"Catriona MacGregor: The Wild Path" - Interview on The Mystical Underground

The Mystical Underground is a series of podcast interviews conducted by writers Rob and Trish MacGregor on their Synchronicity Blog........their Blog is always fascinating, and their interviews equally so.  I felt like sharing a recent interview here that touches deeply on Gaianism and communing with the living Earth.   Thanks again for your continuing inspiration, Trish and Rob!

 https://soundcloud.com/themysticalunderground/tmu-0036-catriona-macgregor-the-wild-path

https://themysticalunderground.com/

Join Trish and Rob for a conversation with…

Catriona MacGregor has over thirty years experience in education and environmental leadership. She is a visionary bridge builder between nature and humankind – and an intuitive mystic.

Catriona oversaw one of the largest coastal sanctuaries in the United States stretching over 600 miles with wintering grounds & stop over sites for 98% of the long-distance migratory bird species in N. America.

Her conservation program led, in part, to the comeback of an endangered species for which she received a blue ribbon award from the Governor.

She has extensive experience in habitat management and species conservation and is leading a resilient forests initiative to apply innovative and bold solutions to forest & species management.

She’s an expert on environmental trends, she has advised scientists, government officials, non-governmental organization leaders, and the public on environmental topics.
Catriona was the Director of EarthScope’s Academy of Science and Communications for 15 years and she founded the International Bering Sea Forum, a public-private partnership and a diverse international coalition with representatives from 5 countries seeking protection of marine species and promoting the sustainable livelihood of coastal communities, indigenous communities.

After a mystical experience with a tree which brought her back to her ancestral Celtic roots, Catriona founded Nature Quest and has led Vision Quests and spiritual retreats for two decades.

She is the author of Partnering with Nature: The Wild Path to Reconnecting with the Earth, which won a gold medal from the Nautilus Book Awards, which recognizes world-changing books that promote positive social change. Previous winners include His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, and the Tibetan author Thich Nhat Hanh.
Catriona has a Masters of Science in Resource Management & Administration and a Juris Doctorate. She was admitted to practice law in New York and Pennsylvania. She specialized in environmental law for seven years. Catriona wrote a Supreme Court brief on issues of environmental and constitutional law.

She also has a new book coming out called Secrets of a Celtic Mystic: Sacred Earth Prophecy.

Vote as if the Future of Humanity Depends on It

I try to steer clear of politics in this blog, as there are so many other voices far more informed and eloquent than mine addressing this topic.  But, I have to say it, aside from watching the United States veer into an authoritarian dictatorship and the end of the American democratic experiment under Trump, aside from being the ONLY nation in the world, under Trump, to be withdrawn from the Paris Accord, aside from having the highest uncontrolled incidence of Covid19, under Trump and isolated by quarantine from the rest of the world, even Canada..............I agree with this writer and his article, and felt I needed to post it.  If you are a U.S. citizen, and care about the planet and the lives of your children and their children, vote.  

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/climate-vote-trump/

Vote as if the Climate and the Future of Humanity Depend on It—Because They Do

Trump wants to steer us straight onto the rocks. This election may be humanity’s last shot to prevent utter climate catastrophe.

By Bill McKibben

SEPTEMBER 22, 2020

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

To understand the planetary importance of this autumn’s presidential election, check the calendar. Voting ends on November 3—and by a fluke of timing, on the morning of November 4 the United States is scheduled to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

President Trump announced that we would abrogate our Paris commitments during a Rose Garden speech in 2017. But under the terms of the accords, it takes three years to formalize the withdrawal. So on Election Day it won’t be just Americans watching: The people of the world will see whether the country that has poured more carbon into the atmosphere than any other over the course of history will become the only country that refuses to cooperate in the one international effort to do something about the climate crisis.

