Pilgrimage – The Mythic Journey to Avalon

Since my early childhood, I’ve been fascinated with mythic places and legends.  Poring over old issues of National Geographic as a school kid, I pointed to pyramids, ruins and temples and vowed that I would go there some day.  The pictures awakened wild imaginings in my mind and opened the gateway to a lifelong love of myth and legend.  As I’ve gone on to make many of these journeys, I’ve found that they compel me – it’s as if there is no choice in the matter.  Something powerful awaits in the journey, something destined to change me forever. 

The call bubbles up, echoing from deep within.  Like the Muses, it whispers to us while littering our paths with signs that point the way.  Casting our soul’s sight over oceans, mountaintops or skylines, we exhale into Destiny. The air thickens with possibility.  Forces conspire, pushing and pulling all at once.  Signs lead to people lead to places and doors open. 

Pilgrimage is an opportunity to make a move, to walk our soul-talk.  It requires a leap of faith to dive into the myths that hold us in their thrall and to drink from the wells of sacred memory whose waters have penetrated vast layers of history and fed the souls of generations.  We go in order to connect to something bigger than ourselves and feel the primordial awe that enflames our whole being.  The trip to the sacred place is a conscious act of evolution; a living metaphor for the intense inner journey as each step of the pilgrimage comes into focus and reveals its sacred purpose.  Things take on mytho-poetic proportions as we enter the Myth and it enters us.

The connections we make with the people, landscape and mythology of the sacred place will bring treasures and blessings we never expected.  But the sacred journey also shapes us with inner and outer challenges.  “Know Thyself” was the injunction of the Delphic Oracle, and as I learned on a pilgrimage to Delphi a decade ago, we also come to be tested. Boundaries will be stretched and  characters forged.  Deep emotions surface, and sometimes we need a hand to hold.

From the moment I’ve set on pilgrimages to places like Glastonbury, Delphi, Macchu Picchu, Giza, and others, I’ve had the joyous good fortune to meet kindred spirits and fellow journeyers who went on to become lifelong friends.  People we meet on our spiritual journeys are our mutual witnesses.  Around the sacred fires, they give us the gift of reflection, energy and support.  Many appear as spiritual midwives destined to help us birth new realizations, be it through an observation, a well-timed word, a dance, a touch, or the spellbound telepathy of a shared epiphany.

We journey to be inspired by great Teachers – those who hold the keys to the Mysteries through maps, songs, stories, dances, processions and ceremonies. They awaken our senses, shaking and shocking us with the awesome beauty and real-life poetry that comes with living the Myth.  Their wisdom feeds our understanding and gives us the chance to become like children, surrendering to trust and guidance.  They take us to the deep caves, mysterious lakes, and summer gardens of our psyches, opening us up to the power of Myth for healing and inspiration. As the mythologist Michael Meade once said at Delphi, “A handful of the sweet waters of Mythos is more precious than an entire ocean of dogma.”  The hands of the great Masters cup those waters to our thirsty lips so that we may drink and revive our souls.

So it is that my soul has thirsted for Glastonbury – Avalon – almost my entire life.  A deep fascination with Britain’s history and mythology started with those National Geographics back in the 70’s when I first arrived as an immigrant child to the U.S.

Castles, stone circles, magic and King Arthur piqued my interest more and more even as my Christian upbringing obliged me to read in secret.  As a teenager, I lost myself in the saga of Morgaine and Viviane at the twilight of the Old Religion.  What was the Tor like?  How did it feel to raise the mists or summon up one’s “Goddess glamour”?  Were the gods really all one, as the Merlin says at the end?  Why did I resonate so deeply with the Morgaine character, yet feel antipathy towards Gwenhwyfar?

My late teens ushered in a lifetime of learning about the Goddess and Her ways.  The Spiral Dance, Drawing Down the Moon, A Witch’s Bible Compleat, and many other books came to light my path and lead me to my first coven.  Celebrating the cycles of Life and Earth and feeling the Mysteries of ancient practice revealed in me a love of ritual and ceremony that have carried over into practically every aspect of my life and work.

