The Way, the Camino, and Black Madonnas

 

I recently saw "The Way", a film with Martin Sheen, who walks the ancient pilgrimage route in Spain.  I found it a quietly wonderful movie, very true in the personal journey that Sheen makes to grieve his son, and wonderful to see  as you walk with him and his chance companions on "The Camino".  Synchronistically, I met a woman  a few days after seeing the movie who, in her early 60's, did the trek herself.  I want to!  And perhaps I will someday!

The Camino is the ancient pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, a 10th century Romanesque and Gothic cathedral that houses the bones of St. James, a Christian martyr.  It also houses a Black Madonna effigy.  Thinking about the Camino, and pilgrimages to "spirit of place", I  felt like sharing again this article I wrote in 2009. 

Black Madonna of Guadaloupe

Reflections on the Black Madonna 

"There was once a vast pilgrimage that took place in Europe. Pilgrims made their way towards the town of Compostella in Spain, where an ancient effigy of the BLACK MADONNA is housed. The word Compostella comes from the same root word as compost. COMPOST is the living, black material that is made from rotting fruits, grains and other organic matter. From this compost -- life and light will emerge. When the pilgrims came to the Cathedral at Compostella they were being 'composted' in a sense. After emergence from the dark confines of the cathedral and the spirit -- they were ready to flower, they were ready to return home with their spirits lightened." ~~ Jay Weidner

  

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

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

"Black Madonna" (2005)

In 2005, during a residency on the 150 acres of IPark, the land spoke to me, and I had time and space to speak back, to engage in a conversation, and my own "Black Madonna" arose from that numinous time.

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

fresco from the Temple of Isis at Pompeii

Mother Earth

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

I did not realize until recently that there are many pilgrimages in Europe to Black Madonnas. The Cathedral of Santiago at Compostella is the endpoint of "The Camino", the long pilgrimage still made by thousands today across Spain.

Pilgrimage routes to Compostela

The Camino is also the title of a book by Shirley Maclaine, who undertook the journey in 2000. It's believed that the earliest pilgrimages were made to the "Black Madonna of Compostella", a very ancient effigy housed in the church. Compostella comes from the same root word as "compost". Compost is the fertile soil created from rotting organic matter, the "Black Matter". The alchemical soup to which everything living returns, and is continually resurrected by the processes of nature into new life, new form. Mater. Mother.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Black Madonna of Czestochowskad (Poland)
 

Procession to the Black Madonna, Poland

Resources:

The Cult of the Black Virgin (1985) by Ean Begg;

Miraculous Images of Our Lady (1993) by Joan Carroll Cruz;

The Virgin Goddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology (1993) by Stephen Benko.

Martin Gray: Sacred Sites (http://www.sacredsites.com)

Gaia - beautiful video (and new masks)

As I make masks for Goddesses that are multi-cultural personifications of the  "faces of Mother Earlth", a friend forwarded this extraordinary video to me.

"Skadi", Scandinavian Goddess of Winter & Ice

"Oya", African Goddess of storms

The Independent Eye

From "The Descent of the Goddess Inanna" (2008)

I wanted to introduce two extraordinary people who have been a mythic team for over 45 years, Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller, the Independent Eye.  Actors, playwrights, directors, singers, composers, and master puppeteers, they have had an extraordinary career.  I take the liberty of sharing here a brief video excerpt from their website, and have copied below their most recent newsletter.  Thank you, Conrad and Elizabeth, for inspiring and teaching me!

