LAMMAS: Mass of the Bread

 

Lammas Day - the first day of August, once observed as the first  harvest festival, during which bread baked from the first crop of wheat was blessed.  Lammas  means "Mass of the Bread", although in pre-Christian times it was called Lughnasadh (Day of Lugh) a traditional celebration of  the  Celtic Sun God Lugh.  As such, the celebration often traditionally included many games and feats of strength, among them the famous Highland Games, which included sports  such as log throwing and sword dancing.

The Wicker Man was traditionally related to the Lammas ceremonies - he represented the God who dies and is ever reborn, the eternal "Green Man" in the next year, next growing season, next cycle, next turning, the lover of the Goddess, the Earth Mother.  This  ancient and ubiquitous symbol of the  sacrificed and resurrected God, related to both the Sun and the Grain is found "resurrected" in numerous myths and religions, among them  Osiris, the Green Man, Dummuzi the shepherd,  even in Christianity where it is found in the death and ressurection of the Christ - born at the Winter Solstice (often called the "return of the light"), sacrificed, and then reborn, appropriately  at the time of the Spring Equinox.   

 In contemporary neo-Pagan culture the effigy is often created and loaded with offerings of food, flowers and prayers on paper before it is burned - this tradition is sometimes carried on indirectly in the creation of  sculptures that are burned in the closing bonfires of Starwood Festival on the East Coast.  

Starwood Bonfire

         

           Lughnasadh

Fields of listening, whispering corn
Ripen in the heavy air
Lugh the Golden dancing forth,
Leaves and sheaves in his wild hair.
In perfect circles bow the stalks,
Mark the path where great Lugh walks,
Mark days and seasons, round they go,
As above, so below.

All that dies shall be reborn
All that dies shall be reborn

 Rev. Raven Spirit 2002

 John Barleycorn Must Die is a traditional English song very much related to early traditions of Lammas and Lughnasadh - records of its origins go back as far as the 1300s, and it is probably much older than that.    Over time, many variations have arisen, and the Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote his own  version of the story.  In the 70's, John Renbourne, Traffic, and Steeleye Span popularized the song, along with many folk artists during the Folk Revival of the 60's and 70's. 

John Barleycorn is a very prime myth indeed  - the Great King who is sacrificed, dies and is reborn in the agricultural cycle.  The motif is found as the story of the  Sumarian myth of  Dumuzi, the Shepherd husband of the Goddess Inanna who goes into the underworld for part of the year to be with the Queen of the Dead, and returns to Inanna in the Spring.  The same idea of the dying and reborn King is found with the Egyptian Osiris, who is reborn in the Sun God Horus.  And of course, the later evolution of this mythic cycle in the tale of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades, which became the basis of the Elysinnian Mysteries pilgrimage and ritual cycle.  

John Barleycorn is the personification of the grain, and the life of the grain from planting to harvest, its  transformation into bread and  beer, the staples of agricultural life.  After Barleycorn’s "first death"  he is buried, and laid within the ground.  In Midsummer he grows a “long golden beard” and “becomes a man”.  The song goes on to describe threshing and harvesting. Then the grain is shared: some is taken to the miller to make flour for bread. And some is saved and brewed in a vat to make ale. And some is planted, so that the whole cycle can begin again.   Some of these rituals survive to this day in modified folk traditions, as well as in neo Pagan revivals,  most famously the sacrifice of the wicker man "the burning man".   

Here is a rendition of the folksong "John Barley Corn Must Die" by Green Crown, a wonderful group I remember from my days at the Renaissance Faire:

https://youtu.be/9IIr6vjn3ZY

  Photo with thanks to  Avalon Revisited

It might be noted as well that John Barleycorn is also the God of Ecstasy - because he provides celebration and ecstasy as the barley becomes the source of beer and the beloved malt whiskey of the Highlands.  The malting and fermentation is also a part of his "life cycle" and transformative  divinity. Perhaps one of the most famous "ecstatic"  manifestations of the Wicker Man, his rituals of sacrifice, rebirth, and  celebration,  is Burning Man, the  festival that happens in Nevada every fall.  Originally associated with the burning of the Wicker Man at the Lammas Harvest Festival by neo-Pagans in the Bay Area, it's grown to become a fantastic art event.  I'd be willing to bet however that  the majority of people who attend  Burning Man don't know about its origins in a resurrection of a  traditional European  myth.

