Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Gathering Around the Well of Sacred Memory

The Mirror of Venus by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt ARA. 1898


This June 2015, I was honored to visit New York state and city to conduct two editions of "Aphro-Hera's Temple".  It was a magical time full of inspiration, realization, and healing.  And it underscored the power of women when they unite to commune with the timeless sources of inspiration through the arts, myths, and archetypes.  It was a gathering at the well of sacred memory - the collective dreams, aspirations, expressions, and achievements of countless generations who refreshed their creative souls there.  From that sacred spring, the Mysteries bubble up in various forms - stories, paintings, sculptures, songs, music, and dances that lead us to those levels of wisdom which defy verbal definition and transcend the Self.



This is called "transpersonal" healing - when we reach across, throughout, and beyond ourselves to the spiritual and archetypal realms in order to engage the deep realizations and shifts that conduct us along our quests for wholeness. The same forces that inspired great works of art like "The Mirror Of Venus" above continue to inspire us and to speak through our souls, hearts, and bodies.  We meet the Goddess and she holds a mirror, reflecting back to us a nobler version of ourselves.  That is the gift of transpersonal healing, sending us the message that we already ARE what our souls long to be.  In a time that is not a time and in a place that is not a place, we shift into sacred time/space/consciousness and BECOME living works of art, born of the divine inspiration of the ages.

I want to sincerely thank all the beautiful women who participated in "Aphro-Hera's Temple" and with profound gratitude leave some of their reflections on the experience here.


"I am so grateful for the opportunity to experience this workshop. It was soul stirring and transformational. I left feeling empowered and with greater self acceptance. There is so much to rave about. You created a sacred, reverent atmosphere that instantly signaled to our psyches that it was time to excavate and do deep work. The exercises you created allowed us bypass our egos and work with our hearts. You also taught us rituals that we can easily incorporate into our lives. Thank you" - Kierra Denise Foster-Ba, NYC



"Hera has been unleashed and it’s amazing!"  – Barbara Graham Price, NYC

 "I want to recommend that everyone study with you the next time you're here.  Such a gift, you are!" – Tachea, NYC

"Paola Blanton is a master story teller, facilitator, and Goddess Divina. I took AphroHera's Temple, a creative movement ritual workshop she created and facilitated, and was moved by her work. Her study in the Goddess Archetypes and the history of the Goddess is extensive, & her facilitation in embodying the archetypes of Aphrodite and Hera through movement ritual is grounded in her daily practice as a dancer. Her intention to bring these two Goddesses together within all women so we can live empowered and in harmony AS women is powerful! Thank you Paola for your masterful work." – Sarah Haykel, Buffalo, NY




Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Why study Myth?

  
The myths are the great stories that shape our lives.  They reflect our journeys, tragedies, comedies, and victories.  They are stories that have taken on a life of their own, fed by the events of history and the collective dreams and imaginings of countless generations.  Authored by us, they in turn “author” us, bringing the interactive saga of the collective imagination with them that shapes the cultures that then shape us.  They ignite the conversations between our every-day selves and those nobler versions of ourselves that we long to become; those that reach toward the divine powers symbolized by the gods, goddesses, and heroes of legend.

Are they true stories? What kind of truth are we looking for?  I once sat at the feet of the eminent world mythologist and bard Michael Meade.  We were in the ancient temple ruins of the Oracle of Delphi, assembled to hear him tell the timeless tales.  As Michael beat a rhythm on his drum and spoke to us of the Old Ones, I began to listen with a part of me that sank into the deepest levels of knowing, levels that transcend the rational mind.  I began to submerge myself into the spiritual and emotional truths of his storytelling, feeling my way through the metaphors and paradoxes towards this wisdom to which stories open the door.  It was as if my mind were floating in a dark warm ocean, absorbing knowledge through my very pores, my DNA, something so personal, like the relationship between a foetus and the nurturing environment of the womb. In the presence of this Source, rational “proof” becomes irrelevant as we begin to see with inner eyes and hear with inner ears; it’s a process of opening one’s self to the therapeutic power of mythos and the inspirations they set in motion. I tend to feel those inspirations as visions, which quickly lead into movements.

When we open ourselves to it, this wisdom has a way of seeping into us and transforming us from the inside out. It bubbles up through us like a spring. In Michael Meade's words, “A handful of the sweet waters of mythos is more precious than a lifetime of dogma, piped in.” The myths prime the pump of our creative souls.  They teach us and cause us to reflect on the state of our Being.  They inspire us to create truth and beauty and to express the epiphanies that give substance to our relationship with the eternal.  They activate the Goddess within.

For women today, the resurgence of Goddess consciousness has brought with it an awakening to the many dimensions of feminine power that the ancients revered and that the Patriarchy has done so much to mutate.  The wisdom of the ancients speaks to us of the possibilites veiled deep within the quarters of our souls. An especially big bubble of this consciousness has been growing in the last century, casting doubt and interrogation on our roles as handmaidens of the patriarchy. We begin to see that the narratives that uphold the status quo are full of plot holes, missing characters, and bias. Not to mention sense.  Just through human transmission, the stories begin to lose essence. All human transmission is biased, because all humans write from a point of view and a language.  How can we put the Eternal into words?

