This week, the Christian season of Lent began. Ugh. Lent can be so somber and serious and gloomy. Last year, I didn’t want to place myself in that frame of mind. I was experiencing grief and self-doubt and loneliness, and felt that an extended period of reflection about self-denial, Christ’s suffering, and the sinful condition of humanity might pull me into an unhealthy depression. Also, I questioned why I should seek silence and solitude when I was already experiencing too much of it. I felt isolated.
This year is different for me. Once again, I’m entering the season with a grieving heart. I’m mourning the death of my cousin. But I do not feel isolated. I am not self-doubting. This January, I spent four continuous days with mentors and peers in academia who poured love and wisdom and inspiration into me. The women in our group sought each other out and had honest and authentic conversations about the successes and struggles in our lives. We affirmed self-care. We affirmed milestone birthdays. We affirmed our bodies, despite the physical limitations we sometimes feel. We affirmed the tough decisions some had made, the transformations some were pursuing, and the exciting opportunities that had developed for others since we last met over the summer.
It was a powerful experience, but there was pain, too. We confronted fear, rejection, anxiety, exhaustion, and frustration. I felt blessed—divinely gifted—to have an opportunity to speak honestly with my sisters in the spirit about the people and issues on our hearts: challenges with students, systemic racism and sexism, menopause, children, research questions, financial decisions, romance, and health.
If you ever eavesdrop on a conversation between my husband and me around the clamor of our four children’s voices, you will probably hear me making a tired lament: “All I want is a broad swath of uninterrupted time.” In listening to Elizabeth Gilbert’s newest book, Big Magic, on audio book I was interested by her mention that many creative people lament not having long stretches of uninterrupted time available in which to work. She quotes a letter from Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne, lamenting his lack of time and how he is always pulled “hither and thither by circumstances.” Melville said that he longed for a wide-open stretch of time in which to write. She says he called it, “the calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose.”
…I do not know of any artist (successful or unsuccessful, amateur or pro) who does not long for that kind of time. I do not know of any creative soul who does not dream of calm, cool, grass-growing days in which to work with- out interruption. Somehow, though, nobody ever seems to achieve it. Or if they do achieve it (through a grant, for in- stance, or a friend’s generosity, or an artist’s residency), that idyll is just temporary—and then life will inevitably rush back in. Even the most successful creative people I know complain that they never seem to get all the hours they need in order to engage in dreamy, pressure-free, creative exploration. Reality’s demands are constantly pounding on the door and disturbing them. On some other planet, in some other lifetime, perhaps that sort of peaceful Edenic work environment does exist, but it rarely exists here on earth. Melville never got that kind of environment, for instance. But he still somehow managed to write Moby-Dick, anyhow.
When I create a new sculpture, I am most often creating something that I need to remember or want to learn. The original figures for my Centered Mama sculpture and my Meditation Goddess sculpture were both created while at a friend’s house for a weekend work exchange as my baby toddled around. While I love making figures of mothers and babies, I was feeling a strong urge to make a goddess representation complete unto herself. It felt like a reclaiming of my non-maternal identity and a declaration of self-sovereignty. She turned out a little bigger than some of my other figures, strong and secure and independent. Then, the baby crawled over and knocked off one of her breasts, knocked her over on the tray, smashing the side of her head. I came close to crying. I felt annoyed with my husband who’d “let” him come over and destroy my work rather than noticing him doing it and stopping him. I was frustrated, dismayed, and my feelings felt hurt in a sense. First I felt like, Argh! This is a metaphor for life! And, then I realized it was not just a metaphor for life, it is my actual life! I pouted a bit and said I was just going to smash her and give up and I made some bitter faces at my husband and some long-suffering huffs and signs, but then the baby fell asleep in the Ergo, held close against my chest. I kissed his soft hair and I took my clay and started again. I reclaimed her from the smashed parts and she sat stronger and taller than ever.