Over the decades, I would circle through to the UK via long stints in South America and Asia.  In 2015 came a definitive moment via my friend Carla Cooper, who had hosted my folkloric dance workshops in Somerset in July.  One sunny day, she suggested a jaunt to Glastonbury, and it just so happened to be during the Goddess Conference week.

photo by Marc Cooper, 2015

My first sight of the Tor in the distance sent a shockwave of pure awe through me.  It rose in the distance like a giant lightning rod connecting Earth and Sky and majestically marking “the spot”. The whole day, wandering through the Abbey and taking a brief pass through the Conference, I felt déjà vu.  I couldn’t shake it, nor did I want to. I just had to find a way back to Glastonbury.

And so, over the next year, people and events conspired to make that wish come true.  An invitation to teach at the March 2016 Majma Dance Festival in Glastonbury brought me into contact with many more beautiful dancing souls, who then conspired to open the pathways for me to return to the UK in July of 2016 for an extended teaching trip.

I decided to try and present myself to the Goddess Conference, on the off-chance that they may be interested in having a World Dance Alchemist among them, offering my services as a Melissa and chewing my nails to the bone wondering if I had been too forward in my approach. 

The welcome that I received from dear Amanda Baker felt almost too good to be true.  The warmth and generosity emanating from her emails helped me to trust that this was actually going to happen!  That same week came an offer of housing with the family of Claire Salem, who lives a 20-minute walk from the town square.  Things were settled. I was going! I could hardly contain my excitement.

I was received in the UK by Shirley Griffiths from Newport and Sacha Tremain from Bristol in the month leading up to the Conference, and it turned out to be a perfect preparation for what I would experience in Glastonbury. Both of these wonderful spirit-dancers shared my passion for ancient places and took the time to show me some of Britian’s historic sites.

Shirley shot by Paola

Paola shot by Shirley

The tour began in Wales with Shirley and included inspiring sites such as the ancient Tintern Abbey. A day spent there rendered many laughs and playful portrait images as two dance friends made art in its ancient spaces.  One drizzly afternoon at the Avebury Stone Circles with Sacha fascinated me with and its ancientness.  I felt its energy rising from the ground and traveling along its lines and angles in a powerful current, imposing yet embracing.

Sacha and I then spent a day tromping around in the Gloucestershire forest, where she channeled her inner Artemis while I clicked the portraits.

Sacha shot by Paola

For our Goddess Dance project we journeyed to the temples of Aphrodite and Hera, the archetypes of Lover and Queen that most prominently inspire my work in sacred dance. I was honored to bring my lifework to a group of thirteen ladies – a journey of art, affect, and sacred movement ceremony that inspires and integrates the feminine psyche.

Like this, the energy built up to the last ten days of July at the Glastonbury Goddess Conference.  Excited yet apprehensive, I made my way to the first Melissa meeting, where I was immediately put at ease by Brian Harrison’s gentle leadership.  As I met the other Melissas, I was grateful for my experience in festival event work, which prepared me to observe and flow with the group dynamic in a productive way.

Just like so many spiritual journeys, there’s a feeling of living an entire lifetime in one week.  The first day or two feel tentative, and then we start to build connections with people and fall into rhythms until the big climax and heartfelt good-byes. On the day we set up the town hall as the Goddess Temple, I fell into a nice work-groove with Rowan, Pete and Trevor. The entire Melissa team was a joy to be a part of, buzzing around like worker bees and getting things done!

I am immensely grateful to Amanda Baker not only for having the generosity to offer me a spot as a Melissa, but for actually reading my CV and intuiting that she could take a chance on the creative technique that I brought to the table.  She asked me to partner with Sadhu Valakhilyas in constructing a ceremony for the invocation of the fire element, and I was happy to meet him and see that he was also a mover like me!  So it HAD to be a dance!

Our team’s creative sessions were so much fun. We exchanged ideas and fused them into a kinetic dance of invocation. Along with Silva, Sarah, Greg, and Annabel du Boulay who jumped in to drum and teach us some songs, we worked with gesture, music, and fiery movement that charged people up and transformed their personal energy. It was amazing how it all came together, and was such an honor to share music and sequences from my repertory of sacred dance with everyone at the  Conference.  

