Soil Mother Fed By Her Vultures (Çatalhöyük)

I’ve been taking an extended break from art-making, so this is the last thing I painted, way back in August last year. I haven’t shared it until now because, along with a piece of writing, it was meant to be a contribution to a collaborative project. But since that is now on hold indefinitely, I’ve decided to reveal the Soil Mother in all her glory.

This is my imaginative rendering of the Neolithic town of Çatalhöyük (found in modern day Turkey), combining two motifs: a headless Mother Goddess figurine, who, to me, represents the fertility of the soil (the original found here; one of many such figures found at the site); and vultures, as depicted in the famous ‘vulture shrine’ mural, which portrays the ‘excarnation’ (de-fleshing) of bodies prior to burial (a common Neolithic practice). 

I liked the headless figures from the mural echoing the headless figurine, pointing towards the primacy of the body in early cultures, rather than the overly rational or controlling mind.

The vultures are a symbol of death as part of life, and life emerging from death. Neolithic people understood that the Life Mother is also the Death Mother—that the bountiful, often pregnant or large-breasted Goddess, also appears as the bone-white Goddess of death and decay. Vultures were sacred to the Goddess in her death aspect, and by eating the dead, transforming their bodies into the soil which gives rise to new life, they were awe-inspiring agents of regeneration. Death, though mysterious, was not to be feared, but embraced as part of the cycle of life.

I hope that the postponed project does eventually come to some kind of fruition, and this image will reach a larger audience. I also hope to get back into my studio in the coming weeks and months and bring forth more of my visions. Until then, I am just moving with the natural cycle, knowing that death and falling away is the mother to new life, new creativity.

As always, this image is available from Redbubble.

Soil Mother Fed By Her Vultures (Çatalhöyük),
watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared cardboard (2021)

The Wild Nun: Foundations

I am starting slowly, from a low-to-the-ground place.

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The future grows from the ground of the past —

The past is mother to the future, to possibility, while it holds us steadily, solidly, in the present —

It is the foundation that cannot be denied —

Only honoured and shown gratitude for the many lessons that push us onwards towards ourselves.

Tree, Merrion Square Park, Dublin, July 2005

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If it is the journey and not the destination, then it is the longing and not the attainment.

I must tend to my longings, feed them, encourage them to grow from the ground of my being, so in turn they nourish me.

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It’s not easy being a late-bloomer, often a complete non-bloomer, and occasionally dying right back down to the roots to spend time hidden and safe in the underworld, to get some good old composting done before the next furtive emergence.

The world is not always understanding of such changeability, of an adherence to inner seasons that cannot be tamed and forced into production on demand.

It’s not easy but I can’t be rushed. I have to take my own sweet time dancing with the invisible.

Words and images from my Instagram project @the_wild_nun

Our Lady of the Seeds

When I said that Our Lady of the Stars (my previous painting) was showing me the way, I did not understand how precisely that was meant. She was a diversion from the work I had planned, painted simply to use up a piece of gesso-prepared paper coated in an inky blue—the remains of an abandoned attempt at painting Solitude. Yet I think I had to paint her to be able to finally manifest Our Lady of the Seeds.

The idea-seed for this painting was planted a little over a month ago by Meinrad Craighead’s work, Sacred Hearts, the form of which suggested this figure to me, buried beneath a mound of earth, only her hands protruding, with greenery sprouting from her fingers. 

Meinrad Craighead – Sacred Hearts (1990)

Though the pose, with arms raised and hands held palms forwards—often referred to as the gesture of invocation—came from an image of Hera which caught my attention in The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford (p. 312). This also gave me the design for the dress, decorated with square ‘fields’ with dots (perhaps seeds?) pricked into the middle of each one.

I also referred to this image of Thracian Kybele from Max Dashu’s visual presentation, Magna Mater / Isis of 10,000 Names. 

When I scribbled down my initial drawings I knew immediately who this figure was, and had some idea of how I wanted her to look, with a colour scheme very similar to Meinrad’s image—reddish brown earth and green-blue foliage emerging from darkness. Yet try as I might (with three seperate attempts!), I couldn’t get the paint to behave as I wanted it to. Whether this was due to my own lack of technique, or wayward materials, I can’t say. Probably a little of both. 

Yet the potency of the image was such that I knew I couldn’t just give up. So I decided to take an entirely different approach, simplifying it to a mixture of just two colours—ultramarine and burnt umber—laying a wash over freshly gessoed paper to create an initial symbolic (albeit invisible) link between the earth and the sky. 

The day after I applied the wash I read the first message of the nine-day Novena of Our Lady of Woodstock, and it inspired a sudden realisation: the sky and the earth are not separate—Our Lady of the Stars is Our Lady of the Seeds!

Sometimes I need reminding of the things I already know.

Our Lady of Woodstock said:

You believe that plants rely upon dirt for their life, but I tell you that the Dark is dirt. Darkness bears the seeds of the cosmos in Her womb, and out of those seeds—which you call stars—all things have their being and their life.

Stars and seeds are one and the same—stars seeding the cosmos, seeds seeding the earth; the dark of space and the dark of the soil the same Darkness, the same ultimate Source of Life.

Suddenly my painting had direction and I felt far more confident about what I needed to do. She emerged without too much incident or difficulty, though with a great deal of patience and attention to detail. She is not at all as I envisaged, but entirely different, entirely what she needed to be.

I feel that I may still return to this idea again at some stage, perhaps to make another attempt at manifesting her as I originally saw her. But for now I am just glad she has come through at all.

