Greeting the Wild Nun

Dear readers, I seem to be becoming more and more quiet in this space. Life seems to be getting the better of me, and I am struggling to find not only the energy to make art, but also the motivation. I don’t lack ideas—in fact, I have far too many!—but I do lack impetus and focus. 

This is the ongoing challenge of living with a chronic illness: traversing the difficult times with as much grace a possible, and then beginning again, again, again.

So, in an attempt to redirect my attention and energies back towards what is nourishing and restorative, and away from detrimental distractions, I have made a decision to take an extended break from social media. Mostly this means Facebook, which I intend to avoid for the next month (though potentially much longer). The only exception will be to share anything I publish here. 

I will also probably be posting less often on my Instagram account: @offeringsfromthewellspring

By consciously avoiding the worst of the online world, I hope I will be drawn back towards what I need: nature, sunshine, beauty, myth, making, and healing work in my studio.

However, wisely or otherwise, I have created a sister account on Instagram to explore a new creative project, an alter ego of mine: @the_wild_nun

I intend to share most of what I post in the voice of this new persona here, but do come and follow her journey on Instagram if you feel so inclined. She’s an hermitic creature, much like the Solitary Woman of a story I once wrote; but she does like some company from time to time. 

And so I, she, begins …

*

My unknowing is both shameful and a place of beginnings.

It is only by journeying into the darkness that I will find my way. I can no longer shy from my uglinesses, my weaknesses, my flaws, or the hidden things that scare me. I need to dive down deep into myself, to find a passage through the underworld, and then back to the surface.

The Wild Nun is me and not me; she tells all the truth but tells it slant. She is a dweller of two worlds: upper and lower, inner and outer, conscious and unconscious. She bridges the gap between, and sees in the dark, unearthing treasures.

When I cannot speak as myself, I will speak through her. When illness, fatigue and depression silence me, I will use her voice, create with her hands and heart.

Her name is Veejma, the phonetic spelling of the Polish word wiedźma, meaning witch, hag, harridan (source: Max Dashu, Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700–1100).

I am taking the Wild Nun’s hand and letting her lead me into the underworld where radical healing is found. A new journey is beginning, a new twist in the path, a new shadowy entrance into myself.

Detail of my painting Rainmaker (filter added)

Beginning with the Birds

I don’t really celebrate the new year. As I’ve said before, I dislike fireworks; and, contrarian that I am, if everyone else is doing it, I’d really rather not. (Needless to say, I went to bed early last night.)

I don’t see that the Gregorian calendar has much relevance to reality. It’s an abstract system that has been imposed on the natural cycle of the year. It does makes more sense in the northern hemisphere, where the new year comes in the midst of the winter dark, but here in Australia the summer light and brashness of the celebrations grates on my nerves.

My aversion has been heightened this time round by the events of the last few months. Australia is experiencing an ecological crisis with the bushfires on top of a decade-long drought and some of the hottest days on record, with no decent rain in sight. So many people and communities have been affected. Yet what concerns me most is the ecological destruction. Ecologists estimate that around 480 million animals have died (and this doesn’t include trees and plants). Add that number to the millions of fish who died last year in the drying-dying rivers of western NSW, and it doesn’t seem like the right time to celebrate. Too much has been lost. And the fires still rage, and the drought goes on. The numbers will continue to rise. I’m not sure how I am going to come to terms with the grief of this ongoing catastrophe.

Yet this morning I took a detour from my usual walk and went to the lake, and what I saw has given me some hope. Yes, nearby there are charred landscapes which will take years and perhaps even decades to regenerate, the fires in some places having been so fierce. Still, right here is life doing what it does.

An eastern great egret (identified by the prominent kink in the neck) was standing in the shallows, fishing, and seemingly waiting for me. I have never been so close before.

Meanwhile superb fairy wrens were skittering along the shore, and a black cockatoo flew by, calling sadly.

Later I watched as a wren youngster was fed tidbits by her mother. The undergrowth was alive with the musical trills of a large family of these tiny birds.

And when I finally arrived home I was met by the gaze of a curious young rosella. 

I have no idea what 2020 will bring. I wish only to work on my health and make more art—both challenges I am very uncertain about. Yet the birds have given me hope. Life will go on living, despite the massive changes that are happening here and everywhere else around the world. 

This is a time of so many endings, I’ll grasp what beginnings I can.

Witchlines: Bird-Woman’s Foot

This next tale for Witchlines, in relation to The Frog Princess, is inspired by a clay temple model from Old Europe, which has a bird’s head above the body of the structure, and a leg and human foot below. In this strange object is a mixture of ideas and symbolism: of the Neolithic Goddess in her guise of Bird-Woman; of the sacred work of women (weaving, bread-making, pottery), which took place in Old European temples; of the structure and meaning of the temples themselves—the womb-like sanctuary of transformation, the microcosm of the Goddess’s body; of the bird-like Baba Yaga, whose house stands on chicken legs … This is the story that grew from this intriguing vessel. 