She reminds me not to give up and that beautiful work can come from struggle, but also of interdependence (not just the independence I was going for!), co-creation, and tenacity. When the finished version of her, cast from the original sculpt, sits by my bed at night or overlooks my dinner preparations, she reminds me that I am strong and that persistence is worthwhile. She also tries to remind me to be calm and steady, centered and Zen, even though I more often feel like a whirlwind.
That same Saturday at my friend’s house, as my baby tentatively toddled around the kitchen, chewed on a piece of watermelon, and snoozed on my chest, I felt moved to begin creating a new Centered Mama sculpture. I had been going through an emotional rough patch, feeling buffeted by variable emotions and erratic and unpredictable in my enthusiasm and confidence. I was also feeling impatient, snappy, and irritable.
“I will be gentle with myself. I will be tender with my heart. I will hold my heart like a newborn baby child.”
This song by Karen Drucker replayed in my mind as I sculpted. The baby woke, the watermelon got dragged along the floor collecting dust, and it was time for our collaborative dinner, so I had to put her away unfinished. When we got back to our own home, I was compelled to finish her, working feverishly as the baby pulled on my legs and I said, “just a few more minutes!” to the older kids who were trying to play with him to let me work. Again and again I re-rolled the clay baby’s head, trying to make it “perfect,” and worked to lay down the strands of her hair, against of the backdrop of this often-chaotic, noisy, home-based life we’ve consciously and intentionally created together. She was created to represent holding my own center in the midst of motherhood. I will be tender with my heart. I don’t create sculptures like this because I AM so “Zen” and have life all figured out, I make them to remind me what is possible if I listen to my soul.
As I do extensive rearranging, construction, and reconstruction on my slowly ongoing dissertation project, I typed out a quote from the book Priestess: Woman as Sacred Celebrant by Pamela Eakins about her past life memories of making clay goddess figures as a temple priestess:
…to me it brought a continuation of the energy of the sacred objects of the grandmothers. I contained this energy in a new form in the dolls that would be placed upon the altars and in the graves of the daughters living now and the daughters to come…
I felt this process made my own clay stronger, too. Some of the pieces cracked in the fire because of the added ‘impurities’…but, in this case, I felt the impurities were the purest of pure and I worshipped each crack knowing the crack contained the wisdom of the priestesses who had occupied the doll-making table for more moons than I could even imagine. It contained too, the devotional energy of every grandmother who had held it in her hands or placed it on her altar. Sometimes ‘impurities’ sanctify further that which is holy to begin with.
While I tend to have a knee-jerk skepticism about past-life memories, there is something in Eakins’ words that I know at a bone-deep level as I do my own work with goddesscraft:
…Each goddess was imprinted with the sound of sacred life coursing through the Universe. I changed with the priestesses as the figures came through my hands. Each doll received the sacred vibration of life…For seventy-seven moons I made the dolls at the long table with the young Sisters of Nun. My hands were so fast. I made thousands of figures: beautiful little faces, etched collars of gold plates, pubic hair swirled into tiny rows of connecting spirals. They were so precious. At the end of the day, my baked clay shelves were covered with little women.
The clay goddesses healed…
This is how I apprenticed. I learned, in this manner, the art of healing. I learned that to heal means to make whole, and that becoming whole involves learning many levels of purification, balance, and reformation” (p. 32-33).
In Anne Key’s marvelous priestess memoir, Desert Priestess, she makes this important point: “It is of course no small wonder why graven images are so tightly controlled by religious traditions.” (p. 52) Sometimes I feel like this is what I’m tapping into when I make my own goddess sculptures—a resistance to tight control over graven images and over personalization of divinity as male.
