(Black) Butterflies revisited.........

who is arguing with the storm
passing over oxen in a field
not me just a butterfly
whose eyes blind my shabby self

"Old Pajamas", 2010

"The Ancient Greek word for “butterfly” is “psuché/psyché”(ψυχή, 1st.declension) which is used in the meaning of ‘butterfly’/ ‘moth’ by Aristotle and Theophrastus, though its usual meanings are :
breath, spirit, life, soul, departed spirit, ghost, living being, person.  In Ancient Greece the butterfly was a symbol of the soul, because it changes from caterpillar to a beautiful winged creature. Plus it has a shape of a double ax which was an Minoan symbol of the Great Goddess. Greek paintings often showed a small butterfly - "soul" - flying free from the mouth of the dead."  Yahoo Answers.com

Lately I've been thinking about butterflies again (maybe because I've been painting them), and felt like re-examining this post from 2010.  Butterflies are a universal symbol of transformation.  BTW, Antero Alli has recently finished a new film, THE BOOK OF JANE, which will be premiered in the Bay Area of California this coming month.  As with all his previous films, I'm sure it will be beautiful, fascinating,  and well worth seeing.

I think this is going to be a wandering/wondering post, because what I'm trying to approach with my capture net of words is the magical butterfly, a black one at that, a creature that clearly exists on such an elusive multitude of dimensions and metaphors........that it's impossible to consider her mysterious flight without a "holographic" approach. Butterfly is a creature that flies right into the Dreamtime as she so chooses. So, I'll begin by slipping, momentarily and gratefully, back into mythic time and mythic place, the life-renewing, fluid land of the Fey, the imaginal** (!!!).......for any hour I can spare.

I recently had energy work with a healer. With eyes closed, lying on a table, she did something similar to Reiki, running energy, helping me to connect with different areas of the "subtle body" that are blocked. Within this holistic approach, mind is viewed as being not only in the cranium. We perceive through at least 7 or more different "brains" - energy centers, symbolized by the Chakras, which represent different ways of receiving, experiencing, perceiving, responding to, and expressing consciousness. For example, the Base Chakra, identified with the color Red, is about physicality, the interface with nature and the planet; the Heart Chakra, Green, is associated with the ability to love and experience com-passion; the "Third Eye" Chakra, violet, is associated with psychic perception and visioning.

In energy medicine, practitioners help patients achieve integration between the chakras, the different "brains". Much of the work is surprisingly psychological, and is often concerned with helping clients to identify emotional "blockages", accessing, while in an altered state, old traumas, environmental issues, or erroneous belief systems that have caused an individual to close the heart or the doors of perception.

I had a vivid vision throughout this energy work of butterfly wings (not butterflies, just wings)...........folding, unfolding, before my closed eyes. I cannot help but feel that this was a kind of Grace, the wings offered were, perhaps, mine.

The butterfly has much significance to me, as personal archetype, and a sometimes visitor from the angelic realms, fulfilling the angelic role of messenger. Of course, I'm not alone in this. I've spoken with many people over the years who have had mystical Butterfly stories, among them my friend Fahrusha (her name, in Arabic, actually means Butterfly), who recounts an amazing synchronicity with a black butterfly in her blog.

Out of curiousity, I looked up "Black Butterfly" on Amazon.com recently, and was stunned to find there were 27 books with that title. I think a black butterfly is about the transformation that happens when the Shadow, in Jungian terms, is also given wings, transmuted.

I have met many people who have told me about butterflies appearing in connection with the loss of a loved one, or at times of personal despair. I list below a site that is devoted exclusively to "miraculous butterfly experiences". **To me, and I'm no psyche-ologist .....but to me, butterflies wonderfully participate in the interface between dream and waking life, flickering on the wings of synchronicity with their multi-dimensional messages, disappearing into the field of dreams just as mysteriously. A "Butterfly Experience" can be utterly intimate in the meanings they bear, and equally, universal and impersonal. For me, dealing as I have been for years now with therapy, and caretaking my mother and brother.........there is great personal meaning in my vision, meaning that has to do with karma, long patterns of family dysfunction, the work of emotional and psychic transformation.

