The Tresses of the Magdalene

The painting in the manuscript is quite small, and shows a woman dressed in blue in the act of cutting off her long hair. The identity of the woman is not in doubt, for in the text above her we can read her name: Marie Magdalene. What perhaps makes this modest manuscript miniature so touching is that we do not see the Magdalene’s face: it is wholly hidden behind the curtain of her golden hair. What Mary Magdalene looked like is however we imagine her appearance to be, for history has left no record – not even a written description – of her physical appearance. In the painting she remains as anonymous as in history, although the gesture of the scissors about to close around her golden locks is telling enough, and we know that were there to come a next moment, then in that moment those tresses would fall to the floor.

Why should the simple act of cutting off one’s hair feel so charged with drama? Hair would seem to have mysterious properties, for we remember that mighty Samson was conquered by the simple act of having his hair forcibly cut off. In Samson’s case, it was an act of treachery by Delilah. The woman betrays the man, and the man is robbed of his power. But this is not the case with Mary Magdalene. The act is here clearly a voluntary one: she is cutting off her own hair. It feels like – and is – an act of penitence. A true gesture of penitence brings with it the blessing of redemption, and so far we are on familiar orthodox ground. Mary Magdalene, the fallen woman, is redeemed by her deeply-felt penitence. But for whom does the Magdalene really cut her hair?

If such a gesture moves us to the extent which it does, then it would seem to point to something beyond a mere penitent shedding of locks. A woman’s tresses – or perhaps more specifically: a woman’s tresses that are on view – have traditionally been associated with wantonness. More than one culture which has its basis in religious tradition has insisted that a woman must keep her hair concealed from view, because to reveal her hair is construed as a come-hither signal. But by whom? Such cultures are without exception male-dominated: cultures in which men have made the rules to which women must adhere. And keeping to such rules is dictated by the consequences of a loss of a woman’s good reputation. It is a simple rule through threat, and ostracism can be a powerful weapon.

Traditionally, Mary Magdalene’s loosely-worn hair is a sign of her fallen nature. But if the sacrifice of Jesus redeemed all, then if it is truly so that we are all one, then so must the sacrifice of the Magdalene’s. The blades of the scissors close, and the long tresses fall to the floor with a telling finality. Perceiving that her own reputation will be tarnished by orthodox thinking throughout the centuries, the Magdalene, the closest and most trusted of all the followers of Jesus, cuts off her hair for the wrongs done to, the prejudices towards, the transgressions against, the inequalities endured by, all women.

Today, July 22nd, is traditionally Mary Magdalene’s day.

The manuscript miniature is from the 15th-century Livre de la Passion. 

No Lack of Love

Dear Ones, 

If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, rebellious...take heart. There is yet time...practice. Andele! And again. 

To begin with, take on meaning wherever you can, as though it is the air you must breathe in order to not only survive, but to thrive. Find work and events that leave you feeling well used, rather than just aggravated and angry. If on the road you encounter a sign that reads "Keep Out", understand the true nature of wisdom, consider carefully and most of the time, do not "keep out". Remember, there is almost nothing that cannot be helped or improved by love, warmth, mercy and a small but wild gleam in one's eye. 

Caveats? Beware of people with smiles that light up quickly, but drop away like black eels as soon as you turn away. Beware of grinning people carrying daggers who say they are not daggers but rather gladioli that just happen to be painted to look like daggers. Avoid those who maintain minds so narrow that they can see through a keyhole with both eyes. 

To remain strong choose able fellow travelers. Bypass whiners, blamers and complainers. Whiners trail long slimy weeds behind for everyone to trip over; blamers waste everyones time by pointing to the same problems over and over, without ever truly putting their own cajones or ovarios on the line. Complainers drain and delay everyone with petty predictabilities. Their ice cream is always too cold and their soup is always too hot. 

Elude, as well, people who nip away at your time, your resources, just a little here and there. "Surely you don't mind...." they wheedle. Mind. 