Trump’s withdrawal benefited oil executives, who have donated millions of dollars to his reelection campaign, and the small, strange fringe of climate deniers who continue to insist that the planet is cooling. But most people living in the rational world were appalled. Polling showed widespread opposition, and by some measures, Trump is more out of line with the American populace on environmental issues than any other. In his withdrawal announcement he said he’d been elected “to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris”; before the day was out, Pittsburgh’s mayor had pledged that his city would follow the guidelines set in the French capital. Young people, above all, have despised the president’s climate moves: Poll after poll shows that climate change is a top-tier issue with them and often the most important one—mostly, I think, because they’ve come to understand how tightly linked it is not just to their future but to questions of justice, equity, and race.

Here’s the truth: At this late date, meeting the promises set in Paris will be nowhere near enough. If you add up the various pledges that nations made at that conference, they plan on moving so timidly that the planet’s temperature will still rise more than 3 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels. So far, we’ve raised the mercury 1 degree Celsius, and that’s been enough to melt millions of square miles of ice in the Arctic, extend fire seasons for months, and dramatically alter the planet’s rainfall patterns. Settling for 3 degrees is kind of like writing a global suicide note.

Happily, we could go much faster if we wanted. The price of solar and wind power has fallen so fast and so far in the last few years that they are now the cheapest power on earth. There are plenty of calculations to show it will soon be cheaper to build solar and wind farms than to operate the fossil fuel power stations we’ve already built. Climate-smart investments are also better for workers and economic equality. “We need to have climate justice, which means to invest in green energy, [which] creates three times more jobs than to invest in fossil fuel energy,” United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said in an interview with Covering Climate Now in September. If we wanted to make it happen, in other words, an energy revolution is entirely possible. The best new study shows that the United States could cut its current power sector emissions 80 percent by 2035 and create 20 million jobs along the way.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris haven’t pledged to move that quickly, but their climate plan is the farthest-reaching of any presidential ticket in history. More to the point, we can pressure them to go farther and faster. Already, seeing the polling on the wall, they’ve adopted many of the proposals of climate stalwarts like Washington Governor Jay Inslee. A team of Biden and Bernie Sanders representatives worked out a pragmatic but powerful compromise in talks before the Democratic National Convention; the Biden-Harris ticket seems primed to use a transition to green energy as a crucial part of a push to rebuild the pandemic-devastated economy.

Perhaps most important, they’ve pledged to try to lead the rest of the world in the climate fight. The United States has never really done this. Our role as the single biggest producer of hydrocarbons has meant that our response to global warming has always been crippled by the political power of Big Oil. But that power has begun to slip. Once the biggest economic force on the planet, the oil industry is a shadow of its former self. (You could buy all the oil companies in America for less than the cost of Apple; Tesla is worth more than any other auto company on earth.) And so it’s possible that the hammerlock on policy exercised by this reckless industry will loosen if Trump is beaten.

But only if he’s beaten. Four more years will be enough to cement in place his anti-environmental policies and to make sure it’s too late to really change course. The world’s climate scientists declared in 2018 that if we had any chance of meeting sane climate targets, we had to cut emissions almost in half by 2030. That’s less than 10 years away. We’re at the last possible moment to turn the wheel of the supertanker that is our government. Captain Trump wants to steer us straight onto the rocks, mumbling all the while about hoaxes. If we let him do it, history won’t forgive us. Nor will the rest of the world.

Bill McKibben is the founder of climate change campaign 350.org, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and the author of the new book Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?.

On climate change in California:

https://laist.com/2018/08/06/california_has_had_a_monster_wildfire_every_year_for_the_past_7_years.php

On Trump trying to incite civil war:

"To Trump and his core enablers and supporters, the laws of Trump Nation authorize him to do whatever he wants"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/27/donald-trump-american-civil-war-joe-biden-republicans-democrats-robert-reich

Greenland is rapidly melting:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/greenland-is-melting-at-some-of-the-fastest-rates-in-12-000-years/

Our Lady of the Desert Spring: Prayers in the time of Drought

 

The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas the Twin

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save 
you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring
forth will destroy you." 
   