EyeSight The Independent Eye                             March 1, 2012

In Perpetual Spring... Mistrusting Paradise?      Our plum trees and feral cats are confused.  Our wall furnace is asking questions.  It's dry shirt-sleeve weather in February, when in Sebastopol it should be rainy and chill.  What gives?      Well, can't help but think "climate change" and expect the worst for the human race.  And with the rumbles of election time, it's hard to frolic out into the spring.      But let us not hold back from stepping out into the day, breathing in the air, and saying "Ye gods, what a gorgeous day!"  We need those in-drawn praises of life to hold through the dark times.  More and more, I hold the irrational thought that we have to feel the spring before it's willing to come.      Co-Creation...      Our reading and performance tour of Co-Creation continues on.  See the calendar to the right, and join us.  Email us about hosting us in your living room, coffee house, arts center, gallery, or wherever you can assemble fifteen friends. Late June in Denver/Boulder, late summer or early fall in the Midwest and East, most any time in the greater Bay Area. Our Duo Show...      First draft is finished, and we start rehearsals this week.  First showings late summer.  It might even have a title by then.  Several old pieces are incorporated in it, including "Freeway," which has reappeared in several shows, but now revisited in a new context.  More as we go.    Strange Evolution...      How things catch fire.  In 2003 I created a solo story-telling show, Survival Tips for the Plague Years.  I played a couple of performances in Sebastopol, adapted it to radio, then canned it.  It seemed to have strong audience response, maybe too strong: several friends found it highly depressing, especially one story, "Galahad's Fool."  For all practical purposes, it was dead meat.      Recently, a friend who makes puppet films sent me a first-draft script for comment.  It was on the theme of St. Joan, and as a framing device he used a filmmaker struggling to cope with that theme.  Later, he went a different direction, but the spark struck.  Now, I'm launched into work on a novel about an artist wrestling with a Sir Galahad journey, both of them on their quests for the Holy Grail, whatever they conceive it to be.  Damned thing about novels:  there are so many words.       Sometimes an idea lies fallow until someone empties the slop bucket, and suddenly it's the magic catalyst.  Right now what's emerging is a big, messy tsunami, but a very personal one.  We'll see.      At Play...      Our daughter Johanna and her mate have just bought a 14th Century stone mill house in Tuscany, and now launched into the process of making it their own.  Our son is beginning work illustrating  a fantasy graphic novel to be serialized on the Web.       We gave readings of Co-Creation this month for the San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild and the Sonoma County Pagan Network — diverse audiences indeed — and performed short sketches for a local Valentine's "Love Salon" cabaret and for Arcata Playhouse in Professor Willikers’ Puppet Slam, a thorougly jovial affair.      We're not wild social beings, but gradually we've evolved a bit more contact with the rest of humanity.  We attend a periodic poetry salon and Shakespeare reading group, quarterly meetings of the SF Bay Puppetry Guild, a small full moon circle, Sunday morning coffee at Hard Core Espresso, and recently lots of friends' parties, which have resulted in both of us gaining five pounds, despite faithful trips to the gym.  Life is good. Peace and joy— Conrad Bishop Featured this Month... {with a bonus} Descent of the Goddess Inanna— A full-length DVD of our 2007 staging. The Queen of Heaven and Earth begins a fateful descent to meet her sister, Queen of the Underworld, as a New Jersey wedding photographer finds her images turning into nightmares. Based on 5,000-year-old Sumerian myths, this dramatic revisioning features compelling music, masks & puppets, and the dazzling richness, humor and erotic imagery of the ancient texts.  It's $16.95 plus shipping.  Order through our website.    * * * Bonus:  Order Inanna this month through our website and receive a free 72-minute CD of Diana's Gifts — six of our favorite audio-dramas, the most "visual" of all our dramatic work. Upcoming Gigs... Concert Readings of Co-Creation— Saturday, March 3 7:00 pm House Concert - Los Angeles, CA Email for invitation.   Sunday, March 4 2:00 pm House Concert - Long Beach, CA Email for invitation.   Friday, March 5 8:00 pm House Concert - Van Nuys, CA Email for invitation.   Saturday, March 10 6:45 pm House Concert - Menlo Park, CA Email for invitation.   Monday, March 12 7:00 pm Arcata Playhouse - Arcata, CA Free.   Thursday, April 5 7:00 pm Pegasus Theater, Monte Rio, CA Free.   Thursday, April 12 7:00 pm The Imaginists, Santa Rosa, CA Free.   Wednesday, April 18 7:00 pm Main Stage West, Sebastopol, CA Free.     — more to come —   [Email us for info on hosting a reading]   and performing a short sketch as part of An Evening of Puppet Obsession 6:00 pm, Sunday, April 1st The Garage, 975 Howard St., SF www.975Howard.com Explorations... Enter the Labyrinth...      ... of our website.  Many treasures.  To mention a few: All 92 episodes of our radio series Hitchhiking off the Map for free listening (See "Media"). Full scripts of 29 of our original plays for free online reading (See "Print"). Photos, reviews, video samplers, and a chronicle of 38 years of work (See "Stage/Chronicle"). Our library of play anthologies, CDs and DVDs for sale (See "Media" and "Print").      Much else besides.  START HERE.