As a teacher of world dance, I often invoke the spirit of my late folklorist grandfather, Vangel Betinski, who danced the ancient dances of Macedonia.  When I was young, he would train me in the folklore of our people even after I had moved to the States.  “No matter what,” he told me once, “No matter where you go, you will always find your brothers and sisters in the dance.”

And so I did at the Glastonbury Goddess Conference.  As our group welcomed each new influx of participants into the Town Hall for the fire-dance, we jumped and clapped and stamped and sweated and smiled…..and recognized each other in the dance.  Soul to soul, eye to eye, heart to heart.  There is nothing like the power of ritual dance to awaken group spirit and build community.  Fire is outgoing, energizing and transformative energy.  After conducting the fire dance four times that day, my body was exhausted, but my spirit was electrified.

And it would continue to be electrified over and over as the week unfolded, charged to overflowing with the vision, talent, and spiritual generosity of this thriving international Goddess community. The wise words and songs of great Teachers like Starhawk and Alisa Starkweather….the haunting music of Heloise Pilkington or Tiana’s visionary Goddess art….these were just some of the glorious manifestations of Goddess spirit on a daily basis.

Tiana's Goddess Art

But nothing could prepare me for the intense transformational experience of the Mysteries conducted by Kathy Jones and the High Priestesses. Time and again, the ceremonies struck a harmonic convergence of sacred theater, myth, shamanism, art, epiphany, and tribe.  The sound-scapes, physical settings and characterizations of the Lady invoked Her presence with deep resonance that reverberated throughout the sacred week. It was obviously lovingly planned to take people deeper and deeper into the Mysteries of Lady and Land.

The Treasures of Avalon

Water Ceremony

As I followed Kathy and the Priestesses across the sacred topography I dropped into deeply-rooted reverence for Mother Earth.  Walking the land is an act of sacred communion, of physical merging with the deity’s primal body.  A deep draught of the air, a drink from the sacred well, earthing myself in the grasses, jumping and clapping around the sacred fire….

I drank that energy in and sent it through my whole body.  I felt it wrapping each of my cells in a vibrant magnetism.  I envisioned it imprinting itself onto my DNA, charging me with the Lady’s love and purifying me from the inside out.  Then I let it spark outward to my sisters and brothers in the fire ceremony at dusk, envisioning and feeling the whole tribe united in a warm, protective bubble of Goddess light. 

Fire Ceremony

No words or symbols can adequately capture the force of shared affect.  Its immediacy has always led me to dance it, move with it, allow it to move through me. As Isadora Duncan said about her vision of the Dance as Prayer, “If I could speak it, I wouldn’t have to dance it.” Ritual and ceremony give us direct experience of the Divine in a safe container where we are encouraged to experience deeply and wholly.  When the powers of ritual and dance unite, an explosive potential for magic and healing is released.

Taking the magic and healing even further was the 10-hour shamanic journey. Laughing, crying growling, chirping, howling, dancing, screaming, dreaming and knowing....I dove deeply that day.  Deep into the depths of being beyond the ego’s searchlight, I lost myself and found myself.

The voice of Kathy Jones – Master storyteller, shaman, weaver of visions – led us into the sacred topographies of psyche.  Beyond the mists, into the Avalon of soul and collective unconscious, the stories and places and characters gradually brought forth an even deeper sense of a Mother-World – that alternative reality that Kathy spoke about since the beginning of the Conference.

A world in which magic is a lived daily reality.  A world where the past, present and future meld into an Eternal Now blessed by a benevolent, generous Goddess. A world where inspiration, creativity, love and material to spiritual well-being spread their vines and flower over the ruins of our corrosive current world paradigm.

Air Ceremony

During the entire Conference, I felt a growing sense of Mother-World.  I felt it in the embrace of the Melissas and our Queen Bee Amanda Baker. I felt it in the Embodiments of the Lady, welcoming me to Her realm.  I felt it in the voices of the singers, my barges to the Other Side.  I felt it in the dance, swirling with my brothers and sisters.  I felt it in the treasures and gifts I received all week long – a snakeskin, a picture frame, a pendant, a kiss, a key…..a yummy treat prepared by Amanda Reeves.  And I feel it welling up now as I write these words in a café in the middle of chaotic São Paulo.

