art

Woodspriestess: She is Crone

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Molly

Crone
Wise woman
Sage woman
Grandmother

Her cloak of many colors
Is woven from the threads
Of a million stories
Part of the fiber of her being

Her righteous anger is carried
In the soles of her feet
No longer apologetic
She walks with purpose

Like water upon rock
Time has made its mark
Left its patterns on her body
Carved her away
To her most essential self

Around her waist she gathers
Her girdle of power
She holds her wise blood
Her cells imprinted
With the memories and potential
Of a thousand generations
Children have written upon her body
And she carries it well

These breasts have fed
The world
These shoulders have borne
Heavy burdens
These hips have cradled infants
Have carried children
And danced with friends and lovers

She who changes
She cannot be pinned down
Her multicolored cloak
Shifts its pattern in the breeze
Carrying the voices
And the wisdom of the years

She wraps her cloak of stories around her
Scoops up dreams with wide arms
Tilts her face to the sky
Whispers a blessing on the wind

She picks up her staff of memory
She sings the song of experience
And she takes another step
In the river of time…

I hoped to have more time to write tonight and to expand my thoughts on the Crone. I’ve been wanting to make a new sculpture ever since a reader posted and asked if I’ve ever made a Crone sculpture for someone going back to school. I’m also on the Crone lesson in my Triple Goddess class at OSC, a class that encourages explorations of the triple goddess archetypes through creative expression rather than more academic discourse (the academic discourse came in the Introduction to Thealogy class—the hardest class I’ve had so far!). Late last night after I had such a sucky day, I picked up a rock off the bookshelf and went to toss it outside because it didn’t belong there. It had been colored on by children and had a little face on it and scales. As I held it though and realized it could be stood on edge, I found one remaining scrap of clay in my almost empty box and I made my Crone. Her cloak is supposed to be a bit like butterfly wings, thinking of the menopause metamorphosis described in Women’s Rites of Passage. I purposely left the child-drawn monster face on the bottom exposed, because, she has been written upon by children, was the first line to come to mind when I saw that. And, it makes me smile, because it is like her little secret.

As I worked on her I kept singing…

Old and strong

She goes on and on and on…

Then, tonight I got some bad news about my own grandmother and it made me think that perhaps I’d actually been writing and sculpting for her without knowing it yet.

And, finally, in the not-too-understood augurs from the woods, I found these stones lined up just like this went I went down to the woods to take photos of my Crone. Kind of a Triple Goddess right there, right?!

Categories: art, nature, poems, readings, sculpture, theapoetics, woodspriestess | 3 Comments

Woodspriestess: Echoes of Mesopotamia

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Molly

Custom sculpture for a Facebook follower 🙂

Echoes of Mesopotamia
small figures from ancient places
ancient times
and ancient faces
ancient words
and ancient wisdom
still flowing in my veins

Clay in my hands
clay in her hands
running on the rivers of time
spiraling in the mysteries of being
spinning in the eddies and ripples of eternity

I have a strong emotional connection to Paleolithic and Neolithic Goddess sculptures. I do not find that I feel as personally connected to Egyptian and Greek and Roman Goddess imagery, but the ancient figures really speak to something powerful within me. I have a sculpture of the Goddess of Willendorf at a central point on my altar. Sometimes I hold her and wonder and muse about who carved the original. I almost feel a thread that reaches out and continues to connect us to that nearly lost past—all the culture and society and how very much we don’t know about early human history. There is such a solid power to these early figures and to me they speak of the numinous, non-personified, Great Goddess.

What were they thinking? Those ancient woman who transformed stone into potent and enduring images of the Goddess. Who crafted with their hands, something that persisted for 5,000, 10,000, 15, 000, 20,000, 30,000 years. Images so compelling that they reach across time, space, and understanding to say hello. Who made them and what was she thinking? Who am I and what am I thinking? Perhaps it is encoded in the layers of our being. Carrying on a legacy. The next link in a chain that spans the centuries and that is beyond the reach of history.