Quote of the month... From Co-Creation... Great demands require great patience.  In a rehearsal, you learn gradually that the sudden breakthrough, the perfect solution, that moment of blinding truth won’t necessarily come today.  Maybe it won’t come tomorrow or till you’re halfway through the run of the show.  You push as far as you can, and then you lie back and wait.  Sow seeds and wait for the sprouting.  Truth, oneness, trust — they likely won’t come as lightning bolts.  As the Christ-like space alien teaches in Stranger in a Strange Land, “Waiting is.”  Meanwhile, celebrate.

Visit our website for four decades of photos, playscripts, radio shows and chronicles of life, plus a catalog of our published books, CDs and DVDs. www.independenteye.org The Independent Eye - 502 Pleasant Hill Road, Sebastopol, CA 95472 eye@independenteye.org Copyright 2012 The Independent Eye.  All rights reserved.

Pachamama Mask (almost) finished

"Pachamama"

 I'm almost finished with this mask, "Pachamama".  Macha has gathered a great "Mask Council", with an online discussion group, and great minds are circulating ideas about how these masks might look, be performed, and their stories told even as I write.

Freya, who has explored South America has inspired me to make the mask with the bright colors of the indigenous peoples art and clothing.  We envision the performer in the handwoven garments to be found among peoples of Bolivia and Equador, and Freya suggests that she hold a spindle, because that is a common sight.  With her spindle, the performer might offer threads to the celebrants/audience, encouraging them to "assist in the spinning" of a new way of understanding our relationship to Mother Earth.

I wrote about Pachamama, and introduced the Pachamama Alliance, in a recent article:

http://threadsofspiderwoman.blogspot.com/2012/02/pachemama-and-rights-of-mother-earth-in.html

Mything Links and Mythic Resources

 
Since I'm neck high again in mythology as I work on masks, I felt like re-introducing one of my favorite sites,  Kathleen Jenks "MYTHING LINKS"
site.  And here are a few more links to Mythology sites I've enjoyed. 

* Mythic Passages
* Mything Links
* Mythic Mojo: Catherine Svehla
* The Imaginal Institute-
* Joseph Campbell Foundation
* Mythopoetics
* The Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts
* The Journal of Mythic Arts
*The New Stories Foundation
* Parabola Magazine
* Black Earth Institute 
* Mythic Musing Blog

* Immanence:  A Journal of Applied Myth, Story and Folklore

"Our challenge is to bring the Goddess back to life, to envision, create, and inhabit the re-membered living  body of the Earth."

Starhawk

And just as the false assumption that we are not connected to the Earth has led to the ecological crisis, so the equally false assumption that we are not connected to each other has led to our social crisis.

--Al Gore, EARTH IN BALANCE

Spider Woman's Hands (PP)

I can't resist some of the free offerings on the Web. This one is  www.slideshare.net,  a free service that allows you to post power point presentations to the Web (it looks best if you make it "full screen") - so my experiment here is to post the presentation that I gave last year at the Conference at the Claremont School of Theology on Spider Woman.

We're weavers all - so may we rub a bit of Spider Web into the palms of our hands in 2012!

Spider Woman's Hands 

                                              View more presentations                                                 from Lauren Raine.