Yet their pull is irresistible.  They are stories that have kept the human imagination alive since time immemorial and they've been constantly re-written, retold, and revised.  We begin to realize how alive these stories are, and to realize our power to co-author them.  They want us to! To read and interpret the myths of the great Goddesses is to open one’s fullest Self to the vast reservoir of power that lies in the Source.  When we refresh ourselves at this sacred source, we emerge with our creativity newly activated.  We are inspired to re-create or co-create our individual and collective stories – adding our own brush stroke to the portrait of the feminine psyche and its archetypes. These expressions of creativity are the offerings we give back to the Source, the Universe, and each other, and they keep the cycle of creative energy flowing.

The idea of a Goddess is in and of itself an epiphany, a way we humans have tried to grasp at the vast infinity of the Source.  To how many countless dreamers has a full moon's cool liquid light not inspired visions of radiant femininity that coalesce into a Goddess form?  Humans have made the same associations for millennia, and the Gods and Goddesses are figures in the dramas we've lived and written about and painted and expressed in our struggles to know ourselves.  

So Aphrodite and Hera come to us with their powers, their stories, and a vast body of art they've inspired over the ages.  We can look at them, read about them, and take them in.  But they're already there, deep inside us, as unconscious content.  In a woman's soul, they can be thought of as two separate energies, two temples that women transit in their life journeys

Goddesses of love/beauty and marriage/power respectively, they are frequently pitted against each other in the legends.  The passionate, carefree nature of Aphrodite is often an affront to Hera, protectress of the stable home.  On Olympus, the arrival of Aphrodite was much-heralded, as word of her dazzling beauty rang throughout Greece.  Zeus panicked and quickly married her off to the (ugly) smith-god Hephaestos, one of his two sons with Hera.  This made Hera Aphrodite’s mother-in-law! Can you see where this is going?

Hera was rightly famous for her own beauty, but as Queen, she married Zeus out of duty and bore the brunt of his constant infidelities. Aphrodite engaged in numerous passionate love affairs including with her other son Ares the god of war.  So these two energies, one dedicated to stability and the "other" a passionate de-stabilizing force, find themselves in opposition not only in Heaven, but within us and among us.  In this narrative, we see a fragmentation of feminine power as the archetypal symbols of passion and duty square off against each other in a setting where things are the way they are because a male king Zeus decrees it. In ancient Greece, mostly men wrote.  How does human authorship affect the impact that myths have upon us?

Because the myths absorb and then reflect back our projections, we can also make them into whatever we need them to be in order to serve our cultural ends.  The arrival of the Hellenes into Greece marked the beginning of the end for the indigenous matriarchal earth goddess cults.  With the arrival of the warlike sky-gods, the goddesses were literally married off, like real-life princesses, into marriages of alliance and re-written in relation to male counterparts.  The goddesses who pre-dated Aphrodite and Hera, like Isis and Inanna, actually combined the feminine powers that the Greeks dissected.  The Sumerian Inanna, for example, was called “The Queen of Heaven and Earth, Goddess of Love and War.” That’s a lot of power concentrated in one feminine figure!

So Aphrodite brings us love, passion, beauty, creativity, and art.  And Hera brings us partnership, duty, power, and leadership.  And the two Goddess figures were cast against each other in the Greek myths as catty enemies.  Why?  Because  feminine power is easier to control when women are fragmented – internally and interpersonally.

Why can’t both powers live harmoniously inside women and amongst women like they once did in Innana or Isis?  Why do women have to be categorized as either wife or lover?  Madonna or whore?  Dutiful or Passionate?  Leader or Muse? Hillary or Monica?  Is this starting to sound familiar? And isn’t it starting to become obvious how limiting this is?  Do we have choices?  Can we intervene?

This is part of the magic of the myths – in their permeability and malleability.  They are living stories and in order to remain alive, they must adapt and mutate and evolve along with us. They want us to re-write them, and I have a feeling they have been waiting for a new chapter for a while now! If the story of the eternal Great Goddess can have had so many chapters already – Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Celtic, Neo-Pagan, etc. – then why can’t we write a new chapter today?  How do we keep the story moving towards the future?

For our inspiration, I would like to offer the mythical story of Aphrodite’s magical golden belt, which legend says made the wearer irresistible to any being who saw her!  It was kind of like a wonder-bra, described as a "golden strap in her bosom". So she wore it over her heart, and it was gold, so perhaps a symbol of her "heart of gold."

Homer writes the episode during the Trojan war, in which Aphrodite supported Troy and Hera supported the Greeks.  Of course! It was wartime, the Greeks were warlike, and wars had to be waged.  But the earthly battle was mirrored by the discord between the great Titan father god Okeanus and the mother goddess Tethys.  "As above, so below" - another lesson the the myths teach us.  Queen Hera decides she must intervene in the divine argument in order to bring about peace in Heaven so that it may be reflected as peace on Earth.  But she finds she lacks the powers of seductive flattery and sweet speech, so she summons Aphrodite’s aid.  Aphrodite at once decides to give Hera the source of her power, the golden garment who will also make Hera irresistible to the warring Titans, so that she may achieve peace.

