After a long winter hiatus from workshop teaching, going inward and learning the lessons of Temperance and the Hermit and how to honor my body's need for stillness, there is now a new beginning. An offering. Details and the story of my newest class can be found HERE.
Come write with me.
Sort of self-portrait in needle & thread. Fingers shredded with silent hours of tedium. My idea of you only semi-materialized. Transfer of story in a million little stitches. Bittersweet Magdalene, the whole world in bloom between your thighs. Misunderstood. Crucified for love. I wanted to see you. I wanted to show you. Rough embroidery sketch of your naked heart. Your body, so much more than your body. Bare reclamation of your narrative. Your eyes invite and challenge all at once. I half-woke this morning, the liminal space between midnight and dawn, my left hand clutching frantically for the dream-needle I dropped. Stitching you even as I slept. Good Friday and I have you on my mind. Embedded in my thoughts like a crown of thorns. A day of so much sacrifice. These words to you, the embroidery, just an offering for all lost things.
I just returned home from a long weekend in Los Angeles, where I circled & shared & learned & loved with a group of magicmakers. What I want to remember from this is that the act of women gathering together is a powerful one. I see this again & again in my own life. Building deep community, interaction, & intimacy with other women gives all women greater power. Over the weekend, I got to feel this--to be a witness again to the potent alchemy of women's connections--and then, to commemorate it with a sacred symbol.
The inverted triangle is the symbol of water & women, the chalice, the cauldron, the womb. The upright triangle is fire. What I see when I look at myself and what the world sees are different—I am always shapeshifting—water in, fire out. My tarot card of the year for 2015 is Temperance. Temperance, in Rider Waite tradition, has a triangle as the heartcenter of the angel's chest. Along with all of its other symbolic meanings, this angel & this card are what I think of when I see this shape.
As for the witch's mark, by definition, "Witch-hunters often had their suspects stripped and publicly examined for signs that witches were said to have…This “Witch’s Mark” could supposedly change shape and color, and was believed to be numb and insensitive to pain. Moles, scars, birthmarks, sores, and tattoos could all qualify, so examiners rarely came up empty-handed.” From a feminist perspective, the witch’s mark was really about men hunting women to expose their bodies for their own gratification.
My own witch’s mark is of my own choosing and right out in the open as a totem for everyone to see. It was tattooed on me alongside seven sisters on a Saturday afternoon in LA when the sun hung in the sky above scarlet flowers in full bloom, above a blue sea edged by oil tankers & surfers skirting waves, above our hummingbird hearts thrumming wildwing in our chests. On a Saturday afternoon in LA, when anything seemed possible. It will always remind me of this. And of them.
Books...cathedrals of the mind.
My ongoing effort to record what I am reading for My Wild Year in Books 2015 continues...
"How little the public realizes what a girl must go through before she finally appears before the spotlight that is thrown upon the stage. Giving a performance is the least of her worries."
~Florenz Ziegfeld~