I occasionally get requests to make bigger goddesses–-people ask about figures that are large altar pieces 12-18 inches tall or taller. The goddesses I make are all about three inches tall and there’s a reason for that: they fit in the palm of my hand. When I create them, I feel as if I’m part of an unbroken lineage stretching back 30,000 years to the person who carved the Goddess of Willendorf. I feel connected to the priestesses of the Mesopotamian temples who sculpted hundreds upon hundreds of tiny clay goddesses. Someone commented on my sculptures once saying, “echoes of Mesopotamia.” And, I said, “exactly.” I feel the connection between the clay in my hand and the clay in their hands, running through the ripples and eddies of time.
I’ve been inspired recently to re-read Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance, finding new bits of wisdom from it that speak to something different in me than they did the first time I read it. She writes of the attempts to discredit Goddess religion by invalidating the historical narratives or archaeological evidence: “The idea seems to be that if they can disprove our origin story, they can invalidate our spirituality…Is Buddhism invalid if we cannot find archaeological evidence of Buddha’s existence? Are Christ’s teachings unimportant if we cannot find his birth certificate or death warrant?…the truth of our experience is valid whether it has roots thousands of years old or thirty minutes old…a mythic truth whose proof is shown not through references and footnotes but in the way it engages strong emotions, mobilizes deep life energies, and gives us a sense of history, purpose, and place in the world. What gives the Goddess tradition validity is how it works for us now, in the moment, not whether or not someone else worshipped this particular image in the past” (p. 4).
The ancestry of my goddess sculptures may not be the same energy that raised temples and built monuments (or walls), it is the energy that carried a baby on one hip and a basket of supplies on the other and needed a goddess just the right size to tuck down the front of a shirt…
Sometimes I describe my life in the woods as being held in the hand of the goddess. And, I make goddesses that I hold in my hand. Am I in the palm of her hand or is she in the palm of mine? The answer is both.
(One of my all-time favorite fan photos–a rainy day traveling goddess picture, taken by my friend/SIL (this one is only an inch tall, but look how she calls in the waters of the world!)
Molly has been “gathering the women” to circle, sing, celebrate, and share since 2008. She plans and facilitates women’s circles, seasonal retreats and rituals, mother-daughter circles, family ceremonies, and red tent circles in rural Missouri. She is an priestess who holds MSW and M.Div degrees and she is finishing her dissertation about contemporary priestessing in the U.S. Molly’s roots are in birth work and in domestic violence activism. She has worked with groups of women since 1996 and teaches college courses in group dynamics and human services. Molly is the author of Womanrunes: a guide to their use and interpretation, Earthprayer, Birthprayer, Lifeprayer, Womanprayer, and The Red Tent Resource Kit, as well as three social service oriented booklets and a miscarriage memoir. She has maintained her Talk Birth blog since 2007 and writes about thealogy, nature, practical priestessing, and the goddess at her Woodspriestess blog. Molly and her husband Mark co-create original birth art, goddess sculptures, ceremony kits, and pendants at Brigid’s Grove.
I started this post just after getting back from an India trip, always very challenging because of memories that haunt me not only through their high negative recall value, but also in that I often find myself reverting to the diffident, fearful person I used to be while living there. In fact, palpitation is the first to greet me at Bombay airport even now after nearly seventeen years of being an expat. But with every trip, I also find myself evolving as a person, as a woman. And of course, it is always fun to meet up with family and old friends, all of whom I hold very dear. But the highlight of this trip was Queen.
Queen is a Bollywood movie unlike any other I’ve seen. As mentioned in a previous post, B-wood cinema if you can call it that, is made mostly of predictable, formulaic themes centering on impossible flights of fancy, not-so-subtle patriarchy, and gendered stereotypes. The good news is that in recent years, film makers have been trying to push boundaries in their own small ways, no doubt a laudable attempt in an industry where success still depends on mass consumption; box office success over critical acclaim. Queen, however, stands out in its portrayal of the protagonist Rani Mehra, a middle class young lady from Delhi (“rani” is “queen” in Hindi). Even more remarkable is that it portrays Rani’s female friends – “scantily” dressed women and prostitutes – without judgment, as human beings who are far from detrimental to Rani or the plot. Continue reading “I Am Queen by Vibha Shetiya”
“Light and Darkness” is a song written and arranged to one of the oldest known European melodies by Ariadne Institute founding Co-Director Jana Ruble, following her first Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. Every year since then, we have sung it in the caves of Crete during our rituals. A pilgrim told us that she learned it at the (Christian) Re-Imagining Conference. Last spring another pilgrim said that she knew it because her choral group sings it. You can listen to “Light and Darkness” and see pictures of an altar in a cave on a new video created by Goddess pilgrim PJ Livingstone after the 2015 spring tour.