 The Gospel of Thomas (Nag Hammadi)
  

"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas 

I have not thought of this  quote for a while, but it arises of late.  I used to write the first 
quote into the margins of notebooks, a reminder to myself.   The second quote also, I feel, contributes to these reflections.

The first quote above,  from the Gospel of Thomas was found  in 1945 with the Nag Hammadi Gospels, which, I believe, are among  the earliest (3rd Century A.D.) writings from the advent of  Christianity and apparently hidden because they were considered heretical after the Nicean Council. The Council of Nicaea was the first council in the history of the Christian church that was intended to address the entire body of believers - in essence, it was convened by the Emperor Constantine agreed to make Christianity the central religion of Rome, but only if the Council would determine what, exactly, the doctrine of Christianity was to be.  And as a result, many of the early Gnostic Christian groups thus became heretical, and found themselves persecuted by Rome, which was in those days a military force to be reckoned with.  The Nag Hammadi Gospels were hidden for this reason.

The most famous scriptures to come from the translation of the Nag Hammadi Gospels was the Gospel of Thomas, which is essentially described as  a collection of the sayings of Jesus.  

According to Wikipedia, the introduction to the Gospel of Thomas states that "These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down." Didymus (Greek) and Thomas (Aramaic) both mean "twin".   Some scholars have pointed out that there was a widespread tradition in early church documents, as well as some surviving Christian traditions, that Jesus had a twin brother, by the name of Didymos Judas Thomas, but most feel this is unlikely.    My sense is that the meaning of "twin" can be understood, from the vantage point of the early Gnostic Christianity, as a metaphor.  All are  "twins" of the great teacher, with the same potentiality and the same  origin - this idea, of course, along with most of the Gnostic sects,  would have been highly heretical as the church became an institution and developed the latter idea of Jesus as divine savior, with it's accompanying  hierarchy and later the horrifying, but effective, doctrine of the need to  "saved" by by the Church  in order to attain Heaven in the afterlife instead of terrible, eternal punishment in Hell.

But long before that evolved, Jesus of Nazareth was a visionary, healer and a great Teacher and a  social revolutionary for his time.  He  practiced  poverty and simplicity as he  taught for free in olive groves, including women as well as men among his devotees.  And it is believed by many that what he taught was  much closer to Gnostic Christianity, the Essenes, and even Buddhism than what has evolved into our time, some 2,000 years later. 

"Gnosis (from one of the Greek words for knowledge γνῶσις) is the spiritual knowledge of a saint or  mystically enlightened human being. Within the cultures of the term's provenance (Byzantine and Hellenic) Gnosis was a knowledge or insight into the infinite, divine and uncreated in all rather than knowledge strictly into the finite, natural or material world. Gnosis is a transcendental as well as mature understanding. "  Wikipedia

I've been thinking  about what Jung termed "Shadow" recently.  I believe this  saying from the Gospel of Thomas  is significant to an understanding of this concept.  I carried it about as an encouragement to be an artist, to affirm deeply the life-affirming creative impulse. But one does not have to be a professional artist to "bring forth that which is within".  

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you."

We are all creative, in fact, the need to create may be our most profound human drive, right up there with sex and reproduction (which, if you think about it, is all about creation as well).   We come into the world with this energy, this drive, some even say we each come into the world with a creative destiny, a "soul purpose".  We are channels and depositories of creative energy, and through expression of creative energy we are affirmed, healed, we learn, we connect with the world and each other, and we're inspired.  It's the life force.  An individual's unique integrity, personal truth, is also deeply connected to the creative force.

"If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Creative energy denied becomes toxic, stagnant, destructive. I believe Jesus was truly revolutionary in this profound statement. To live without responding to one's authentic creative impulse and innermost drive to a meaningful life is to live with despair that can become carcinogenic, a breeding ground of physical,emotional and psychic disease and destructive social harm. When we deny  authentic expression, when we lie to ourselves and by extension, to others,  we do a great damage to our innermost being.

"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven."