Here's an excellent  quote I take from a Druid's Blog called "The Dance of Life" 

about the Wicker Man:

"In English folklore, the folksong representing John Barleycorn as the crop of barley corresponds to the same cyclic nature of planting, growing, harvesting, death and rebirth.  Sir James Frazer cites this tale of John Barleycorn in The Golden Bough as proof that there was a Pagan cult in England that worshiped a god of vegetation, who was then sacrificed to bring fertility to the fields.  It is tempting to see in this  echoes of human sacrifice as portrayed in The Wicker Man film (1973), but that is not really what this time is about.  Whilst there was a Celtic ritual of weaving the last sheaf of corn to be harvested into a wicker-like man or woman, it was believed that the Sun 's spirit was trapped in the grain and needed to be set free by fire and so the effigy was burned........In other regions a corn dolly is made of plaited straw from this sheaf, carried to a place of honor at the celebrations and kept until the following spring for good luck."

It's interesting that in Robert Burn's poem, there are "three kings", similar to the kings from the east in the Nativity story.  Early Christians who came to the British Isles (and elsewhere) often absorbed native pagan mythologies and traditional rituals into Christian theology/mything.   The evolution of the Story of Christ is full of such imagery in order to help the natives accept Christianity:  it is very unlikely that Jesus was actually born on the Winter Solstice, for example. Certainly John Barleycorn shares with the Christ Story the ancient, ubiquitous  theme of the death and rebirth of the sacrificed agricultural King. 

I am a great admirer of the wisdom traditions of  Christianity, but I also believe it is necessary to separate the spiritual teachings of Christianity from  the mingling (and  literalization) of earlier  mythologies absorbed, and often changed or even demonized, throughout the very  long development of the Christian Church. 

For example, I believe the metaphor used to describe Jesus as the "Lamb of God" directly relates to Biblical Hebrew  practices prevalent in his lifetime  of the  sacrifice of lambs and goats to Yahwah.  Indeed, the  sacrifice of animals was common

throughout the Roman world as well.   The later development of  the doctrine that Christ   "died for our sins"   may have some of its origins in the important, and quite ancient,  Semitic Scapegoat Rituals,  wherein the "sins and tribulations" of the tribe were ritually placed on the back of a goat, which was then driven away from the village or tribal enclave  to literally "carry away the sins" into the desert.  

 

Observing recently a Catholic "Communion" ritual ("This is my Body, This is my Blood") I was impressed by the many layers of mythologies and archaic traditions inherent in that ceremony, still important to so many people today.  One of the threads of that Ceremony  may very well originate in the prime agricultural myth of  the dying and reborn God.  A  long tradition from which John Barleycorn arises, with each turning of the year,  re-born  again every spring to be "sacrificed" in the fall. 

Ubiquitous indeed!  This same idea is found in variations throughout the Americas as well, this time with  the story of the Corn Mother (among the Cherokee, Selu) who is killed, dismembered, and reborn in the spring - and when her sacrifice is not honored, misfortune befalls the tribe.     (I myself have had the privilege of encountering the Corn Mother. )

John Barleycorn
by Robert Burns

There was three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.
They took a plough and plough'd him down,
Put clods upon his head,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead. 

 

 

But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surpris'd them all.
The sultry suns of Summer came,
And he grew thick and strong,
His head weel arm'd wi' pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong.

The sober Autumn enter'd mild,
When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Show'd he began to fail.
His coulour sicken'd more and more,
He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage.
They've taen a weapon, long and sharp,
And cut him by the knee;
Then ty'd him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie.

They laid him down upon his back,
And cudgell'd him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turn'd him o'er and o'er.
They filled up a darksome pit
With water to the brim,
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.
They laid him out upon the floor,
To work him farther woe,
And still, as signs of life appear'd,
They toss'd him to and fro.

