Category: Fiction

A Feline Petit Prince by Barbara Ardinger

I am tamed by cats. I live with them. Note that I do not say that I “own” cats. Cats are their own beings, as are the dogs and fish and gerbils and parrots and other critters that may live with us. Do farmers and ranchers really own their chickens and cows? I don’t think so. They’re our kin. We’re all the children of the Goddess, of our blessed Mother Earth.

I wrote recently about one of my all-time favorite books, Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a book I first read in my high school French I class. Le Petit Prince is said to be a children’s tale, a sort of fairy tale of the desert. Actually, it’s “about” many things: the value of childhood innocence, the incomprehensibility of serious adults (in his voyage from Asteroid B-612 to earth, the prince visits a king, a businessman, a drunk, and a lamplighter), the follies and the lessons of love. In the Sahara Desert, the Little Prince meets a golden desert fox that tells him that we see better with our hearts than with our eyes. The fox also asks the Little Prince to “tame” him, that is, to allow them to become familiar and friendly with each other.

I am tamed by cats. I live with them. Note that I do not say that I “own” cats. Cats are their own beings, as are the dogs and fish and gerbils and parrots and other critters that may live with us. Do farmers and ranchers really own their chickens and cows? I don’t think so. They’re our kin. Continue reading “A Feline Petit Prince by Barbara Ardinger”

Soror Mystica: New Myth for a Changing Earth by Gael Belden

Once, when my life collapsed around me, as life is wont to do at times, I began creating clay images, placing them near the headwaters of watersheds around the United States. I called this project 100 Clay Buddha’s and it seemed at the time an incantation and a prayer for water, for the planet.  Later, I came to understand that I was also re-figuring my life, image by image, waterway by waterway.

I was also working at the time with particular koans, myths, and fairy tales because they speak not only to the personal, but to the collective –to the ways things have been over time. The hero’s journey monomyth, although genderless in its most distilled terms, seemed, though its imagery, to speak mostly to the theme of the outer quest (slaying dragons, returning from battle, and whatnot). I felt as a woman, however, my journey had to do with a descent into the Great Below and with that a dying into something new. Continue reading “Soror Mystica: New Myth for a Changing Earth by Gael Belden”

Painting Baby Suggs by Angela Yarber

Each month I am writing an article that discusses one of my Holy Women Icons, which are an array of icons painted with a folk feminist twist.  These Holy Women Icons are comprised of biblical women, such as the Shulamite, feminist scholars, such as Mary Daly, artists, dancers, and women from mythology and literature.  This month, I’d like to focus on a holy woman whose preaching embodied eschatological imagination and whose dance liberated broken bodies.  This holy woman cannot be found within the confines of scripture or met in the flesh.  Rather, her preaching and dancing are found within the pages of Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved.  If ever there was a holy woman who preached on behalf of all those broken and bound it was Morrison’s stunning character, Baby Suggs, holy.

Eschatological imagination is a communal foretaste of resurrection that does not suppress the social conflicts and injustices of racism, poverty, slavery, and privilege.  Through the preaching and dancing of Baby Suggs, enslaved bodies are redeemed and transformed into resurrected bodies.  A slave herself, Baby Suggs leads all the black men, women, and children to a clearing each week for worship.  After inviting men to dance, children to laugh, and women to cry, she offers up one of the most beautiful sermons on behalf of her enslaved community.  Morrison describes the efficacy of Baby Suggs’ message, saying:

She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more.  She did not tell them they were blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glory-bound pure.  She told them the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine.  That if they could not see it, they would not have it. Continue reading “Painting Baby Suggs by Angela Yarber”

A Tale of Power and Beauty, Part II: Snow White by Amanda Kieffer

This is a moment we all face—the moment when we slay the enemy, only to realize we have slain ourselves and the enemy is still at large.   