During our last women’s circle meeting we talked about our personal cultural histories and we began work on “sacred bundles” that we will continue to add to throughout the year-long course. I added photos of my ancestors, a fossilized stone shell, (because the Earth itself represents the shared cultural history of us all!), and one of my own Goddess sculptures and I tied the bundle with a Goddess of Willendorf necklace. I surprised myself by bursting into tears when I tried to explain the significance of my items, feeling the swift swirl of time and how those grandmothers in my pictures are now gone, but they were people, just like me. I also shared about the deep connection I feel to the land I live on and how my parents moved here in the 1970’s, so maybe this isn’t really where I “come from,” but that this is where my blood and roots belong. I continued crying as I described how when I sculpt my little figures, I feel like I’m part of an unbroken chain that stretches back at least 35,000 years, from the person who carved the Willendorf Goddess, all the way down to me with my rocks and clay. Later that week, my dad said he needed to talk to me and he shared that in our family history it is really only HIM who “broke the chain” of being “from” this exact patch of the Earth, here in Missouri. He was actually the only member of his side of the family in a long time who wasn’t born here and that, in truth, six generations of my family were born, lived, and died within a 25 mile radius of this very hillside that I find so meaningful. He said that he feels like his blood called him back here and he returned to this land as a young man and raised his own children here because it called so powerfully (I was born one mile from where I now live). So, he said, no wonder you feel like this is your cultural heritage and where you belong. Your lineage is right here, right where you like to be.

When I was taking a Goddess history class at OSC, I wrote the following about the common use of red ochre on Goddess figures:

As I saw the slideshow and reflected on goddess figures I have known and loved, I was suddenly struck by the realization that the walls of my home are, in a sense, colored with red ochre. We live in a straw bale house and the walls are plastered with an earthen plaster that include the red Missouri “clay dirt” that is a feature of the Ozarks region in which I live. The clay is red because of iron oxide, which is what red ochre is defined as. I looked at the Goddess of Willendorf on my altar and at her rich reddish color that exactly matches the shade of the earth on my bedroom walls. No wonder I feel such a deep, personal connection to these ancient figures—quite literally, some part of me identifies Her with home!

Last month when I shared a photo of some of my Goddess sculptures on Facebook, someone left a comment saying simply: Echoes of Mesopotamia. And, I really liked that.

Goddesscraft.
Womancraft.
Lifecraft.
Who molds who?
Who sculpts who?
Is it just one beautiful dance
of exuberant co-creation?

Expansive memory,
silent witness,
inner wisdom,
embodied connection
solid space
all twisted together
in an incredible tapestry
of time
culture
power
and life.

Today, in the woods, I carried some of the sculptures I’ve made recently and am getting ready to ship to their new homes and I offered this prayer for them:

In this place of elemental peace
with the earth, stone, trees, sky
as my witnesses
I bless, dedicate, and consecrate
these sculptures.

May they go forth
in wisdom
love
grace
and peace

May they bring a message
may they carry with them
the loving intention
with which they were birthed
and may they go forward
to speak to those who need to hear from
to enter the hands and homes of other women
with love, joy, power, and connection

May they recall deep wisdom of deep places
bright kindness
of bright spaces
and may they be just
what another woman needs

Categories: art, blessings, Goddess, nature, OSC, prayers, sculpture, spirituality, theapoetics, womanspirit, women's circle, woodspriestess | 6 Comments

Woodspriestess: Behold

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Molly

Behold this circle of women
it is blessed
behold this joy
it is blessed
behold these messages of peace
understanding
and empowerment
it is blessed
behold this circle
behold the women
behold the power
it is blessed.

May these sculptures take flight. May they draw up the power of this sacred space. May they draw upon the energy of these woods and these stones. May they soak it up and may they carry it with them to their new homes. May they carry the message of love and intention with which they were birthed. May they carry that message into other waiting women’s hands. May they speak clearly, truly, and deeply to those who need to hear from them.

Behold this circle
it is blessed

Categories: art, blessings, poems, prayers, spirituality, theapoetics, women's circle, woodspriestess | Leave a comment

Shekhinah Mountainwater

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Molly

Make for yourself a power spot
Bring you a spoon and a cooking pot
Bring air
Bring fire
Bring water
Bring earth
And you a new universe will birth…

–Shekhinah Mountainwater in The Goddess Celebrates by Diane Stein

It took me a lot of years of interest in Goddess spirituality to eventually discover Shekhinah Mountainwater and when I did, she’d already passed away. I bought her book Ariadne’s Thread on Amazon and fell in love with it. In the book I quote above, Shehkinah describes herself in this way:

“…I have taken vows to be a full-time priestess and Goddess-worker. I teach classes, make ceremony, develop calendars and culture, write, play music, create art and poetry. I long for a society where women and men are free to be themselves, to be creative and loving and fulfilled in all their great potential…” (p. 86)

Some writings from Shekhinah are available at this link.