“Hera (...) called Aphrodite to come aside and speak to her. "My dear child," said she, "will you do what I am going to ask of you, or will refuse me because you are angry at my being on the Danaan side, while you are on the Trojan?" Zeus' daughter Aphrodite answered, "Hera, august queen of Goddesses, daughter of mighty Kronos, say what you want, and I will do it for at once, if I can, and if it can be done at all." Then Hera told her a tale and said, "I want you to endow me with some of those fascinating charms, the spells of which bring all things mortal and immortal to your feet. I am going to the world's end to visit Okeanos (from whom all we gods proceed) and mother Tethys (...) I must go and see them that I may make peace between them; they have been quarrelling, and are so angry that they have not slept with one another this long while; if I can bring them round and restore them to one another's embraces, they will be grateful to me and love me for ever afterwards." Thereon laughter-loving Aphrodite said, "I cannot and must not refuse you, for you sleep in the arms of Zeus who is our king." As she spoke she loosed from her bosom the curiously embroidered girdle into which all her charms had been wrought - love, desire, and that sweet flattery which steals the judgment even of the most prudent. She gave the girdle to Hera and said, "Take this girdle wherein all my charms reside and lay it in your bosom. If you will wear it I promise you that your errand, be it what it may, will not be bootless."  When she heard this Hera smiled, and still smiling she laid the girdle in her bosom. 

This tale is powerful because it highlights an instance where these two Goddesses join forces.   Hera acknowledges that the Ancient Ones haven't made love in a while (not sleeping together) so she herself knows the power of erotic love to heal and mend discord. How exactly she will use the garment we don't know, but it is definitely a legitimisation of the same Aphrodisiac force which can often be perceived as so unsettling.  How many of us are afraid to use our feminine powers?  How many of us are afraid to share our power with other women?  Aphrodite's sweetness and generosity is telling.

This inspired me to imagine how these forces can be consciously worked to achieve harmony inside women and among them.  It has always struck me, for example, how a woman’s Aphrodite nature rules the process of falling in love, while a woman’s Hera energy takes over at marriage.  One Goddess helps the other form a stable family unit.  Yet a lot of attention is given to the supposed decline of romance in modern marriages, suggesting that a woman’s lover and wife aspects are prone to discord.  Why? I think it’s high time we explored this and how we can change the script by claiming our right to be lovers and queens – integrated and harmonious.  Standing in our power but unafraid to radiate love and acceptance.

It’s not just in our relations to men that the dichotomy plays itself out.  In the workplace, we often see the organic, artistic creativity of Aphrodite collide with the focused leadership of Hera the boss lady.  How can they build dialogue? When we begin to use the Goddess archetypes as lenses through which to observe and analyze ourselves and each other, we begin to grasp the interplay of personality types and patterns. Maybe, as Hera suggested, if we help make peace between the goddesses, that peace can reflect in us and among us?  "As above, so below."

As sources of inspiration, they give us so much. Who wouldn’t want to inhabit Beauty like Aphrodite, or to walk in dignified grace like Hera?  Who among us would like to explore a leadership of the heart, or forge a stable romantic partnership?  These and other possibilities are consciously engaged through Creative Movement Ritual, which takes the reading of the myths to a whole new level by adding meditation, movement, and ritual theater.


In ritual, we take a break from ordinary time and space to reflect on the condition of our souls.  We set aside differences to come together at the tribal hearth. Together, we contact the great Source whose stories have led us there. And we invite this Source to inspire us to become better people and build a better world.  In Creative Movement Ritual, we allow the body to move us through this dialogue with the Source.  We bypass the rational mind and allow the truths of our personal conditions to reveal themselves to us via movement, be it spontaneous or choreographed.  We shift from ordinary time, space, and consciousness and enter the temple of the ancients, in which the ancient tales are revived.  Creative Movement Ritual offers ways to move through the mythic stories; to act them out, characterize, interact, and create shapes, gestures, dialogues or sequences that express our internal process. The results are often moments of rare poetic beauty that transcend the limits of time and space.

In a time that is not a time and a place that is not a place, for a brief eternity, we will meet.  We will walk the sacred circle, and open the portals to our souls.  We will bring our stories to the temple of the Goddess, and she will tell us Hers.  We will open our inner eyes, ears, and hearts to the message beyond the words, deep within us, circulating through us like a fountain. We will allow the Source to flood us with its grace and inspiration and fill us with realisation. We will raise the cup of communion to each other in the spirit of integration and harmony. Thus revived, we will create expressions of truth and beauty that we will offer the Source, ourselves, and each other.  And we will walk away knowing that our passion can become our duty, our power lies in love and our beauty is our truth.  

Monday, May 25, 2015

Creative Movement Ritual - Bridging the Divide Between Body and Soul

What is Creative Movement Ritual?  It's a way to dance with your soul!

In Creative Movement Ritual, we acknowledge the interconnectedness of the various levels of Self – the physical body, the emotions, the mental processes and content, and the spiritual soul.  What happens to the body affects our emotions, which produce thoughts whose energy in turn affects our souls.  Conversely, a change in our spiritual reality can “trickle down” to our earthly, embodied selves.  The process of inspiration often works this way – a ripple in our soul, that part of us most deeply connected to the Source, can send an image flashing through our mind, which jump starts our heart’s passionate need to express it, which the body then obeys by grabbing a paint brush, tuning up an instrument, writing, singing, or dancing.

This immense and mysterious force can often be capricious, and hard to navigate.  Anyone who has suffered from writer’s block or a similar lull in creativity can attest to those frustrating moments in which nothing seems to flow and we delete drafts, rip up sketches, or throw the whole choreography away.  It feels as if the Muse has abandoned us, and the well of inspiration dried up.  Sometimes it’s good to just take a break and breathe for a while.  But anyone on the creative path will affirm that it’s hard to stay away.  When we have identified what expresses the creative desire of our souls, it is like a lifelong love affair with its ups, downs, dynamics, and cycles.  But to quit is unthinkable!