 

 

They wasted, o'er a scorching flame,
The marrow of his bones;
But a Miller us'd him worst of all,
For he crush'd him between two stones.
And they hae taen his very heart's blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
'Twill make your courage rise.
'Twill make a man forget his woe;
'Twill heighten all his joy:
'Twill make the widow's heart to sing,
Tho' the tear were in her eye.
Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne'er fail in old Scotland!

 

And here is Steeleye Span to tell the tale! 

 https://youtu.be/tlL9RCznuU8?si=XpmYSDKxGC2wKbN5

Collapse and Rebirth: Richard D. Hames

 

"These approaches fail because they refuse to confront the core issue: the lifestyle and infrastructure of modern industrial civilization are fundamentally incompatible with the biophysical realities of our planet. True sustainability would require radical reductions in energy and material throughput, dramatic decreases in consumption levels, and a fundamental restructuring of economic and social systems—changes so profound that they would amount to the "end" of civilization as we know it. "

 https://richarddavidhames.substack.com/p/beyond-the-event-horizon

I was deeply moved when I encountered this article on Substack by philosopher and futurist Richard David Hames.  He so eloquently and succinctly says it as it is, now.  Where do we go from here?  We are living, I believe and agree with the author, in the chaos of end stage capitalism, cultural collapse, and in the U.S., governmental collapse,  all set against the global environmental catastrophe of climate change.  

People like me, and scientists, mythologists, writers, artists, politicians and many others, have been talking about "paradigm change" and "re-mything culture" for a long time.  Here we are, and where do we go from here?  How can we "compost" the "detritus of our failing civilization into the foundations" of what is to come? How do we navigate in a collapsing system, and also such profound cultural denial? I take the liberty of sharing this important article here, as this Author speaks I believe so well to what is occuring.  I  highly recommend to any who read this post subscribing to Mr. Hames Substack Blog.  He is one of those who are "Realists of a larger Reality". 

"Our task is not to prevent collapse, we've already past the point of no return. Our task is to compost the detritus of our failing civilization into the foundations for whatever emerges from this vast transformation. This requires grieving the loss of the familiar world while remaining open to possibilities that we cannot yet imagine. It means cultivating resilience and adaptability rather than efficiency and growth. It demands that we rediscover our embeddedness within the living systems that sustain all life, abandoning the mythology of separation that has brought us to this threshold." 

 

A Journey Through Collapse Toward Regenerative Futures

Richard David Hames

Jul 19, 2025

The data streams converging from every corner of our world-system are recounting a story that's obvious: we have crossed a threshold from which there is no return to the stable climate and abundant ecosystems that cradled human civilization for millennia. What we're experiencing is not a series of discrete problems requiring technical solutions, but more accurately the breakdown of the complex adaptive system we call Earth—a collapse precipitated by a single species that learned to harness energy flows at scales that dwarf the capacity of natural systems to absorb the disruption. Homo sapiens.

The symptoms manifest across every domain of planetary function: carbon cycles destabilised by the combustion of ancient organic matter, nitrogen cycles overwhelmed by industrial fertiliser production, hydrological systems disrupted by massive infrastructure projects, and biodiversity hemorrhaging through habitat destruction and chemical contamination. These are not separate crises, they are interconnected expressions of a fundamental mismatch between the operational logic of industrial civilisation and the biophysical constraints that govern all life on this planet.

Our species has consumed the geological inheritance of millennia in mere centuries, burning through fossil fuels accumulated over hundreds of millions of years, strip-mining the planet's mineral wealth, and harvesting renewable resources—forests, fisheries, fertile soils—at rates that surpasses nature's ability to replenish them. Meanwhile, we have overwhelmed the biosphere's waste-processing capacity, saturating the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, choking the oceans with plastic, and poisoning ecosystems with an ever-expanding cocktail of synthetic chemicals that natural systems cannot break down or incorporate.

To understand how we arrived at this juncture, we must trace the arc of human development from our earliest emergence as a species. Our ancestors evolved with biological imperatives perfectly suited to their environment: survive, reproduce, consume available resources, and expand into new territories when possible. These instincts served us well in a world where human populations were tiny and technical capabilities limited. But our capacity for innovation—the discovery of fire, the development of tools, the evolution of intricate social cooperation—began to allow us to transcend natural constraints in ways that would ultimately prove catastrophic.

