A Coalescence of Time and Yarn

I finished making this blanket early in the year, but have not had the opportunity to photograph it until now. I completed most of it during my six months away from social media last year, knitting a few rows each evening, which coalesced into this design inspired by Ukrainian Easter eggs. The tragic events of this year have made it even more poignant and precious, to have created such a thing. Though my maternal ancestry is Polish, I’m sure there is forgotten, or more likely denied, Ukrainian blood in the mix.

The human web we have woven is a complicated and knotted one, and I’m sure the tangles will get worse as the dominant culture collapses. But there’s a great deal of material to reweave, so many different colours and shades to knit into a new pattern, thus we are not short of bright, shining threads to do that work of renewal.

Even when I am unable to do much, except knit, or read more than is sensible, or overthink myself into a twist, I feel assured that there is meaning behind it, that I am still part of the overall pattern, and that maybe I am still weaving new life into being.

Messenger of the Invisible

It has taken me some time to complete (and then photograph) this new painting, mainly because midway I experienced (I suspect) some kind of fatigue-inducing virus, which meant—to my frustration!—that I did almost nothing for about a week. Also, it was initially intended to be nothing more than an ‘experiment’, but clearly I need to have a little more faith in myself and what I can create, for I am very pleased with the results.

Messenger of the Invisible, watercolour and gouache on gesso prepared paper (2019)

I have not been writing, and thus feel unable to say much more at present, but I am including some quotes below that elucidate some of the ideas behind this work, and what she represents. All are taken from the absolutely brilliant book I have been reading by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image (Arkana: London, 1991).

The bird who appears out of a distant sky has always been a messenger of wonder as the visible incarnation of the invisible world. In many Bronze Age myths the cosmic egg of the universe was laid by the Cosmic Mother Bird, and its cracking open was the beginning of time and space. (p. 13)

The bird was the life of the waters, the epiphany of the goddess as the deep watery abyss of cosmic space and as the seas and the rivers, underground wells and streams. The bird that flies high above the earth and the bird that swims on waters resting upon the earth linked two dimensions that were not the native element of human beings yet surrounded them above and below. The image of the bird at home in both dimensions brought the upper and lower waters together, offering an image of a unified world. (pp. 58–59)

The bird, since Palaeolithic times the messenger of the vast incomprehensible distance and so of the whole invisible world, was taken by the Minoans, as by many another culture, to constitute the supreme image of epiphany. (‘Epiphany’ in Greek means literally the ‘showing forth’ of the sacred, which is the presence of the divine recognized as immanent in creation.) (p. 124)

The moon was an image in the sky that was always changing yet was always the same. What endured was the cycle, whose totality could never be seen at any one moment. All that was visible was the constant interplay between light and dark in an ever-recurring sequence. Implicitly, however, the early people must have come to see every part of the cycle from the perspective of the whole. The individual phases could not be named, nor the relations between them expressed, without assuming the presence of the whole cycle. The whole was invisible, an enduring and unchanging circle, yet it contained the visible phases. Symbolically, it was as if the visible ‘came from’ and ‘returned to’ the invisible – like being born and dying, and being born again. (p. 147)

Witchlines: On The Tip Of The Needle

The second myth we have been studying for Witchlines is the Russian Baba Yaga tale, The Frog Princess. In this story the frog-wife, Vasilisa the Wise, has her frog skin destroyed by her husband, Ivan. She is then forced to return to the realm of Koshchei the Deathless. Ivan must go on a journey to find her; but what isn’t told is what happens to Vasilisa while she waits.  

On The Tip Of The Needle

Life waits on the tip of a needle.

The needle is inside an egg, the egg is inside a duck, the duck is inside a hare, the hare is inside a trunk, and the trunk is at the top of a tall oak tree.

The tree stands bare, poised between winter and a spring that does not come, at the bottom of a steep-sided valley where light barely reaches. A perpetual twilight cloaks the place with dimness, broken only by the pale glow of swan feathers shed at my feet. My woman-skin is all I have now, and I am cold, shivering in the damp, stale air.

A sliver of moon, neither waxing nor waning, pierces the sky, a sharp piece of bone; and I hear the rattle of Koshchei’s bones as he stalks about his realm, as naked and spindly as the old oak.

There is no movement, no breeze, only stillness. The day seems to be ending—always ending—falling towards a longed-for night, yet the stars never appear to whirl as they should. The world remains colourless, silent, grieving for the lost certainty of darkness and light. Icy water seeps up through the sodden ground to numb my feet, and exhale its reek of rot, its stench of stagnancy. My mouth is dry, but I cannot drink this foul fluid, for near me is a shallow pool filled with frogspawn on the verge of decomposing, a becoming that will not be. Beside my unrealised children, my dormant dreams, I sit and brood on my fate, holding the memory of warmth within, the memory of wings, of clean water, of life and growth and never-ending change.