The Druids consider the force of inspiration to be sacred, and their ritual practice centers on accessing it.  They believe that it emanates from the undifferentiated field of cosmic energy that permeates all existence, and that it manifests in our creativity.  To them, our creative acts are the gifts that we offer the divine force in exchange for the inspiration it gives us. It is a two-way street, a sacred circuit to which ritual is the key.

In the wonderful book Ritual by the neo-druid priestess Emma Restall Orr, she defines ritual as “the art of taking a break” in order to recognize that everything in life is sacred.  She writes that ritual is a powerful tool for discovering how to re-program our attitudes and beliefs, which, as many of us already know, are the real engines of our destinies.  “Through images and sensations we dive into our subconscious, where we encounter and remove the layers of mud that strangle our efforts to access and express inspiration.  In ritual, we seek to connect, see, and hear clearly.  We strive to align ourselves with the contours of the Spirit in order to touch its beauty and power.” (Restall Orr 230)

With ritual, we create sacred space and time wherein we summon the courage to inhabit what Restall calls “a perfect state of being where harmony exists between the inner and outer worlds.”  To me, the perfect medium, receptacle, and expression for this harmony is the body, and this inspiration has guided me for over fifteen years.  It came to me as rather overwhelming impression – this idea that my dance movement could take on much deeper meaning and healing power if I could bypass my rational mind and dive into the mysteries of my soul, allowing its message to flow through me like a musician playing an instrument, or an oracle speaking in a temple.  As soon as I tuned into this inspiration, people, places, and things seemed to “miraculously” appear in alignment to it.  Soon after having this explosive realization, I discovered the philosophy and dance of Isadora Duncan, who believed that the “true dance is a prayer” and whose poetic movement repertory embodies this vision.  Duncan movement, gesture, and philosophy permeate my work in Creative Movement Ritual, because of the ease and clarity with which they bring about sacred states of being.

I see the body as the temple of the soul, and like many others, perceive the soul as that ethereal part of the self that transcends time and space, connecting to the powerful forces of the Earth, the Cosmos, and the vast reservoir of human history, memory, and creativity.  Having been initiated into the beauty and power of ritual through the Wiccan tradition, I had already begun to ritualize certain parts of my dance practice.  Lots of artists ritualize, even without knowing it.  The preparation of one’s working space, the tuning of one’s instruments, whatever they may be – these are all little rituals that artists engage in.  But what about consciously contacting and dialoguing with the source of inspiration?  What about making an art-form out of that contact, and trusting the Soul-Source to pour its inspiration into us?  This is the purpose of Creative Movement Ritual.

In Creative Movement Ritual, I take classical ritual structure and re-cast it to include the body’s expression at each stage.  Those stages are:

1) The shift in consciousness from mundane to sacred.
2) Creation of sacred space/time.
3) Activation of the creative vision and power of intention.
4) Contacting & dialoguing with Soul-Source.
5) Raising energy through the body’s rhythmic movement.
6) Circulating this energy along the pathway from body to soul – through the heart and mind.  This circulation of energy purifies the various levels of the body of its accumulated toxins – the metabolic toxins of the physical body, the emotional stagnancies of the heart, and the mental clutter that impedes the clear channel to the soul.
7) Receiving the soul’s inspiration.
8) Embodying and expressing this inspiration as a creative act.
9) Offering our creative act to the Soul-Source.
10) Sharing the creative act with Humanity.

All throughout this ritual experience, inspiring music, images, and stimuli are offered in order to access the emotions and imagination/creative visualization, which are then expressed through the body’s shapes, gestures, and movements.

Participants identify an intention for the Creative Movement Ritual, which at the various stages is affirmed and re-affirmed as the energy grows in purity and intensity.  In “Feminine Alchemy”, the intention centers on freeing the Self of a “lump of lead” – the excessive, stagnant emotions and thoughts which each person personally identifies in the preparatory stages of the ritual.  These stagnancies impede the connection between body and soul and block our access to inspiration, which is the “philosopher’s stone” that helps us achieve the “gold” – our creative act whose birth is made possible through the disintegration of the “lead”.

In my Goddess work, such as “Aphrohera’s Temple”, the intention centers on parting the veils between the Self and the Goddess Consciousness, so that the Goddess may pour her grace, wisdom and inspiration into our earthly temples and ennoble every part of us – our thoughts, our emotions, and our bodies.  Aphrodite opens our hearts and creativity, while Hera crowns us with a sense of divine purpose.  When they fuse as “Aphrohera”, we experience a profound sense of inner integration – one that affirms the sacred duty of opposites to complement one another.  Passion and duty, for example, do not have to be mutually exclusive.  Through Creative Movement Ritual we can show ourselves, for example, that our creative passion can and should become our duty.  We have the freedom to do that in sacred space/time – to rewrite the narratives that shape our lives, and re-program our attitudes and beliefs about our own power as women.  When we move through this process and express it creatively, we are able to give a gift back to the Universe, which accelerates the whole dynamic exchange and strengthens us on all levels.

Creative Movement Ritual operates on the principle that no matter who or what we believe in, we are the authors of our own evolution, and it is up to us to establish the vital dialogue between our earthly Selves and our eternal Souls.  We can become the inspiration we seek.  All we have to do to get started is make a move!