Practice mercy. Don't be ashamed to be a person of faith, whichever faith that might be. If you follow Christ, act like Christ, if you follow Buddha, echo Buddha. Whether you love Theotokos, or the Goddess, or The Prophet or study the great Rebbes--all the great ones are characterized by kindness and kinship with all, rather than by bickering, keel-hauling and killing. When you hear a politician or "reformer" disparaging the poor, the uneducated, the sick, the lonely, the tormented, the helpless--change sides. 

Rekindle forgotten beatitudes: Speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Practice Descansos y flores blancos: planting the dark ground with white flowers wherever atrocities or death have taken place. Be mindful that in la lucha, matters of deep change, God is often put on trial by detractors. Step forward as lead counsel for the defense. 

Vigor and humor are the keys to longevity, helping one to rise up again and again. Do not forget to appall your critics often: Tell them "I have worse news for you yet; there's more of my work yet to come; much, much more." In disheartening moments, remember that you can weep and be fierce at the same time. Let the tiny lights of your tears be lights on the path for others. Resist much. You will be asked to accept the conventional wisdom: "First you crawl, then you walk." Confound them all! Get up off your knees. Fly first. Soar second. 

So it may be for you, so may it be for me, so may it be for all of us. 

No lack of love,
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
On behalf of "The Grandmother of the World"

Photo: 'Masks' by Molly Kate Taylor
www.raggedwing.org

The Buddha

I wander the path

azure blooms brush my robe,

grateful for a blessing.

They are more blessed than I

though innocent

of their own beneficence.

It is my robe

which is blessed by their contact.

Above my head

yellow petals pour from the azure sky,

forms unfold in radiant gold

to light my way, so bright

they cast an amber shadow at my feet.

All around me

grasses sway respectfully,

lean and bow,

the very trees bend in obeisance...

I wish they'd stop!

Enough of this deference,

this homage extended

by all creation!

The Buddha is not for worshipping!

Were that so, then I, being a part

of that creation, must worship myself.

Sometimes, like now,

I would just like to wander,

nothing more,

enjoy things in their natural state

as others do, as others see them.

No, the Buddha is not for worshipping,

The Buddha is merely

for being.

Painting by Odilon Redon

In the Eyes of an Owl

I remember as a very young child being intrigued by the stuffed owl on the desk in my father's study. That owl always seemed to be looking at me, no matter where I was in the room. He followed me with his eyes the way the moon appears to from the window of a moving train.

My father died when I was eight, and the owl also mysteriously disappeared to unknown realms where I evidently could not follow. Perhaps influenced by this experience, owls have long been one of my favourite animals, especially the barn owl. They have even featured as characters in one of my books – but that, as they say, is another story!

Have you ever looked into the eyes of an owl? Most birds look with one beady eye at a time. With an eye on both sides of the head, they have a wide view on the world – handy for both those who prey as well as for those who in their turn are preyed upon. Not so the owl. As with a human's vision, both his eyes are in the front of his head. He almost looks at you in the same way as we would do, and perhaps for this reason seems closer to us than the chatty parrot, who seems able to 'talk', but who is really only mimicking sounds.

The owl has an observing glance, observing and inscrutable. No other bird looks at you in quite this way. Is this the reason why this bird of the Greek goddess Pallas Athena has acquired a reputation for wisdom?  It is true enough that the eagle, for instance, has a fierce look, but that look is different from the owl's inscrutability. The eagle looks out at the world. But we do not have the idea that he is ‘aware’ of his own gazing. His is the remote, dispassionate stare of a calculating hunter.

In contrast to the calculating and passionless eagle, the owl seems to wish to involve us in an unfathomable, unspoken conversation, almost as if it is seeking a dialogue. Recently I looked again into those eyes, this time those of a barn owl that was perched on the heavily-gloved hand of a staff member at our local petting zoo. What did this particular owl have to say to me? What message did it wish to convey through those night-dark eyes?