The agricultural revolution marked a pivotal turning point, transforming human societies from nomadic hunter-gatherers into settled civilizations capable of generating food surpluses. This abundance enabled population growth, social stratification, and the concentration of power in urban centres. More notably, it fundamentally altered our relationship with the natural world, shifting from participation within ecological systems to domination over them. Growth became not merely an opportunity but an imperative, both for survival in competitive environments and as a marker of civilizational success.

The industrial revolution accelerated these trends exponentially, as the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels provided access to energy stores that had been accumulating in Earth's crust for eons. Coal, oil, and natural gas became the foundation for unprecedented population growth, processes of production, and material consumption, enabling a way of life that seemed to transcend all previous limitations. This fossil-fuelled bonanza created the illusion that perpetual growth was not only possible but natural, obscuring the fundamental reality that we were drawing down finite stores of ancient sunlight at rates millions of times faster than they had been created.

The drivers of our current predicament operate at multiple levels, from the biological to the cultural to the systemic. At the most fundamental level, we remain governed by evolutionary programming that compels us to consume and reproduce without regard for long-term consequences. Our brains evolved to respond to immediate threats and opportunities, not to process abstract dangers that unfold over decades or centuries. In competitive environments, those who exploit resources most aggressively tend to outcompete those who exercise restraint, creating a relentless "race to the bottom" that plays out between individuals, corporations, and nations.

It's worth noting here that while evolutionary drives and competitive systems incentivise short-term exploitation, indigenous wisdom demonstrates that culturally evolved practices—like stewardship, restraint, and cyclical thinking—can realign human behaviour with long-term sustainability, offering pathways to overcome our more self-destructive programming.

Nevertheless, that does not change our present predicament. We have constructed elaborate belief systems that not only justify but actively promote behaviours that are driving us toward collapse. The mythology of technological salvation convinces us that innovation will always provide solutions to whatever problems previous innovations have created, even as our track record demonstrates that new technologies typically generate more problems than they solve, often with greater complexity and unintended consequences. Our economic systems in particular are predicated on the assumption of endless growth, requiring constant expansion of production and consumption to maintain stability, despite the mathematical impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet.

Most fundamentally, the worldview of human supremacy that underlies modern civilisation portrays our species as separate from and superior to the natural world, justifying the treatment of ecosystems as mere resources to be exploited rather than living systems of which we are an interdependent part. This conceptual separation enables us to externalize the costs of our activities, treating the biosphere as both an inexhaustible source of materials and an infinite sink for wastes.

The tragedy of our situation becomes apparent when we examine the responses that have emerged to address these mounting crises. Despite our growing awareness of environmental degradation and social dysfunction, proposed solutions almost invariably focus on technological fixes and economic adjustments that go out of their way to preserve the fundamental structures and assumptions of industrial civilisation.

Green technologies promise to maintain current consumption levels while reducing environmental impact, ignoring the resource requirements and environmental costs of manufacturing and deploying these technologies at scale. Economic reforms propose to decouple growth from resource consumption and environmental degradation, despite the absence of any historical precedent for such decoupling at the scales and timeframes required.

These approaches fail because they refuse to confront the core issue: the lifestyle and infrastructure of modern industrial civilisation are fundamentally incompatible with the biophysical realities of our planet. True sustainability would require radical reductions in energy and material throughput, dramatic decreases in consumption levels, and a fundamental restructuring of economic and social systems—changes so profound that they would amount to the "end" of civilization as we know it. The resistance to such transformations is understandable but ultimately irrelevant, because these changes will occur whether we choose them or not.

We are already witnessing the early stages of this great unraveling. Multiple planetary boundaries have been crossed, triggering feedback loops that are accelerating environmental degradation beyond our ability to control or reverse. Thawing permafrost releases vast quantities of methane and carbon dioxide, amplifying heating trends. Melting ice reduces the planet's ability to reflect solar radiation back to space, further accelerating temperature rise. Deforestation and ecosystem destruction eliminate carbon sinks while increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. These processes are now largely autonomous, continuing regardless of human interventions.