Wednesday, April 8, 2015

“In the Temples of Aphrodite and Hera” - A “Mytho-therapeutic”, Transcendental Movement Journey Into the Archetypal Divide Between “Lover” and “Queen”

The telling and re-telling of the great myths has always been a powerful form of folk therapy.  “The story you are looking for is also looking for you,” wrote Dr. Robert Svoboda in The Greatness of Saturn – a Therapeutic Mythic, his recounting of the Vedic tale of the Father of Time and Limitations.  Like Joseph Campbell, he holds the myths to be living narratives who need us to engage them as much as we need their healing potential.  To interact with a myth is to participate in an egregore – a thought form whose power grows over the eons as countless individual stories weave into and out of them.

The legendary narratives of Greek mythology have handed down a rich cast of characters and archetypes that still live vibrantly in our imagination and culture.  Two Goddesses are in the great inner circle of Olympus. Both are beautiful and powerful, but in distinctly different ways.  Hera is the wife of Zeus, the Queen of Heaven and Earth.  Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love and Beauty, born of the Sea fully formed.  One is the regent of power and dominion, while the other embodies the primal forces of attraction and creativity.

To engage the myths is to embark upon a journey into the great Human Spirit, with the maps and symbols left behind by storytellers like Homer, Hesiod, or Eurypides.  In the ancient Greeks began a flowering of humanist western culture, with the gods cast as super-humans possessed of powerful traits both positive and negative.   To these archetypes generations of human consciousness have been aggregated in a timeless, undying dialogue which continues to teach us valuable lessons about the human spirit and its divine counterparts.  The truths of mythos are not literal so much as they are metaphorical; they carry echoes of universal qualities which inspire our cultures, arts, and values.  Aphrodite, for example, has been the most depicted, painted, sculpted, filmed, photographed, sung, sonneted, lamented woman of all time!  Hera, her regal counterpart (and mother-in-law in the soap opera of Olympus) is lesser-known but for how she was depicted by the (male) authors of Greek history.  In "The Temples of Aphrodite and Hera", we delve through history, myth, poetry, image, and dance to the cores of both of these potent emanations of the Divine Feminine.


There were various inspirations for this work, but one source has been essential, and that is the book The Goddess Within by Jennifer and Roger Woolger.  In it, the authors present their theory of modern feminine archetypal psychology through the six primary Greek goddess archetypes:  Athena (wisdom), Aphrodite (love), Artemis (nature), Demeter (mother), Hera (power) and Persephone (the unconscious).  All women carry aspects of these goddesses hard-wired into their psyches to varying degrees.  We identify with them much like zodiac signs or any other symbols; they are maps of consciousness that help us understand ourselves and our dramas in the light of their Universal principles.  The following website summarizes the book quite neatly, and is a good preparative read for the workshop:  www.goddess-power.com.

We are the Goddess and She is Us.  Between us is an unfolding dialogue that reveals us to ourselves more fully and to Her as reflections of Her Divinity.  Through ritual, movement, and conscious gesture, we journey to the Temples of Aphrodite and Hera within.  We commune with the Goddess consciousness and in the process encounter deeply-held beliefs, truths, illusions, and inspirations.  We have the opportunity to examine these and understand them in order to alchemize them – to deconstruct them and to separate the gold from the lead.

This workshop encourages women to “flip the script” and experiment with the creation of a new direction for the narrative that not only suggests that these two Godesses can get along, but that they can become a very powerful partnership – Love and Sovereignty, Passion and Duty, Attraction and Power working in service of the New Woman, the one envisioned by Isadora Duncan as being “the highest intelligence in the freest body.” Who doesn’t want both?  Doesn't it seem natural that we should embody both?  Doesn't it seem obvious that divided from each other and divided within ourselves we are easier to dominate?

How do they meet?  What are their gestures?  How can they help each other heal their wounds? In the Temples of Aphrodite and Hera, they meet in mythic time/space.  They dialogue.  They forgive.  Hera places the crown of legitimacy on Aphrodite's head, thereby healing her wound as the "outcast" object of suspicion, envy, and lust.  In return, Aphrodite opens Hera's heart - the often caged, cold, and lonely heart of the conquered Princess forced into a marriage of duty.  No Madonna/Whore complex can curtail the power unleashed by this mighty fusion!



More than ever, women are looking inward and starting to unpack the levels of cultural conditioning we’ve inherited and constructed.  We are looking across at each other and joining in the effort to grasp, define, and re-define our realities within the rapidly-spiraling chaos of our age.  There’s a lot of energy out there, and one way to navigate it is through these timeless ideas and thought-forms like the archetypes and the cosmic forces they represent.

We learn, among other things, that we are not so small and yet not so big as we once thought.  The big story is also the personal story, the Myth is the public dream, the dream the private Myth, as Joseph Campbell famously wrote. “As above, so below” begins to come into vivid focus as a tool of self-empowerment.  We discover that there isn’t a thing we’ve faced as women that the Goddess Herself hasn’t also conquered. She offers us the power of transformation - of transmutation, and Her therapeutic mythics are the paths to healing and integration, and to those versions of Self that have learned to turn our wounds into medals of honor.

What role do our bodies play?  They carry the imprint of everything we’ve been, done, said, or have experienced individually and collectively. The Body of Woman is the body of all women – its bones and curves and blood and claws – the giver of Life and the dark moon of all returns.  Womens’ sovereignty over their own bodies and their own potential for ecstatic pleasure, for example, is something only recently registered onto the topical radar of our time.  Can you imagine what a Hera/Aphrodite integrated woman could accomplish in that area? Many realizations burst forth when we begin to participate in the "therapeutic mythics" and begin to write our own stories. We find that creativity and sovereignty can co-exist, and that to follow our passion becomes the highest of duties.