Perhaps (or so I fancied) the owl’s inscrutable gaze was a reminder to me to remain focused, not to allow myself to become distracted by the events happening to right or left. If the owl does this, then he goes hungry – and so do I. Not for my next meal, but for missing the simplicity of the moment, for not acknowledging and accepting what is directly in front of me on my path, whatever that happens to be. If I look away, then I so easily can become drawn into the emotions of others – emotions which are not my own, even if they are directed at me.

Dear, wise owl! Now I realise what golden word you uttered to me in your silence, what I see reflected in your dark eyes. It is equanimity.

An Alchemical Wedding

They are portrayed standing opposite each other with their hands touching: a crowned king and a queen. He is the gold of the sun, she is the silver of the moon. Blessed by a descending dove from starry heaven, they solemnly cross flowering emblems: sceptres of their royal status. As with the two dots or seeds contained within the familiar yin-yang symbol, each emblem is the colour of its opposite: the king holds a silver emblem, the queen a red. Red king, white queen: they are a familiar couple in ancient books of alchemy, symbolising the intermingling of red sulphur with white mercury.

But there is more to these regal two than a mixing of metals, and their symbolism is more ancient and more layered than the 17th-century books in which they can be found. They speak of an ancient truth: the truth of the essential partnership between the soul and the spirit, and the interdependence of the two. Just how powerfully this union speaks to us can be glimpsed in tales of the love between Tristan and Isolde, or between Tamino’s pure love for Pamina in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. We even can read about this couple in the Book of Genesis, albeit in a safely disguised form. Eve (the spirit) in her wisdom prompts Adam (the soul) to fall into Time, and so experience all the joys and pain of an earthly existence, and ultimately to face his own mortality, and a return to the realm of pure spirit.

The soul must know these things in order for its existence to become enriched, both by its earthly experiences and by the ultimate realisation that these experiences are only a transient state between the realms where its true nature is revealed. The soul needs the wisdom and guidance of the spirit to help it navigate its way through these realms, but the spirit also needs the soul. It is the soul’s questing, its daring and thirst for experience and new adventure, that makes it the perfect partner for the guiding light of the spirit.

If we are very fortunate, our own relationships in our life can reflect this Alchemical Wedding. We feel it when we feel that we have found our ‘other selves’ in our partners – and we have the experience, not of our partners being exactly like us, but of being different from us, but with those differences complementing our own. And perhaps the more perfectly this happens, the more it approaches the archetype of the Red King and the White Queen. The dove descends to bless us, and smiles upon that rare marvel: a match which, literally, is made in heaven!

Gaia's Agony

Upon the iron ground she lies

hands grasping the earth

to hold what cannot

be held or bound.

For what is sought

cannot be found

beneath this iron land.

She lies unmoving, blind

her face upwards

searching the sky

where in her darkness

no light breaks through.

Nor where the wings of prey

cut through the air

to scream

aaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

A sacrifice

from herself to herself

sustaining her being

with her own body.

In the space between the earth, 

hard, unyielding

and the space between the sky, 

predatory, unforgiving

she must forge her shield

from the fires of her own

surrender..

Upon the iron ground

beneath the iron sky.

Photo credit: Selma Sevenhuijsen

Cycle

For one brief day

my misty blue

fluttering veils

reflect the sky

in which I dance

Velvet blue

I wander midst

the flowers of

the realm of death

requiem

First egg am I

caterpillar

nymph am I

transformed

butterfly 

In pearl grey light

urgently quivering

with life, with death

I tear myself free

from the earth

I glide the land

through rings

of light and shade

and sense

the twilight calling

Knowing my time

is ending soon

I will fly north

lay off my wings

become a soul once more

Dazzling Darkness

The author Ursula Le Guin describes how she was once given a box by her young daughter. Without opening it, she asked her daughter what the box contained. ‘Darkness’, was the secretive reply! 

If we think of God in terms of either light or darkness, then we are almost sure to think of God as light. But to the Gnostics, God was described by the term ‘Dazzling Darkness’. To us the term seems self-contradictory, for surely it is light which is ‘dazzling’? This description of the Gnostics seems to function partly in the same way as a Zen koan – a contradictory statement the contemplation of which pushes us towards new enlightened realities. ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ is perhaps the best-known koan.

