Every time I sit down to write in this thing, I always feel like it entails constructing articles complete with footnotes and addendum.......which is one of the reasons my articles have been not very inventive lately. Having said that, I'm going to loosen up, maybe make a few subjective statements and meandering surmises, and stop feeling I have to write as if I was defending my ideas at a podium. So here's a mysterious synchronicity that involved my friend, sculptor Georgia Stacy recently.
Last week I sent out an announcement about "
Restoring the Balance: the Mask of Sedna" being published in
I'm proud of this article. It was the last event I did with the
Masks of the Goddess collection. It was also wholly infused with, for lack of a better word, a kind of numinous presence. I've always felt I had a duty to document and share these stories, not just the myths, although they are beautiful and significant, but especially the stories of the rituals, the performances, the insights of the people who were involved. These were collective re-mythings, shared prayers through the medium of story, performed within the liminal landscapes of theatre and sacred space. As Reclaiming members used to say when a circle was cast,
"We are between the worlds now, and what happens between the worlds can change the world."To be "between the worlds" is to be in that zone between the secular and the sacred, a "wholly" place that is fertile and
imaginally fluid. (
"Imaginal cells" is the actual scientific term for the cells that are responsible for transforming a caterpillar, immersed in its chrysalis, into a butterfly. They are utterly transformative agents of biological change.)
"I think many artists feel they are weaving some form of energy into their work. It's what psychometrists see when they "read" objects. There is an aesthetic psychometry each person does as they look at a work of art. Artworks are like batteries - if we're receptive, they can charge us. My idea of reality is that there are many, many interpenetrating dimensions."
.....Alex Grey
"Between the worlds" is a creative place, ripe with syncronicities, because the boundaries lessen.
So, what this is leading to is an email I received, after forwarding my article about the Myth of Sedna, to Georgia in New Mexico. Recently, Georgia has begun, for reasons she doesn't understand, to include whale flukes instead of wings in her pieces. Here's a new piece (this one with arms of bones, although not with the "fluke motif" in other recent works) and an email she sent me back.
Painting by Tyler Gore