Old Mother Hubbard Went to the cupboard To get her poor dog a bone; But when she came there The cupboard was bare, And so the poor dog had none.
From her lips to our ears.
Yawanna know why my cupboard’s bare? It’s because we’re poor! Well, not all the time. Mr. Hubbard gets a good job from time to time, and then him ’n’ me an’ the kids an’ the animals have enough to eat. But those jobs never last long enough. And yawanna know why? It ain’t just the economy (which is, yeah, pretty stupid). It’s on accounta we don’t quite look like everybody else ’round here. On accountawe don’t speak the “normal” language at home. We obviously came from someplace else. An’ the folks ’round here are so worried about themselves they don’t care about us. Some of ’em don’t like us at all. (And, I ask you, where’s the folks who look like me in the schools ’n’ the gov’mintan’ on the police force?)
Now we don’t live way out in the sticks like my friend Mrs. Shoe does with all her children. We live in the outskirts of this big city, and we can grow a lot of our own food. Lotsa times, though, we march into the big city and look around for more food. There’s lotsa food that got thrown away, perfectly good food goin’ to waste every day. That’s how I get bones for the old dog an’ good stuff for the cats, too. An’, of course, for the kids an’ the hubby ’n’ me. An’for the homeless folks who show up from time to time. Share ’n’ share alike, that’s my motto. We do what we can for who we can.
And we don’t share the “normal” religion of the folks in the big city. Most of them never heard of the Mother Goddess. Or any goddess at all, for that matter. No, they’re all enthralled by that greedy Mammon or by those other old bearded guys who stand up on top o’ that metaphorical mountain and yell down at their favorite men about invadin’ some foreign land ’r other. An’ya know what? When the folks in the city are havin’ their prayers and we happen to be there, we stand quiet-like and bow our heads (politeness counts, donchaknow) and wait till they’re done before we walk away and go lookin’ for more good thrown-away food ’n’ other stuff to take home with us. But would they stand respectful-like if we started prayin’ in the city to our Mother Goddess? (That’s what they call a rhetorical question. Don’t need no answer.)
Candlemas / Imbolc, the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox brings with it (in the northern hemisphere) the first signs of awakening spring. Here in Canterbury, southeast England, where I am living this year, the birds are already starting to sing for mates and build their nests. In Celtic pre-Christian religion, Imbolc is associated with the Goddess Brigid / Bride (and the Christian Saint Brigid), but today I suggest we pay a visit to Brigid’s Slavic sister, the Goddess Mokosh / Mokoš, who is also powerfully associated with emerging fertility in the woman, the land and the year.
As well as fertility, Mokosh and Brigid bless and protect women’s crafts and women’s work, and share attributes of healing, motherhood and midwifery. They are both Goddesses of Fate and of destiny: spinning the thread of creation, giving life and cutting the thread, like the Three Fates of Greek tradition. Both have a special connection with sheep, wool, and weaving, and of course with textiles: Brighde is honoured through the tying of cloths or ‘clooties’ at sacred wells, while a favourite offering to Mokosh was a hank of spun wool dropped into a well. In the Slavic lands, Mokosh is a key figure on embroidered ritual cloths.