In Part I of this blog, I analyzed the themes of power and beauty in the film Snow White and the Huntsman in relation to the character of the Queen.  In Part II, I would like to continue exploring these themes in light of Snow White’s character and her relationship with the Queen. That Snow White’s power is her beauty is clear.  True, it is stated right up front that Snow White is admired throughout her father’s kingdom “as much for defiant spirit as for her beauty.” However, it is her beauty that grants her agency and power, not her free and defiant spirit. The battle scene in the climax of the film illustrates this connection between power and beauty well—as Snow White drives her dagger into Ravenna’s heart she repeats the mantra: “By fairest blood it is done; by fairest blood it is undone.”  After Ravenna breathes her last, we see Snow White looking into the mirror on the wall, the victor, the fairest. Her beauty has allowed her to ascend to power. Her beauty has allowed her to defeat Ravenna. We are left wondering—who has won exactly?
Continue reading “A Tale of Power and Beauty, Part II: Snow White by Amanda Kieffer”

Rien n’est parfait  by Barbara Ardinger

What le renard teaches le petit prince is that when people tame each other, they spend time together and get to know each other. It’s not power-over, but power-with. We become important to each other…. The world is made more sacred. That’s what we pagans and good, honorable people in the other religions who talk to each other without preaching are doing.

In Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by the French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the little prince takes advantage of the migration of wild birds to leave his home, the tiny Asteroid B 612, because he running away from a vain and fickle rose. After he arrives on earth, he sees a whole garden of roses, and it breaks his heart because he thought his rose was unique in all the world. When he returns to the desert where he originally landed, he meets le renard, a very wise fox. The fox tells the prince that they should “tame” each other. “Apprivoise-moi,” he says, “tame me. Let us create ties so that we know each other.”[i]  Continue reading “Rien n’est parfait  by Barbara Ardinger”

OF POWER, GOOD COUNSEL, AND WISDOM by Daniel Cohen

In the Jewish and Christian traditions, Wisdom (Hochma in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek) is a female figure who is an aspect of deity. This has been forgotten for many years, but people are beginning to re-discover Her.

There was a time when Power and Good  counsel walked hand in hand. That was the springtime of the world. In those days men and women honoured each other and honoured also the living world. The sun, moon and stars, the winds, the waters, and even the rocks themselves were known to be alive. In those days Death was no enemy, but a friend to be welcomed when She made the invitation to visit Her country.

But Good Counsel became pregnant, and Power began to be afraid. He feared first that the coming child would take Good Counsel away from him. And then he feared that their child would so well combine the features of the two of them that it would in due course put him down from his place.

Power devised a plan. He opened his mouth to its widest, and pushed Good Counsel in, swallowing her whole. He now felt free of his fears. He began to claim that all the good counsel in the world now belonged to him, and so he declared that it was only fitting he should rule all the world. Though many opposed his claim, he persuaded, and sometimes bullied, others into believing that this opposition was due to bad counsel. And so, though many grumbled and secretly worshipped elsewhere, he set himself up as ruler of the world. Continue reading “OF POWER, GOOD COUNSEL, AND WISDOM by Daniel Cohen”

A Tale of Power and Beauty, Part I: The Queen by Amanda Kieffer

A closer look at Snow White and the queen reveals that these women have a common enemy that neither is either willing or able to perceive—the patriarchal lie that a woman’s power is synonymous with youth and beauty. 

A couple of weeks ago, to bide some time, I went to see Snow White and the Huntsman, the latest expression of the classic Grimm Brothers tale, “Little Snow White.” Expecting a mediocre experience, I was unprepared for the complex emotions that followed me out of the theater. Don’t misunderstand me: the film was mediocre.  But it also provided some poignant opportunities for me to reflect on my own feminist journey and to ponder some essential feminist themes.  While, Snow White and the Huntsman does offer some acute depictions of the reality of women’s lives, the film as a whole misunderstands these interpersonal dynamics, fails to acknowledge the true source of oppression and, in the end, offers up two lead female characters neither of which is liberating.  One is real but vanquished, the other unreal but victorious.

There are a number of elements in this film, which, in the barest terms, might hint at a genuinely appealing picture of female empowerment.  There is a powerful queen, who even above the male characters is the most complex and sympathetic.  She enjoys vast amounts of power and independence.  In this film we also encounter a Snow White who traipses around in pants and a torn up dress, which is delightfully ambiguous.  Continue reading “A Tale of Power and Beauty, Part I: The Queen by Amanda Kieffer”

Happy the Land That Needs No Heroes by Daniel Cohen

A story that follows on from my version of Perseus and Medusa…

We are blind now, my sisters and I.