Perhaps the most dramatic "butterfly experience" I had occured 10 years ago. Since this experience had to do with both dream and synchronicity, I don't know if I can tell it very cohesively, but I'll try.

It began with a disturbing dream. I dreamed I was on a ship, and on the deck many people sat in deck chairs, all of them playing with masks, taking them on and off. I seemed, in the dream, to be two people at once. I knew that there was, down in the lower decks of the boat, a demon. One of the women that I was was a kind of priestess or missionary - she was about to descend into the depths of the boat, where the demon below would torture and kill her. She thought that if she did so, offering herself as sacrificial victim, she could save the people above.

The other "me" was a cynical observer who thought she was a ridiculous martyr, and knew everyone, especially her, was doomed. I woke up as the "martyr self" began her descent.

Without going into the many circumstantial and psychological meanings of this dream, I'll skip ahead in real time. About 6 months after having this dream, I actually found myself, with a lot of actors, and a few masks, on an old decommissioned ocean liner (the "art ship"), which was anchored in the industrial harbor of Oakland. I was acting in a movie, and the writer and director of the film, Antero Alli, had decided to do his filming in the very bottom of this 5 level boat; the old, cold, dark, dank, cargo bay.

Descending into the bottom of the boat brought my dream back vividly, and every superstitious notion of prophetic dreams I ever had came right to the fore. I didn't like it there! Between shoots, the cast hung out in what must have once been the crew's cafeteria - located in a middle deck, it had round portholes, all of which were closed because it was a cold day in March. As we waited, the Director offered everyone a card from his own fascinating deck of oracular cards (with his artist wife, Sylvie Alli), and there was lively interest as each person contemplated his or her card.

I took a card from Antero with trepidation, and sure enough, damn if it wasn't the "DEATH" card.

Not five minutes later, as I stood with the card of doom in hand, a small orange butterfly landed on my shoulder.

There was absolutely no explanation for how that butterfly could have gotten into that closed room. I had lots of witnesses - and after the miracle revealed itself, several of them helped to catch the butterfly and get it upstairs where it could be released.

As a kind of synchronistic post-script, in 2005 I was back in the Bay Area for a two-person show (with Rye Hudak) at Turn of the Century Gallery, in Berkeley. I was surprised that, of all the works in the show, the gallery owner chose to put on the card announcing the show the one above, "The Butterfly Woman". When I came to hang the show, I went to nearby Cafe Trieste for a cup of coffee. Two stacks of cards were on the table there, side by side.

One was the card for my show with the image above. The flyer next to it was an announcement of the premiere of a new movie by Antero Alli called "The Greater Circulation" (a gorgeous film inspired by the life of poet Rainier Maria Rilke). The image on his announcement was a face encased in a skull - a Death's Head.

-------------------------------------------------------------

***"The caterpillar spins or weaves the cocoon, and in that cocoon, what the caterpillar is creating is his own tomb. We don’t know if he knows that or not. And he crawls into it, and his body liquefies. Complete disintegration of caterpillar. But in that caterpillar soup are these cells that have been in the caterpillar’s body all along, called imaginal cells. Isn’t that a fabulous word? Imaginal cells. It’s called imaginal by botanists because the adult form of that creature, the butterfly, is called imago. So these are imaginal cells, but to me those cells are ‘imagining’ flight. And these imaginal cells know how to take the soup and reconfigure that into a butterfly, an adult. I believe nature has designed us humans to go through a similar experience."

Imagine your Imago - Liberating the Imaginal Cells of the Human Psyche

 Bill Plotkin

http://www.animas.org/
http://www.alternativesmagazine.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

** The Butterfly Website - miraculous stories
Alan Moore and the Butterfly Gardeners Asso.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE BLACK BUTTERFLIES

The black butterflies of night
Clipped for sleep to nightshade and widowgrief,
Or in shaking luminous flight
On paired and silver wings, are rare,
And rarely seen by human sight.

Yet, they are there, surfacing
Out of range of neons and streetlights,
Preferring underleaf
And the dark offshores of air
To man and moth-maddening glare of things.
Tonight, As crisis after crisis
Cracks our skies like lightning,
I think of death,
Of different ways of dying,
And of Egypt and the myth
That once held black butterflies
Sacred to Isis.

