Glenys Livingstone Ph.D., A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony, Girl God Books, 2023
I first read PaGaian Cosmology in 2016, and though it made quite an impression at the time, there were definitely aspects of it that I didn’t fully understand, or which were still a little bit too challenging to fully embrace. Returning to it now with greater understanding, however, I am grateful for the perspective it offers, for it affirms the inklings and thoughts I’ve been having for some time (and it fits very well with the concept of asymmetry as I described it in Asymmetrical Re-worlding: Part 5, and will help me to develop that further).
Glenys Livingstone used to live in the Blue Mountains where I reside, and the search/research that she devoted herself to, and the celebration of the Seasonal Moments of the Wheel of the Year which form the basis of her cosmology, initially took place here. There is, therefore, an organic resonance between her ceremonial creations and this place. The way in which she describes her upbringing also echoes some of my own feelings about my childhood:
I was perhaps one of Earth's most alienated of beings, and by that I mean that I did not sense belonging Here. My cultural context was such that I had no sense of relationship with my earthly and cosmic habitat. Cultural circumstance and story built over millennia converged to create a human who did not know her Place much at all—this included the place within my own skin, as much as the place in which I dwelt. (p. 1)
Being raised Christian in a colonised land, with all of those connotations, without the long-held traditions of the Northern Hemisphere, which at least retained some link to the land, ‘the children here … inherited a poverty of spirit, a deep divorce from Earth that few other religions in the history of Gaia have known’ (pp. 2-3). This is compounded by the fact that the traditional yearly festivities (and even much pagan/Earth-based ritual) are still practiced from the Northern Hemisphere perspective, meaning that in the Southern Hemisphere Yule/Christmas is celebrated in summer, the rebirth of Eostar/Easter takes place in autumn, and the imagery of pumpkins and autumn leaves at Samhain/Halloween is in high spring. It’s all very upside down and inside out. As Livingstone says,
There is consistent failure to take into account a whole Earth perspective: for example the North Star does not need to be the point of sacred reference (there is great Poetry to be made of the void of the South Celestial Pole) nor the North rigidly associated with the Earth element and darkness, nor is there really an “up” and a “down” cosmologically speaking. A sense and account of the Southern Hemisphere perspective with all that that implies metaphorically as well as sens-ibly, seems vitally important to comprehending and sensing a whole perspective and globe—a flexibility of mind, and coming to inhabit the real Cosmos, hence enabling a PaGaian cosmological perspective. (p. 17)
This ‘whole-Earth perspective’, as Livingstone asserts, is somewhat easier for people of the Southern Hemisphere to grasp due to this frustrating displacement of seasonal imagery and experience. Because the northern perspective has never made sense in our own context, we also more easily come to the realisation ‘that the whole Creative Dynamic happens all the time, all at once. The “Other”, the opposite, is always present—underneath and within the moment.’ (p. 16) As we celebrate the Summer Solstice and the birth of the Dark here, the Winter Solstice and the birth of the Light is taking place simultaneously on the other side of the globe.
The word ‘PaGaian’ is a merging of ‘Pagan’—‘meaning a person who dwells in “country”—and ‘Gaian’ (referring to the Earth goddess and the Gaia hypothesis)—‘a name for humanity’s Habitat’ (p. xiii), which includes Earth and Her own habitat of Cosmos, from which She cannot be separated. Taking inspiration from mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme, who defines a cosmology ‘as “a wisdom tradition drawing upon not just science but religion and art and philosophy”’ (p. xiii), Livingstone says that PaGaian cosmology ‘is based in the indigenous female-related religions of “Gaia”, yet draws in contemporary knowledge/sense of Her from the sciences and humanity studies; it has many strands that are ancient, present and not-yet’ (p. xiii). It is therefore just as much a ‘whole-knowledge/sense perspective’ as it is a ‘whole-Earth/Cosmos’ one.