This also is a revolutionary statement for the time Jesus lived in, and a revolutionary statement for our time. To "do what you hate" is to live a hateful life, without personal integrity.  Something that people can become habituated to, something they can and will eventually self-justify.  From that arises true destructive power.

"For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered." 

Here the Gospel of the Twin is saying that we live in a Quantum universe.Nothing is really hidden. What is denied (or unconscious) will still manifest, what is seemingly hidden from ourselves or others is nevertheless perceived on unconscious levels.  We're all connected, integral, telepathic.   All things manifest through the creative potential we possess  - we are all creative and collectively co-creative.  But those forces are neutral - they can manifest as positive or negative, consciously or unconsciously. 

I guess what my interpretation of this is is  that one must take responsibility for the marvelous  font and spilling forth of  of creative force that each of  us is innately gifted with.

   

The Minds of Trees...................

tall-trees-of-redwood-national-park by pierre-leclerc

I move among the ankles 
of forest Elders, tread
their moist rugs of moss,
duff of their soft brown carpets.
Far above, their arms are held
open wide to each other, or waving
what they know, what
perplexities and wisdoms they exchange,
unknown to me as were the thoughts

of grownups when in infancy I wandered
into a roofed clearing amidst
human feet and legs and the massive

carved legs of the table,
the minds of people, the minds of trees
equally remote, my attention then

filled with sensations, my attention now
caught by leaf and bark at eye level
and by thoughts of my own, but sometimes
drawn to upgazing-up and up: to wonder
about what rises so far above me into the light. 

Denise Levertov, From Below

Animal Communication - Anna Breytenbach and the Black Leopard

I re-discovered this moving video about Anna Breytenbach, a South African-based professional animal communicator who has received advanced training through the Assisi International Animal Institute in California, among other sources. The video is well worth watching again, reminding us that we are not the only evolving and intelligent beings on the great Body of Gaia. Anna has been practising and teaching for about 18 years in South Africa, Europe and the USA with both domestic and wild animals.

The "Story Of An Angry Panther Who Talked To A Human". What if you could talk to animals and have them talk back to you? Anna Breytenbach dedicated her life to what she calls inter-species communication. She sends detailed messages to animals through pictures and thoughts. She then receives messages of remarkable clarity back from the animals. In this section, Anna transforms a deadly snarling black leopard into a relaxed and content cat. The amazing story in the video below is of how the leopard Diabolo became Spirit.......

https://youtu.be/wL--zc1KIxk

The Masks of the Goddess: New Slide Show

I will be giving a Salon Presentation next week with the Association  for the Study of Women and Mythology, and put together a new, improved Slide Show!  Here it is below, and the Slide Share link - and I'm most grateful to Slide Share for making their wonderful service available.  And since I'm also doing a kind of "retrospective" here as I  wait for the heavy hand of Bloggers "new look" which may make it rather difficult to access my older posts, I copy below an article I wrote about the "Mythos" of the Goddess, and the creation of masks.

https://www.slideshare.net/laurenraine/the-masks-of-the-goddess-2020

The masks of the goddess 2020 from Lauren Raine

MYTHOS
The Multi-cultural  Divine Feminine

"Western civilization has been overshadowed by the Father archetype, to the exclusion of the Mother archetype.  By suppressing the feminine, we have done enormous damage to our individual and collective psychic health, ​ to say nothing of the health of our planet."   

Jennifer Barker and Roger Woolger, THE GODDESS WITHIN
​

​In 2002, just before the invasion of Iraq, I directed an event with the Masks of the Goddess collection devoted to peace in Oakland, California.   I   remember a conversation I shared with one of my collaborators,  Dorit Bat Shalom, an Israeli artist who brought Israeli and Palestine women together in “Peace Tents” to share their stories in the 1990's.   

Dorit asked: "How can there be peace in the Middle east without the Shekinah?"  The Shekinah is the feminine aspect of God in Judaism.  Dorit explained "The Shekinah has been driven away from the holy lands. We cannot heal without her."