Soundings of the Planet? Gaia's Voice?

  My friend Fahrusha gave me permission to reproduce the fascinating article she recently posted on her Blog  about the strange phenomena of rhythmic sounds heard in different parts of the world, which she suggests could "Gaia's Voice".  Although there have been quite few "copy cat" fakes since the video  from Kiev was posted, there seems to be fairly good evidence that the video below is genuine.  My  thanks to Fahrusha, who is a noted psychic in NYC, for her article below and her blog.

Weird sounds and Earth changes

On August 23, 2011 between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. I was traveling on a ferryboat from Fire Island N.Y. to Long Island N.Y. after a too short holiday. There was a small girl about four years old who was also on the boat with a group of relatives. We were both riding on the open top level of the ferry. Towards the end of the ride I was gazing at the shore in anticipation when the level of the Earth seemed to shift. The sea was very calm. The child noticed it too and pointed and cried out to her fellow travellers who had not seen it. I mentioned it to my companion with a bit of anxiety but he hadn’t noticed it either.

Soon I was in a car driving west toward Manhattan. The event on the ferry probably would have passed totally from memory had it not been for the news I heard on the radio when I returned to the car after lunch: THERE HAD BEEN AN EARTHQUAKE IN NYC!!! Totally surprising, and as it turned out the actual epicenter of the quake was in Virginia, but it was clearly felt in New York City. The visual anomaly seen by myself and the child had been approximately an hour before the earthquake struck. Was there any connection? I do not know.


On Monday, February 02, 2009 at 10:34:19 PM and Tuesday, February 03, 2009 at 03:34:19 two earthquakes were felt just to the south of the location where I had been. I was not present for either of them but was told by several persons who were, that the sound was like that of a large truck that had been dropped from a great height.  Recently I have become aware of the mysterious sounds which a variety of people from many places around the world have heard. There are purported recordings of these sounds on YouTube, some of which are probably hoaxed, but I think not all.

What I personally think may be happening is related to global warming.  As the Earth’s temperature is rising quickly (in geologic terms) perhaps on average a degree a decade, the polar ice caps and many glaciers are melting causing a displacement of water. Simply put, large amounts of water in the form of ice are melting and the water in liquid form is going elsewhere. In the North Arctic/Atlantic region the melting fresh water being dumped into the sea seems to have affected and diverted the Gulf Stream causing Europe to have a record cold winter. With the Himalaya glaciers melting there is abnormal flooding in Pakistan and Bangladesh in the rainy monsoon season.  In other places the lack of snow/ice/glaciers are causing the land to rise very slowly and unevenly causing some of these sounds and earthquakes. Water is extraordinarily heavy even when it is only a few feet thick. Think of massive amounts of rock under considerable pressure shifting against one another for perhaps miles on a seam under the surface of the Earth. Granted, this explanation is somewhat simplistic, but generally speaking this is what I believe to be happening.

It would seem that it is The Mother Gaia speaking to us.

For an interesting compilation of these trumpet-like mechanical sounds heard worldwide and some back stories from experiencers go to http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1940&category=Environment which is Linda Moulton Howe’s Earthfiles website.

 

 Sounds recorded in Kiev, Ukraine, August 3, 2011

Pachemama and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia

“The earth is what we all have in common.” 

 Wendell Barry

The next mask I want to work on is Pachemama, the name for Mother Earth among indigenous populations of South America.  Something really important happened in December of 2010 with the passage of the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia.  In Wikipedia's commentary about this remarkable event, the editor notes that "Mother Earth is sacred to indigenous peoples".  I was saddened to be reminded, again, that in the so-called modern world, Mother Earth is not sacred.  As corporate oil interests (from The   Pachemama Allience below) negotiate for 5 million acres of rain forest in Ecuador......I am reminded again that to that mind, nothing is sacred.  