With the tip of a feather, I trace meandering lines on the muddy ground. Lines that turn this way and that, swirling inwards and outwards, always moving, always journeying, seeking and finding. Lines that tell of life, and the Mystery, and the insides of bodies—mine, Her’s, earth’s. 

Koshchei the Deathless is near, and he is always hungry. I hear him gnawing on the bones of his own gaunt body, scraping at the lifeless ground with his fingernails, looking for any trace of sustenance. He moans and cries out a lament, which echoes through the valley, the song of a sad ghost, a decaying god. I pity him as much as I fear him, but I know he must die. 

As he howls, my meandering line moves towards one of the oak’s twisted roots, and that is when I see it: the rotting wood, the bark falling away, the beetles and fungi that are eating out its heart, bringing blessed death. 

The tree will fall. 

I know then that the oak is Her body, withering, turning inwards, descending back into the renewing earth. It is Her body, crowned with the magic vessel, containing hare, duck, egg, and needle—the needle that stitches the world together, threading it with lines of fate, tipped with the prick of life in death. And when Koshchei succumbs—as all life must—when he finally lets go of his impossible immortality, it is Her body to which She will draw him, back into Her embrace, into life, to suckle hungrily at Her abundant breasts. 

Postcard by Matorin Nickolay Vasilyevich (Source: Wikimedia)

Witchlines: Dancing The Labyrinth

Here is the second of my Witchlines pieces exploring the world of Minoan Crete—or Ariadnean Crete, as it should be. This prompt asked us to write about a ritual, involving bull, labyrinth, and sacred dance. 

Woman dancing in a circle (the centre figure holds a snake), clay figures, c. 1300 BCE, Heraklion Archaeological Museum
(Source: Wikimedia, by Jebulon)

Dancing the Labyrinth

Half-closed eyes under the round eye of the moon, under the gaze of the mountain, the shelter of the trees. Whirling, skirt unfurled, face upturned. The air heavy with poppy smoke, the scent of night, and the sweetness of the honey and wine we have offered to the earth.

Between us is a red thread, a sacred cord. Grasped in the hands of seven young women, led by Her—Most Holy, Most Pure—the Mistress of the Darkness, the spiralling ways, crowned with horns. We thread the air with circles. We weave ourselves in and out of time.

As we move like an eddy of water, a twist in the wind, night seems like day, rich with colour, and the moon’s light is an echo of the sun. 

This is a waking sleep.

From a part of myself that is aware, and still, I notice the great moon-beast, tethered to an olive tree. His hide seems to glisten in the moonlight, and his muzzle is wet and dripping. He snorts, stamps a hoof, tosses his head, dancing his own dance, resonating with a rhythm only he hears—ears flicking, muscles rippling. Garlanded with fragrant flowers, he smells sweetly of crocus and herbs.

I understand, now, the love held for this great bull, his pale hide and dark eyes. The blessing of his presence in this dance, to call forth what is yet to be born from the round belly of the earth, and what is to be born anew—the spark of energy that moves in and out of all things, always circling.

As we whirl we begin to feel it—a humming, a throbbing—an excitement in the air, an intoxication of life. Under our feet, we feel the earth inhale. 

The cord in our hands grows warm, sinuous as a serpent, and we thread it in a circle around the bull and the olive tree, tracing an ancient way that goes deep. We feel Her labyrinthine path beneath our bare feet, leading us onwards; we feel the labyrinth opening inside ourselves. The bull’s low bellow, and the tree’s movement in the night breeze incite us, and we move faster, faster, abandoning ourselves to Her will.

Suddenly, the Most Holy, Most Pure, She changes course, leads us inwards, ever closer to the bull; and we slow, open our eyes to see the beautiful horns reaching for the sky, the stars, drawing down the moonlight, calling in the light-in-darkness, the darkness-in-light. We touch the horns as we pass—blessing, being blessed—and the bull bows his massive head, lulled by the poppy smoke, gentled by night.

Then, eyes opened, and seeing anew—awakened fully—we orbit once more, spiralling out and away from the sweetly sleeping bull, our hair flying behind us, merging with the dark.

Below our feet, with a scent of honey and wine, the earth exhales.

White bull's head ritual rhyton, terracotta, from Gournia, 1600–1450 BCE, Heraklion Archaeological Museum

(Source: Wikimedia, by Jebulon) 

In The Dead Of Night: A Poem

In the dead of night 

  there is life and light : 

the dead dance 

Dreams whisper our desires

Grandmother Owl swallows us 

  whole

and in her belly we 

  grow

(23^rd August 2017)

Grandmother Owl, gouache on card (June 2018)