"Coming Into Power" and Medicine Baskets: Shan Goshorn

                                   

"The Work of seeing is done,
  now practice heart-work
  upon those images 

  captive within you......."

 Rainier Maria Rilke

A print of the image above was given to me  as a gift, and I have carried it around and placed it on my altar for at least 10 years.  I did not know who the artist was until 2012 when I was delighted to discover Cherokee artist  Shan Goshorn's site.  What a magnificent body of work!  

The image above that has spoken to me over the years is not even on her site, and I don't know what it meant to her.  But to me it speaks of "coming into power" as the maturation of integral consciousness.  The masked figure "gathers power" as he/she embodies, "drums with",  the union of opposites.  Red and Blue represent opposite elements or forces, heat and cold, fire and water, dark and light.  The orbs could be both the sun and the moon, as well as the interplay and synthesis of dark and light, conscious and unconscious, heart and intellect. As the figure drums, she/he resonates and harmonizes with the starry rythems of creation.  The mask is, to me, self becoming transparent, personality and ego a thin mask over a field of stars, the cosmos, the greater life we are part of.  The white band in the "sky" could be the energy of spirit, or the vast rim of the Milky Way.   This image is important to me, a great gift by a sacred artist.

Learning that the artist is also weaving  together the broken threads of the past to create healing baskets that re-member and re-join brings the idea of "coming into power", for me,  into even greater focus. I was particularly moved to see her work as a Weaver of Sacred Baskets.  She creates  "medicine baskets" in traditional designs and techniques that are woven with words, some in English, some in Cherokee.  One that I found truly moving  was woven of broken contracts, the names and photos of children taken from their communities and forced to attend boarding schools. I'm so pleased to share a bit about Shan Goshorn's  powerful and (to me) shamanic  art.....

Shan Goshorn's award winning basket “Educational Genocide – The Legacy of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School” was created with a Cherokee-style double weave, and was made from splints of paper that had student’s names and historical documents and photographs who were taken from their parents and force to attend the boarding school.  A photograph of the Carlisle Student Body of 1912 was woven around the perimeter of the lid.

 “I completely underestimated the impact that this piece would have on viewers, including Indian and non-Indian.  I was surprised that every native person seemed to have a connection to Carlisle, but it was even more surprising that everyone seemed affected by seeing the faces of those children woven into the lid.  I think that maybe seeing those children humanized this ugly, but critically formative, part in our collective history.”

"Song of Sorrow"  2015

"The devastating impact boarding schools has had on Native culture cannot be overlooked. Native children were removed from their families, homes and communities and sent to live in these military-like facilities in an effort to be whitewashed into the dominant culture.  The goal of these institutions was to acculturate and “civilize” Indian children, thus stripping them of their Native identity and resulting in the loss of language and tribal customs.

Mainstream American attitudes also perpetuate this historical trauma. At first printing, the popular children’s song “10 Little Indians” presented a malevolent outlook and summed up popular national sentiments regarding “The Indian Problem.” In this basket, the center white splints combine lyrics of three versions of this song, including the original words written by Septimus Winner in 1868. Sample phrases from all three versions of these hostile lyrics include: one got executed and then there were nine, one got syphilis and then there were eight, one shot the other and then there was one, one broke his neck and then there were six, one chopped himself in half and then there were six, one dead drunk and then there were three, one passed out drunk and then there were two, one shot himself and then there was one, he went and hanged himself  and then there were none.  

Woven into this basket are Navajo, Lakota and Kaw tribal prayers of healing and well being, collected for the healing and well being of generations of boarding school victims.  Also included are the words to a Cherokee Memorial Song, “We remember your sacrifices. You will not be forgotten.” In order for race relations in this country to truly be repaired, America has to accept responsibility for this travesty and make amends. "

Shan Goshorn

" Defending the Sacred" (2017)

"This River Runs Red" (2018)