I also completely fell in love with her womanrunes system. I have included scans of them here before:

And, after writing my name with them, I then decided to make a goddess priestess sculpture with all the womanrunes on her skirt (each family member also made a little pocket token with our names and special symbols during one of our “family full moon fun” events).

I then made a mini-priestess with some significant womanrunes on her skirt to take to the Gaea Goddess Gathering in September. I was going to put her into a medicine bundle there, but I decided not to do that and she still comes out to sit next to my computer while I work sometimes.

I revisited the womanrunes when I crafted my 2013 full moon calamandala:

and then again when my kids and I drew designs for MakIt plates for a Christmas party project.

And, finally, during our fall women’s retreat, we each made a full set of clay womanrunes that my mom then fired in her kiln. Here is a picture of my own set after the first firing:

She offered to re-fire mine while firing some other things and I wanted her to do that since it would make them darker and little smoother.

Just out of the kiln!

Womanrunes re-fired (save one that I missed and left in the bag by mistake!)

I’ve been inspired by this to start working on my own personal rune symbol system 🙂

—

Update: eventually my work with Womanrunes evolved into a real book!

Categories: art, Goddess, ritual, spirituality, womanspirit, women's circle | 37 Comments

Winter Blessings!

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Molly

Categories: art, blessings, quotes, spirituality, womanspirit | 4 Comments

A night wind woman…

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Molly

“…Look at me
I am not a separate
woman
I am a continuance
of blue sky
I am the throat

of the Sandia Mountains
A night wind woman
who burns
with every breath
she takes.”
–Joy Harjo in Open Mind

I recently made these sculptures and my mom glazed and fired them for me this week. Usually I work in polymer clay and regular clay was more difficult to work with, but the results are very pleasing. I love them!

Categories: art, poems, quotes, readings, spirituality, theapoetics, womanspirit | Leave a comment

2013 Moon Calamandala

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Molly

This post is part of an assignment for my Birth-Death-Regeneration: Triple Goddess class at Ocean Seminary College.

First, I considered the relevance of the triple goddess concept and maiden, mother, crone archetypes/stages in my own life. I appreciate the expanded concept of the Women’s Wheel of Life elucidated by Elizabeth Davis and Carol Leonard and find there is more room within their construct for women to identify with the Wheel. The expanded wheel includes:

The Women’s Wheel of Life
(Amazon affiliate link included)

The Daughter
The Maiden
The Blood Sister
The Lover
The Mother
The Midwife
The Amazon
The Matriarch
The Priestess
The Sorceress
The Crone
The Dark Mother
The Transformer

Women’s Rites of Passage: Reconnecting to the Source of Feminine Power
(Amazon affiliate link included)

However, I also find the original Triple Goddess concept is still useful. Why? Simply because in very, very broad ways, they encompass the three blood mysteries of womanhood and serve as clearly recognizable transition points in my own life. My life IS in fact divided into three distinct stages. Before menarche and after menarche are distinctly recognizable in my memory. A couple of months ago I finished working through a Women’s Rites of Passage workbook and in it we were asked to explore our relationship with menstruation. I was surprised to discover and write the following:

I was shocked to discover during the first menstruation meditation that there is a clear division in my bodymind between before menstruation and after and that after involves less happiness and more confusion and angst and altered relationship to my body. In the meditation I saw/experienced myself as carefree and happy prior to menstruation and also eagerly awaiting her arrival. Post-menstruation I recalled the intensely painful cycles I experienced, the feeling as if I was “sick” when I had my period, and no longer feeling in blissful harmony with my body. Giving birth in power and joy helped me reclaim my body joy, but it is only in the last year that I’ve begun to consider that moontime itself might hold sacred wisdom and opportunity for connection…

As referenced, giving birth is also a distinct, transformative and intiatory rite in my own life. As with menstruation, I also observe a definite distinction between before motherhood and after motherhood. And, in many ways, I am not the same person I was before going through this rite of transformation.