I never forgot her comment.  Because  indeed, endless strife does takes place in the very heart of what was once the fertile homeland of the ancient Great Mother, of Inanna, Astarte, Isis,  Asheroth, and the Shekinah.   Artists are mythmakers - and myths are the templates of dream, art and religion, the templates upon which both civilizations and individuals name what is sacred, and what is profane. I think the question Dorit raised is profound:  how indeed can there be peace, in the Mideast or elsewhere, when deity, and values, are personified and polarized as almost exclusively male? 

 A mythos that denies “the feminine face of God”, and degrades or belittles the sanctity of feminine experience - has left us a humanity divided against itself.

At the closing of our event participants and audience approached a masked “Sophia”, who held a mirror over her heart. As they drew near the stage, each saw themselves reflected in the mirror, the “heart of Sophia”.  The name of Sophia, the feminine face of God in early Gnostic Christianity, means "wisdom".  Ultimately, to "know Sophia" means to "know thyself". In all our complex diversity, male and female, dark and light, old and young.  The "mirror of Sophia" represented the Gnosis necessary to become true peacemakers.

The Goddess of antiquity and world culture, as well as in contemporary women's spirituality,   has a thousand faces - maiden, mother, wise crone, teacher, warrior, healer, destroyer, lover, nurturer of new life or the flame of creativity. She is found throughout world religions and mythologies, with names like red Kali, Inanna Queen of the stars, Quan Yin the compassionate, suffering Sedna Ocean mother to the Inuit, Aphrodite the capricious goddess of love, and Mary, the Virgin. To me, most of all, she is Gaia, Anima Mundi, the feminine “World Soul”.  As the collective power and voices of women rise now so does the Goddess, often hidden and underground, rising now from the buried past.  

I've found, with many others, that re-discovering and re-inventing these universal stories is important to empowering women.  They are also important on many other levels:  to restore the balance within the fragmented soul of humanity, which includes reverence for nature and the sanctity of embodied existence, and for the affirmation of women’s experience.  It's been my privilege to share some of that telling through the use of masks, dance, ritual and theatre.

SACRED MASKS AND DANCE

When I studied mask making in Bali, I realized the Balinese had no understanding of our western discourse on art....art, to them, is a way to commune with the deities of their Hindu religion. Everyone in one way or another assists in the daily practice of their beliefs,  from creating offerings for ritual events, dancing in performances, participating in Ketchak performances, or many other activities associated with festivals and ritual dramas. Every village has its collection of Temple masks, preserved for specific events, such as the seasonal battle between the Barong (light) and the witch Rangda (dark).   For the Balinese the Temple masks are not "art objects" - they "belong to the Gods", and are imbued with special meaning and energy, just as the telling of their stories is more than entertainment.

"Theater" comes from the same Greek word as "theology" - Theos, or "god". In traditional cultures, masks, drama and dance are about contacting the divine, and refreshing the mythologies that inform their cultures... Masks are never made lightly. Animated by the body, masks are threshold tools that mediate between this world and the realms of spirit. There are many procedures to be followed, including choosing the right materials from the right place, asking ancestral spirits what kind of mask is required for specific ceremonies, and consecrating the finished work. A great deal of preparation was necessary, and masks were activated and de-activated with great respect.

As psychologist Stephen Larsen commented in his 1996 book The Mythic Imagination:

"The primary function of the mask is to unite the indwelling wearer (and the observer) with a mythic being, or as Jung would say, 'an archetypal power'. The mask, as we have found in our own work, becomes a transformer of energy, a medium of exchange between ego and archetype. Thus in traditional societies one finds taboos surrounding the mask, its recognition as a power object.”

Among natives of central Mexico, masks used for corn and rain dances were destroyed after a number of years, because they believed they accrued too much power over time. This sensibility is found in Japanese Noh Theatre. Noh masks are created according to traditions that go back many generations to represent personae that have firmly become animated by the mask. Actors will often sit for days with a mask, creating fusion with the character. An artist I know once told me of an African mask at the Museum of Art in Milwaukee that, legend had it, sweated. She said she went to view it over a number of days, and sure enough, there it was, if carefully observed, sweating away. Unnoticed by hundreds of people, she commented, magic is literally on display. 