As with all of my art, she is available on Redbubble.

Our Lady of the Seeds, watercolour, gouache and gold acrylic on gesso prepared paper (2020)

Dark Emu, by Bruce Pascoe

One of the most fundamental differences between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people is the understanding of the relationship between people and land. Earth is the mother. Aboriginal people are born of the earth and individuals within the clan had responsibilities for particular streams, grasslands, trees, crops, animals and even seasons. The life of the clan was devoted to continuance. (1)

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Having just read Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?, which argues that an extensive system of agriculture (and aquaculture) existed in Australia prior to colonisation, I find I am having to completely reevaluate my understanding of indigenous Australia, which of course is a good thing. Though it is not because I thought that Aboriginal culture was ‘primitive’ or ‘unsophisticated’, but for quite the opposite reason: I think that the development of agriculture is problematic. It very often leads to overpopulation (and the conditions for famine), systematic violence (as food surpluses need to be protected, and more land acquired to provide for more people), as well as soil degradation and erosion – and the soil is the very thing all terrestrial life depends upon. 

Further, my (admittedly fairly limited) understanding of the Aboriginal way of life, and the nature of the land here, had led me to believe that agriculture simply wasn’t possible, and thus the hunter-forager way of life was both necessary and wise. And yet the evidence put forward in the book suggests that not only was extensive farming taking place, but that it was sustainable. It had been happening for at least 4000–5000 years (though potentially much longer), and involved careful attention to building and maintaining the soil, strict rules about how plants were to be harvested, and respect for other people’s crops and food stores. Importantly, there seems to have been no violence, no need for conquest of other people’s land, but instead a continent-wide web of mutuality and respect, based on cultural laws derived from the law of the land itself. Pascoe writes:

Aboriginal Australian law insisted that the land was held in common and that people were the mere temporal custodians. Individuals were responsible for particular trees, rivers, lakes and stretches of land but only so these could be delivered forward to the next generation in accordance with law. Individuals and families might be said to own a particular fish trap or crop but they worked in co-operation with the surrounding clans.

…

The system in operation could be considered a jigsawed mutualism. People had rights and responsibilities for particular pieces of the jigsaw but they were constrained to operate that piece so that it added to rather than detracted from the pieces of their neighbours and the epic integrity of the land.

The piece of the tree or stream or the land that a group retained responsibility for bled into country so distant that they may never visit that country. They had to imagine how the whole picture looked …

… 

The religious, social and governmental rules were forged and entwined in mandala that had to be imagined in the soul. (2)

If this system of farming existed then, clearly, Aboriginal Australia has always been much more complex than we have been led to believe. Much evidence has been suppressed or ignored (or literally obliterated by the hooves and mouths of sheep and cattle), in favour of the ‘nomadic hunter-gatherer’ narrative, because that is what suited, and often still suits, the white/Western perspective. 

Yet now what I am imagining is a land where many people lived more or less settled lives in comfortable houses of various designs, with crop farming, food storage (including dried and smoked fish and meat), and even some evidence of pottery use. It puts me in mind of what I know of life in Neolithic Old Europe, though of course I know it’s not a good idea to start developing new assumptions based on unrelated cultures. Aboriginal Australia, because of its isolation, is incredibly unique, and must be evaluated on its own terms. 

That a truly sustainable agriculture could develop, without population overgrowth or violence, based on respect for the soil and other people’s crops, and a sharing of the land’s bounty, proves that agriculture can be done very differently. There are many lessons that could be learned from this, though how they would be successfully implemented in the modern world I have no idea. Though without a change in the way we view and relate to the land, which means (re)developing a spiritual and moral understanding of it, I don’t think much can be achieved. Still, there is hope to be found in this newly uncovered narrative.

I, for one, want to know what the food of this indigenous agriculture tasted like: the seeds ground into flour and baked into cakes; the yam daisies; the fresh or smoked fish; the Bunya nuts. I want to know how the women sewed their possum skin cloaks with fine bone needles and kangaroo tail sinews as thread, and what their houses were like. I also want to know what the land looked like before European settlement, because the Australia that now exists clearly bears little resemblance to what it once was. This makes me incredibly sad. Even more has been lost than I realised.

The world’s most ancient and sophisticated culture just got way more complex and intriguing, and my eyes have been opened. Dark Emu has not only reminded me to be aware of my preconceptions and prejudices, but has also given me much to ponder.

References

1. Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu – Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?, Magabala Books: Broome, Western Australia, 2014, p. 145

2. pp. 138–139 

Wise Words: Our Only Hope Is In The Soil

To save the world, we must first stop destroying it. Cast your eyes down when you pray, not in fear of some god above, but in recognition: our only hope is in the soil, and in the trees, grasses, and wetlands that are its children and its protectors both.

“And why are we not doing this now?” … For a lot of reasons, most of them having to do with power. But a new populism could spring from this need, a serious political movement combining environmentalists, farm activists, animal rights groups, feminists, indigenous people, anti-globalization and relocalization efforts—all of us who are desperate for a new, and living, world.

… The earth, our only home, needs that movement, and she needs it now. The only just economy is a local economy; the only sustainable economy is a local economy. Come at it from whichever angle matches your passion, the answers nest around the same central theme: humans have to draw their sustenance from where they live, without destroying that place.

That means we must first know that place. 

(Lierre Keith, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability, Flashpoint Press: Crescent City, California, 2009, pp. 250, 252)