They lived forever in flight
In her private groves, compelled like
Flickering minutes
Never to touch leaf nor stone,
Never to rest, except upon her nakedness
When she turned to love.
And here is death to be envied;
To be crushed to a personal breast
Between goddess
And whatever bird, beast, lover
Fell to her lips.
We are something else. . .

Myth and love will miss us
When the night is suddenly turned on,
Turned blank white,
And the black butterflies
Appear against that vellum sky
As far, flitting, burnt-out stars.

Frank Polite

Mabon - the Fall Equinox

I am a lover of the steady Earth
and of Her waters

"Let the light be brilliant" She says,  
"for those who will cherish color."

From "Verses at Powis" by Robin Williamson

Mabon is traditionally the 2nd Harvest Festival of three (Lammas in August, and Samhain in October being the other two) and falls on the day  of the autumnal Equinox.   A time to give thanks for the bounty of the harvest,  to give thanks and celebrate all that nourishes us. The Day of Balance,  a time to consider what we have harvested this year, to give thanks for all of that harvest, the bright Blessings and the dark Blessings from which we learned wisdom, patience, or compassion. On this auspicious day of Balance, when day and night are the same duration, may we experience the grace of Balance within our lives, and in the greater life of our common humanity.  

Apple trees in Avalon, the "Isle of Apples" (the Chalice Well garden) 2011

When I lived in the country in New York, I remember a Mabon with hot cider and new apples, and honey mead that was opened for the occasion.  

I also remember an Equinox when I lived in New York City in the late 80's, and was invited to be part of  a performance organized at a small theatre in the East Village.   She asked me to do some kind of ritual for the  occasion. I couldn't think of anything,  and felt quite intimidated with the prospect of creating a ritual for an audience of New York sophisticates. 

I was visiting a friend upstate at the time, and I  happened to be standing near an apple tree by the road.  I can still see the green grass under the tree, and a brilliant  circle of ripe, freshly fallen red apples,  lying in the grass around the tree.  I picked up all the good ones, and took them back to the City with me.  

When I gave my short performance, I took out that basket of apples, and said something to the effect that "This is Gaia, ever generous, ever giving us what we need."  And then I invited those present to come and take the apples.  I was amazed to see that the audience took every one of them and ate them right there!

As I sit writing, the sun rises over the Catalina mountains that surround Tucson, where I live now.  Many years and miles away from that theatre in Manhattan.  I look up to  orange, magenta, violet, mauve, and a continually changing pale, cerulean sky, the canvas for this magnificent painting the sky makes, created anew twice daily.  I'm grateful indeed for this moment of Beauty, and grateful for the stories of my life.  Especially, today, those that are about Mabons.  

This is one of my favorite songs, Robin Williamson's love song to Mother Earth.  Seems a good time to share it again............  

https://youtu.be/yK5IWgsdqCg?si=SrIbBPp728FMXERs

John Steele, Kali Yuga, and Temporal Density

"Kali is the Goddess of the dissolution of time and structures.  She clears the way for those impediments of evolution that have arisen.  The Tibetan translation for "Kali Yuga" means literally the  "dregs of time", the bottom of the barrel of time.  Time has acquired such "temporal density" that it can actually be felt in the body.  And the definition of "Temporal Density" is that we have too many units of events in each day to fully or effectively assimilate them.........Another aspect of Kali Yuga   which is related to temporal density is that there is seasonal disequilibrium.  The climate and the seasons go out of whack."

John Steele

I've been wanting to post this talk by John Steele for a while now.  I met John Steele in 1989, at the Symposium on Art and the Invisible Reality at Rutgers University, sponsored by Dr. Rafael Montanez Ortiz.  I wish there was another such conference!  I presented a performance piece called "When the Word for World Was Mother", and not too long after John kindly sent me his amazing book Earthmind: Communicating with the Living World of Gaia, in collaboration with  Paul Devereux and David Kubrin.  It remains a very important book for me. 