"We're really praying" Drissana Devananda, a Tantric dancer, said of her dance practice. "It's a devotional practice. We're not bodies seeking the spirit, but spirits seeking bodily experience. Dance is about remembering to function from our whole bodies, the "body mind". That is the place we remember the Goddess." 

The intent of sacred performance thus is to give movement and voice to multi-dimensional being. What happens when we invite the archetypal powers, the Goddesses and Gods, into our "magic circle"? The answer is, "If you build it, they will come."  I believe there is a magnetic field the dance practice engages, a field of synchronicity and relatedness we step into.

 "When you create within a sacred paradigm", playwright Elizabeth Fuller said "you find a strange thing. You are communicating with, and being fed by, sources you know are within you, but have a much greater reflection somewhere else. You are in touch with something timeless.”

CIRCLE ART

As the group becomes a strong container, it generates energy that flows to the audience and beyond, an expanding circle. "Circularity" is the foundation of evolving Women's Spirituality.   The wheel of the elements, the wheel of the year, circulates. Water and wind move across the landscape like a sinuous snake. All things circle and wind and spiral. So does our creativity as we interact.

Masks are also about circles. To me, masks are an impeccable metaphor for the personae that encircle our souls.

Who are we, really? In the course of our lives we inhabit a noisy council of selves. The metaphor of the mask leads perfectly into that essential inquiry:  “Is this me? Or this? Can I wear this mask, become it for a while, express its unique qualities, feel it in my body, and find its story?  Can I take this mask off, have I become too identified with this mask to my detriment?"

We become, in my opinion, more compassionate beings when we can witness, embrace, and celebrate this "circle of self", from dark to light, mundane to divine, fragile to strong, young to old - as the integral being each of us really is. Not as an abstract concept, but as an authentic experience to be had within our spontaneous, creative imaginations, and in the sensory, visionary immediacy of our bodies. One way to do that is to use the mask consciously - putting on and taking off these many "faces", becoming self-aware shape shifters.

Each mask has its reserve of energy. Women and men exploring mythology with masks and storytelling may chose to work with an archetype for specific reasons; sometimes to call back something they feel has been lost. A woman named Turquoise who participated in a ritual drama in 2001, for example, told me that she discovered a joyful opportunity to reconnect with "the instinctual woman"  she had been in her youth when she worked with the  Artemis/Diana mask.

"I found", she wrote, "renewed love for the animals, the trees, for all living things. I saw my surroundings illuminated with light, the light of nature.  That is the domain of Artemis."

Some may find themselves drawn to a Goddess because she affords them an opportunity to explore something they need to discover.  Enacting the myth of Inanna’s descent to meet her dark twin Ereshkigal has been powerful visioning into the "underground" of the psyche for many who have created ritual events based upon this ancient Sumerian myth. Dwelling in the underworld, Ereshkigal may be understood as the “shadow self”, difficult to meet, necessary to not only know, but to cherish and integrate. The descent of Inanna is among the most universal myths of death, fragmentation, and psychic integration ever told: the shamanic "journey of the wounded healer".  Enacted in ritual theatre, it can represent initiation into mature empowerment; and it is also an enactment of the universal cycle of death and rebirth in the natural world.

The Goddess can also manifest in many intimate or contemporary ways. I remember making three masks for three young women who wished to create a performance about the Biblical Lilith, the "first wife of Adam" who was cast out of Eden because she would not submit to him.    They represented her as three aspects: a dark winged, elemental Lilith, a suffering Lilith cast out of Eden, and finally, Lilith as she appears today - a vamp.

"Mystery" derives from a Greek word, myein, which means "to keep silent". There are Gnostic experiences that cannot be spoken because they are, simply, larger than any word can express. They exist on multiple levels of meaning, and seem to cast us into the field of a consciousness that is greater than our individuality. 