I just have to say it.   People talk about 2012 and the end of the Mayan Calendar and the "end of days".  Here it is.  I'm never able to forget that this is the reality going on all around us.  Here I am, living in a large city in Arizona, daily shopping for my mother and myself, driving in and out of malls and grocery stores, stuck in the responsibilities and economic realities as anyone else............and meanwhile, I hear always the myriad voices of Pachemama.

 As I pull in to parking lots or enjoy the great privilege and luxury  of sitting down at a restaurant to choose what I want to eat, people in the highlands of Bolivia are being driven out of  ancestral homes by global warming, and the famous snows of Kilamajaro grow less every year, and the blue glaciers of Antarctica fall into the sea, tribal wars intensify in the Sudan as resources become less, another 10 or 20 species becomes extinct ..........and corporate executives in black and white suits sit around expensive tables and discuss cutting down the very lungs of our planet in the Amazonian rain forests.  And then they go to lunch.

WE are the agents of "2012", not some apocalyptic punishing father god, or, for that matter, a mythic galactic mother ship either.  I remember when Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" came out in 2006.........I've seen this arise all my adult life.  The shift in consciousness is also not going to come from some magical source - it's going to come from us, is coming from us, as we understand that we are all a part of Gaia, of Pachemama, and of each other.  As we re-sanctify the Earth.  And what happened in Bolivia is very hopeful from that perspective.

Law of the Rights of Mother Earth

(From Wikipedia)

Law of the Rights of Mother Earth (Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra) is a Bolivian law  that was passed by Bolivia's Legislative Assembly in December 2010. This 10 article law was presented by president Evo Morales at the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference.  The law defines Mother Earth as "...the dynamic living system formed by the indivisible community of all life systems and living beings whom are interrelated, interdependent, and complementary, which share a common destiny" adding that "Mother Earth is considered sacred in the worldview of Indigenous peoples and nations. 

The law enumerates seven specific rights to which Mother Earth is entitled:

• To life: It is the right to the maintenance of the integrity of life systems and natural processes which sustain them, as well as the capacities and conditions for their renewal
• To the Diversity of Life: It is the right to the preservation of the differentiation and variety of the beings that comprise Mother Earth, without being genetically altered, nor artificially modified in their structure, in such a manner that threatens their existence, functioning and future potential
• To water: It is the right of the preservation of the quality and composition of water to sustain life systems and their protection with regards to contamination, for renewal of the life of Mother Earth and all its components
• To clean air: It is the right of the preservation of the quality and composition of air to sustain life systems and their protection with regards to contamination, for renewal of the life of Mother Earth and all its components
• To equilibrium: It is the right to maintenance or restoration of the inter-relation, interdependence, ability to complement and functionality of the components of Mother Earth, in a balanced manner for the continuation of its cycles and the renewal of its vital processes
• To restoration: It is the right to the effective and opportune restoration of life systems affected by direct or indirect human activities
• To live free of contamination: It is the right for preservation of Mother Earth and any of its components with regards to toxic and radioactive waste generated by human activities.
•  

 

**Five Million Acres at Risk for New Oil Development in 2012

Pachemama's lungs are the forests of our planet, and Her lungs are our lungs.  The Ecuadorean government is in advanced negotiations to open five million acres of pristine rain forest in the south central Amazon basin for new oil development in early 2012.  The   Pachemama Allience  is working with indigenous partners to resist this new threat. For more information about the situation in Ecuador:

A Sad Synchronicity

 "Today, I would describe a priestess as a woman who lives in two worlds at once, who perceives earthly life against the backdrop of a vast, timeless, reality."

  Jalaja Bonheim

In my Valentine's day Post, I shared some thoughts about Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of love.  One of the things I found interesting was a correspondence that had been going on with a friend in Portland who is bringing up a ritual with Goddess masks.  Apparently, she and others in her group are frustrated because they can't seem to get the Aphrodite mask to "cooperate"..........several priestesses have volunteered to dance the mask, and then abruptly withdrawn.  Some discussion has passed among us about the deeper meanings of Aphrodite in our contemporary world.  I love psychologist and priestess Jalaja Bonheim's book Aphrodite's Daughters, the compassion with which she illuminates this through women's stories.  She is also, quite appropriately, the founder of  the Institute for Circle Work in Ithaca, New York.