For the Gnostics, God is not the Christian creator god - the ‘God the father’. God is beyond this, something truly immeasurable, unknowable. If we even describe what God is, then what God ‘is’, is already changed by our attempts at some sort of a description. To describe this unknowable form of God, this ‘God which is beyond’, we perhaps need one word only. That word is ‘potential’. Think of darkness. Like the box which Ursula Le Guin’s daughter presented to her, we cannot see what it might contain. It might contain anything – and everything. We can neither describe nor limit what we cannot see, what we cannot know. Now we can understand the way in which God can be described as ‘Darkness’.

But why is darkness - of all things! - ‘dazzling’? ‘Dazzling’ describes the limitless potential which the darkness of God contains. To the mystics, this ‘holy dark’ was truly perceived as dazzling: something scintillating with rich creative possibilities. The mystics witnessed this glittering darkness in their contemplations (we would use the term ‘meditations’). God is indeed a ‘dazzling darkness’ out of which all else flows. Our inability to imagine what that darkness is, and what it contains, says something about our own limitations. But we ourselves emerged from that darkness.   

Glass perfume bottle 'Dans la Nuit' by René Jules Lalique

The Sanctuary of Emptiness

We tend to think of a sanctuary as being a place. Even when we talk of our own inner sanctuary, it is still thought of as being a place inside ourselves. But what if we as women find ourselves with no other refuge than emptiness? What if we feel that emptiness is all which we have left? But there is nowhere that is not in some way a sanctuary – even emptiness. And finding the courage to take refuge in this emptiness can become the greatest bond of solidarity between women.

The very fabric of our physical being – our DNA – is passed predominantly through the female mitochondrial DNA from one generation to the next. And yet in so-called developed societies it is the male side which is the recognised lineage. Australian Aboriginal society recognises its lineage from mother to daughter. Did these wise people instinctively know something which Western culture has suppressed for the sake of preserving male dominance?

So much of Western thinking has been deeply influenced by religious standards found in the so-called ‘religions of the Book’, taken to be Christianity, Judaism and Islam. All three of these religions are male-dominant, even to the extent of erasing any traces of female deities from their scriptures. Judaism grew out of beliefs which had both male and female creative deities, with female deities such as Ashtoreth sharing creative powers. But a reading of the Old Testament will now only reveal vague glimpses of this goddess. All direct references to her have been deleted by subsequent male hands. And in spite of a contemporary shift to explain the deity as being gender-neutral, God is still very much ‘God the Father’.

Where is Ashtoreth? Where is Sophia? Where is Shekinah? The shift to monotheism has only succeeded in deifying a supreme being who is unmistakably male. But Jesus himself sought to break the mould of his day by including women among his disciples. Salome and Martha were among his circle – and Mary Magdalene occupied a principal place at his side.

But the spirit endures, and the Spirit is female. It was Eve in her wisdom who caused Adam to fall. For how can the soul progress without knowing life and death? How can the soul gain ground without experiencing a human life, with all its joys and its pain? A blissful existence in Eden had little to offer the soul, and Eve knew it, even if Adam did not. And yet for millennia it is Eve who has shouldered the blame for the expulsion from Eden. In the eyes of male thinking, it is the woman who prompted the fall into sin. But it is the spirit – Eve – who showed the soul – Adam – the way to progress. 

And it is that progress which now needs to be heeded. All things serve their purpose, and the suppression of millennia is one side of the coin which is now beginning to show its other face. “Look” says the Spirit, “the new world has arrived. The landscape is changing around you.” And it is changing because women took refuge in their emptiness: in the last place which had been left to them.  Because in the end soul needs spirit, and spirit needs soul, and this is the true marriage, the sacred union.   

Invocation

Invocation

In the cracked and barren wastes

that always must be passed through

to reach the Promised Land,

we invoke you, we call to you:

Light of Darkness, Solace of Light,

Moon which guides us, Sun which blesses us,

Giver of Life, we beseech you.

In this land dry without relief

we give thanks to you

for the waters beneath these sands.

