Just visited my sister's new website where she has posted some artworks created for her Master's degree in the UK. (link on side bar to Sue Raven Art)
We are both working on the sacred and profane images of women, from Mary Mother of God to naked female bodies for Sue, and for me, a search for the sacred feminine that includes sexuality, a la Mary Magdalene, Eve, early goddess figures, our first mothers.
How is it we both ended up pursuing this subject? both from Catholic home, check. both female, check. one a major in Creative Writing, one in Art - ok both artists of a sort. Check. But other than that, just serendipity.
I'm reading Mary Renault's The King must Die this morning, the story of Theseus, son of a King's daughter and possibly of a god. Born in Troizen. The author describes the earlier Shore People who were there before the Horse people, those nomads who came riding down from the steppes to the ocean's warmer climes and conquered or assimilated the goddess-loving people.
The symbols we take for granted are so ancient. The sacrifice of a king every few years reminds me of the election process, where a president must step down after two terms of four years. We don't kill them anymore, but we get rid of them just the same.
Where is the blessing of the god mother then? where is the power of the Earth invoked? tornadoes, storms, hurricanes, floods seem to be the only symbols we are afraid of anymore. The power of the earth to disrupt our 'orderly lives', our illusion of harmony and busy work ethic productivity. We do not offer sacrifice, we do not acknowledge a higher power, except in a very abstract way. But we cower in the face of the destruction of our homes by wind and rain.
So how gain back our harmony with mother Earth?
How renounce our conquistador ways and live in peace with the grass, crops, trees? I hear the bees are dying off because they are trucked around the continent to fertilize crop after crop, and it's not pollution that's killing them but all the disruption to their hives' life. Big agro-business means bigger, better, cheaper food, but if we kill all the bees that pollinate the crops, what next?
I think the Queen Bee is part of the answer. How do we find out who or what is at the center of the hive, keeping it alive with her honey-making, egg-laying energy? And who is the fertilizer of the Queen? How can we bring our energies back into balance?
Find the sweetness within.
Find Ariadne's thread in the dark labryinth.
Or failing that, ask for help to find it.
just a monday morning musing
jenn/musemother
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