Temple model found at Aszód north of Budapest, placed in the grave of a young girl, 49th–47th centuries B.C.
(Image from The Civilisation of the Goddess, by Marija Gimbutas, p. 84) 

Bird-Woman’s Foot

Once, in an old, old land, there was a village. In that village, in the centre of the many houses, was a building—a temple—and inside the temple, which was painted with spirals in red and white, was an oven with a round dome. Inside the oven bread was baking, round domes of dough rising and fattening, like babies in a womb. Beside the oven, which radiated its generous warmth into the room, sat three women: one old, one in the prime of life, and one just barely out of girlhood. They were all very wise, in their three different ways. The oldest woman sat at a loom, weaving, her hands moving rhythmically; the middle woman brushed flour from her hands as she checked the bread did not burn; and the young woman was dreaming, and singing out her dream as she sat on a low stool in the dimmest corner of the room.

Inside the dream-song she sang was a tale the three women knew well, for it had been told, mother to daughter, forever; and inside the tale was a beginning.

*

In the beginning, Bird-Woman flew everywhere. There was nothing her wings did not touch, did not bless with their flight; there was no place that was not her. Then, one clawed foot touched the ground, followed by the other, sinking into sweet smelling soil. Here, she said, is earth. Standing now, she flapped her massive wings, and raised her regal head, and the winds unfurled and clouds gathered. Here is sky. She looked down at her round belly, and felt an egg forming inside. Here is water, womb and dream. 

With her fierce and gentle heart, Bird-Woman loved what had been born from herself, and what was yet to be born, and she spread her wings wide in protection of all that is, was, and will be. Then she sang.

And in her song was the force that created life from death and death from life, and time spiralled out and danced.

*

Inside the temple, where the three women did their sacred work, opposite the domed oven, was an altar, on which sat a small temple. A model made of clay, it had a rounded, hollow body with a proudly uplifted bird’s head; below the body was a leg, a column, on a wide-soled foot. A temple within a temple—Bird-Woman inside herself, in the village, in the old, old land, that was inside her.

The foot was the foot that had first touched earth. The head was the head that had first made sky. And the body was the womb from which all things were born.

Each woman knew, from the tale of the beginning, and from the temple model, that we are connected to the earth by our soles, and our souls. Like Bird-Woman’s foot, like tree root, like snake belly, we touch the ground; we raise our heads and see the sky; and in our bellies we carry our dreams. By our life-making, our movement, our dreaming, and our deaths, and by the mingling of earth, sky, water and dream, we are made whole. Life-energy travels from earth through sole into body out to sky, and from sky into body through sole into earth.

From the altar, Bird-Woman, with her earth-bound foot, watched the women doing the work of creation. The old woman paused her weaving to admire the fine cloth she had made. The middle woman took the golden-brown loaves from the oven and looked at the food she had created. And the young woman kept singing out her dream, knowing that Bird-Woman’s wings were still spread wide in protection of all that is, was, and will be.

The Darkness Of The Beginning: A Poem

The darkness of the beginning was never a void. 

It was never empty, never nothing. 

It can only have been a body, 

black as rich soil, the colour of 

the inside of a heart, 

unseen, but felt, 

beating out a rhythm. 

The body — Her body — 

was a site of becoming, of potential, 

resonating with the sound of poetry 

in its elemental form; 

poetry before it became the multiplicity, 

before it became the abundant world 

and all its wonders. 

The darkness of the beginning was not a void. 

It was everything — 

every being and dream, every form and thought. 

A great parthenogenetic pregnant body, 

ready to burst with possibility.

I wrote this poem on 21^st June, the Winter Solstice, as I thought about the creatrix of many Native American cultures: Thought Woman. Below are some of my rambling notes which led me to write it.

* * *

I was just thinking something very important about mind/consciousness, and Thought Woman (aka Grandmother Spider). If consciousness is a property of existence, and we cannot exist without the existence of others (who enable us to be ourselves through contact with what is not ourselves), then this is why the universe began. Thought Woman could not bear being alone—she had to think things into being so that her existence could become different. A multiplicity rather than just One. There was an absence of existence—an essential absence of consciousness, because nothing else existed to form the elements of mind. Mind is totally reliant on diversity, on there being many things, so that beings can become themselves by their sensuous experience with other beings. The more diversity there is, the more whole we can become, the more wise … Thought Woman could not bear to be only herself—she had to create, to think things into being. 

Spider Woman, by Susan Seddon-Boulet, 1986

Always Beginning

I have written before about my discomfort with New Year’s Eve celebrations, so I moved through the recent calendrical transition quietly, thinking of what I was happy (and sad) to be leaving behind in the year that was, and what paths I wish to take and how I need to grow in this year that is.

I sometimes reflect a little on what I need to change about myself, but I do not make resolutions. Such promises to the self are too simplistic, and often too easily broken. Mostly, real change takes time. It is an ongoing process, with many layers and shadows, not an immediate fix. Besides, every single day is a new beginning. The world turns, the sun rises, the birds sing (at ridiculously early hours on these long summer days), and we begin again … and again … and again …

Any day at all is a fitting day for change, to strive to do and be better.

I intend to remember this, this year. To try to make every day count.