John J. Steele is an aromatic consultant, archaeologist, author and visionary.  His work, whether with aromas or philosophy, engages questions about the nature of memory, time, consciousness and being. He has worked with Terence McKenna and Paul Devereux (The Dragon Project).   Steele  explores Vedic culture, Kali Yuga,  geomancy and what he calls "geomantic amnesia", geobiology, time out of balance, shamanism, the effects of geological formations on human consciousness, cross state retention, and the importance of sacred sites and spaces. EARTHMIND explores ways of interfacing with the earth for planetary healing. And Planetary Healing is also our healing.

 In this collection of audio recordings and seminars, John Steele gives an overview of how geomantic traditions have influenced human awareness, psychology and ways of life. He explains how sacred geometry can grant us access to "Present Time", the great and infinite place where silent knowledge flows into our consciousness unrestricted by the objects that surround us, and in many ways, "own us".

"The memorial capacity is the key to the strength of a computer, and our computers are valued by their increasing capacity to store memory.  There is an emphasis upon the acquisition of memory that can be stuffed into a computer..........What happens after a while is that the system becomes constipated by too much hoarding of memory.  This hoarding of memory (in human terms)  sets up a kind of psychological density, and as the system becomes clogged it becomes brittle.  That is to say it cannot react quickly to crisis situations because it is overloaded with information."

"The density of objects in the environment creates a corresponding density of memory necessary to record objects, and this density of memory creates temporial density.  Temporal density is a function of memorial density and memorial density is a function of object density.  You will notice that those cultures that have the fewest objects live in the dream time.  You look at the Australian aborigines with their minimal object array and you see that they live in a completely different time frame. The Bushmen the same.  As temporal density occurs it sets up this extended unconscious array of time - time is generated."

As I listened to the above, I thought of an article Geomancer Sig Lonegren wrote a year or so ago, in which he commented that he believed the great Megalithic structure of Stonehenge was a "last attempt" to retain right brain, or "dreamtime" consciousness, as human culture began to change during the Neolithic.  In a sense, he was saying that a greater contact with "the collective mind of Gaia" was gradually being lost.  Perhaps it is now time to regain that contact, in a new way.

I feel John Steele, and his colleagues, are so important in understanding our place on the planet, and as always, I'm saddened that they are so little known.

(I saw that the original utube interview I posted here has been removed from Utube.  I found something similar, and post below.)

http://youtu.be/r1h4fB5HCd4




***




‘Earthmind: Communicating with the living world of Gaia’ by Paul Devereux with John Steele and David Kubrin 

 "The authors make much of the effect on mind of the electromagnetic properties of the Earth and its rocks. They believe that communication with the Earthmind or anima mundi can best be achieved at sacred sites, facilitated by the crystal structures within the dolmens there. However, the authors believe there are hopeful signs of a revival of belief in paganism and in Earth’s spirituality, which would contribute to lessening our desecration of our planetary home. The key to such a consciousness revolution rests, in the opinion of the authors, with acceptance of the existence of a universal field of consciousness and our spiritual integration with it – what Peter Russell (The Awakening Earth)" described as the Gaiafield and which Devereux calls Earthmind.

for a great review:   http://greenspirit.org.uk/bookreviews/2013/05/earthmind-communicating-with-the-living-world-of-gaia-by-paul-devereux-with-john-steele-and-david-kubrin/

International Women's Earth and Climate Initiative

 

The International Women’s Earth and Climate Initiative is a solutions-based, multi-faceted effort established to engage women worldwide to take action as powerful stakeholders in climate change and sustainability solutions. For Our Earth and Future Generations A project of Women's Earth and Climate Caucus and its partner eraGlobal Alliance 

Global participation in the Women's Earth and Climate Summit:

Join us September 20th-23rd! Participate in the Summit from your home, office, university or community.

Learn more about the IWECI Summit Live Stream and Vision Hubs »

 http://www.iweci.org/

About IWECI

MISSION—A GLOBAL WOMEN’S EARTH AND CLIMATE ACTION MOVEMENT

IWECI engages women grassroots activists, Indigenous and business leaders, policy makers and culture-shapers in collaboration. Our goal is to stop the escalation of climate change and environmental and community degradation, while accelerating the implementation of sustainability solutions through women’s empowerment, partnerships, hands-on trainings, advocacy campaigns, and political, economic, social and environmental action.