He came to us, the hero, the shining one, Perseus, proud in his strength, bright as the two lightning flashes on his tunic.

There were three of us, three sisters known as the Graiae. We had always had only one eye between us, which we passed from one to another, yet we saw more clearly with that one eye between three than many did with two eyes to themselves.

And we saw him for what he truly was.

“Where is she,” he demanded.

“Who,” I asked, though we knew well what it was he wanted.

“Medusa. She whose snakes creep in and poison our good and wholesome society.”

We laughed at the way he saw the world, and I answered “No.” I spoke for us all, since at the time I had our one tooth.

But then I made a mistake. Wishing my sisters to see him, I took out the eye so as to pass it to one of them. But he grabbed the eye as I tried to hand it on. Continue reading “Happy the Land That Needs No Heroes by Daniel Cohen”

Where Did the Gods Come From? by Barbara Ardinger

A man in the group leaned forward and asked, “But how did the Goddess get overcome?” So I told him. Young “warrior heroes” came galloping out of the Russian steppes and the Caucasus Mountains, including Afghanistan, which no one (not even Alexander the so-called Great) has ever conquered. The boys were carrying their thunder-solar-sky gods with them.

I attended a book club at a beautiful metaphysical bookstore a few weeks ago where we discussed the conquest of matrilineal civilizations by the patriarchy. A man in the group leaned forward and asked, “But how did the Goddess get overcome?” So I told him. As my friend Miriam Robbins Dexter writes in her essay in The Rule of Mars, young “warrior heroes” came galloping out of the Russian steppes and the Caucasus Mountains, including Afghanistan, which no one (not even Alexander the so-called Great) has ever conquered. The boys were carrying their thunder-solar-sky gods with them. Those gods included Jehovah, Zeus, Jupiter, and Ares. (Allah arrived later.) Some of these young “heroes” were outlaws “who live[d] at the edge of society and are connected in legend and myth to wolves, dogs, or other animals.”[1] Dexter does not use the term “biker gangs,” but that’s what they were. Testosterone-crazed invaders out to have a good time. They ran over every goddess and temple in their path, and to make themselves seem more legitimate, they “married” former Great Goddesses (like Hera) to their thunder gods (Zeus). Their gods are famous for hurling lightning bolts, enticing their generals to invade peaceful, Goddess-worshipping lands (like Canaan), and populating their new turf via rape, which is how the innumerable sons of Zeus were conceived. More recently, during the last two or three millennia, one of those gods has inspired his prophets and preachers to roar about sin and hell and idol-worship and punishment. The new gods and their carriers thus planted the seeds of warfare in society and its literature. I describe one such invasion in the prologue of Secret Lives, where after a horrific vision that causes her the blind herself, the shaman sends her people out into the world to escape the coming hooligans on their horses and become the secretive, dark “little people” of Europe. Continue reading “Where Did the Gods Come From? by Barbara Ardinger”

Maiden and Monster by Daniel Cohen

 A story that follows on from my version of Perseus and Medusa…

Perseus flew on, away from Medusa. He gave thanks to Athene that he had understood her words, “It is necessary that I have the head of Medusa. Therefore I bid you seek her out”, just in time to avoid a killing.

He flew across the sea until he reached a rocky coastline, the boundary of a fertile kingdom. Here he landed and was given hospitality by the king and queen. Though they made him a welcome guest he could see that they were greatly upset and he asked why. He learnt that they had offended the Changeless Changeable Ones, the Goddesses of the Sea. They had sent out a sea-serpent and demanded that the princess Andromeda be given to the monster. The king and queen begged Perseus, who they could see was a hero, to aid them and he agreed.

Next morning Andromeda was taken to the seashore and chained to a rock. She asked them not to chain her, saying that it was not necessary and that the monster was her fate. But they were afraid she would run away and bring a worse disaster on the land, and they would not listen to her.

Perseus leapt lightly into the air on his winged sandals, while the king and queen and all the people retired to the safety of a cliff-top. Perseus looked at Andromeda as he waited for the monster – as she stood there so calmly the tall grey-eyed young woman seemed to him like a mortal image of Athene. He looked out to sea where great waves were coming in as the monster approached. The monster in some way reminded him of the Gorgon. He waited for the monster to come closer. Continue reading “Maiden and Monster by Daniel Cohen”