In the end, I took a workshop with Michelle Patten about responding to the call of the Goddess.  During the meditative journey to Avalon, the Lady gave me a beautiful little key to take with me as a sign of whether or not the path of the Priestess was for me.  In the closing ceremony, we were all given keys, which kind of made me laugh.  But as I continued my journey with my annual pilgrimage to Macedonia, I saw more keys of that type, randomly popping up as if planted by an mysterious force.  

And it is to that force now that I remand my destiny.  I will soon jump off the cliff of an immense life-change, closing a twenty-one year overseas journey and spiraling back to the United States, the land that welcomed me as a tiny immigrant in the 70’s. In this land I hope to re-establish roots nourished by the values of freedom and opportunity and to cultivate the fruits of my lifework as offerings to the Goddess.  I’m scared, but excited and trusting in the signs.

Throughout my wanderings, I'm starting to see that what I seek is also seeking me.  As we spiral ever closer, I can see that every step of the way, even the detours,  are somehow meant to be.  All the places, people, animals, trials, tribulations and triumphs are becoming part of me, chapters in a personal myth leading me to stronger and wiser versions of myself.  Each step I take with trust in a higher purpose lands on sacred ground.  Step by step the story unfolds, rippling outward into a reflection of the Myths that move me. 

"Participation Mystique" and Moving Through The Therapeutic Power of Myth

The powerful stories of the transpersonal realm – that larger-than-life layer of collective consciousness that is home to heroes, angels, fairies, gods, and goddesses – have a way of drawing us into them like magnets.  Surrendering to their allure, we find that life becomes imbued with magic for a while, allowing us to access a reality that fires our imagination and wakes up our souls.  We tune into the finer frequencies of our higher selves, which open us to the songs of the ancients and the music of the spheres.

Reading myth opens a portal to a rich treasure-trove of symbols and allegory – all gifts that map the way to our inner goddess.  “Symbols are to the mind what tools are to the hand – an extension of their powers.”  They extend our ability to understand things inexpressible via language, and they help us “build staircases of realization to places where we cannot fly”.  Dion Fortune wrote eloquently in The Mystical Kabbalah  on the use of symbols for deeper understanding of life’s mysteries.  She showed how they help us transcend the limitations and language of the ego-mind, because “knowledge of the higher forms of existence is obtained by a process other than thought….it must be crystallized into form to convey impression.”

As a teacher of dance, mythology, and ritual, I’ve always felt compelled to move through the myths guided by my instinctive body.  To move through a ritual re-enactment of the myth is to take it a step further and manifest it in the here and now, giving form to its essence through the body’s expressions.  Within the embodiment cycle of attraction/embodiment/expression, the magic is in the doing, the here and now.  We open ourselves to the possibility of the Higher Self and the instinctual, intuitive body dancing sans ego for a while.  With the ego at rest, we are open to direct knowledge and revelation. 

In Women Who Run With The Wolves, one of the wisest and most beautiful books on the healing power of myths and stories, Clarissa Pinkola Estes distills the psychological attraction the mythic tales exert on the human psyche.

“If story is seed,” she writes, “then we are its soil. Just hearing the story allows us to experience it as though we ourselves are the heroine who either falters or wins out at the end. If we hear a story about a wolf, then afterward we rove about and know like a wolf for a while.  If we hear a story about a dove finding her young at last, then for a time after, something moves behind our feathered breasts.   If it be a story of wresting the pearl from underneath the claw of the ninth dragon, we feel exhausted afterward, and satisfied. In a very real way, we are imprinted with knowing just by reading the tale.

Among Jungians this is called “participation mystique” – a term borrowed from anthropologist Levy-Bruhl – and it is used to mean a relationship wherein “a person cannot distinguish themselves as separate from the object or thing they behold.” Among Freudians, it is called ”projective identification”.  Among anthropologists, it is sometimes called ”sympathetic magic.” All these terms mean the ability of the mind to step away from its ego for a time and merge with another reality, that is, another way of comprehending, a different way of understanding.”