Finally, while I’m not to the Crone stage yet, I can sense that this will be similar only it will likely represent the division between life as a mother with children at home and life as a mother with adult children.

I wish to acknowledge that I know that many women do not become mothers for a variety of reasons, so they may in fact feel excluded from the very transitions and distinctions I describe above. That is why I prefer Davis and Leonard’s exploration of 13 archetypes. And, it is not my intention to make any reader feel excluded or overlooked by the Triple Goddess image, just to explain how I am able to see her represented in my own life’s trajectory.

As I have described previously, within my circle of friends, we have been wonderful for some time at celebrating the Blood/Women’s Mysteries. We have Mother Blessing ceremonies for each pregnant woman as well as maiden ceremonies for our girls who are coming of age. My mother and her friends had a coming of age ceremony for all of their daughters when I was 13 (and my sister 11) and it was very meaningful for us. Two years ago, I facilitated a blessingway ceremony for all of my friends’ 10-12 year old daughters follow a series of Meetings at the Moon classes. We also had a new SageWoman ceremony just this month to honor the wise women among us. One of my goals is to have a regular monthly Moon Circle–to bring some of that sense of celebration and power from our Mother Blessing ceremonies more fully into our lives and to celebrate the fullness and completeness of women-in-themselves, not just of value while pregnant. (In January 2011 some friends and I did begin holding quarterly women’s retreats loosely based on the seasonal cycles, with the intention of perhaps having this become a monthly circle, and with the intention of celebrating our lives, whatever the stage or experience.)

As I read the material for this lesson, I was thinking about the wheel of the year and about the woman’s wheel of life and I decided it was time to make my 2013 Moon Calamandala drawing! It seemed like the perfect time! The Moon Calamandala (TM* 😉 ) includes the dates of each full moon in 2013. It also includes a variety of “womanrune” symbols to pictorially explore what our family would like to bring into our lives during each quarter. In the classes I teach, sometimes I encourage my students to think in circles rather than in lines. To me, this is what the Moon Calamandala represents as well. Here, we see the year as a cycle, a circle, another turn around the sun, rather than as a series of linear boxes as a graph, implying a distinct beginning and ending. The four goddess images represent the seasons and the four quarters of the year. Within each quarter are that quarter’s moons and the womanrunes symbols I chose to indicate family hopes, dreams, or plans for that part of the year. The waxing and waning moons are also indicated symbolically.

My 2012 Moon Calamandala (above) and the 2013 drawing ready to go into the frame. You can see a larger image and description of my 2012 calendar in this post, which was part of an assignment for a different class at OSC.

On the wall!

Seemingly appropriate for the Mother turn of the wheel, I received much assistance from my littlest one as I was completing the calamandala:

Womanrunes

*I think I may have just invented this new word 😉

Categories: art, family, Goddess, OSC, spirituality, womanspirit, writing | 2 Comments

Invocation Poem

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Molly

by Lee Lanning and Nett Hart

We honor the energy of the elements within us.

We are earth, We are dark, we are heavy, we are substantial.

We are grounded.

We are water. We are fluid, we are clear, we are vital.

We are renewed.

We are fire. We are bright, we are hot, we are intense.

We are inflamed.

We are air. We are light, we are movement, we are open.

We are changed.

—in the book Casting the Circle by Diane Stein

Categories: art, blessings, invocations, nature, prayers, quotes | Leave a comment

Making Your Own Sistrum

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Molly

In ancient Egypt, priestesses used a sacred rattle-like instrument called a sistrum. Similar rattles were also used ceremonially in Africa and by shamans of various cultures. I learned about sistra when reading Karen Tate’s book Walking an Ancient Path. She refers to using a sistrum as a modern-day priestess to cast a circle, to invoke the four directions, and to cleanse houses and sacred spaces. I was immediately intrigued and did a little online research. My eye was immediately caught by a primitive style of sistrum made using a forked cedar stick and I became obsessed with making one of my own. Last weekend, Mark and I went out into the woods where we’d cut down some cedar trees earlier this year and we found piles of perfect forked sticks to use. First we peeled all the bark off which took several hours. Mark discovered that underneath the bark, his stick had been “carved by nature” (i.e. bugs!) in very, very cool patterns.

We drilled holes in either side of the forked branches and poked wire through on which we strung a variety of beads, charms, and stones.

