadows,
a creature of smoke and bared fangs.

I went to meet it at last,
and I let it take me in its vast arms,
and I kissed its terrible face.

And I thought I would die
but I did not die.
I thought I would be swallowed
but I was not swallowed.

Because that creature
I thought would devour me
returned my embrace
I looked into eyes
that became soft and liquid,
and filled with tears.

The eyes of a lonely child,
my own lost child,
my brother, my sister,
my lover, my mother.
And with great tenderness
Fear lay upon my breast, and slept.

And what bound me for so long
flowed out of me,
and my heart expanded,
and I found I could hold
the entire world
in my open arms.

I will make my arms a circle
I will make my heart a circle

I will walk my sorrows, my fears Home.
I will walk circles around them
until at last I find
that bright and spacious center

Come with me. Take my hand.
We will do it together

We will walk Home.


Lauren Raine, 1997

Black Tara Mask Finished

Finally finished the Black Tara mask, now working on White Tara. I felt like sharing this 2000 excerpt from an interview with ceremonial dancer Drissana Devananda, about her performances devoted to Kali - Black Tara and Kali are very similar in meaning and origin.

"Kali is the surgeon. She cuts away what has to go. I ask for that quality when I have to cut something out of my life; an addiction, or a relationship that no longer is about growth. And I ask it be done precisely, this cutting away of dis-ease, malignancy, the aspects that no longer serve. In myth, Kali was the last resort savior. When the Gods couldn't kill the demonic forces that ravaged the Earth, they called on a woman's wrath.

We all have the ability to call the Goddesses into ourselves. I can do this in my dance, but in everyday life it's more difficult. That's why I thrive on performance, because I can freely let those forces work through me. What I forget is that we can call on them at other times. We've forgotten that the Goddess dwells within us, all the time, and not just when we wear a mask, or are in workshop, or a ritual. We are, in Tantric terms, extensions or emanations of the Gods and Goddesses - we are their material aspects. We're not bodies that are seeking the spirit, we're spirits that are seeking bodily experiences.

In the Hindu tradition, everyone has a deity they focus on as their personal deity. In the West, as we begin to reclaim the Goddess for spiritual practice, we each need to create a relationship with the Goddess form we have chosen, in order to manifest what we need for spiritual and emotional growth, to invoke the help we need. That practice is not just cerebral. We function out of our whole self, our bodies and spirits. The body-mind. That is where we re-member, we communicate with the Goddess within ourselves.

Women need to become angry. Now. About the women of Afghanistan, the meaningless wars, the destruction of our environment. The demons of insatiable lust are devouring our planet. Those souls who await the future are being denied their birthright. Kali is the catalyst for saying "No more". She's the voice of women whose voices aren't being heard, women who need to open their mouths and speak for the first time. It's time to embrace the sword of Kali and start cutting away the delusions. This is the ferocious mother who says "get away from my children, or I'll kill you." Mothers today aren't saying that. They're giving their children away. Giving them away to war, giving them away by allowing our environment to be depleted, giving permission to the powers that be to destroy their future. This is the dance of Kali."

Drissana Devananda

"Everyday poetry" (revisited)

The Barbed Heart
Takes Refuge


In a hidden Grove
of Palos VerdesTrees

(Tucson, 2009)

I saw this bit of everyday poetry while on a hike last year, and felt like revisiting it. The barbed desert heart is still there, surrounded by the spring fall of yellow palos verdes blossom.

Here is one of the loveliest secrets of the desert, the mystical Night Blooming Cereus. This cactus only blooms for one night. To encounter a Cereus, on a hot moonlit night is encounter a rare, magical event...........

Black Tara

Ture, Dark Mother of Bones & Blood Silent night and smoldering ruins

Teach us the Sorrow path of letting go

Of howling pain & rage releasing the Wheel always turning

Black heart center of understanding.

Grant the art of Letting-go in the still silence of your dark smile

Om tare tuttare ture soha 

 Silverstar

I've begun work on a new sacred mask. I haven't made a sacred mask in years, although I've made a lot of commercial masks. "Sacred" is a word with lots of meanings, but to me it means making a mask through a process that is "In-vocational". 