"Judgment of Paris" Anton Mengs, 1728-1779

One ancient myth that holds a lot of revelation potential for modern women is the “Judgment of Paris”.  In it, we see a multi-layered conflict centering on three main characters: the goddesses Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera, the Warrior, Lover, and Queen. They are pitted against each other in a plot orchestrated by Zeus to cause the Trojan War.  The spark is a golden apple thrown into the midst of the three at a royal wedding.  Addressed to “the fairest”, it results in a bizarre beauty contest between the three goddesses, which Zeus commands the mortal Paris to arbitrate.

Each goddess attempts to bribe Paris into choosing her by offering victory on the battlefield (Athena) sovereignty over Europe and Asia (Hera) and the love of Helen, the most beautiful woman on Earth (Aphrodite).  We all know the disastrous chain of events unleashed by Paris’ choice.

Deconstructing the myth, we uncover themes of manipulation, ingrained paradigms around Beauty, bad judgment and life choices, and the suffering caused when women work against each other and not together.  The Greeks were famous for dissecting the goddesses of the peoples they conquered and re-casting their fragments as new entities in the conquering mythology.  Most of Greek history and myth was handed down by male authors, in service of the patriarchal narratives that have shaped western civilization for thousands of years.

But these stories are also living entities.  They invite us into them because they live on through our telling.  In The Greatness of Saturn – a Therapeutic Mythic  by the Vedic mythologist Robert Svoboda, he shows how the reading and re-telling of myth is one of the oldest forms of therapy, a way of transmitting timeless healing wisdom.  From Svoboda’s viewpoint, it’s a two-way process – the myths inform some of our innermost scripts and paradigms, but they need us as much as we need them.  Their characters beckon to us to step into the narrative and identify with them as we re-tell, and eventually re-write their stories, allowing them to evolve.

What if Athena had won the apple?  What if Hera had?  What if the goddesses decided to plot a different ending to the story?  What if Paris had refused to choose, or Helen refused to elope with him?  What if Zeus’ original plot was exposed – the fact that he wanted the Trojan War to happen?  These and many other possibilities can be played out in the psychodrama of ritual theater.

"Venus and Juno" (Aphrodite Giving Hera the Golden Strap)
 Andrea Appiani, 1754-1817

The myth of Aphrodite’s golden girdle is paired with the Judgment of Paris to bring closure to the episode and catharsis to those of us in the throes of participation mystique.  The Trojan war had dragged on for a decade, and the world had grown weary of it.  The people were starving and even the primordial parents, the Mother and Father Titans, were at odds over it. So much so that they had stopped sleeping with one another, which according to the Law of Correspondences, means that fertility had withered everywhere, love and harmony shriveled in the shadow of famine. 

Hera decides to intervene by trying to broker a peace between Father Okeanus and Mother Tethys, the primordial Titans.  But first she calls Aphrodite to the side and asks her to teach her the ways of charm, sweet words and enchantment that make all beings, mortal and immortal, fall to her feet.  Aphrodite responds without hesitation, unfastening from her bosom a magical golden strap that carries her powers of enchantment and makes the bearer irresistible to anyone.  Thus girded, Hera goes to the Titans and brokers the peace, which results in peace on Earth and the restoration of order.

The lessons and possibilities in these stories are far-reaching.  How do these dramas play out in our daily lives? In our psyches?  How are women pit against each other in societies that value physical beauty over our other attributes?  And how can the meeting of feminine powers like charm and duty bring about healing to the problems that plague our world, our relationships, and our innermost selves?

These and many other possibilities are explored in ritual theater like “Journey to the Temples of Aphrodite and Hera”.  For women in dance, it is also a chance to consciously explore the gifts each goddess bestows on a dancing soulbody – Aphrodite imbues us with enchantment, charm, and attraction while Hera crowns us with majestic presence, impact, and the ability to channel higher ideals through our art.

Every time I’ve conducted “Journey to the Temples”, an immense wave of exaltation and euphoria is a typical immediate result.  Women connect to themselves, each other, and the archetypes for an alchemical healing that ripples out into their lives and reverberates for quite some time.  Cycles of realisation are set into motion as the body and soul begin to reflect and express each other and the profound inner shift the Journey brings.  And it all starts with the mystical call of myth, the old stories, an ancient form of therapy brought to new life through embodied ritual.