To embody one’s knowledge and wisdom is a great challenge of our time.  So many of us are walking heads, caught in a world of work, strategy, traffic, stress, and deadlines.  We are cut off from our bodies and often at the mercy of relentless cultural messaging about them, which we absorb at all levels of consciousness. We are force-fed insidious lies about feminine power, bound by stereotypes that keep us tethered to the post of patriarchal privilege.    Where do we go for sustenance? 

More than ever, we need each other as women.  Our gender has broken many barriers within the last two centuries, and together with our “emancipation” has also come a certain erosion of community as we evolve our way through a male-dominated landscape.  Men are not the enemy.  It’s our ignorance of our own innate power that’s the enemy.  We have to continue to step beyond the boundaries as our foremothers did and cycle around to what is constant in the Divine Feminine Spirit:  Community.  We may no longer all bond over the canning, weaving, or child-rearing, but today we have the time, resources, and freedom of choice to bond on a new platform for unity and healing among women, and I believe that platform is the Dance.

“The Dance of the Future is the Dance of the Past and of all times” wrote Isadora Duncan, who affirmed to the New Woman that the art of the dance must be returned to its rightful place as a sacred art form. When we move through the Goddess, we re-enact Her mysteries and for a brief eternity, we become her.  When we move through the Goddesses in their complementary pairs, we encounter explosive potential for reconciliation, healing and integration of our deepest rifts that separate us from our fully authentic selves.  When we share these experiences with each other, we extend our personal healing into the greater community of women and become catalysts for the transformation of sisterhood.



This was an edition of the workshop for the WAMED festival in Australia.  The only space available for it was a church, so we did it in the community room of the church, and this was Hera's "throne".  When I saw this picture, I thought the white ball overhead was a light fixture.  It wasn't - it was an ORB, concentrated and hovering overhead, like a crown....

We used one of the church pews for Aphrodite's "divan", and although you can't see it, it was draped with her colours and scented pillows.  The orbs in this picture are all around, "embracing" everyone in contrast to the photo above.
Some reflections from women around the world who have experienced

 “In the Temples of Aphrodite and Hera”:

“The Aphrodite/Hera workshop was a personal revelation: I discovered that I was very uncomfortable with leadership roles - the Queen Hera position - yet my life had cast me for many such roles. Learning more about the Goddesses in a safe space penetrated my subconscious in a way that simply reading about them never could: it was a thoughtful and mind shifting experience, one that has impacted one in various spheres of my working and social life.” DR DARLENE MILLER, SENIOR LECTURER, SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN.

"Aphrodite the eternal lover & Hera the queen. Both with their wounds, both with their power, are incredible & often fundamental archetypes that impart upon the woman psyche. When I first heard of the workshop I was  particularly intrigued in the bringing together of two archetypes that often bring their opposing polarity.

The workshop provided a gentle way for bridging these two archetypes within myself, that I  feel has helped me develop a fuller expression of being a woman. A catalyst that brought me peace & understanding into what it means to be me. I experienced release & found courage in honoring my truth that my sovereignty lies in the following of my heart.

There have been many treasures from this workshop that still continue to unfold months later. For me I felt the workshop unlocked a beautiful process of realization & healing with shifts in many parts of my life. I am utterly grateful to have been part of the experience.

Paola holds the space with love, compassion & strength. I'd recommend it to any woman interested in deepening her connection to herself."

Vanessa Biddulph, Fusion Belly Dance Artist

"This incredible workshop opened my eyes to accepting the many wonderful qualities that I hold within myself.  Through Paola’s guidance, I was welcomed into the realms of Aphrodite and Hera, discovered the beauty and dignity of each goddess then learned how to embrace those qualities.  When I entered the Temples of these magnificent goddesses, I was uncertain what I would find but when I left I felt the sensuality, love and beauty of Aphrodite as well as the dignity, majestic independent qualities of Hera.  I returned home from the workshop as the sensual regal Queen of my own domain able to face the world with confidence.