"Traditionally, native women held positions highly revered in their communities, often respected as leaders, warriors and always as the bringers of life. However, after first contact, non-native men frequently viewed indigenous women as disposable sexual commodities. Based on today’s disproportionately higher rate of violence toward native women and a judicial reluctance to prosecute these crimes, it is a belief that appears to be ongoing.  Statistics in the U.S. indicate three in five native women will be physically assaulted; 34% will be raped; on some reservations,native women are murdered at more than ten times the national average; and U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute 67% of sexual abuse related cases. In Canada, a 2015 report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RMCP) concluded 1,049 aboriginal women had been slain between 1980 and 2015, and that another 175 were considered missing. Patty Hajdu, Canadian Minister for the Status of Women, reported in 2017 that 4,000 would be a more realistic number based on a history of police under-reporting or failure to properly investigate cases. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reports that activists with the Walk 4 Justice initiative collected at least 4,232 names of missing or murdered indigenous women.

Although the numbers tell a story, revealing a tragic disparity that must be rectified, we must remember the persons behind the numbers. This Cherokee style single-weave basket was created not only to point to the statistics but also to humanize women who’ve lost their lives. Woven in the traditional pattern called “Water”, the vertical splints are printed with high stats of violence directed at native women in the U.S.; the horizontal splints compile the discrepancy in gathering such numbers in Canada. The interior is printed with the names and tribes, compiled by the CBC, of 306 murdered and missing women, cases the RCMP dismissed as solved. The families of these women dispute this resolution.

The Red River, which runs from Winnipeg, Canada to northern South Dakota, has become known as a place where the bodies of women are regularly recovered making its name (Red River) heartbreakingly fitting. Included on the front of the basket is a red-lined map of this river, a visual gash to serve as a reminder of this place where native women have been discarded and seemingly forgotten. It is time to recognize the humanity of these women, mourn the value of their lives and put a stop to this terror. "

Sources: National Congress of American Indians (2013); US Department of Justice (1998); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1998); Native Women’s Association of Canada/ Canada Public Broadcaster CBC NEWS (Feb 2016); The Guardian (Feb 2016); Walk 4 Justice/ Global News (Mar 2016); NPR National Public Radio (Aug 2016) 

Shrine for the Sixth Extinction Proposal

 

I just completed a proposal for an installation of a Shrine for a show about Dia de los Muertes, the "Day of the Dead".  Such Shrines traditionally remember and celebrate the Beloved Dead - among Mexican Catholics, whole families will gather in a graveyard to honor those that are gone.  But for us, Humanity that is, our whole world is a kind of "graveyard".  Each Walmart parking lot represents the destruction of a habitat, of countless interwoven lives of animals, insects, and vegetation destroyed and possibly lost forever in order to create that parking lot.  I don't know if I'll get to construct my Shrine, but I got excited envisioning it, and felt like sharing on this Blog some of the images that, hopefully, will come together to create it.  

Most importantly, I want the "roll call" or list of extinct or critically endangered species to be on each side of the Shrine:  and that list will continue down to the floor, the last pages empty, showing that the "roll call" of those to be remembered is by no means complete, or over.

Below is the Proposal.  Wish me luck!  As Mr. Walters said:  how sad to know that so many of our fellow Beings, our friends who create such diversity - are soon to be gone.  Let us at least remember.  Maybe, just maybe, that will help in re-membering our lost Family of life.

A SHRINE FOR THE SIXTH EXTINCTION 

"Psychologists have not begun to ponder the emotional toll of the loss of fellow life.  Nor have theologians reckoned the spiritual impoverishment that extinction brings.  To forget what we have had is to forget what we have lost.  And to forget what we have lost means never knowing what we had to begin with."

Mark Jerome Walters, The Nature Conservancy (1998)

As we go about our daily lives, a mass extinction of fellow lives and other species evolutions is happening - the sixth in the history of planet Earth.  We are the cause of what is now called the Sixth mass extinction, or the Anthropocene extinction. Scientists at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity have concluded that every day as many as 150 species are lost.  They suggest that as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species may be going extinct by 2050.

Dia de Los Muertos is about remembering the Beloved Dead, those that are gone.  I propose creating a memorial shrine on this special day to remember the many Beings gone and leaving us, to our great loss and impoverishment. Proposal is for a Shrine no larger than 45" x 30" composed of paper panels listing the names of extinct and vanishing Species, with Centerpiece, Narrative, Visuals of species included in tableau.