Invoke comes from the same root as "yoke" and "yoga", to join with , unite. In my experience, when intent is given to create a sacred mask, it becomes an invitation and a prayer to the deity (ancestor, power animal, or for those who are uncomfortable with anything touching on religion or shamanism, "archetypal power") to enter this world. To interact with, inform, bless, and transform in some way, the maker, those who use the mask, and ultimately, the audience as well. This was well understood in indigenous cultures, where masks are regarded as power objects, and are not used lightly. But because we've lost so many of our shamanic/magical traditions, the idea is generally not understood in today's world. In my own experience, like in Kevin Costner's 1989 movie Field of Dreams, "If you build it, they will come". This mask may be the first of 21 masks for Prema Dasara and the "21 Praises to Tara", the beautiful Mandala Blessing Dance that she has been creating with groups of women for many years. It will be an honor to meet this dedicated spiritual teacher.

Engaging in the spirit of the dance she has devoted her life to, making these masks will be, for me, also a devotional meditation for Tara, who is the female Bodhisattva of Compassion in Tibetan Buddhism. More on this later......there is far too much to say to write about Tara and Prema in passing. To share with fellow devotees a sacred invocation, a ritual dance, the creation of sacred and devotional art, can be transformative, a great blessing. Tara is celebrated with a long prayer called "The 21 Praises to Tara". The Goddess has 21 manifestations - peaceful and wrathful - all different expressions of divine mercy and wisdom. In the painting below, Tara is surrounded by smaller figures, each representing a different aspect of the Goddess (such as "White Tara", "Red Tara", etc.)

Black Tara is a wrathful manifestation, identical in form and, no doubt, source, to Hindu Kali. Like Kali, she has a headdress of grinning skulls, like Kali, she is black, like Kali she has three eyes. Like many Tibetan deities in the wrathful aspect, she has the fangs of a tiger, symbolizing ferocity, a ferocious appetite to devour the demons of the mind. Her aura or halo is fiery, energetic, full of smoke symbolizing the transformation of fire. Kali is the great Dark Mother of India. 

In Hindu mythology, when the world was being devoured by demons, there came a time when even the great Gods couldn't battle them. And so Kali the terrible manifested, the "last ditch savioress". Kali is the One who brings the forest fire, levelling the ground so new growth can occur, the surgeon who cuts cleanly away morbid tissue so flesh can heal. The icon of Kali, dancing on the prostrate body of Shiva, is a strange and horrific image to the western sensibility. Christian theology is dualistic, but Hinduism and Buddhism are not. In Bali, the curbs of Ubud are all painted like a checker board, black and white, as are the altar clothes. This is to remind those who walk down the street continuously of Sekala and Neskala, the continuing balance of Dark and Light, the yin/yang of life.

Kali appears in Bali as the dreadful, fanged, bloodthirsty Rangda. Battles with her are always fought by the benign dragon, the Barong, in dreadful graveyards. But no one ultimately wins. Because, perhaps, the battle must continually be fought. And Rangda, work done, often then returns to the heaven realms, to become beautiful, peaceful Uma, wife of their version of Lord Shiva.

Kali, whose name means "Time" (Kala) lives beyond form, beyond the pairs of opposites, the truth beyond the skeins of karma and time................ So, what can happen when we, even unconsciously, In-Voke a great Deity, an Archetypal Power.............a Goddess? Well, as I said, "if you build it, they will come". These things really shouldn't be done lightly. Tara has been my revered and mysterious divine teacher for many years. I won't presume to say I can understand a Goddess ......... their purposes being collective and far beyond my personal understanding..........but if I was going to make a tenuous statement, it would be when you call on a Goddess, She's not going to give you a polite reply that's been spell-checked. 

The ineffable forces work with us in the arena of energy, in the field of dreams and soul language. So, I began work on a mask for Black Tara..........not really thinking about why I chose that particular manifestation, just drawn to the image. 

Without going into particulars, I've been miserable. Too much death, overwhelming family needs, feeling trapped, loss of what I consider personal integrity. I've been resigned, paralyzed by it all, unable to see the necessary changes. So, a few days ago, I became a lunatic. It was nothing I planned.... I stayed up all night, pacing the floor. The darkness and solitude was deafening. I walked around and around the block, yelling at the damn yapping ubiquitous dogs. Yelling at the walls. I pulled out cups and plates and shattered them around the house. (Pottery therapy can be very satisfying. White china is especially good.) 

