November 4, 2004
The Blood of the Mother
by Lauren Raine
just asas the Kogi have told us
gold is the menstrual blood of the Earth -- oil is the blood of the Mother
by Judy Grahn
I want to thank Judy Grahn, whose poem "The Vampires of Empire" I found in Awakened Woman's current issue.
As war continues to escalate in the Middle East, I cannot help but reflect that this violence -- this war on terror -- is taking place on the ruins of Sumer, Mesopotamia, Babylon, and Egypt, the lands of the Great Mother of the Fertile Crescent.
These were the homelands of Inanna as She made her descent into the underworld. Her sacred marriage to the land and the king was an annual event; where Isis sought Osiris, Lilith flew in the night, and Nut birthed the starry heavens. Long before Eve was shamed, before Lilith was cast into the wilderness, before women covered their faces or were told to keep silent, this was the fruitful home of the Goddess.
I think Ms. Grahn is right. Mythologically speaking, the boys are still fighting over Her blood, in Her primal power place. The very place where it all began. And the blood of the Mother is not just oil.
Dorit Bat Shalom is an Israeli artist I met who brought Native Americans to teach in Israel in the early '90's - I remember she told me they called the Middle East "the Bleeding Lands". Dorit creates international "Peace Tents", and has successfully brought Israeli, Palestine, and women from many walks of life together to share their creativity, stories, and concerns with her work. In a conversation I had with her in 2002, she asked, "How can there be peace? The Shekhinah has been driven away from the holy lands. We cannot heal without Her."
The Shekhinah, the feminine face of God, has been driven away from not only the Mideast. She has been banished by a mythology that takes away divinity from the Matrix, the Mother Source. So few recognize the enduring, unconscious message of violence this worldview engenders - from the military mind that can discuss, in all seriousness, a "limited nuclear exchange", or corporate entities that can clear-cut the last magnificent giants of an old growth redwood forest, to the banal, voyeuristic misogyny of popular media.
"The mythologies of our present culture are heading us to destruction" Art critic Suzi Gablik wrote in The Re-enchantment of Art. "We are being called upon to participate in revising the mythic assumptions we follow." Myths are the templates of art and religion, the templates upon which both civilizations and individuals name what is sacred, and what is profane. Recently, while at a motel, I did some channel surfing. My first choice was a show about a serial killer. My second was an "America's Most Wanted" program that reconstructed, in graphic detail, the rape and murder of a young woman. Only the actual rape was left out.
How is this considered entertainment? The Goddess has indeed been driven away, or we would be horrified by what prime time reveals every day. How, as Dorit pointed out, can there be peace, here or in the Middle East, when we are a humanity divided against itself? When the mythic roots of our culture do not teach us otherwise? And where is the separation between myth, and the quantum creation of reality?
It is no accident that, as James Lovelock revolutionized earth science in the '70's with the Gaia Hypothesis, the Great Mother was also being rediscovered by artists, social theorists, and the women's spiritualilty movement. The Goddess is about women, but she is also about the divinity immanent in all life upon our Mother Earth. "We are living in the Body". Performance artist Rachel Rosenthal wrote. "Not on the Body, but in the Body."
I believe each of us has a responsibility to take back our ancient roles as mythmakers. The Goddess with a thousand faces has been driven underground, but She never left us. She lives in our archetypal memories, and is reborn in our mythic imaginations. We're dancing the future into the world with the stories we tell.
Lauren Raine is a consummate mask maker and choreographer of dances of the goddess. She can be reached at Laurenraine@aol.com; visit her web site, rainewalker.com