After living on the Big Island of Hawaii, I learned about Chinese and Japanese traditions that became part of the pidgin mix plate experience that is life in the 50th state.
Ways of celebrating the new year that resonated (and still do) with me are:
~Clean house (pretty much)
~Pay off debts (working on it)
~Honor family & ancestors (in my heart)
~Ritual foods (Hawaiian style Kalua Pig)
~Fireworks to frighten away evil spirits (can’t get them legally)
~Bamboo and Pine for Good Luck (I can do that)
The deeper symbolism of bamboo involves characteristics of
strength, flexibility, adaptability, durability, and persistence (ask any gardener).
returns in a new form at each new spiral of growth.
If we accept this,
we are not torn apart by the opposites.” ~ Marion Woodman
Lydia came to us with her name.
She was on her way to becoming a junk yard dog, when we learned about her.
Her retriever buoyancy and passion for children was too much for the first family.
Lydia joined ours, and became the youngest sib to two other dogs.
She brought a balance to the ruff and tuff one, and a job for the eldest, which needed a maternal herding outlet. A fine little trio. And, a LOT of energy.
Her diagnosis of untreatable cancer came suddenly this week.
I recalled Marion Woodman’s (MW) story about her own dogs, as soul animals.
And Neil Russack’s book on Animal Guides, where he writes about the capacity for deep healing intimacy between humans and animals:
“…so my own little dog kept me linked to life when my vitality was fading. When I took him with me into the country, we would take a long walk during the day, then spend the evening by the fire. Sometimes, we walked at dead of night in the dark woods, and the white tip of his tail would lead me home in the starlight. He was the one who, by helping me find my way, showed me who I was.”
Both Woodman and Russack remark on the timing, the co~incidence of the dog’s death, as a punctuation in their own individuation journeys.
Perhaps, as I just crossed the threshold of 60 years, Lydia has been with me for the empty nest Demeter depression, and the entrance of The Crone?
Animal behavior experts warn against anthropomorphizing, or projecting human sentiments and characteristics onto our animals.
Fine then. Projection removed.
But I say, what about Soul?
“Soul hears with eternal ears,
sees with eternal eyes,
smells with eternal nose.” ~MW
And I would add, Soul’s Body wags with eternal tail.
Mysterious, vulnerable, and wholly unseen, like the faces here.
“When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
~ C. S. Lewis
I take Lewis to mean it is only through time, maturation, and a deep exploration in the aquifers of the soul that babbling becomes bubbling. Bubbling up from the Source.
The ideas and images in Vox Anima have babbled and bubbled for years.
It may have been that my face has not been fully formed, enough, til now?
To speak with the gods, so to speak?
Like the Dreamer and the Dream-Maker… perhaps, it begs the question:
Simple math tells us, dear readers that are at least 20 million women
on their way to being Crones!
Lord have mercy.
Some time ago, I developed a workshop series titled “The Witch and the Queen”
(based on the witchy work of Kate Amatruda & Lauren Cunningham).
In these workshops, we pondered the idea
that we channel, so to speak,
the archetypes of Witch & Queen on our way to the Crone.
Rather than limiting ourselves to the notion to the 3 stages of woman,
could it be there is more to it?
I think so.
Our recent birthday celebration had us re-visiting the fairy tale of Snow White.
In the story, Snow White naively becomes victim to the envious Evil Queen.
The Queen in disguise, offers our heroine the apple which puts her into a deep sleep…
The Maid, is no more, or so it seems.
We all know the rest of the story.
But, it is important to recognize it is the encounter with the Witch Queen, that transforms dear Snow White into the mature adult woman she was meant to be.
I think we can draw from this as we Crone–
which is now a Verb in my vocabulary.
I aspire most days to The Queen, and in particular,
a government action taken to stimulate an economy during a recessionary period.
I borrow the metaphor for the creative process, to get the juices flowing, as it were, after a lengthy period of —
Stagnation? Stagflation? Incubation?
At any rate, some sort of, “-tion”.
Another way to look at the metaphor is the hand water pump.
As a child, my first experience of the water pump was on the deck of the family cabin in Wilsonia, CA.
Jana Botkiin The Cabins of Wilsonia
Located in the Sierra Nevada mountains at 6,617 elevation, our cabin was a refuge from Fresno’s blistering summer heat.
Built by my Maternal Grandfather’s family, the cabin served as my wild sanctuary.
I remember photos of these men in model T Fords crawling up those hillsides, like bugs, loaded with building materials!
The cabin was bare bones primitive.
A common room, with stone fireplace and built in dining table and benches (which held storage of games, cards, and books about mythology) was the heart of the place.
My favorite piece of furniture was the the suede fringe chair by the big console radio. The mammoth photo of a snarling mountain lion hung over the couch nearby. I preferred my distance from the cat.
Jana Botkin The Cabins of Wilsonia
A tiny kitchen, the size of a small closet, was the place for meal preparation and clean up.
3 Bedrooms, with strange wall art that the family had accumulated in the Southwest–very Georgia O’Keefe. Patchwork quilts made up the old brass beds. Each room had a chamber pot, in the event one did not wish to make the long trip outside and down the steep stairs to the outhouse.
The only running water to be found was out of that miraculous marvelous hand pump on the deck.
After minutes of pump priming, freshets of icy pure mountain water would emerge, never failing to delight me.
When the plumbing upgrade happened, bringing a shower and running water inside, I was deflated. Perhaps, the reconfiguration away from the source was drying to my little soul?
…C.G. Jung utilized the image of the riverbed as a way to describe archetypes.
The riverbed may dry up at times, but the water surely finds its way back to the grooves laid down over eons.
Perhaps, the beginning of this blog is like that initial trickle of water from the aquifers of the Soul.
I invite and welcome your comments as we prime the pump together.
Susan Davis Martin, M.A., M.F.T. & StillDancing... 