The social and political dimensions of collapse are equally evident. Rising inequality and resource scarcity fuel social unrest and political volatility. While national political horseplay descends into sheer spectacle, conventional governance structures are proving inadequate to address challenges that transcend state boundaries and operate on timescales that exceed electoral cycles. Progressive and conservative political movements alike remain trapped within paradigms which incorrectly assume the possibility of maintaining current civilisation through minor modifications, unable to acknowledge the biophysical limits that constrain all human activities.

Unless we stumble upon a suite of technological miracles, the depletion of cheap, easily accessible energy sources ensures that the industrial system cannot sustain itself indefinitely. As the energy return on energy invested for fossil fuel extraction continues to decline, the economic foundation of modern civilization becomes increasingly unstable. Complex supply chains that depend on cheap transportation fuels become vulnerable to disruption. The elaborate financial systems that facilitate global trade require constant growth to service increasing debt burdens, creating instability that cascades through interconnected economic networks.

Collapse is not a future event to be avoided but a present reality to be navigated. Economic instability, resource scarcity, extreme weather events, and social fragmentation are already disrupting the normal functioning of industrial society. The question is not whether collapse will occur but how rapidly it will unfold, what forms it will take in different regions and communities, and what we must do to adapt.

This recognition, while painful, offers the possibility of liberation from the illusions that prevent us from responding appropriately to our circumstances. Accepting that industrial civilisation cannot be sustained allows us to stop investing energy in futile attempts to preserve the unsustainable and instead begin the work of adaptation and transformation. Living with the reality of collapse means slowing down, becoming more present in our immediate environments, and rediscovering beneficial ways of life that operate within ecological limits rather than in opposition to them.

The end of industrial civilisation doesn't necessarily mean the end of human culture or the possibility of flourishing communities. Throughout history, human societies have demonstrated remarkable ingenuity in developing ways of life adjusted to their local conditions and available resources. The knowledge and skills required for such adaptation still exist, though they have been marginalised by the homogenising forces of industrial development.

Our task is not to prevent collapse, we've already past the point of no return. Our task is to compost the detritus of our failing civilization into the foundations for whatever emerges from this vast transformation. This requires grieving the loss of the familiar world while remaining open to possibilities that we cannot yet imagine. It means cultivating resilience and adaptability rather than efficiency and growth. It demands that we rediscover our embeddedness within the living systems that sustain all life, abandoning the mythology of separation that has brought us to this threshold.

The transition ahead will be neither smooth nor equitable, but it is inevitable. Our choice is not whether to undergo this transformation but how consciously to participate in it. By releasing our attachment to the myths and structures of industrial civilisation, we create space for ways of being that honour the limits and gifts of our earthly home. In the ruins of the old world, the seeds of the new are already beginning to germinate. It's an exciting time for those with a pioneering spirit. A time for real hope that we're able to generate a world of peace and prosperity.

The Hames Report - Limited Edition is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Reflections (again) on Art and Spirituality.........

 

 

"A Navajo rug may be a commodity for trade.
It also may be the voice of the weaver’s prayers and dreams"

(unknown Author)

 I once had a brief conversation with a young woman who mentioned that spirituality (or religion) is "taboo" in the world of contemporary art. I agreed at the time, although  perhaps things have changed  since the 1980's when I received my MFA.  To be honest, I don't keep up with what's happening in the contemporary art world much, finding my relationship to my art mostly contemplative and devotional.

 I remember emerging from graduate school with a body of work ("A House of Doors" and "When the Word for World was Mother") very much concerned with metaphysical and spiritual exploration, and I felt  angry at the resistance I received in the program for my subject matter.  This was the height of "New Age", and  I had an enormous desire to find out who, what, and where art and spirituality were united in contemporary life, outside of the church, of course.