Cosmology deals with the ‘Great Origin’ of the Universe, which is present everywhere and everywhen, and Cosmogenesis, ‘the ongoing creative agency of the Universe … referring to the form-producing dynamics of the Cosmological Unfolding’ (p. 46). Thus, evolution as an understanding of ongoing change and process (not progress). Importantly, PaGaian cosmology
is not a ‘theism’ of any kind – not an ‘a-theism’ nor a ‘pan-theism’ or a ‘panen-theism’: nor do I describe it as a ‘thealogy’, though some may. It is about Place – this Cosmos, this Earth – not a Deity … it is a study of, or engagement with, our Place, which is dynamic, a Verb, not a Noun – it is an Event. (APCC, p. xvii)
Using ritual as a microcosmic expression of the macrocosmic drama of Earth-Sun relations—marking the solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarter festivals, and exploring what they signify in our experience of ecological, seasonal and personal change—enables ‘a shift in [the] sense of space and time, which is perhaps the most significant barrier to a return to an indigenous sense of being, to an archetypal relationship with the Universe’ (p. xvi). By utilising attention to the local, the particulars of one’s Place, and creatively engaging with the seasonal and energetic dynamics, a larger, deeper, more complex perspective is enabled to develop. This ‘perception of the organic depth of being’ (p. 7) has many layers—spatial, temporal, ecological, physical, emotional, metaphorical, mythic and poetic.
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| From A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos |
a sense of depth is intrinsic to seeing things in context. This is true both of the depth of space and the depth of time, but here I would say that it implies, too, a metaphysical depth, a respect for the existence of something at more than one level, as is inevitable in myth or metaphor. (2)
Livingstone is critical of the frequent use of language in spiritual traditions, some ecological texts, and the dominant culture generally that speaks of ‘higher levels’, the ‘higher self’ and heaven as ‘up there’, as this ‘has created and goes on creating a sense of alienation from what is here—the stuff we inhabit and where we dwell’ (p. 31). The reality is that there is no up or down, no inside or outside—‘Earth is immersed in Universe’ (p. 31), as are we, and the Centre is everywhere.
McGilchrist maintains that depth (unlike height) can refer to any dimension—up or down, the solidity of three-dimensional space, as well as time (3)—and ‘that the spatial and the spiritual senses of the term have always co-existed … so it is not clear which is literal and which metaphorical’. (4) Fascinatingly, philosopher and theorist Ervin László has said, ‘We need to revise the widespread assumption that nonordinary “spiritual” experiences occur at a high frequency domain. They do not occur above the frequency of everyday experiences, but below it.’
Depth, then, seems to be a rather crucial element of the cosmological and spiritual perspectives, an antidote to the hierarchy and superiority implied by height and aboveness, as well as the shallowness of modern life. McGilchrist states that
Depth, then, may characterise what is tangible, solid and reliable, as foundations are, but also what is indescribable, ineffable, awe-inspiring and beyond reach, as are the mysteries of a solemn ritual. In doing so it re-enchants the realm of matter. What is deep has abundance, fertility, much packed within … though what that is cannot be known in full. It reaches not just beyond our viewpoint, but beyond what we can grasp. To believe that all is within our grasp, is surely a failure of imagination, one that, I contend, leads in turn to failure to apprehend the deeper meaningfulness of existence. (5)
Livingstone elaborates that ‘“Higher” indicates “out there”, in “loftier” realms beyond the earth, transcending lowly earthly nature. “Deeper” indicates “within”, the depth of the earthly realm, enriched awareness of the multivalent numinous earthly nature/reality’ (p. 31). Depth therefore brings us awareness of meaning, and of our place within the immanent wholeness of the endless round of life, death and regeneration. The great archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas put it well: ‘the creativity of the Goddess is inexhaustible and comes from the cosmic deep’. (6)
The Female Metaphor
Despite being ‘told that to look at history, theology, philosophy from the female perspective is myopic—one-eyed’ (p. 72), on the false assumption that the human perspective includes the female, Livingstone understands the great need for gynocentric ‘re-storying’: ‘Re-storying “Her” means re-storying “her”—the mere human (as well as our Habitat), and vice versa: Her stories are the stories of women (and therefore of men, who are co-Habitants) through the millennia, Her image is the image of women’ (p. 78).