I screamed at people who fortunately weren't there. I raged, I spit, I cried and wiped my nose on my shirt, I drank too much vodka, I looked in the mirror and called myself a lot of names. The sun came up, I drove around and around, and screamed some more (in my car), because I felt like I had no where to go. But finally, I looked up a friend. I didn't clean up the mess on the floor for several days. Visiting my friend, who is also having a hard time these days, sleeping on her couch, talking all the next night...........was more important. I thought it was worth keeping that pile of shattered pottery there for a while, a silent witness to the passing of a storm. 

How do I feel now? Actually, I feel great. And, I think I understand some things about myself, and my authentic needs, a lot better now. Black Tara, dancing Her tough love, crimson lips full of that vast, vast laughter. 

There's a great film called "The Shipping News" (with Kevin Spacey). Towards the end of the movie, a storm has destroyed his old family's house, a weary old house haunted with too many secrets, too much ancestral karma. Moored atop a crag, literally tied down with ropes, the ropes broke at last, and the house has been blown  into the ocean below,  to vanish beneath the waves. 

Confronting the littered place where it once stood, Spacey (who has become a newspaper reporter) comments:

"Headline: House disappears in storm. The view is great."

** I am embarroused to find this worthy commentary about Kali in my files, and not the credits. I hope, should the author ever find me, he or she will accept my apology, and appreciation for the wise scholarship.

"Kali's black complexion symbolizes her all-embracing nature. Says the Mahanirvana Tantra: "Just as all colors disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her".Kali is free from the illusory covering, for she is beyond the all maya or "false consciousness." Her red lolling tongue indicates her omnivorous nature —her indiscriminate enjoyment of all the world's 'flavors'. Her sword is the destroyer of false consciousness. Her three eyes represent past, present, and future, — the three modes of time — an attribute that lies in the very name Kali ('Kala' in Sanskrit means time). The eminent translator Sir John Woodroffe in Garland of Letters, writes, "Kali is so called because She devours Kala (Time) and then resumes Her own dark formlessness."

Kali's proximity to cremation grounds where the five elements or "Pancha Mahabhuta" come together, and all worldly attachments are absolved, again point to the cycle of birth and death. "

Serendipity

"We must be willing to let go of the life we planned
so as to have the life that is waiting for us." — Joseph Campbell

I was thinking lately about Serendipity, which is actually a vague word that I kind of.....maybe....understand, or.....contribute to its continuing creative evolution by using it..........or.......? Maybe it's kind of related to synchronicity? Or, kismet?

I was thinking about how lives seem, sometimes, to be woven from random accidents.

Here's an example. Back in 1975 I was living at an artists warehouse in Berkeley. It was almost Halloween, and we were planning our big bash. I had a date for the evening, and a costume.

A little earlier, Paul and Peter from Ontario, Canada, had just graduated from college, and decided to have an adventure by driving across Canada in Paul's Volkswagen bug. They had gone through Vancouver, and were headed down the coast on their way to Mexico, their destination for the winter, until they headed back to Canada when the weather was friendly again.

When they got to Berkeley, the engine blew up.

In those days, if you were a counter culture type, and you had a Volkswagen, you pulled out your friendly counter-cultural volkswagon repair manual, and fixed it yourself. Taking a volkswagon to a mechanic was so "establishment". They even had do-it-yourself garages in Berkeley where one could rent space to work.

While in Berkeley, Paul met a woman who invited him to a Halloween party; which is why he turned up wearing a large plastic garbage bag. His date, however, never turned up. Feeling dejected, Paul wandered around looking for someone to dance with, and found me. My date had also failed to turn up, and feeling equally dejected, I started dancing with the tall, skinny guy in the garbage bag.

To make a long story shorter, Paul (and his friend Peter) stayed on in Berkeley. Peter met Belinda, got married, and had a child, Gabriel. Paul and I got married, moved to Wisconsin, and a few years later were amiably divorced. I moved to Vermont, and Paul met a woman there in Madison who he married, and they later moved to Austin.

While still in California, Paul's sister Pat came out to visit me, and there she got a job as a nanny. She lived in the Warehouse for a while, and met a man from Sri Lanka. They got married, moved back to his homeland, had 3 children, and Pat is still in Sri Lanka. Paul's brother, David, also came to visit, and ended up moving to San Francisco; he lives there still.