Mokosh, like Brigid, is associated with wells, springs and moisture; the name Mokosh comes from the root ‘mol’ meaning ‘moisture’, and is connected with the Slavic words mokry and moknut (‘wet’ and ‘to get wet’) . Mokosh brings the water of life and protects the life-giving waters on which human and animal existence depend. In this way Mokosh gives life to plants and animals, and is often portrayed with them. She is an important Slavic Mother Goddess, embodying fertility, femininity, prosperity, protection, health, good luck, abundance, and a successful future.
Mokosh is also a warrior goddess, in her fierce aspect as a goddess of protection. One of her epithets is ‘She who strikes with her wings’. The fact that she is a winged Goddess indicates her power and that which she grants to her priestesses and devotees, to travel between the worlds in trance, dream, and vision, for blessing and for healing on behalf of the community and all who are in need. Mokosh is also connected to butterflies, symbols of transformation, and bees, symbols of priestesses in antiquity. The beautiful Slavic embroideries shown here depict some of her typical manifestations as a tree/flower/goddess figure with branches/arms/wings/wheat ears, sometimes all at once.
Slavic Goddess Embroidery
Mokosh is a Slavic sister in the same lineage of water-loving fertility deities who were so important in ancient Greece, the Nymphs and Muses. Mokosh features centrally on women’s aprons, directly over the life-giving place of the womb, on sacred cloths for the icon corner in the home, or on cloth and clothing tied to birch or willow trees in Russia and the Ukraine. All over Europe, these elements of the Goddess and the divine fertile feminine can be found, disguised but discernible, in embroideries, dances, songs, fairy tales, ritual breads and other seasonal customs.
In the Christian era Mokosh continued to be worshipped in the form of the Virgin Mary, and more specifically was transformed into St. Petka / Paraskeva / Paraskevi, ‘Saint Friday’, which links her with the Norse Goddess Freya. Friday is the holy day of both Brigid and Mokosh.
Late winter/early spring, the time of Imbolc, is one of her sacred seasons. Whether you call her Brigid or Mokosh, or by another name or none, now is an opportune time to ask her help and invoke her presence. By lighting a sacred flame, tying a cloth to a tree in a fertile place, honouring the waters of Earth which give life to all, spinning and weaving threads of creation and creativity – literally or metaphorically – we too can connect once again with the source of all, and open ourselves to receiving Her blessings.
We may not be able to see what this year will bring, but we do know that the waters of the earth, the birds, bees and animals, the food sources which nourish all life, and the women of the human family, all need blessing and protection. Brigid and Mokosh can help with this. Reconnecting with these and other Goddesses also helps reawaken the Old European worldview as articulated by Marija Gimbutas, Carol P. Christ, and others: cooperation and community, respect for nature and shared resources, an understanding of our mutual interdependence, the value of craft and creative expression, and the need for social justice to protect what is precious.
As the spring returns, may we all both receive and give abundant blessings of new life and rebirth on every level.
Russian women in ceremony
*****
I will be teaching dances from Greece and Eastern Europe which honour Mokosh and the nymphs and muses at my workshops this year in Greece, Austria, Germany, Morocco and the UK. For details of these dance events, please visit www.laurashannon.net
I thank Sylwia Geelhaar, who researched Mokosh for us in my most recent 2-year training group in Women’s Ritual Dances in Lebensgarten, Germany, and gathered together many of the images shared here.
Further reading: Barber, Elizabeth Wayland (2013). The dancing goddesses. W. W. Norton & Co.
Gimbutas, Marija (1989). The language of the goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Kelly, Mary B. (1989). Goddess embroideries of Eastern Europe. McLean, New York: StudioBooks.
Rigoglioso, Marguerite (2010). Virgin mother goddesses of antiquity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Shannon, Laura (2011). ‘Women’s Ritual Dances: an Ancient Source of Healing in Our Time.’ In: J. Leseho and S. McMaster, eds., Dancing on the Earth: Women’s Stories of Healing Through Dance. Forres: Findhorn Press.