We give thanks that you are those waters.

in this land without trees

we give thanks in gratitude 

for the unexpected fruit plucked from nothing.

In this land without sustenance

we give thanks that you are the fruit

which nourishes and sustains us.

In this land without shade

we give thanks that you are the shade

which shelters and cools us.

Through your grace we discover

that this waste land bears its own seeds of liberation

before even the Promised Land is reached;

before even the taste of the old land left far behind

with its towers and temples, its fields and vineyards,

its giving wells of water, has faded from our memory.

We invoke you, Blessed One of the water-jar,

of the amphora, of the wine-press,

of the wheat, of the grain,

of the songs and laughter of our children’s games

as they played in the fields,

of the smiles of our elders

who once watched them playing

and whose smiles remain in our hearts

even though they themselves are faded into air.

In the desert of emancipation we call on you, Blessed Shekinah.

Give your breath to the breathless ones

who feel that they cannot journey farther.

Grant your sanctuary to those women

who are forced to leave their homes,

who are fleeing with their children

to seek refuge in tents and shelters.

Give your blessings to those women

who bury their own talents away for the sake of others.

Light the way for those women who search for themselves,

and imagine that they search in vain.

Enfold these women in your compassionate light,

give them their own voice once more

give them the power to sing

give them the power to believe that they can do so.

It is to Your spirit that we pray, Blessed Shekinah.

We pray for all women who are captive and long for release,

we pray for all women who are suffering through their race,

or through abuse, or through violation,

or through social or religious customs

which deny them their voice, and even their very femininity.

We pray for all women who are suffering for their beliefs,

or because of the beliefs of others.

We pray for all women who are suffering for their ideals,

or for their dreams unable to be realised,

or for no other reason than that they are female.

We commend all these women to your grace, Blessed Shekinah,

may they find solace in the shadow of your shining wings.

This Invocation has  been created as a video, set to the music of Hildegard von Bingen and can now be seen on my post:

Invocation: Hildegard von Bingen ~ Anonymous 4

The Ecstasy of Icarus

Daedalus has already created a legend. He has engineered and built an ingenious mechanical cow for Pasiphae, queen of Crete, to climb inside and couple with her favourite bull. He has designed the famed Labyrinth: that bewildering maze of passageways and corridors in which callous Theseus, hero in deed but deserting the fair Ariadne who had provided him with the means to carry out that deed, had slain Pasiphae’s grotesque progeny, the monstrous Minotaur.

This master craftsman is already a legend. But to create a myth, he needs his son Icarus. To create a myth, he needs something which Icarus possesses but which he himself lacks. To create a myth, it will take an extreme bravura gesture: a gesture of bold youth which calculating, rational, cautious old Daedalus is incapable of making.

And so Daedalus busies himself with the preparations for his most ambitious invention. He stitches and glues. He fashions feathers and wooden struts and wax. He makes wings for mortal man to fly like the gods. And when these great wings are ready, he and his beloved son strap them on, march to the edge of the Cretan cliffs, and launch themselves into the blue unknown.

Choose the safety of the middle way, the craftsman tells his son. Too low, and the waves will claim you. Too high, and the fierce sun will melt the wax, and you will tumble to earth. Choose the middle way. But it is the nature of youth to be impetuous. And it is the nature of Icarus to go beyond, to seek an ecstasy of knowing which his cautious father is forever denied.

Higher, ever higher, flies Icarus in the ecstasy of this cruel light. He wants to know the sun’s bright secrets, to know the waves’ restless turmoil, to understand the flames’ voices, and to feel their tongues lick his face. He knows a passion beyond the experience of any middle way as he begins to fall upwards, ever upwards, for ecstasy knows neither up nor down. He wants to go beyond. There, at the apogee of his flight, he becomes just another spark of light thrown out by the sun. And far below he will learn all which the journeying waves have to teach him.

Do not mourn for Icarus. His body will be carried safely to shore by the waiting sea nymphs who, themselves being immortal, recognise this fallen son as one of their own.

   'Icarus' by Herbert James Draper