And yet Livingstone claims that the work she has done in her books is not ‘feminist discourse’—rather she ‘regard[s] it as “PaGaian concourse”’ (p. 45, my emphasis). It does, however, still include a strong feminist consciousness, whilst attempting to move beyond analysis into embodied attention to and relationship with our Earthly/Cosmic context. Because we are ‘subjects within a Subject—a sentient Universe’ (p. 6), ‘concourse’ is interactive and relational, ‘a process of changing of mind, not just talking about it or to it’ (p. 7).
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| Bearer (2021) |
there is a recognition or naming of “female-referring transformatory powers” that are identified as cosmic dynamics essential to all being—not exclusive to the female. For example, “conception” is a female-referring transformatory power, that is, it happens in a female body; yet it is a multivalent cosmic dynamic, that is, it happens in all being in a variety of forms. It is not bound to the female body, yet it occurs there in a particular and obvious way. (pp. 56-7)
‘[A] metaphor based in female bodily experience’, Livingstone asserts, ‘is ubiquitous in natural phenomena such as all bodily cycles, the moon cycle, plant cycles, and the seasons’ (p. 62). Thus, ‘female sacrality as part of all sacrality’ is upheld (p. 57), and the specific potentials of the female body are re-valued, without reductively claiming that the only meaningful form of ‘conception’ or creation is via pregnancy and motherhood. This brings to mind a poem by Sylvia V. Linsteadt in which she says:
Fertility is first a matter of soul
I am just as likely full of stars,
turtle eggs, words and charms as I am of children
Fertility is what makes the summer garden flourish
It is a quality of earth, of mineral and light
It is what ground you stand on,
and what life it will bear
what will flourish there (7)
Because the female has been ‘othered’ and excluded from the metaphor for divinity, Livingstone asks,
If the story had been told from within her perspective, that is, the perspective of a female-friendly cosmos…as wise woman, healer, priestess, mother, would she speak of herself for instance, as “just a mother”—if her mind was imbued with the integrity of Life happening in her? (p. 3)
Indeed, Livingstone stresses that her evocation of the Female Metaphor is not ‘feminine’, nor is She the counterpart or consort of a god—She is a comprehensive Creative Principle that cannot be fragmented or labelled with the artificial constructs of ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’. Female and male are held within Her, along with all other life, geology, stars and galaxies.
Importantly, she also prefers to speak of ‘metaphor’ rather than ‘archetype’, as the word ‘archetype’ often ‘tends to connote a “mindstruct”—something “merely” cultural’ (p. 39). Yet
The evolutionary cosmic dynamics—Cosmogenesis—are not culturally induced phenomena, nor is the cyclical dynamic of the Triple Goddess Metaphor. The Cosmogenesis in which we find ourselves is at once completely physical and manifest, as well as “intra”-physical and unmanifest—it is not “meta”-physical and separate, it is intrinsic with the physical. (p. 40)
Metaphor is essential as ‘it underlies all forms of understanding whatsoever, science and philosophy no less than poetry and art’. (8) It is the very foundation of language, and the way that we understand abstract concepts that cannot be defined in and of themselves. This is especially crucial when trying to evoke the Ground of Being—something that cannot ever be truly named—but only gestured towards.
The necessity of learning to embody the creative dynamics of the Universe in our own lives, which is required for human maturation, according to Swimme (p. 22), means that the Female Metaphor is of value for all of us. In particular for men, Her relationality ‘may restore [men] to the context, partnership, as opposed to centre-stage, dominance and alienation’ (p. 22), providing an antidote to the often disembodied patriarchal spiritualities, and the distorted values of the dominant culture as a whole.