*****
Laura Shannon has been researching and teaching traditional women’s ritual dances since 1987. She is considered one of the ‘grandmothers’ of the worldwide Sacred / Circle Dance movement and gives workshops regularly in over twenty countries worldwide. Laura holds an honours degree in Intercultural Studies (1986) and a diploma in Dance Movement Therapy (1990). She has also dedicated much time to primary research in Balkan and Greek villages, learning songs, dances, rituals and textile patterns which have been passed down for many generations, and which embody an age-old worldview of sustainability, community, and reverence for the earth. Laura’s essay ‘Women’s Ritual Dances: An Ancient Source of Healing in Our Times’, was published in Dancing on the Earth. Laura lives partly in Greece and partly in the Findhorn ecological community in Scotland.
I spent 2015 teaching an Intentional Creativity program ‘Wisdom of the Goddess”to an intimate tribe of women creatives from our local community. In December we held an end of Year Art Gala displaying a portion of the work which saw over 100 paintings of Goddesses created over a 10-moon period.
The program was divided into the cycles of Creation, Transformation and Celebration, as inspired by Hallie Inglehard’s book “The Heart of the Goddess”. Each month, through ritual, visioning and painting, we explored a Goddess that represented these cycles; Eve, Anjea, Demeter, Cerridwen, Kali, Persephone, Aphrodite, Ochun and finally, our Inner Goddess.
It took great courage for the artists to display their paintings in public. It is often hard to explain this work because it requires such deep and thoughtful exploration of one’s inner world along with a commitment to a creative practice that favours personal growth and discovery over outcome. It can be difficult finding the language to elucidate on this process that is not just about the act of painting.
It is painting to grow and heal.
It is sacred.
It honours and empowers women.
It inspires authentic creative expression.
It unites one with self.
It connects one back to the earth.
It transforms.
It reveals.
The show was a great success. A gallery full of Goddesses was surely a sight to behold! It was a humbling experience to be out and proud about our creative work in our regional, agricultural, largely conservative community. I feel it is imperative for the restoration of female empowerment to be remembering and re-imagining the Goddess by way of image and it was through Her that these astounding women artists found the courage to put their heart and soul on the wall for all to see.
The influence that image has is far-reaching and cannot be under-estimated. Image is a universal language that evokes emotion and can go as far as mobilising the masses and even change the course of history. The famous photo of ‘Phan Thi Kim Phuc’ running naked down a road after a napalm attack during the Vietnam War is but one outstanding example.
As I reflected on the years work however, I was reminded that while these paintings carry with them incredible insights and powerful messages of change, growth, discovery and transformation, the Goddess is so much more than just an image; and certainly more than just an image to mass-produce and sell. While “the strength and independence of female power can be intuited by contemplating ancient and modern images of the Goddess” (Carol P. Christ in ‘Why Women Need the Goddess’), it cannot be forgotten that She is the sacred made immanent in the natural world, expressed in the diversity of all forms of life and death. We seek Her, sometimes even travelling to the ends of the earth to find Her, forgetting that She is everywhere. She is you and me and Her sacred sites are found in our own backyards.
With this in mind I recently returned to some creative investigations I had begun a few years ago exploring woman in nature and the Goddess as the body of the earth through paint. The earth speaks and I am listening to Her stories and bringing them to the canvas to re-affirm my sense of wonder and respect for nature. My aim is to awaken an ancient memory of the sacred relationship between human and nature, for now, more than ever, it is critical that this relationship be restored. In doing so, the earth may once again be seen and valued as a living, breathing body that sustains and nourishes all life rather than being merely a commodity to be devastated and destroyed in the name of capitalism and greed. Further, these images are reminders of the interconnectedness of all life; we are not separate from the earth, but part of its’ intricate web.
The following image was inspired in part by Terry Tempest Williams ‘When Women Were Birds’ but is also an image born from a revelation I had many, many years ago when I first starting seeing woman in nature, especially in the body of trees.