"Hands" by Lorraine Capparell (1987)

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

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

.....from the Gospel of Thomas

So I did what I've always done, took off travelling on a "vision quest" that lasted almost 5 years, visiting California and New York City, and points in between. The result was a collection of interviews I intended to make into a book called "Seeing in a Sacred Manner:  Interviews with Transformative Artists".  The book was never published, although some of the interviews were published in small journals with the kind permission of those artists who granted them to me, among them Alex and Allyson Grey (The Sacred Mirrors), Rafael Ortiz  (Physio-Psycho-Alchemy), Rachel Rosenthal (Pangaean Dreams), Kathleen Holder (The December Series), and others. In retrospect, I wish I could have made their conversations more available to other artists, because what they had to say was so profoundly inspiring to me.  Some of the interviews are on my website  https://www.laurenraine.com/seeing-in-a-sacred-manner.html

Reflections from a stained glass window

Many artists in our world have an "identity crisis". We are surrounded with structures that say art is important - schools, museums, galleries, magazines, books, churches. And yet, a contemporary practicing artist is often not given credit for pursuing her or his profession, often not seen as doing something with social significance.   I cannot tell you how many times people have asked me what I do, and afterwards responded with "so what's your real job?".  "Real job?"   We define value in monetary terms, and equate quality or "professionalism" to how much money a "product" makes - which is an insane way to evaluate the "worth" of an innovative work of art, or any innovative work for that matter.  Or the value of a person.  

 

Illuminated manuscript
by Hildegard Von Bingham
 (11th century)

Many of the greatest, and most profoundly transformative, contributions to our world had no "monetary value" whatsoever. Among them, the works of poets such as Rainier Maria Rilke, Rumi, and Gary Snyder, the solitary musings of Emerson at Walden Pond, the great visions of Lakota Medicine Man Black Elk and Hildegard von Bingam. When Van Gogh went into the fields to ecstatically paint the energy he saw in sunflowers or a star strewn night sky, when Georgia O'Keefe gathered bones she found in the New Mexico desert and contemplated them in her studio, when Louise Nevelson found pieces of cast off wood and furniture in the rain- slick streets of New York city.....they were responding to the beauty and story they each saw, the creative energy that welled up from that source.  And they wanted to communicate what they saw.

"Compassion is the rooting of vision in the world, and in the whole of being"

....David Michael Levin

I often think of Bali, the amazing way art making, ritual making, music making are so much a part of daily life.  From the woven offerings that women make first thing in the morning to the elaborate festivals held on specifically auspicious days. For the Balinese, art is a devotional activity, constantly renewed within the traditions of their Hindu religion.  Certainly, our modern "identity crisis" would not be understood by such a traditional society, the questioning of "what is art", the sometimes arbitrary separation we seem to make between "high" and "low" arts, "fine arts" and "crafts", etc.  I'm not sure, after 50 years of being an artist, I understand it myself.  I was in Bali 25 years ago, and I remember feeling quite at home there, and when I studied mask making, I observed the flow of art, ritual, and culture there.  It seemed seamless to me.  I have not been back to Bali since then; I hope things have not changed.

 So what is "art process"?  It helps to think of it as a  spiritual practice.   You don't have to live in a traditional culture like Bali, or even be affiliated with a traditional religion, to give the making of art that devotional respect.   I think if one considers it in that light, it becomes so much easier! Making art gets me out of the tyranny of my mind, the "laundry lists" and preoccupation with money - and into a greater world of seeing, sensing, color, light.  Of being. I can engage with my ever evolving, personal, and yet archetypal, symbol system.  The emergent place.  Sometimes (like with the "Prayers for the Dying" series I did for my brother) it helps me to understand grief, to heal emotional losses or conflicts. Increasingly, I am interested in sharing the creative process with others, finding ways to connect with others in creative community; in this light, it becomes a form of entrainment, of ritual, of prayer.

"It’s easier for people to anthropomorphize something abstract. That is where the metaphor of Gaia comes in - it is easier to think of a mother, a nurturing parent. By giving a name to it, you can talk to Her. That’s the purpose. Otherwise, you are lost in abstractions, and lose the emotional content of the issue."

 Rachel Rosenthal

I am reflecting much on the past these days, and take the liberty here of sharing (below)  the Introduction to the (unpublished) book of interviews I wrote back in 1990.  Perhaps I've mellowed, and understand things more comprehensively since then -  still, it's good to revisit.........