IWECI was created to accelerate a holistic Global Women’s Earth & Climate Action Movement. Our five-point plan for the first two years’ of action in 2013 and 2014 includes:

1. Online Action ; Networking Platform (launching on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2013) - to spark project collaborations, sustainability business opportunities, and campaigns designed to advance long-term cross-cultural, cross-sector, cross-generational and cross-socioeconomic networking and mobilization.
2. International Day of Action - creating a global photo mosaic of women promoting the slogan “Women for Earth and Future Generations”.
3. The International Women's Earth and Climate Summit (20-23 September 2013, New York) - an unprecedented gathering of women leaders dedicated to addressing solutions for climate change and environmental degradation.
4. Solution Spotlight, Projects and Action Campaigns - promoting best-practice solutions, on the ground sustainable projects , business and trainings that deliver benefits to both women, communities and the environment, and engaging in action campaigns focused on the most pressing issues.
5. North American Regional Gathering - To engage women in the United States to mobilize together in support of concerted climate change solutions for the US.

---

Commentary:

Our basic relationship with the natural world has been distorted. Humanity is systematically destroying our home and undermining the ecosystems of our Earth. We are in need of a paradigm shift.

Global climate change is no longer a distant warning but is rapidly approaching a tipping point of no return. Scientists warn that the opportunity to prevent the worst impacts of climate change will be “lost forever” unless the global community changes course by 2017. This means we have four years to cap global emissions in order to reverse the current trajectory and change the deadly course we are on presently.

It is internationally recognized that women are critical to implementing climate change and sustainability solutions, yet there is currently not enough prominent mechanisms to wield a united effort into a defined movement. IWECI is engaging women's organizations worldwide, inside and outside the environmental arena, to join together and create a groundbreaking movement.

Icon by Betsy Porter

Signs Out Of Time: Marija Gimbutas Documentary

    





I often try to explain to others what is the focus of the Goddess events I attend, what, in other words, do I believe.  That question is not easily answered.......when I listen to people like Vicki Noble, Joan Marler, Mirrium Dexter, Starhawk, or Kathy Jones speak, it comes together in a great visionary whole, a hopeful paradigm shift that never fails to inspire, provoke, and challenge the long standing assumptions, so deeply embedded, within our culture.    So I take the liberty of sharing here the first two parts to SIGNS OUT OF TIME,  a 2004 documentary by Donna Read and Starhawk, narrated by Olympia Dukakis, based on the work and life of  archeologist Marija Gimbutas, who found that Europe's prehistoric origins lay in a cooperative, peaceful, Paleolithic and Neolithic culture whose universal prime deity was a Mother Goddess. Her theories challenge conventional archaeology, history, spirituality, theology, and religious studies, while inspiring artists, feminists, environmentalists, permaculturists,  and activists to explore a revolutionary paradigm of  peace upon Mother Earth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozaeuULrLjM&feature=share&list=PL42DD8748183C9B11



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmjghytJDtQ&feature=share&list=PL42DD8748183C9B11

Motherworld - A Vision from Avalon

Banners by Lydia Ruhle

The Vision of the Motherworld

by Kathy Jones 

Motherworld is where mothers and the values of mothering - love, care and support for each other, and for our Mother Earth and all Her creatures - are placed in the centre of our lives, rather than being left out on the periphery. 

The Motherworld is a vision of a society in which creative and life-affirming values, actions, insights and awareness are honoured and encouraged in women, men and children. It is the society that is grounded in the fact that we all live upon our Mother Earth. She is the source and foundation of all that we are and all that we have. We need to take care of Her, of each other and of all life.

The primary values for the new Motherworld are:

Honouring Mother Earth as a living being. 
Love for each other, kindness, support, respect, care, and compassion. honouring all forms of mothering, honouring fathers, and the celebration and nurture of children and young people. Protecting and taking care of the earth, water, fire, air and space in Her world.

Suggested values for the new Motherworld include:

Honesty, personal integrity, authenticity, relationship, diversity, choice, discernment, inclusion, trust, beauty, emotional expression, listening, clear boundaries, reflection, soul development, empowerment, shadow-healing, the pursuit of wisdom, the encouragement of self-responsibility, self-worth, self-respect, self-confidence, self-discipline and self-reflection, prayer, ceremony, service, connection, partnership, generosity, sharing wealth, gifting, receiving, humour, creativity, education for all, non-violent methods of resolving conflict, honouring and protecting Mother Nature and all living beings, ethical production of goods and services, the protection of the vulnerable, and valuing the Wisdom of the Elders and of the Ancestors.