" - Kelly Garland, Melbourne, AUS




Saturday, April 4, 2015

Descent and Return - Dancing through the Ancient Myths of Transformation



The mythologies of the ancient Near Eastern cultures are an endless source of fascination and inspiration.  The mysteries of the pyramids and ancient Egyptian arts hold symbols, images, and narratives that take us deep into the psyche of a desert/river civilization imbued with cosmic consciousness.  Their myth cycle mirrors the cyclical nature of a river civilization, with the Nile’s yearly flood season bringing fertility and abundance to the people. 
The goddess Isis represents this cycle through the narrative of her descent to the underworld to rescue her consort, Osiris, who dies and is reborn every year, just like the seasons.  In the Isis myth, we find a rich source of inspiration for our art, but when we dig deeper into the archetype, we realize we are looking into the great ancient depths of the Divine Feminine Soul. 
The Egyptian Isis was the heiress of the earlier Babylonian Ishtar, which was the heiress of the still earlier Sumerian Inanna.  These goddesses were all powerful Queens – sovereigns of fertility, love, and magic.  Their legends intertwine, revealing likenesses in patterns and themes whose echoes reverberate strongly in our modern concept of the heroic feminine.
They were goddesses of descent, transformation, and ascent, choosing to journey into the mythic underworld on sacred missions. The primordial Inanna descended in order to willingly sacrifice herself to her Dark Twin, Ereshkigal, a struggle from which she emerges reformed and re-empowered.  Ishtar and Isis both descend in order to rescue their beloved consorts. All three myths are symbolic of the life/death/life cycle of fertility and the agricultural year, and remind us of the sacrifices necessary in order to propagate the cycles of productivity and abundance.
For modern women, these narratives ring true on an even deeper level. They remind us of our need to transform and transmute as human beings.  We “sacrifice” old selves, old lives or out-dated paradigms in order to emerge into more evolved versions of ourselves.  But like all heroic quests, we must journey into our own depths to find the power to rebuild the new Self.  In those descents to our personal underworld, we encounter repressed parts of ourselves and face our Shadows, those Dark Twins who hold the keys to our transformations.  We find strength we never knew we had and the courage to pass tests, face our fears, and emerge newly integrated into the light of the new realities we create.  We return stronger, more creative, more intuitive, and empowered with our new discoveries.  Just like the goddess.
The field of archetypal psychology works in exactly that way – by showing us that our stories are the stories of the goddess – and that even great goddesses were obliged to descend and pass the tests of the underworld in order to deepen their magic and integrate the powers of the Self.  When we realize that these transformations come in cycles, we gain courage and hope as we engage the processes of self-evolution.  As above, so below – our journeys mirror the great journey of the goddess, and by discovering this journey, we discover that her powers can also be ours.
A wonderful book that has informed my approach to dancing the Descent/Return Cycle is Descent to the Goddess by Silvia Pereira.  The book vividly interprets the myth in light of the Jungian map of the psyche and presents a clear case for its therapeutic value for modern women by revealing the hidden likenesses between our interior processes and the eternal processes of the Divine Feminine.
As dancers, we often confront fear and insecurity as we engage our art form.  When we delve deeper into our art, we delve deeper into ourselves, and come up against barriers to our evolution – be they physical issues, creative blocks, or the fear of being seen and judged by our peers.  We need to find ways to engage our inner reality in safe and inspiring ways that put us into contact with our authentic, creative Selves.  Dancing the great myths is a wonderful way to do this.  When we dance in mytho-poetic reality, the movement of our bodies transmits the unfolding story of our heroic soul and its changes.
One way to dance our way through this myth is by aligning its narrative stages with a movement cycle musically engineered to place the dancer in an affective landscape that evokes the emotions of each stage of the story. 
 1) the Goddess awakens to the need to embark on the Journey
 2) The Descent through the seven gates of the Underworld
 3) the Dance with the Shadow
 4) the Symbolic Death and Disintegration 
 5) The Re-integration 
 6) The Return. 

In preparation for this mythopoetic Dance Shamanism experience, each woman is invited to consider what and how she most needs to transform at that given moment.  Through reading and analyzing the myth, guided meditations, creative journaling, and a ceremonial opening, the mind and psyche are aligned to the work at hand. 
The symbolic nature of the story becomes more personal and real when we consider that the actual Descent through the Seven Gates is a gradual divestiture of worldly attributes.  Women are encouraged to reflect upon what they need to shed on this journey to the ground zero of the Self.  What illusions, habits, or attachments impede our personal evolution? 
In facing our Dark Twins, what virtues are revealed in surrender?  Can we embrace this split-off part of ourselves?  Can we heal her even as we allow her to heal us?  Is the meeting a struggle, a dance, or both?  When we enter the dark stillness, how do we empty ourselves in order to fill back up with hope and new potential?  These are powerful issues for women that can be integrated on various levels and that reach deeper into the subconscious when they are danced ceremonially.  They transform through creative expression, which heals and integrates on a much more immediate level.  The result of the transformation is embodied - like the soul inscribing itself onto the physical canvas of the body.



The dance cycle is structured to allow spontaneity and improvisation to bring authentic expression to the forefront.  Creative imagery is offered as a guide, as well as evocative suggestions and passages from the epic poem.  The musical soundtrack is a powerful stimulus which is carefully constructed to promote immersion into the myth.  
At the end of the dance cycle, women are encouraged to crystallize the results of their journeys by creating and incorporating statue figures that reflect their new states of being.  The experience is wrapped up with a ceremonial closure and talking circle.  There are usually many hugs, tears of joy and realization, and an amazing sense of lightness.  
Participants tell me of how they change in the wake of the experience, that they find new courage and strength, renewed creativity, and deeper insight.
I can’t help but reflect on the significance of these essential therapeutic myths on a day like today - the Saturday before Easter, the Christian adaptation of the ancient mythic of descent and return.  Easter  is a Great Renewal after the character-test of Lent.  Tomorrow, there will be feasting and celebration, a great release from the period of testing which carries so much weight in the collective consciousness. 
The mythologies of descent and return reach to us throughout the eons and across multiple cultural expressions. They ring true for all of us, because we all have to die little deaths in order to resurrect to newer, nobler versions of Being. It’s the life/death/life cycle of evolution, and as cyclical creatures, women are keenly attuned to its rhythms.

