PART 1 - ANTHESTERIOS On the morning of Khytri, as has been our private tradition for many, many years, I woke up in Hermes’ bed. His warm breath on the back on my neck roused me to day breaking on the third day of Anthesterios. Hermes’ typically swift-running, golden body lay resting in deep slumber upon the stone floor of his...
My mother was raised Catholic. I was not. Her childhood was Northern Californian suburban bourgeoise. Mine was not. After attending all girls’ private Catholic schools - through college - my mother came of age in the 1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area at the moment of “turn on, tune in, drop out.” (Timothy Leary) My mother fled the Church...
One summer day, a female mountain lion climbed down from her den in the costal hills of Northern California to walk along the seashore. Foraging in the wet sand at low tide, she ate her fill of crab and jellyfish. With a full belly she felt her heat – the hunger of loneliness – in her womb. More than anything,...
In the Sumerian myth of Inanna’s Descent (c. 4000 BCE – c. 3100 BCE), the goddess of love and war goes below ground to the Underworld to visit her sister – or shadow aspect – the dark goddess, Ereshkigal. As she descends, she discards the objects and ornaments of her authority. She is then flayed, and her skin is hung...
“Culture is its own limitation. Culture represents a particular adaptation, a particular level of psychological maturity. What happens when the capacity of the individual to expand the framework exceeds the cultural capacity? The two come into conflict. Where the individual potential for development exceeds the cultural limit the need for new meaning erupts.” (D. Stephenson Bond, 1993, Living Myth, p....
The first myths were passed orally, from generation to generation, and visually, painted onto cave walls. Prehistoric myths conveyed essential ancestral guidance for surviving hunter-gatherer lifestyles that followed the seasonal migrations of animal herds and wild vegetal food sources. Fascination with life’s processes of birth, death, and reincarnation – the Great Mysteries – developed into primary mythic themes. These stories...
“Loss and grief are initiations into a changed landscape, reminding us that everything is passing. By dying before we die, we are able to accept this fact and embrace this amazing chance we have to be alive.” (Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, 2015, p. 124) I have been thrice initiated into the Mystery of Death through the losses of...
I began praying the rosary daily with the Way of the Rose at the beginning of 2020, just two months before the start of the pandemic. When I discovered the practice in January I had no idea that an experimental spiritual pastime would very soon become a lifeline. In March I found myself at home alone indefinitely with my baby...
As we experience acute climate crisis and face cascading species collapse, have you imagined your own extinction? The annihilation of your language, culture, kin…and species? Here is my imaginal wander in Neolithic Europe at the moment of the Indo-European “Kurgan Horde” invasions which, according to eminent feminist archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, destroyed the prehistoric culture of the goddess and instituted patriarchal...
Tucson sprawls from west to east. Stripes of asphalt spill from a black basalt mountain marked ‘Alpha.’ The city derives its name from the Pueblo Indian earth epithet, Ts-iuk-shan, the gate of western hills that the sun departs through each evening. An urban concrete grid is superimposed over a wild, deadly garden which brims with fierce flora that evolved for self-defense...