The Triple Goddess
Livingstone is interested in the essential nature of reality—which early Greek philosophers called physis, the origin of our word physics (p. 21). Thus her work is intimately connected with contemporary scientific understandings while also being interwoven with art, poetry, theology, mythology and philosophy. Of particular influence has been the work of Swimme and the late cultural historian and ‘geologian’ Thomas Berry, who claim that the constant creation of the Universe is distinguished by three features:
differentiation – to be is to be unique
communion – to be is to be related
autopoiesis – to be is to be a centre of creativity (APCC, p. 35)
Augmenting these features are ‘three shaping powers of the biosphere … genetic mutation, natural selection and conscious choice/niche creation’ (p. 120).
Livingstone relates these dynamics to the metaphor of the Triple Goddess: differentiation/genetic mutation is associated with the Virgin/Maiden as the ‘Urge to Be’ (p. 93); communion/natural selection is associated with the Mother/Creator as the ‘Place to Be’ (p. 99); and autopoiesis (i.e. ‘self-making’)/conscious choice/niche creation is associated with the Crone/Old One as ‘She Who Creates a Space to Be’ (p. 106). These processes of ‘waxing, peaking and waning, creation-preservation-destruction’ are inseparable and intertwined—‘one cannot Be without the others’ (APCC, p. 35).
‘In the beginning was the Matrix’, Livingstone says, ‘and the Matrix was all there was’:
This Matrix was not “feminine” … which would limit Her to a certain mode of being. She was beyond all pairs of opposites. As the beginning and the end of all things, She contained it all—she was yin and yang, right and left, light and dark, linear and cyclic, immanent and transcendent. There was not an either/or. She was not carved into bits, apportioned a certain fragment of being—She was a totality. She bore within herself all the polarities. (p. 80)
She is a Oneness that is expressed through differentiation, exemplifying a constant and complex flux. Of particular interest is the chapter that re-stories Goddess, which explores some of Her ancient faces: from Greek Nyx, Black Mother Night—‘the full Emptiness, the empty Fullness’ (p. 82); to Aphrodite who embodied ‘an “allurement” intrinsic to the nature of the Universe’ (p. 83); to Supreme and Primordial Kali Ma; and the rocks, trees, mountains, springs and sacred creatures that were Her non-anthropomorphised incarnations.
The Triple Goddess could also be represented by the Triple Spiral or Triskelion, tri-lines, or the downward pointing triangle, as well as the phases of the lunar cycle. Livingstone goes on to elucidate the symbolism and resonances of all three of the Goddess’s faces, and how they relate to the Seasonal Moments, which are then enacted in ceremony.
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| Isness (2021) |
I am particularly intrigued by the assertion that ‘The Triple Spiral may represent a powerful indigenous Earth-based jurisprudence – law – that is not separate from its representation of Being itself.’ (APCC, p. 36). As Jay Griffiths has written, ‘For much of the world, for most of history, Nature was Law—it was the way people organized morality. For indigenous people, Law is in the land and nature is anything but lawless; rather there is a profound core of order within wild nature.’ (9)
Thus, there is so much to be learnt from the dynamic triplicity of the Female Metaphor, and how it manifests in the nested realities of Universe–Earth–Self. It has the potential to reorganise our perceptions and experience, and thus our thinking, which could lead to much-needed cultural change. As Livingstone says:
This Goddess Metaphor, this Wisdom tradition, is about recognizing the Power within each being, and making the Hera’s journey, taking it for ourselves—female and male, all beings. This is empowerment—as opposed to a worldview that says some have this sentience and some don’t. (p. 76)
We’re all children of the Universe—humans and nonhumans, breathing and non-breathing beings, stars and galaxies and dark matter—and we’re all in this together.