They weren’t satisfyingly jingly enough, so Mark cut out some circles out of a sheet of brass and drilled holes through the middle. That was the perfect touch!

I was ridiculously pleased with my results. I absolutely love it!

I fancied mine up by wiring three awesome clay Goddess beads on the outside and adding a ribbon and handmade pewter spiral bead.

This was a fabulously fun and enriching project! I highly recommend it. Coincidentally, or cosmically, we collected 12 extra forked cedar sticks in the woods and I think that is just perfect for making these at our fall women’s retreat. We just randomly collected them until we felt done and I said, “I probably need about twelve of these if we’re going to make these at our retreat.” We counted them and…amazingly…there were exactly twelve of them! So, I think it is meant to be 🙂

Categories: art, nature, ritual, women's circle | 1 Comment

The sum of human culture…

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Molly

Thousands of years
of history have passed…
and during all that time
human beings
have fought, killed
plundered and wronged each other
in every possible way.

Of such stuff history is made.
But also during that time,
other human beings
have quietly and patiently persevered
in the development
of the arts, crafts
inventions, ideas and programs.
From these millions of creative persons,
most of them unnoticed and unknown
in the upheavals of history,
have come the good and lasting things
in the sum of human culture.

–Barbara G. Walker in Life Prayers

3-D journaling, my birth art series

Categories: art, readings, theapoetics | Leave a comment

Everyday Goddess

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Molly

This is a photo of the back cover art from a wonderful back issue of Sage Woman magazine. I love how the women in the painting are holding classic, ancient Goddess figures from ancient times 🙂

I’d marked these two poems in the 2011 We’Moon datebook:

What Does a Goddess Look Like?

She is tuberous terracotta, she is golden twins,

sacred violins, nappy triangles tucked

at meeting of thigh and belly

snakes swing in the air

arms raised in prayer

She is a silken hair-robed majesty standing on a sea shell

Our great mother deconstructed into male fantasies and re-gathered:

milk, water, mixed with blood in barreled belly folded flesh

round red vase

She is old and rests on rock, feet braced apart,

hunched in grief, arched in anger, hands smashing stones

against the iron feet of thunder gods

She is women laughing, spilling wine, chopping onions

licking licorice, looking backwards savoring salt, satisfied, she is

mother pulling patience from the air, bedraggled hair, she is

woman stacking shocks of corn, woman making love in dreadlocks

sweeping floors sweating summer heat.

What does a goddess look like?

She looks like you, She looks like me

She looks like us in sacred conversation.

–Yvonne Pearson

Uprising

They are coming to life,

They are coming!

They are singing back to us.

And they are dancing!

Mama mia!

The Venus of Willendorf has hip

rocked open the entrance doors

of Vienna’s Natural History Museum.

She’s waltzing down the Strasse,

pendulous breasts swinging.

Her hands which have rested on them

for millennia are arcing

through the air

like two ecstatic love birds.

Meanwhile in Malta’s Hypogeum, The Sleeping Lady is waking

from labyrinthine dreams, pregnant with power for healing.

She is opening her eyes, rolling her vast thighs over

the platform sides. Snakes are spiraling from her ankles to the ceiling.

In every corner of the planet, they are breaking out of their prisons–

archaeological sites where there are no sacred rites,

vaults and glass boxes in temperature controlled rooms

where they are seldom seen and there is no touching.

They are growing back their missing limbs,

repainting themselves in the colour of life.

And they are dancing.

It is harvest time. The moon is full and fat and buttery.

She is spreading her liminal light along the pathways

where hundreds of them are streaming—

cavorting, cackling and mischieving.

Every woman who has a besom has snatched it from the closet

And is flying out the back door to greet them.

And now the Venus of Laussel and Dolni Vestonice

have joined to make an archway.

With a shimmy and a shindig, Sheila-Na-Gig

(dauntless icon of fecundity and pleasure)

jostles through first, snapping her purse

revealing and concealing her treasure.

They are all here.

Grain goddesses, crowned snake goddesses,

uterine egg-shaped goddesses,

bird-faced goddesses, birth-giving goddesses.

Dancing for our lives. Dancing for our future.

Dancing for the Earth. Dancing for the Great Mother.

–Debra Hall (this poem is offered as a prayer of liberation and healing For Aung Sun Kyi and the women of Burma)