The Dark Goddess Los Angeles by Arianne MacBean

“Welcome to Hollywood! What’s your dream?” the character Happy Man says in the opening scene of Pretty Woman, a movie that epitomizes mythic Los Angeles, a place where fairy tales come true. The Dark Goddess Los Angeles, with Her lure of wealth and transformation, Her persona of glamour and aspiration, where even a down-and-out sex worker can be saved by a lawyer with a fear of heights and “save him right back.” Los Angeles calls out a westward invocation of promise. But as much as She pledges, She deceives. Her thick air, dense with unseen harmful toxins, a costly nutrient. Her sinewy highways, the blood lines of her body, sites of daily catastrophe. Our pilgrimage is the slow crawl of passing car crashes on the opposite side of the freeway divider wall. Our mantra, That could have been me. That could have been me.

I’ve been hating LA for thirty-five years. Hating Her May Grey and Her June Gloom. Hating Her maze-like web of concrete highways, Her center-less-ness. Only in Los Angeles are the freeways archetypes, “Take The 2 to The 5 to The 110 to The 10.” I’ve never felt lonelier – alone in my apartment, alone in my car, alone in my thoughts. But over time, I’ve learned to love traversing Los Angeles’ arteries. I have had some of my most profound ideas, my most aha moments, while flowing through Her pulsing veins. The neither here-no-thereness of this city is pregnant with patient possibility. Anything can happen in Her spaciousness, Her waiting.

A few months ago, I was feeling desolate that I had no images of the Great Goddess in my life. I was just an LA mom, waiting in carpool lines, buying cold pressed juice for $20 a pop. How could She reveal herself to me in this banality, this horizon-less landscape? But then, on January 7^th, The Dark Goddess burned, and I awoke. She has been here all along. The Dark Goddess Los Angeles wears Her social and economic disparities like plastic costume jewelry with gold Van Cleep & Arpels bangles side by side. But we who live here know, She will look in the mirror and snatch off whatever piece catches her eye first, fling it to the Santa Anas, and let it drop like a riot onto the streets where we live, work, and dream.

This is The Dark Goddess’ magic. She flutters in the background, watching and waiting for Her moment. When it comes, She turns you inside out. The fires in the Palisades and Altadena were an expression of Her power. Something must die for something new to be born. The Dark Goddess Los Angeles does not require blood sacrifice, but something more, a mutation of consciousness. As Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson wrote in Dancing in the Flames – the Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, “Anyone who has labored to release the Goddess from the darkness of centuries of abuse has returned from the excavation with a paradox. She who is dead is alive.” The naked neighborhoods filled with charred skeletons of homes are her message. I give. I take. No patriarchal delineation of districts is immune to my power. The truth can no longer be denied. Patriarchy rejected the cycle of life because it only understood power through linear progression. In this order, death is something to deny and protect, like a family secret. This is no longer viable. The secret is out. Post fire here in LA, we understand, in our bones, the illusion of control. The more we hang on to order the more chaos reigns.

What makes up a fire? A fire needs three elements: fuel, oxygen, and heat. When these elements are present and combined perfectly, a self-sustaining reaction occurs, producing heat and light: flame. Fuel is any substance that can burn, wood, paper, or your own body. Oxygen is the invisible gas in the air, sustaining life. Heat is the energy that makes things feel their own temperature. The chain reaction is the process where initial heat ignites fuel, which in turn produces and increases the feeling of heat, continuing the reaction. In a sense, a body (or a body of land) mixed with the untouchable gaseous life force and the feeling of the body’s own temperature creates the flame. Fire is spirit in matter, the Dark Goddess around us and within us. The Dark Goddess Los Angeles made her visitation on January 7^th. Her smoke signal mirrors the harrowing destruction of this moment, this time. She reminds us to find strength in adversity, to embrace the cycle of life, death, regeneration and to discover the profound insight that lies within darkness. We must go dark to gain sight.

I was angry after writing this. I stomped the ground in my witch’s hut (my She Shed). I plodded in circles trying to match the anger I feel emanating from The Great Goddess Los Angeles. I return to my body, my own land. Through my heavy rhythmic steps, I tried to let Her know She is a part of me, and I Her. I had a vision, all of us across the city, stomping together in the same rhythmic pattern. It might take that to mirror Her power, to assure Her that we understand. Again, Woodman and Dickson lay it bare, “Not until we recognize the divine imminence, the light of the goddess in matter, can we hope to establish a balance, a reconnection with our own deepest nature that can root us in a world of meaning and imagination. Perhaps we will have to face the darkness, walk out on the Moor alone at nightfall, or dive to the bottom of the sea before the old ossified ego boundaries can be shattered to make room for the dance.” Like the Hindu Kali, the Egyptian Sekhmet, and Hawaiian Pele, The Dark Goddess Los Angeles mesmerizes with Her truth, Her ferocity. We need to listen carefully to Her wisdom now. That is my dream.

BIO: Arianne MacBean is a Certified Somatic Psychotherapist and Licensed Marriage Family Therapist at Synergy Somatic Psychotherapy in Los Angeles, CA. She holds a BA in Dance from UCLA, a Double MFA in Dance & Writing from California Institute of the Arts, and an MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Her writing has been published by the academic journal Dance Chronicle and Nasty Women Writers. Her childen’s book, The Backyard Fairies is available on Amazon.