To briefly summarise some of the symbolism of each facet of Her:
Virgin/Maiden
As the Urge to Be, the Virgin is in relationship with Her self, committed to the truth of Her own being, to Life itself, especially its possibilities and often vulnerable beginnings. This is the source of Her purity, not a lack of sexuality. The patriarchal version of virginity, as exemplified by the Virgin Mary, is a distortion of what was originally a core quality of Goddess: self-determination, ‘a power to be “at cause”, instead of “at effect” (p. 89). In the oldest version of the story of Persephone, She descends to the Underworld voluntarily and becomes a psychopomp, compassionately guiding the dead. She ‘goes into the heart of our sorrows to unfold the Mystery’ (p. 93), and her association with the dead, the Underworld and the Dark intimately connects her with the Crone. Though additionally, as much as She is the Daughter, She is also never disconnected from the Mother …
Mother/Creator
As the Place to Be, the Mother is in relationship with the Other, and represents Creative Power in its completeness. Mothers were the original culture-creating force, and she
was not a mere passive vessel, nor was she limited to the birthing and feeding aspects that later cultures allowed her; “Mother” was an wholistic title incorporating the beginning and the end. She was “Om”, the letter of creation and “Omega”, the letter of destruction. (p. 81)
‘Maternal energy’—the fullness and sustenance of being—is something that everyone can embody, including men, yet within patriarchal cultures this ‘has been for most women the zone where we frequently lost ourselves’ (p. 96). Without the self-love and autonomy of the Virgin, maternal energy ‘has been unbalanced and short-circuited; frequently it is a woman locked into domesticity or a woman pouring her life’s energy into mothering a man or an institution from whom she is getting no return’ (p. 96). Re-storying is still desperately needed here so that women are no longer pushed into a role than limits our flourishing, and so that men can begin to learn and embrace the skills of mothering, including an acceptance of necessary death and loss …
Crone/Old One
As She Who Creates a Space to Be, the Crone is in relationship with everything. She is dissolution, destruction and the Dark—the realm of the unmanifest from which everything arises. She is perhaps the most challenging face of the three, and therefore the aspect that is most critical to re-story.
Miriam Robbins Dexter points out that although patriarchal cultures could find a place for the use of the virgin and mother energies, they could find no such use for the old woman. The young virgin could represent stored energy … The mother transmitted energy … The old woman, however, only had knowledge; this could be threatening, and was increasingly trivialised … (p. 102)
As we now know from the ‘grandmother hypothesis’, post-menopausal woman have a crucial role to play in caring for and transmitting wisdom to their children and grandchildren. But in patriarchal culture the Old One has become the evil witch, the hideous hag, and loss, death and the Dark are feared and often denied. As Livingstone says, ‘In a culture where the darkness is languaged as evil … this aspect is feared and loathed. Where only the Light is valued as positive, where the nurturance of the Dark has been forgotten, real wisdom and compassion will never be discovered’ (p. 78). But when Her Darkness is newly ‘understood as “a depth of love” (p. 82), as a place of nurturance, transformation and the capacity for new beginnings, then we can return to an acceptance of death as part of life, and re-embrace the flowing dynamics of the Cosmos in their wholeness.
Poiesis
Poiesis essentially means ‘to make’ or ‘to bring forth’; it is related to the same root as the word ‘poetry’, and Livingstone says that she thinks of herself ‘as a student of the Poetry of the Universe.’ (APCC, p. xvii). It is believed that ‘poetry evolved before prose’ (10) (and probably emerged out of song/music), and it is therefore the original language for humans, and perhaps of the Universe Herself. Robert Bringhurst says, ‘Poetry is a quality or aspect of existence. It is the thinking of things’ (11):
When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how? (12)
The how for Livingstone is via the seasonal rituals which she has created and lays out in detail, weaving scientific knowledge of cosmogenesis with the three aspects of the Female Metaphor, so that participants can orient themselves to the cosmic rhythms, embedding their own lives into the larger story of Gaia. As an invocation for Samhain has it: ‘“We are co-creators—we are divine. We call the Divine by a thousand names, uttering ourselves”’ (p. 188). Like the flower that blooms, the rain that falls, the birds who build their nest, we can make and do and participate—and that is poetry.
Livingstone says, ‘Poetry could be described as an “Earth-centred language”: it has the capacity to hold multivalent aspects of reality, to open to subjective depths, to allow qualitative differences in understanding’ (APCC, p. xiii). Poetry and its essential element of metaphor create depth and meaning, and allow us to reach towards and relate to the Great Mystery.