Celestial Celebration - The Dance of the Angels

“Mystical Nativity” detail by Sandro Botticelli, 1501

“Celestial Celebration”

Dancing the Inspiration of the Angels

Angels are intermediaries between the incarnate world and the upper levels of existence.  Belief in Angels cuts across religions and cultures, and gives humans an easily accessible archetype for inspiration, comfort, and personal development.  They are just a shade more divine than humans; implying that "angelhood" is something within our reach; something to aspire to.  Something to commune with. 

Angels carry our prayerful messages to God, and bring God’s inspiring revelations to us.  They are our guardians, watching over us and catalyzing the ennoblement of all levels of Self - the body, the heart, mind, and soul.  When we open ourselves to them, they begin to manifest in all sorts of ways in our lives.  When we dance the Angelic energy with the Music of the Spheres, we can commune with them in ways we never before imagined.

We begin by dedicating the body as the material instrument for the song of our soul.  Breathing and moving our way through a ritual change in consciousness, we begin to travel beyond body & mind to a realm of pure spiritual essence.  The soul is our gateway to the Angelic realm; it parts the veils between our mundane existence and the glories of the infinite.  Our soul's longings and intentions, however, are inextricably anchored in the body and can be expressed through creative movement ritual.

The body realizes its capacity as receiver and transmitter of Divine Light.  Through forms, gestures, and ritual sequences, we effect the merging of soul and flesh that is the moment of healing transcendence.  We enter into a state of consciousness that transformed Isadora Duncan in the Temple of the Parthenon, when she realized the Divine mission of dance and declared, “It was then that I realized that I had found my true dance, and it was a prayer.”

Isadora Duncan was inspired by the classical Greek understanding and interpretation of Universal laws and forces. She taught us that the archetypes expressed through classical art and philosophy are guides to the ennoblement of our bodies, minds, and souls and keys to our deepest creativity.  She revealed how the sister arts - painting, scultpure, poetry, mythology and drama provide inspiration and image for our dances as well as intention - that which makes our art keenly felt and authentic. 

Through her teachings and suggestions, we can cultivate a “mytho-poetic” state of  dance consciousness, in which our intention and movement merge into a direct communion with our divine, immortal souls and Art becomes Life.  “Listen to the music with your soul,” she wrote. “Do you not feel that you are moving toward the Light?”

This Light, this divine essence, permeates the archetypal realm of the Angelic.  Angelic imagery is all about lightness, air, aether, and the highest, most noble qualities of Love, Compassion, Joy, and Courage.  When we contemplate depictions of Angels in art, we too resonate with the same qualities they transmit.

Consider the figure above right of the “Victory of Samothrace”, or “Winged Victory”.  It is essentially an “Angel of Victory”, a guiding principle into the radiant courage and expansive motion of victory.  It also inspired Isadora Duncan in her development of solar plexus and arm techniques for dancers.  Since Angels are most often depicted as winged beings in the collective unconscious, the angelic dance is radiant with the power of the solar plexus and the poetic expression of the arms, poetically transformed into the wings that make our souls take flight.

Angels are a great inspiration for dancers, because they are often depicted dancing in Divine Dances and singing or playing the Music of the Spheres. They bring blessings with beauty, harmony, and grace that transcend words because they come from the realm of epiphany.  More than any other type of artist, dancers are the instruments, the messengers and the message.  When we stand tall and open, breathing in deeply cleansing breaths and fully releasing them, we begin to embody Divine Light and to move in Harmony with the Universe.  As dancers, it behooves us to ask ourselves,"What is the true Divine Message of my Dance? How can I align myself with Source so that my dance becomes a blessing for those who participate in or see it?  Ruth St. Denis, contemporary of Isadora's and Dance Priestess in her own right, wrote that the time will come when we will no longer dance to astonish audiences or gain applause, but to heal and bless.  To me, that brings endless inspiration for a New Dance - a Creative Movement Ritual in which we access, embody and transmit Divine Light.