The Motherworld is the society where the patriarchal structures and values of dominance, ‘power-over’ control and coercion, greed, excessive profit, destructive competition, violence, rape, war, slavery, suffering, hunger, poverty, and the pollution of Mother Earth and Her atmosphere, are recognized as shadow expressions of humanity which need to be challenged, deconstructed, transformed and healed. In the Motherworld, healing practices are encouraged and made readily available to all.

In the Motherworld it is recognized that all human beings, women and men, carry wounds from our patriarchal conditioning – emotional and mental patterns which may be activated as we try to change our world. In the Goddess community we are particularly aware of our shadow material, which includes envy, jealousy, judgment, competitiveness, collusion, resentment, undermining, back-biting, blaming, naming and shaming, projection of negative emotions, such as anger, shame and rage, fear, loneliness, lack of self-love, lack of self-esteem and lack of self-confidence, all of which are the result of individual cultural and karmic life experiences.

In the Motherworld, one of our first works is to love and support each other in taking responsibility for our repressed and often hostile emotions. These shadows undermine all our best endeavours to change the way we act in our personal and social relationships, in our lives as Goddess-loving people living in a patriarchal world, as Her priestesses and priests, as Her melissae, and in our personal commitments to Goddess. They often prevent us from experiencing true empowerment. Amongst many of us we already have developed skills and techniques of emotional expression, such as really listening to each other and offering reflection and support so that we may heal these wounds. This personal healing work needs to – and can - accelerate at this time with the help of the Motherworld community, which can help hold us in compassionate safety as we work to heal our wounds.

Although the name ‘Motherworld’ comes from Barbara Walker’s novel about an ancient fictional matriarchal society, this is not a return to such a society. It is a forward movement to a new kind of mother-centred community, where all are valued, supported and appreciated, and where we can experiment together with new ideas and forms. ‘Motherworld’ evokes a loving world where we are held safely in the Great Mother’s embrace.

Kathy Jones is the Founder of the Glastonbury Goddess Temple, and the annual Glastonbury Goddess Conference.  It was inspiring indeed to hear her talk this past weekend.  For more information about Kathy and the Temple, visit:  

 http://www.goddesstemple.co.uk/index.php/the-vision-of-the-motherworld

Vicki Noble at the Conference

  Back from the Goddess Spirit Rising Conference in Los Angeles, inspired, and with so much to think about.  I was able to find a speech, from the 2009 Motherworld Conference in Toronto,  very similar to the speech Vicki Noble gave this weekend  on UTube, and take the liberty of sharing it here. Listening once more to Vicki,  Mirrium Dexter and Joan Marler, all former students and colleagues of Marija Gimbutas and teachers at the Institute of Archaeomythology, I was renewed in my understanding of the importance of the radical paradigm shift their work represents.  I was especially fascinated with the way Vicki wove the work of Dr. Shelly E. Taylor into her talk.  Dr. Taylor wrote   The Tending Instinct:  Women, Men and the Biology of Our Relationships  which skillfully re-examines the biological basis of human relational identity:

For generations, scientists have taught us about the fight or flight response to stress. But is this instinct universal? Renowned psychologist Shelley E. Taylor points out that fight or flight may only be part of the story. Humans - particularly females - are hardwired to respond to stress differently. As Taylor deftly notes in this eye opening work, the tend-and-befriend response is among the most vital ingredients of human social life.
Drawing from biology, evolutionary psychology, physiology, and neuroscience, Taylor examines the biological imperative that drives women to seek each others company, and to tend to the young and inform, bestowing great benefits to the group, but often at great cost to themselves. This tending process begins virtually at the moment of conception, and crafts the biology of offspring through genes that rely on caregiving for their expression.

 http://youtu.be/-EisR17foaQ

http://youtu.be/S3Oc77ZTqXI

 

 http://youtu.be/jW_Vlse2HJw