Lauren Raine, July 30, 2021

 

Blossums Along The Way: Mary Oliver

 

BY MARY OLIVER

If you're John Muir you want trees to live among. 

If you're Emily, a garden will do. 
Try to find the right place for yourself. 
If you can't find it, at least dream of it. 
                                             •

When one is alone and lonely, the body
gladly lingers in the wind or the rain, 
or splashes into the cold river, or
pushes through the ice-crusted snow. 
Anything that touches. 
                                             •

God, or the gods, are invisible, quite
understandable. But holiness is visible, 
entirely. 
                                             •

Some words will never leave God's mouth, 
no matter how hard you listen.  
                                             •

In all the works of Beethoven, you will 
not find a single lie.
                                             •

All important ideas must include the trees,
the mountains, and the rivers. 
                                             •

To understand many things you must reach out 
of your own condition. 
                                             •

For how many years did I wander slowly 
through the forest. What wonder and 
glory I would have missed had I ever been
in a hurry!
                                             •

Beauty can both shout and whisper, and still
it explains nothing. 
                                             •

The point is, you're you, and that's for keeps.

---

Excerpted from Mary Oliver's collection of poetry, Felicity, published by Penguin Press in October, 2015.

"How to Speak to the Earth": Remembering Frank Barney

 I was saddened to learn that Frank Barney, the founder of the Brushwood Folklore Center  in Chautaqua County, New York, passed away.  Frank had suffered from Parkinson's disease for a long time.

"Center" - the Labyrinth at Sirius Rising

How do you celebrate a visionary and brave life that touched so very many other lives? Whose ideas,  planted where he lived in rural New York,  took root and flowered into a place and community for thousands?  I am sure that Frank's family and extended community have found many ways to remember him - this is my own small addition to the "Ancestor Mound".

Sirius Rising Bonfire -
sending prayers with the
"Thunderbird"

Frank and his family over the years, as they did for so many others, gave me a summer Home to return to, year after year,  as well as a warm and generous (and often eccentric)  community to create with in the woods and beauty of his land.   I never told him how much this often lonely wanderer appreciated it.   I feel so fortunate that I could have those "pagan summers" in Western New York, working at the festivals, building my Moss Garden shrine deep in the woods,  spending time with Frank and Darlene  and the  many people who came over the years to celebrate with ecstatic exuberance the land, Gaia, the Goddess and the God, the rising of the Dog star Sirius, the walking of the Labyrinth, the Summer Solstice, the recreation each year of little shrines and gardens at festivals like Starwood,  Sankofa and Sirius Rising, as they created big and little rituals, big and little bonfires, art and performance and music and conversaton...............so much.   Brushwood was a refuge for me, a place of renewal.  

Drum Circle (which often went on all night long)

Brushwood - photo by Theresa Barney

I have posted this interview before, and here do so again, because it was with Frank, I believe in the summer of 2005.  And because what he had to say remains so vitally important - the truth of his roots in nature  that underlay all that he created, under the Celebrations, under the Rituals, under the art.  We were riding through the “village” that bubbles up  out of the ground when the big festivals happen.   It's like I used to feel with the Renaissance Festivals when I worked at them........like Brigadoon, the festivals appear, then  disappear.   I asked Frank what it was like to live with a particular place since childhood, to raise your family there, to grow up within his environment of forests and meadows,  and eventually become  its caretaker and spiritual collaborator.    "How", I asked, "do we speak with the Earth?"

Frank (who was a dowser as his father was) answered my question as he always did in  his own round-about way. He was answering in circles, literally, as we circled the grounds in his golf cart, looking at favorite trees, niches of shrines people had made,  feeling the geomagnetic intensities of various places, the “green breath” of the forest, that watchful "presence" I always feel among the trees.