My friend and collaborator, Macha NightMare, is a potent weaver and circle maker, and I would not have made the original collection of Goddess masks had I not met her, and followed her to the Spiral Dance, and later the performances she organized with many communities.  The masks being used currently in Portland have their origins in her inspiration some 12 years ago, and are infused with the energies of community she gathered. I see that Macha will dedicate the ritual in May to Luanne, who I did not know, but was friends with her partner, Tami.   I was saddened to receive an email from Macha today about the death of a priestess of Aphrodite, on Valentine's day:


"I've been distracted due to the dying of a close friend in the Reclaiming community; she'd been fighting leukemia for 2.5 years and she passed thru the veil last evening.  I'd like to dedicate this ritual to her memory.  Luanne Blaich, Priestess of Aphrodite (Aug. 29, 1962 - Feb. 14, 2012)."
  
From Reclaiming's bio:  "Luanne was a teacher in the Reclaiming Tradition for 7 years -   committed to radical sanity, ecstatic devotion to the Goddess, and living in the Good Reality. Her magick is informed by a lifetime's study of movement and dance technology as well as drawing on many different shamanistic and magickal traditions. She is a devotee of Aphrodite."

There is a circle here I honor.

New Masks

I'm not always sure where these characters come from..............but the masks filling my head are definately elemental.  They await storytellers, and story!  The above mask is a Trickster Goddess - I don't know her name, but she just kept flitting in and out of my imagination until I gave her a face.  Now she needs a name, and a voice!

 

This is a Volcano Goddess.  Not Pele................I know she seems frightening, but to me, the image is about giving birth, which is what a volcano does, gives birth to new land, to new life, the substance of the continents coming forth from the hot core of the earth.  The land is born in fire.  

This mask I call "The Lady of Avalon", and is a meditation for me upon my experiences there, in the place of the ancient sacred springs, the Red Spring  and the White Spring.  More on that later.........feels good to be in the studio, and more good news, I'm 1/3 of the way to achieving my funding with my proposal! 

THE MASKS OF THE GODDESS

Proposal for a  Community Arts Project  to be Funded with "Kickstarter"

Aphrodite and Jalaja Bonheim

 

"Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love "

Leonard Cohen, "Dance Me To The End Of Love"

A friend in Portland is facilitating a ritual performance with masks, and I was a bit amused to learn that the mask of Aphrodite had been chosen by 3 women to invoke, and then each had withdrawn.   In my experience, one does not aspect a Goddess lightly!  When I last heard, they were still seeking a priestess to dance the mask.  I think invoking the energies of Aphrodite especially is no small task!  As I write I  remember a performance in 2001 in which the mask was danced by a beautiful woman with black silk gloves, to the music of "Dance Me To The End Of Love".

Aphrodite was "born from the sea", and without writing about the many sources of the mythic Aphrodite, it seems fitting that the Goddess of love should have her power and source in the vast depths of the ocean.  I also have to say that, considering the blog entry that preceeds this one, I believe Aphrodite........Eros.........is very wounded in our world, and I don't need to go very far to demonstrate my claim.  

 

 "Today, I would describe a priestess as a woman who lives in two worlds at once, who perceives earthly life against the backdrop of a vast, timeless, reality."