To these rhythms is set the spiralling Dance of Life, twirling, unfolding and mirroring to us the universally therapeutic truth that our own cycles are the cycles of Nature, Goddess, and Cosmos.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

The Divine Spark: Inspiration as Sacred Quest



Inspiration is one of life’s profound mysteries, a capricious force that may be courted, but never coerced or commanded.  
Sometimes it’s a spontaneous eruption, sometimes it trickles in, and sometimes it floods the senses and overwhelms us.  Like the finger of God sparking life into Adam, the force of inspiration is an activation - an affirmative, catalytic transformation.  We are never the same after an idea bursts forth.  For a brief eternity, the veils of the Cosmos are drawn aside and the overwhelming poetry of existence is revealed. 
When Isadora Duncan journeyed to Europe, she accessed a deep well of inspiration in classical, renaissance, and neo-classical art that was based on classical Greek mythology. Paintings and sculptures such as Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” or the “Winged Victory of Samothrace” capture moments of mythic resonance that exist beyond time and space. 
They transported Isadora and transport us to the sources of our deepest dreams and ideals.  “Dreams are private myths.  Myths are public dreams,” wrote the great mythologist Joseph Campbell.  The great mythologies are the narratives which root our world cultures in deeper meaning and connect us to those versions of ourselves that exist in the realm of ideals, dreams, and epic visions.
The “Winged Victory”
inspires us to activate the power of the solar plexus, to imagine the arms as wings, and to FLY to mythic heights of heroism

In the mythic tales of the Greeks lie the foundations of Western Civilization – heroic quests, tragedies and victories that carry on the values of humanism which made Greek culture a fulcrum of evolution in the ancient world.
They were the first ancient culture in the west to recast the gods in human image.  Prior to the Greeks, the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Sumerians worshiped “composite” gods.  With animal heads, human bodies, tails, and such combinations, their deities were more primal, closer to nature and the raw and often frightening realities of earthly existence. Their powers were composite – in the pre-Greek cultures we see an aggregation of powers in one deity that the Greeks later separated into full personifications of the great forces that rule human existence. Love, Wisdom, Sovereignty, Justice, War, Nature, Fertility, the Ocean, and the Underworld were all represented by gods and goddesses who were the great Übermenschen of the epic sagas that shaped the Greek collective consciousness and inspired centuries of great art and thought.
Mythology is an exciting inspiration for the art of the dance. Myths give us images, text, meaning, and what choreographer Twyla Tharp called "spine" for dance-making.  They are narratives we can use to inspire us to add character and story to our choreographies.  But instead of simply telling someone else’s story, in mytho-poetically inspired dance we connect to the deeper reality of the myth and its power to tell our story as well. We are all heroes on journeys and quests, and the mythic heroes and heroines that inspire us are the epic heroes of legend AND the surging hero within.  We identify with them on a deep, unconscious level.  They permeate the cultures we swim in, flowing in from a deep ancestral well of soul-substance.
Through the study of Dance in an interdisciplinary setting, we can reveal and strengthen its dialogues with history, the sciences, and the arts. 
We can reveal the hidden likenesses between the art of the dance and the mysteries of the universe, and from these moments of recognition reclaim the mysteries of our sacred bodies while returning the dance to its rightful place as a sacred form of expression.
Through this interconnectedness, we can discover and reveal a more personal and authentic intention for dancing.
Together, we can co-create an experience whereby Life becomes Art and Art becomes Life, and through this union engender a deep transformation in ourselves, each other,  and our audience. 

THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE US

“I see dance being used as communication between body and soul, to express what is too deep to find for words.” - Ruth St. Denis

“The Dancer of the Future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together, that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body.” 
Isadora Duncan,  The Art of the Dance

The way my soul took flight when I first walked through the Louvre, when I first saw the Parthenon and the Great Pyramids of Giza, when I heard a Bach sonata, or when I first saw a Duncan Dance - that is the state of being that I want to contact, work, and transmit to others.  I yearn for increased creative dialogue between myself and the version of me that lives in that realm, closer to the Sources, the Mysteries, and the Forces of the Universe.  That part of me that knows its own divinity and knows the pathways between sacred body and sacred soul.

Both Isadora Duncan and Ruth St Denis believed that the Dance is a sacred art form, and sought inspiration for their work in sacred sources.  Ms. Ruth danced the Goddesses and mythic figures from the East, like Isis, Radha, and Kuan Yin. Isadora danced the forces of nature and inspiration, looking to the great mystical line of discovery that connects all great art back to the Universal laws ruling all of existence.  I hold both of these great Masters in the utmost of reverence - re-reading their books and studying their images and dances over and over.  Every time they spring into my consciousness fresh and new, igniting my soul and pulling me ever closer to my conviction that the force of inspiration is sacred - that it emanates from the Gods and contacts us through our sacred souls, and that every time we engage in its activities, we must do so with a deep reverence.  

PRAYER FOR ARTISTS 
 Adapted from the original by Ruth St. Denis

O, Divine Father and Mother, 
Makers of heaven and earth, 
Supreme artists of creation, 

I, your humble instrument, kneel here at your feet.

I listen for your inward word 
and I wait to behold your inward vision.

Cleanse me 
from all sin and self-righteousness; 
from all illusions of prided vanity and fear. 


Make me sensitive to your sounds, 
to your vision, and to your rhythms.


Let me express beauty, 
the wonders of your universe 
and the immortality of my own soul which you have given me. 



Allow me to enter that temple not made with hands 
wherein I may express the beauty of love and the majesty of truth.


In humble and surrendered gratitude - 
For life, for love and for wisdom 
I offer 
again and yet again to You, my heart, my body and my mind.
 - Ruth St. Denis, Wisdom Comes Dancing