“We are the birds eggs. Birds eggs, flowers, butterflies, rabbits, cows, sheep; we are caterpillars; we are leaves of ivy and sprigs of wallflower. We are women. We rise from the wave. We are gazelle and doe, elephant and whale, lilies and roses and peach, we are air, we are flame, we are oyster and pearl, we are girls. We are woman and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak.
Jassy Watson, who lives on the sub-tropical coast of Queensland Australia, is a Mother of four, passionate organic gardener, Intuitive/Visionary Artist, Intentional Creativity Coach and a student of Ancient History and Religion at Macquarie University, Sydney. She is the Creatress of Goddesses Garden Studio & Gallery; a small school for the Sacred Creative Arts. Jassy teaches regular painting workshops in person, nationally, internationally, and online based around themes that explore myth, history, earth connection and the Goddess. Her latest SOULSCAPES (TM) exploring woman in nature will be on show at ‘Dreaming Into Being’, Percolator Gallery, Paddington, Brisbane April 5th-11th. You can see her work at http://www.goddessesgardenandstudio.co
She appeared on a hill on December 9, 1531. She spoke to Juan Diego in his native tongue of Nahuatl; the language of the Aztecas. She asked for a church to be built at that very site in honor of her, the Virgin Mary. Juan Diego took the request to the local priest, but his story was not believed. On December 12, following further instructions from La Virgen, Juan Diego was able to find and pick roses not native to Mexico. He rolled them up in his tilma and returned to the priest. When he unrolled his tilma to present the roses, there on the tilma was the image of La Virgen de Guadalupe; she was as dark as the natives themselves.
Natives across Mexico and throughout the Americas endured the brutal realities of conquest, and experienced the relegation to second class citizens during the colonial period in Mexico. In particular, native women experienced oppression two-fold. This is evident in the fact that native men had privileges and opportunities within the public sphere of society which were denied to women, such as holding particular types of public service positions.
So how is it that millions of natives across the continent converted to Catholicism, the religion used by their oppressors to justify the horrors and atrocities inflicted upon them? The appearance of La Virgen to Juan Diego. She is seen as the blending of the Indigenous and European cultures. A Huffington Post article, Everything You Need to Know About La Virgen de Guadalupe, explains, “Her image has been used throughout Mexican history, not only as a religious icon but also as a sign of patriotism.” Indeed, she has appeared as a symbol even in the most pivotal of moments, such as the fight for Mexican independence and the Mexican Revolution. The authors of the study The Evolving Genre of ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’: A Feminist Analysis, also note that she has become “. . .the ideal model for womanhood and motherhood.” Continue reading “La Virgen de Guadalupe: New Feminist Portrayals by Jose Duran”
The trappings of motherhood are all too powerful reminders that, as Catherine Keller reminds us in her book From a Broken Web, mother goddesses have to be continually slain for patriarchal heroes to be born. Indeed, she suggests that conceptions of Western selfhood are based upon this symbolic matricide—so it is no wonder that breast milk might be considered abject…
Once upon time formula companies and complicit medical experts launched a serious campaign to sell more formula, telling a generation of mothers that this product was both superior to breast milk and far better for baby and mother. Some were convinced, others found formula a good alternative to breast milk given their employment status, hormonal changes, their particular baby’s needs,personal choice, difficulty producing their own milk, or the like; and still others chose to breastfeed despite criticism, like my mother-in-law, who received scorn and derision from medical personnel as the only breastfeeding mother in the hospital in which she gave birth in 1970.