Divine Light clears us of heavy energies and clarifies the intention we would like to transmit to Heaven.  It helps us to establish connection with the Angelic realms and clear the pathways for Divine                    Inspiration, making us receptive to the sounds of our souls and beyond.  When we dance our intention to the Universe that we are ready to receive inspiration, amazing things begin to happen.

The lines of our bodies become transmitters of light.  The exhale becomes a carrier of divine intent, and our gestures become blessings. The very act of dancing our prayers changes us at the deepest and highest levels.  We become living works of art, consciously engaged in the process of personal evolution.

These are the moments when Divine Inspiration uses us as its instrument.  Through us ripples outward a message, a feeling beyond words, calling everyone around into the Dance of Blessing.

Angels are Protectors

We all have at least one Guardian Angel.  When we meditate upon the role of Angels as protectors in our lives, we can become more attuned to our own role as protectors - of each other, animals, plants, or the Earth.  We can feel our arms becoming protective wings and can access feelings of tenderness and caring in our hearts.  The arms are the messengers of the heart, and together with the breath they transmit our intentions in the Art and Ceremony of the Dance.

Angels Dance the Shapes of the Universe

"Celestial Rose" by Gustave Dore

The visionary work of Gustave Dore (1832-1883) illustrated Dante's Divina Comedia and of all his depictions of the afterlife, his images of celestial beings, to me, are most compelling.  In Dore, we see dreamscapes recalling mandala-like formations, spiralling outward and inward toward The Light, emanating, a communication beyond words.  

A sense of awe, reverence, and majesty permeates these engravings, bringing inspiration for our own movement toward The Light.  We can practically hear the Music of the Spheres when looking at these images and imagine the overwhelming wonder felt by the figures of Dante and Virgil in silhouette.

"Heavenly Host" by Gustave Dore

It is easy to see how circles and spirals are inherent in the Divine Dance. In a circle, we feel unity and equality with our fellow dancers.  What's more, we unite with our fellows by joining hands and hearts - a circuitry that unites with the Universe's own cyclical motions - orbiting, spiralling, expanding and contracting in the eternal flow.  

Spirals re-enact the expansion and contraction of the Universe.  They require dancers to lead, then follow, then lead again in an exchange of energy.  They are potent metaphors - for evolution, the spiral trajectory of human history, and the path to Heaven.

"Jacob's Ladder" by William Blake

So, when you're looking for inspiration in your dance, why not call upon the Angels to dance with you?  Did you know there is an Archangel of Creativity (Gabriel) and an Archangel of Art and Beauty (Jophiel) who are ready to bring inspiration to us?  All we need to do is reach out to them.

In "Celestial Celebration", we use the body's movement to access, embody, and transmit the Inspiration of the Angels.  It's inspired by transcendent depictions of Angels in art and conducted through a collection of transcendent, ethereal music throughout the centuries. Prayerful gestures and harmonic movements change a person's state of being and elevate their vibrations to a more noble state in this Dancing Ceremony of Angelic Consciousness. 

Universal movement patterns like the Circle, Spiral, and the Infinity harmonize our motions with those of the Cosmos, resulting in a higher vibrational frequency.  When we elevate our vibrations, we can then attract the Heavenly Hosts to join our dance.

We work with conscious breathing to draw in the Divine Light and use our imaginative powers to build intention for our sacred dance and direction for the Light.  We learn how sacred gesture aids us in expressing and transmitting our Soul's intention.  In the communion between our Bodies, Souls, and the Source, we discover that we, too, are emanations of the Divine and that part of our purpose here on Earth is to reflect the Grace of the Divine back upon itself. We gradually begin to embody the characteristics attributed to the Eternal - its rhythms, shapes, frequencies, and harmonies.

And at the end of the dance, we see that we have changed. Because we have discovered that there is a higher purpose for the Art of the Dance.  It is the most complete prayer possible - one that merges all layers of Self into deep resonance with the Infinite. And that no matter what religion or spiritual tradition or philosophy we subscribe to, there is something deep inside all of us - alive and well in the collective unconscious -  that believes in Angels and longs to join their dance.

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

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. 

Iliad, Book 14, 188-225 (3)

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.