None of them ever returned to Canada. All those children born, and careers begun.

If the VW engine hadn't blown up, or if my date, or Paul's date, had shown up, none of it would have happened. Serendipity....................


Wikipedia says that:

"Serendipity is the ability of making accidental but fortuitous discoveries, especially while looking for something entirely unrelated. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its sociological use, the word has been imported into many other languages."




“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends”..........Joseph Campbell

Saraswati's River

.

Love is Saraswati's river flowing through our lands. She will feed the rice fields, She will accept our woven offerings. She will bear our ashes and the fires of Kintamani to the sea. Formless, she neither takes nor gives; we impose these significances upon the flowers we cast in her. From birth to death, Saraswati's river sustains us to the sea.

In my previous post, I posed the question "how would we live, if rivers were also Goddesses?", and this poem from Bali came to mind.  The Balinese begin each day with an offering. I can't speak about beauty without making my own offering to Saraswati , the Hindu Goddess of the arts, truth., and language.

She is often shown bearing writing tools and a musical instrument, tools for inspiration and truth speaking, which are inseparable. As the embodiment of speech, Saraswati is present wherever speech exists, but She represents the best in human culture: poetry, literature, sacred rituals, and truth-speaking between individuals. Even today, when a new baby arrives, grandmothers make a five pointed star - called "Saraswati-sign" - on the newborn's tongue with honey. The tongue, the organ of speech, is thus "hitched to Saraswati's star" early.

When I was in Ubud, the Arts Capital of Bali, every morning and at twilight I beheld the stately procession of 5 white geese making their way up the busy street I lived on,. In the evening, heading back to whatever rice paddy they called home, they would make their return. Although people on motor scooters often went around them if they could, I was amazed at the utterly un-Western patience with which Balinese motorists followed behind the geese. They did not honk at them (although the geese certainly honked their own mysterious way up the street), nor did the Balinese try to shoo them out of the way.

"Sacred to Saraswati", explained my friend Nyoman.

"The Sanskrit word sara means "essence" and swa means "self." Thus Saraswati means "the essence of the self." Goddess Saraswati is worshipped by all persons interested in knowledge, especially students, teachers, scholars, and scientists.

Two swans are depicted on the left side of the Goddess. A swan is said to have a sensitive beak that enables it to distinguish pure milk from a mixture of milk and water. A swan symbolizes the power of discrimination. Saraswati uses the swan as Her carrier. This indicates that one must acquire and apply knowledge with discrimination for the good of mankind. Knowledge that is dominated by ego can destroy the world."

- Bansi Pandit

 

Sacred Space & the Pollen Path

Illustration from "Rita & Julia", poems by Jimmy Santiago Baca (2006)

"This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be, This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen."*

Joseph Campbell, in 1985 interview with Bill Moyers

I just recently took a brief trip to New Mexico, to see the subtle dance of spring spread over th0se vast, sun washed lands, and to renew, if only briefly, my acquaintance with the Rio, the Rio Grande, the "big river" that is not really a very big river at all, compared to the great rivers of the east. And yet, the Rio is the slender, turquoise, serpentine Goddess of those dry lands, bringing generous life to all the places she travels through on her long, miraculous journey.

Not so long ago, and in many places still, all rivers were Goddesses (the Danube, the Nile, the Ganges, the mystical river of Saraswati)........how differently might we live in the world, when a river is also a Goddess?

While travelling, this quote from Joseph Campbell came to mind. Especially while I travel, I often find myself remembering that the whole world can be a sacred space. That a picnic of sardines and rice cakes under a cottonwood tree, can be a sacred space. Or a sacred space can be a room, or even a table at the library if need be, a place apart. At last, the sacred place has to be the room of one's mind, the closing of doors, for a while at least, so that you find your feet "on the pollen path", so you open your eyes to see, as the Navajo chant goes, that Beauty is all around you.

I have two young 10 year old friends who have what they call "beauty moments"; they will both wave their hands in the air in appreciation of anything that strikes them as beautiful, whether it's a bumble bee, or a painting, or a nice plate of lasagna. I love their aesthetic thank yous. How important it is to take the time to recognize and appreciate the sustaining power of the beautiful.

the Artist brushes a wash of violet,
a moment's gasp of yellow
laughter
in the sand

Yesterday, I was delighted to see blankets of color, poppies, lupine, other wildflowers, dotting the brown landscapes I drove through. Stopping at a gas station, I stood behind a trucker who was actually complaining about having to wash the pollen off of his truck! "It's really bad", he was telling the cashier, "in Texas".