Despite this effort, science has finally “proven” that breast milk, when it is possible to give it, is better for your child than synthesized alternatives. Wow. Well, the politics of believability aside, women in the U.S. are now encouraged to trust their own bodies to feed their babies and give the breast a try. In fact, every new book, article, website and internet forum, birthing class teacher and hospital nurse will tell you that “breast is best,” repeatedly, for months, asking you about your breastfeeding plan, and urging you to keep trying until you and baby get it right. A counter-campaign, this vigorous encouragement is working to undo the attitudinal changes within popular culture that placed a stigma on the breastfeeding woman. Continue reading “Breastfeeding and the Abject? by Sara Frykenberg”
“The pictures that line the halls speak volumes about the history of racism and sexism and they shape the future in powerful ways.”–Simon Timm
The author of these words recently posted a short video on Youtube entitled “Mirror Mirror on the Wall: The Legacies of Sexism and White Supremacy at Yale Divinity School.”* The video begins with a catchy little ditty with the words, “God is not a man, God is not a white man.” It tracks paintings and photographs of professors and other luminaries in the field of theology on the walls of the Yale Divinity School. By Timm’s count: 99 white males, 6 women, and 3 blacks. The single black woman is counted in both categories.
his week, the Christian season of Lent began. Ugh. Lent can be so somber and serious and gloomy. Last year, I didn’t want to place myself in that frame of mind. I was experiencing grief and self-doubt and loneliness, and felt that an extended period of reflection about self-denial, Christ’s suffering, and the sinful condition of humanity might pull me into an unhealthy depression. Also, I questioned why I should seek silence and solitude when I was already experiencing too much of it. I felt isolated.
“If there is one chant in the universe it is to create.”
inches tall or taller. The goddesses I make are all about three inches tall and there’s a reason for that: they fit in the palm of my hand. When I create them, I feel as if I’m part of an unbroken lineage stretching back 30,000 years to the person who carved the Goddess of Willendorf. I feel connected to the priestesses of the Mesopotamian temples who sculpted hundreds upon hundreds of tiny clay goddesses. Someone commented on my sculptures once saying, “
I started this post just after getting back from an India trip, always very challenging because of memories that haunt me not only through their high negative recall value, but also in that I often find myself reverting to the diffident, fearful person I used to be while living there. In fact, palpitation is the first to greet me at Bombay airport even now after nearly seventeen years of being an expat. But with every trip, I also find myself evolving as a person, as a woman. And of course, it is always fun to meet up with family and old friends, all of whom I hold very dear. But the highlight of this trip was Queen.
“Light and Darkness” is a song written and arranged to one of the oldest known European melodies by Ariadne Institute founding Co-Director Jana Ruble, following her first Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. Every year since then, we have sung it in the caves of Crete during our rituals. A pilgrim told us that she learned it at the (Christian) 
Candlemas / Imbolc, the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox brings with it (in the northern hemisphere) the first signs of awakening spring. Here in Canterbury, southeast England, where I am living this year, the birds are already starting to sing for mates and build their nests. In Celtic pre-Christian religion, Imbolc is associated with the Goddess Brigid / Bride (and the Christian Saint Brigid), but today I suggest we pay a visit to Brigid’s Slavic sister, the Goddess Mokosh / Mokoš, who is also powerfully associated with emerging fertility in the woman, the land and the year.
I spent 2015 teaching an 
She appeared on a hill on December 9, 1531. She spoke to Juan Diego in his native tongue of Nahuatl; the language of the Aztecas. She asked for a church to be built at that very site in honor of her, the Virgin Mary. Juan Diego took the request to the local priest, but his story was not believed. On December 12, following further instructions from La Virgen, Juan Diego was able to find and pick roses not native to Mexico. He rolled them up in his tilma and returned to the priest. When he unrolled his tilma to present the roses, there on the tilma was the image of La Virgen de Guadalupe; she was as dark as the natives themselves.
La Virgen de Guadalupe
Once upon time formula companies and complicit medical experts launched a serious campaign to sell more formula, telling a generation of mothers that this product was both superior to breast milk and far better for baby and mother. Some were convinced, others found formula a good alternative to breast milk given their employment status, hormonal changes, their particular baby’s needs,personal choice, difficulty producing their own milk, or the like; and still others chose to breastfeed despite criticism, like my mother-in-law, who received scorn and derision from medical personnel as the only breastfeeding mother in the hospital in which she gave birth in 1970.