  Jalaja Bonheim

Allow me below to introduce one of my personal Heroines,  Jalaja Bonheim, a psychologist, temple dancer, and creator of the Institute for Circle Work in Ithaca, New York who has devoted much of her life to healing that wound.  She is the author of Aphrodite's Daughters: Women's Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul.  After spending her childhood in Austria and Germany, Jalaja studied classical temple dance in India before coming to the United States in 1982. She is the author of three other books as well, which were inspired by her passion for integrating sexuality and spirituality in our world, and empowering women.                                                                                                                            

"I think that every woman should have the opportunity, at some point in her life, to set down her sexual baggage among people who respect and support her, and to unpack it with them.  Our isolation has reinforced the assumption that nobody shares our feelings, or cares about our story, or wants to know.  But our individual baggage is never just ours alone.  Rather it belongs to the collective.  Other women have their own piece to carry.  The time has come to speak of what we know.  In the Temple we now sit in silence, a circle of priestesses.  One by one, each of us has stepped forward to make her offering.  Each one has given her gift, revealing through her story a beauty that made us catch our breath, a courage that renewed our own.  Around us we sense the spirits of many others - mothers and grandmothers, lovers and husbands, teachers and guides, the spirits of the ancestors and the spirits of those who are yet to come."

(from Aphrodite's Daughters)

APHRODITE IN BROOKLYN

Please allow me to take off my shoes,
this faux marble pose 
this modern, pragmatic mask.
Permit me my ruin.

Let us not consider this therapy
 or revolution
do not ask me to give you space
let us not discuss those who came before
and those who might follow.
Let us not talk of past lives.

I have fallen on hard times.
If you come to my temple
 just let me make for you an ocean.

Half seen in the darkness
your body, a mystery
true, tangible, radiant,
lined with the rings of your life.

You are beautiful,
beautiful to be a man.

Darling, even in this era, I will not believe
that love is disposable,
that sex is safe
that lovers are trains, rolling past each other
to some certain station 

  I remember,
  I almost remember my river source

My skin forms the word anew,
     yes,
     enter me
     as if

    you were coming home

             Lauren Raine (1999)

The Handmaid's Tale......

 If you think medievil thinking is a thing of the past, think again.  As we progress into a future of massive over-population, diminishing resources, and global warming,  the wise patriachs have a solution:  let's keep girls  pregnant, barefoot,  ignorant and in their place, as "He" supposedly ordains in the Bible. Remember Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale?

The right-wing has officially gone off the rails. Some have even compared Obama to Hitler - why?  Because the administration approved a rule mandating insurance coverage of birth control.Now Congress is saying they're going to overturn the mandate. "Pro-choice" used to mean abortion.  Now it is also apparently used to mean people who advocate birth control and women's rights to control their bodies.

According to NARAL  since the beginning of the 112th Congress the anti-choice majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has consistently been unleashing legislation attacking women's right to chose contraception.  They tried to eliminate funding for birth control and cancer screening at Planned Parenthood clinics nationally.   They have passed legislation that would allow hospitals to deny women emergency abortion care, even if it means she will die without it.  If this  was happening to people of color, there would be a huge outcry.  But because it's an issue of sexual control and discrimination, instead of racist, few take the time to notice.

I find this, and the very idea of government determining the availability of birth control........scary.  This pushes the envelope towards theocracy, a theocracy of the religious  right that, ironically, also reacts violently to any suggestion of "socialism" and a "welfare state".  It seems that girls may not protect themselves from becoming pregnant, but after conception, they and their children are on their own.....punished, just like the good days, for the great sin of not having been "chaste".

I know from first hand experience what it's like to be a very young girl, pregnant, and alone. I have great compassion as well for children born to children themselves.    I know  how hard women have fought for the right to vote, to work, to own property, and to control their own bodies, rights only available within the relatively recent past. Remember:  It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that a woman could own property, or control her own assets.   Black men were given the right to vote in 1870.  But women (of any color)  were not allowed the right to vote until 1920, 50 years later!  Until very recently, birth control was still illegal in some states, including Connecticut ( in 1965, the Supreme Court  ruled in the case Griswold v. Connecticut  that prohibiting the use of contraceptives violated the "right to marital privacy"). In 1972, the case Eisenstadt v. Baird expanded the right to possess and use contraceptives to unmarried couples.  1972!
Here's a petition circulating to support birth control today:

http://act.weareultraviolet.org/sign/congressbc/?referring_akid=a418651.99468.hFKWrT&source=copy_thanks_email