"Bad!" I couldn't believe it! Apparently the fuming chrome of his diesel truck is the only beauty this man sees in the palette of spring. Such a weird, and sad, contrast to the mind of the Hopi, with their reverence for the Butterfly Woman, the Pollinator. Or the Navajo, who anoint girls when they come of age with yellow pollen, so they will walk in beauty on the "Pollen Path". How can we have so much, and yet be so ignorant about the sheer toxicity of our psychic environment? Even going into my favorite coffee shop, I put on my earplugs to block out the background of radio and commercials. I found myself soaking up the stillness of the Gila Wilderness yesterday like Chi, like Prana, like water when thirsty. In the silence, in the wilderness, you can hear the soft voice of your inner life, the voices of the conversant, synchonistic world, the inspiration of the Muses, the dream language of the soul.

We need these places, these sacred places, whether they be a room or a canyon, to find our Selves. We also need the intention to make it so, to weave the cocoon, to cast the magic circle, to c0-create the exchange. Then, emerging anew, we can also cast butterflies, dancing into the world.

http://www.rainewalker.com/butterflywoman.htm

MOYERS: I like the idea that it is not the destination that counts, it’s the journey.

CAMPBELL: Yes. As Karlfried Graf Durckheim says, "When you’re on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey itself." The Navajo have that wonderful image of what they call the pollen path. Pollen is the life source, The pollen path is the path to the center. The Navajo say:

"Oh, beauty before me, beauty behind me,beauty to the right of me, beauty to the left of me, beauty above me, beauty below me, I’m on the pollen path."

	the psychology of dreams....a Jungian perspective....with Joseph Campbell Myths-Dreams-Symbols

http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/index.shtmlhe Mythic World of Joseph Campbell

Great Syncronicity Blog & Book

"SYNCHRONICITY: the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that can't be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer. Or: meaningful coincidences."

I wanted to introduce the work of new friends I've made in the Blogosphere, Rob and Trish MacGregor. They have a wonderful blog about synchronicity: http://ofscarabs.blogspot.com. and have been collecting stories of synchronicity for a forthcoming book, 7 Secrets of Synchronicity: Your Guide to Finding Meaning in Coincidences Big and Small. (http://www.synchrosecrets.com) The book is scheduled to be published in August 2010.

"If you've found your way here, then it's likely you have experienced meaningful coincidences - what psychologist Carl Jung called synchronicity. Here, we explore the phenomenon in depth and invite all of you to participate. If you have synchronicity stories you would like to share, drop us a note at macs@synchrosecrets.com. "

The Macgregors write about their book, "In February 2009 , we started a blog - www.ofscarabs.blogspot.com as a research tool for writing a book on synchronicity and gathering stories about the phenomena. It was our first experience at blogging and we weren't sure how the process worked or what the response would be. The first week, we got 38 hits - mostly from friends and family. So we set up a Google alert for "synchronicity" and began sifting through dozens of links the blogs and sites that filled our inbox each day. When we found genuine synchronicities, we left comments and invited people to share their stories on our blog. By June when we sold the book - 7 Secrets of Synchronicity: Your Guide to Finding Meaning in Coincidences Big and Small - we had more than 7,500 hits. Before the blog's year anniversary, we had nearly 50,000 hits and had collected hundreds of powerful stories about synchronicity."

I've always been fascinated with synchronicities, and have made an effort to record their occurrence in my own life. Ever since I took on my Spider Woman Project, synchronicities have abounded - I've come to think of them as a thread the master Weaver throws my way, here and there, just to keep me awake. A funny one is on view below - it occurred in 2008 when I parked in Midland, MI, to get a cup of coffee, enroute to view the show of "Spider Woman's Hands", a community art project, at the Creative Spirit Center there. I had initiated the project in 2007, but they completed it that spring without me. Participant panels went around the wall, the thread held in each Icon's hands being passed to the next, and finally disappearing out the door. This, I like to think, was Spider woman's whimsical approval for our efforts on Her behalf. I look forward to the book, and my congratulations to the MacGregors for their dedicated and fascinating work!