“Most of the voices of nature are small and delicate,” he told me, “and can easily be silenced. They can be made invisible, or driven underground. And when that happens, people forget that they ever existed at all. Within a short time, they forget what it was like to live in such a rich chorus of voices, among so many stories, intelligences, lives.......and then  they’re living without them in a world that has lost not only that living  population, but also its mystery and vitality. An increasingly flat world with only human voices.  And that is not only a loss, but a peril. “

“If you violate a person, be it a child or an adult, they shut up. You silence them. They withdraw - although, with human beings, the energy of that violence is likely to erupt in some future way, in some future violence. Places, like people and animals, also have voices. Violate a place, like putting a Wal-mart parking lot over it, and all the voices that belong to that place leave.  The land is silenced. ”

“What I've been trying to do” he said, “for the past 30 years is to create a place that can facilitate communion with the Earth. By treating the land with respect, by acknowledging the presence of so many other intelligences, visible and invisible, that are evolving within the immanent cycles of life, right here, on the land. On this land, with all of its uniqueness. "

"And there are different ways we've accomplished that.  For example, because we didn't have much money, we couldn't do what many people do when they acquire a piece of land. Which is to come in with big machines that level and dominate the land, bulldoze it flat, force it to do what they want it do. We didn't have the financial means to do that, even if we wanted to, so Brushwood evolved gradually, organically, according to the dictates of the land, its contours and water ways and bumps and swamps and resources. And also its energy leys and vortices. 

We bring people here who have an earth friendly ethos and mythos. They can feel safe here, they can interact and create and explore without ridicule or hostility. They come here to connect, to play, or to heal. They can do ritual, make things like art or theatre or music, wear masks or costumes, dance, have discussions, make love, get naked in the sun or rain if they like, the children can ride their bikes or play in the mud - they feel safe. So the Earth can speak through them in all the things that they say and do."

'That’s how we talk with the Earth.
 We let the Earth talk through us.”

Erecting the Thunder Bird (2008)
Throughout the week long festival, prayers and intentions were collected,
and deposited in the Thunder Bird "messenger " -  similar to the ancient
Celtic  Lammas rituals  of the burning of the Wicker Man.

The path in the Brushwood woods I walked to sit in my "moss garden". I can see Frank 

walking down it, in my mind's eye, blessing and protecting and opening the way for 

all the people, like myself, who came there.   A true Green Man, showing the Way. 

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on the snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there; I did not die.

Mary Elizabeth Frye

Photos of  Sirius Rising are by, and copyright,  Roy Jones

Three Seconds

Powerful, simply expressed:    should be shared widely 

https://youtu.be/B-nEYsyRlYo

How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint (from the BBC)

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57751918

"Since the start of the heatwave, people have linked the unusual and extreme nature of the event to climate change.  Now, researchers say that the chances of it occurring without human-induced warming were virtually impossible."

 https://youtu.be/a9yO-K8mwL0

 

The Michael Invocation

 

Archangel Michael by Lauren Raine (2018)

The Michael Invocation

by  Ama Nazra 

 

Archangel Michael,

Remove all attachments from me,

All negative energy forms,

All negative thought forms,

All heavy energy forms.

All intruders and mischief makers,

All astral forces and dominants,

All small demons and large demons,

including succubus and incubus.

All living humans who try to steal my energy,

Or do me any other harm,

Blessed Michael,  

Find all humans in Spirit who are Lost around me,

and take them Home into the Light.

Remove all threads and bindings

All cords and ties, All chains and devices of any kind

All curses and hexes on any level

And all karmic patterns which are 'self'-defeating

And karmic links that are no longer needed

Return me to my perfect energy now please

I ask this in the name of the Divine,

Thank you.

Amen

Where it came from ... 

The above is by  Ama Nazra  from the website Sacred Gates/Victorian Paranormal Connection.  Please visit the link below to read more:

 http://www.victorianparanormalconnection.com.au/MichaelInvocation.html

As she has written about the Invocation:  

"I've been using and adapting the Michael Invocation for the past fifteen years as a means of clearing people's energy, and the energy of their homes and other buildings. The Invocation has changed over time, as the situations people have found themselves in have become more difficult to manage, or more complicated to understand. It has never failed to provide relief on many levels."