Related to the useful reappraisal of gendered language that Livingstone does is her re-storying of the concept of ‘allurement’ and the ‘Lover and Beloved’. She says that desire—which in scientific terms we can say is literally gravity—is what holds the Universe and the ever-changing triune dynamic together, where ‘Desire seems not so much a grasping, as a receiving, an ability or capacity to open and dissolve’ (p. 252). This is similar to McGilchrist’s analysis, though he claims that longing, rather than desire/wanting, is the better term:
Wanting is clear, purposive, urgent, driven by the will, always with its goal clearly in view. Longing, by contrast, is something that ‘happens’ between us and another thing. It is not directed by will, and is not an aim, with the ultimate goal of acquisition; but instead is a desire for union – or rather it is experienced as a desire for re-union. This goes with there not necessarily being a simple explicit vision of what it is that is longed for, which remains in the realms of the implicit or intuitive, and is often spiritual in nature … Wanting is clear in its target, and in its separation from the thing that is wanted. Longing suggests instead a distance, but a never interrupted connection or union over that distance with whatever it is that is longed for, however remote the object of longing may be. It is somehow experienced as an elastic tension that is set up between the one that is longing and the object of that longing – the pull, tautness as in a bow string … holding together the two ends of the bow that are never really separate. (13)
I think this distinction is important, as it emphasises that relationship with an Other (and even with the Self) in a sentient Universe is always unpredictable and dynamic. Connection is ‘experienced as an elastic tension’, as McGilchrist puts it. Gravity both holds the planets in their orbits, while also allowing the flow of movement, and of the Universe’s continuous expansion.
Livingstone remarks that there is confusion surrounding this Power of Allurement:
Allurement may and does manifest between female and male, but … It has been present primordially, before the advent of maleness … Allurement, or Holy Lust … unites the Cosmos, but it is not female and male united that unites the Cosmos … the power may take place here, but it is not bound to this relationship. (p. 60)
This particular female/male poetry has certainly been the core symbolism used in a lot of pagan rituals. Beltaine in particular ‘has been celebrated almost exclusively in terms of female and male biology, frequently expressed as “the Goddess and the God,” especially so in the modern era when this emphasis and pre-occupation may be more the result of modern Freudian and Jungian influence’ (APCC, p. 233) than anything really in accord with how our ancestors understood reality, which may have been less rigid. Re-storying ‘allurement’ (as with ‘conception’), as a fundamental dynamic that occurs in and affects all beings means that we need not be limited to heteronormative symbolism. This opens up the poetic resonances to all sexualities, as well as going well beyond sexuality to, according to Swimme, ‘“identification with the pulse of Creativity itself”’ (p. 233), which of course has endless permutations beyond the merely human. As Livingstone says, ‘Mystical traditions have used the metaphor of “Beloved and Lover,” which opens up many valencies of desire, passion and allurement’ (p. 233).
Thus the wholeness of the Female Metaphor enables the poetic possibilities to expand, increasing the potentials for our autopoiesis/self-making, as it also expands our capacities for living a meaningful Life in connection with the sensuousness of PaGaian reality. I am so grateful for the richness of this cosmology.
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| Source: Wikimedia Commons |
References
1. Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Yale University Press: New Haven, 2009, p. 183 2. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary, p. 312 3. Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, Vol. II: What Then is True?, Perspectiva Press: London, 2021, pp. 1001-2 4. McGilchrist, The Matter With Things, p. 1001 5. McGilchrist, The Matter With Things, p. 1003 6. Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess, HarperSanFrancisco: New York, 1989, p. 225 7. Sylvia V. Linsteadt, from ‘Dreaming the Country in Me’, The Venus Year, Kypseli Press: Devon, England, 2023, p. 245 8. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary, p. 71 9. Jay Griffiths, Wild: An Elemental Journey, Penguin: London, 2006, p. 275 10. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary, p. 105 11. Robert Bringhurst, ‘Poetry and Thinking’, The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology, Counterpoint: Berkeley, 2006, 2008, p. 139 12. Bringhurst, p. 143 13. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary, p. 308 |
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