"The Sacred Mirrors" Alex Grey and Allyson Grey

 

"Everything was made for the greater meaning and use of the the tribe. A spoon was more than a spoon, and a sacred pot was also used to store grain in - because they understood that there had to be a weaving between the material world and the other worlds in order to live right and well. An artist was one of those who did the weaving."

...... Sarah Mertz

 It was my privilege, in the late 1980's, to share conversations about art, spirituality, and cultural transformation with some extraordinary artists. Travelling across the country to meet some of them in New York City, in Arkansas, or in California, not long after graduate school, I realize now I was really trying to understand my own reasons for making art. "Your work is about your life" painter Kathleen Holder told me, "and if you are fortunate enough to do great work, it not only is about your life but it transcends your life and touches many others. "

As a student of art history, I find it ironic that spirituality was a significant impulse in the early development of Modernism. Theosophy, the Golden Dawn, Anthrosophy, as well as Einstein's new physics, enormously inspired the work of such innovators as Mondrian, Kupka, Kandinsky, Arthur Dove, and many others. But by the 1950's, spirituality, indeed, the idea of context itself, had become a kind of heresy among the institutions that defined what "high" art was. I'm not sure that has changed very much today.  

In the 1970's, Tom Wolfe argued in The Painted Word that art was becoming literature, more a media creation of art critics than the artists themselves, who were (and still are) floundering about at the edges of society seeking any kind of identity, even one invented for them. Social context, works created for political, therapeutic, or functional means - or as spiritual revelation - were suspect. The quest was for "pure" aesthetics, celebrated by influential critics like Harold Rosenberg, who wrote, in 1952, 

"The turning point of Abstract Expressionism occured when its artists abandoned trying to paint Art (Cubism, Post-Impressionism), and decided to paint - just PAINT. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from Value - political, aesthetic, moral."

But to liberate art from aesthetic or moral value is to render it meaningless. It becomes a dissociative intellectual exercise, a lonely endeavor isolated from any larger social or cosmic context, isolated, often, from even personal significance. Performance artist Rafael Montanez Ortiz believes our aesthetics reflect a greater issue. "We can objectify" he said, "at the drop of a hat. We have no problem making an object of anyone or anything. If the logic of a culture permits you to abstract to that extent, it then permits you to live without conscience."

If we're to affirm an art with conscience, it must be, by definition, an art that provides an experience of context, of relationships of every kind. Social, ecological, spiritual, external and internal, visible and invisible. That's what transformative art is to me - artists who are reclaiming the roles of visionary, healer, community activist, and prophet within a grand context, an experience of communion that penetrates our lives on many dimensions of being. In traditional cultures, a shaman is one who "retrieves souls." That can also mean the collective retrieval of "soul", the redemption of imagination, beauty, and most importantly, a sustaining vision of the mystery and sanctity of life.

(1990)

Asherah,   Lauren Raine (2024)

"Vision that responds to the cries of the world and is truly engaged with what it sees is not the same as the disembodied eye that observes and reports, that objectifies and enframes. The ability to enter into another's emotions, or to share another's plight, to make their conditions our own, characterizes art in the partnership mode. You cannot define it as self-expression - it is more like relational dynamics.......Partnership demands a willingness to conceive of art in more living terms.

It is a way of seeing others as part of ourselves."

.........Suzi Gablick (The Re-Enchantment of Art) (1989)

                             "Between Land and Sea", Installation by Caroline Beasley Baker

 "I like the Aboriginal idea of "Singing the world into existence".  I once had a wonderful dream. I dreamed I was riding across the Australian desert at night. I was on a bus, and everyone was asleep. I looked out, across the dark, and saw, rising up out of the desert floor, these incredibly beautiful murals, in huge caverns lit by firelight. I knew they had been made by some consciousness predating humanity, that they had been here for millennia. They had never been seen in the world before, and were now rising up to the surface of the Earth.  Those paintings were more glorious than anything I've ever seen in my life! At the end of the dream, a voice said to me, "Caroline, that's the Earth dreaming".

 Caroline Beasley Baker (Interview, 1989)