Their expression belongs to dreams, art, myth and ritual. To too literally "describe" them is to diminish them and their potency. That was surely one of the reasons why the Eleusinian rites of Greece and Rome, which endured for 2,000 years, were called "Mysteries".

Ann Weller, an artist and community activist in California, took on the difficult task of invoking the "Dark Goddess" for a community ritual theatre event in 2000. At the approach of the millennium, their purpose was to symbolically transform the violence of the past century into a more just, evolved consciousness. As Ann described her process:

"The Dark Goddess is found in many cultures by many names, and is not aspected lightly. The work calls forth an internal capacity for psychic empowerment, an energy not easy for our limited ego selves to encompass. Because the work is, I believe, ultimately, impersonal. I was a brief vessel for an immense archetypal intelligence manifesting within the drama we created. And yet, the experience did bring personal change. You can't work with sacred theatre and not be changed in some way. I was being re-constructed, whether I was aware of it or not, to better serve Her. I found myself confronting aspects of myself that were just not useful any more. Which meant better serving myself. That's how I look at it. The little overlay of how I imagined myself, which had never been very effective, was now utterly obvious to me. My authentic power began to manifest."

In 1999 and 2006 it was my privilege to see the entire collection of masks used for the Spiral Dance, created by the Reclaiming Collective, in San Francisco. By offering to "aspect" a Goddess, each woman who wore her mask, and entered the Circle that night, was providing a blessing for all gathered, allowing the power of each Goddess to radiate into the world. This practice of viewing masks as “vessels for deity” - the gods and goddesses, the animal powers, the ancestral spirits - is a concept found in virtually all indigenous and early cultures, including the origins of Greek theatre.

There is a way of knowing that we are the artists of our lives, a way of seeing our creative process as participation in a conversation we are having with an infinitely conversant world. We’re dancing the future into the world by the stories we tell: like the web of the Native American creatrix Spider Woman, the threads of myth are spun far behind us, and weave their way far into the futures of those not yet born. May we dance empathy instead of despair, may we tell the stories that make life sacred and loving, profound and reverent.

 Photographs are by courtesy of:  Jerri Jo Idarius, Ileya Stewart, Thomas Lux, Peter Hughes, Ann Beam and Lauren Raine

References:

Bat Shalom, D. 2002:   "The Peace Tent", interview with Lauren Raine.
"The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", self-published  with  Blurb.com,  (San Francisco, California), 147 pages, 2019
.
Devananda, D. 2001:  interview with Lauren Raine. Unpublished  manuscript.

Fuller, E.  2001:  Interview with Lauren Raine, "The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", (2008) self-published  with  Blurb.com (San Francisco, California), 147 pages, p.87.

Larsen, S. Ph.D. 1996:  The Mythic Imagination: The Quest for Meaning Through Personal  Mythology,   Inner Traditions (Rochester, Vermont),  P. 178

Raine, L. 2008:   "The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", (2008) self-published   with  Blurb.com,  (San Francisco, California), 147 pages. 

Raine, L. 1999:   Performance, "The 20th Annual Spiral Dance", The Reclaiming Collective, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, California, Oct. 31, 1999. Community performance of annual event. 

Raine, L.  2004:  Performance, "Restoring the Balance",  Muse Community Arts Center, Tucson, Arizona, April 4, 2004.  Community performance, directed and produced by Lauren Raine. 

Raine, L.  2004:   Performance, "A Thousand Faces",  Black Box Theatre, Oakland,  California, October, 2002.  Community performance, directed and produced by Lauren Raine.  

Darling, D. 2000         Performance,  "Masque of the Goddess", Sebastopol Community Hall,  Sebastopol, California,  May,   2000.  Community performance, directed   and produced by Diane Darling. 

Smith, T. 2001     Correspondence with Lauren Raine.

Weller, A.: 2001:     Interview with Lauren Raine, "The Masks of the Goddess - Sacred Masks and Dance", (2008) self-published  with Blurb.com  (San Francisco,  California), 147 pages.