Invoking the Goddess
I did not set out to display dead sparrows on platters and serve ritual turmeric milk tea to twenty sincere seekers but, Goddess willing, this is exactly where I ended up. The living dream was over almost as quickly as it began. One month later I am still trying to figure out why it felt so right and normal. Obvious, even overdue, perhaps. And that is OK because on some level all I know is that it changed me in a positive way that so far has been lasting, and for that I am grateful.
The Who
In the second week of September '24, I had ventured to Vermont to take part in a "Metamodern Spirituality Lab," a retreat workshop co-hosted by Brendan Graham Dempsey of Sky Meadow Institute, and led by Layman Pascal of curious Gurdjieffian lineage. This was part of a recurrent event series, each with a different topic to explore. When the timing for the theme of "The Goddess" fit into my fall, I thought "It's time to go play with these guys from the internet who've been helping me make it through these last few years. Let's go!"
Clearly not for everyone, there were several pre-conditions that helped make this experience transformational. First is being raised Unitarian Universalist, I've participated for decades in a spiritual tradition that displays reverence and respect for ancient ways of worship and understanding the world. I've had my notions of "God" and "Goddess" deconstructed and reconstructed constantly through the prisms of various world traditions, including the more modern developments of agnosticism and atheism. I am blessed to have been raised by a mother who is unusually ecologically attuned, and whose primary co-parent was the forest outside our back door. Also, I live in a region that is rich with Native people and living spiritualities, which inspired me at key points throughout my life to hold open the door on the necessity of the literal sacred.
The What
Coming from this tilth, I felt curious and open when invited to walk through forest and field with the mission of creating a "ritual to call forth the Goddess(es)." Instead of feeling weirded out by the situation or paralyzingly unqualified to answer the call, I understood whatever Goddess exists would certainly dwell in all of us, so I might as well help make things interesting by sensing into my own interpretation of how to accomplish such a task. I'm the kind of person who re-models and re-landscapes homes and businesses in my mind as I pass by, so being asked "What does this space want?" was a familiar and fun game to me.
We started in a yurt called the "Dance Pavilion," and worked our way around in a twisty loop that included the skeleton of a sweat lodge, a boulder cave, water well, tree fort and bramble pile along the way. Our bodies wanted to sit in circles, snake through paths cut into the grass, and stand in moon-like hemispheres to take in various symbolic acts of others. We incorporated appeals to all the senses sprinkling spices, incense, textures, sights and sounds throughout our circumnavigation of the land. Different participants were deputized for orchestrating activities at different locations for which they seemed to have a natural affinity.
I was full of visions that were kindly coaxed out of me, and to my surprise, all but one them were actually implemented and undergone. I saw jellyfish-like tentacles streaming down from the skylight in the yurt, candelabras and an altar with my Tara statue flickering at the edge of a fire to be engulfed in a final crescendo of propane enriched flames. In the center of a circular structure of sticks, our five female sojourners filed in to enclose a makeshift conception altar. I insisted we sit on a bed of freshly spread hay, nativity-like, around a giant red glass orb (the proverbial ovum) and the statue of an angel holding the head of a cherub. The men stood post around facing outwards, unable to see what they could hear and smell inside. I began a chant on shaky emotional ground, my voice roughly cracking like that of an ancient otherworldly crone. We filed out of that cove through a hymen-like portal covered in pink sheets, on to the horizon of our next rites.
My brother Ari Nazem and I had been appointed to guide the whole delegation, to which I credit my marching band experience and protest leading days with the confidence to do so. In a three sided structure built from boulders, participants took turns expressing whatever big emotions they had to release there. I had to set the tone for the "rage cage" as it came to be called, inside of which I picked up a stick and violently beat an old can until my implement shattered. An echo of anger to which I also attribute certain marching band experiences... No live video or photos of our opening ritual were taken, but this moment in the journey could be humorously summed up as:
After my moment, which was every bit as cathartic as I hoped it would be, I stood outside the structure as women preceded the men in taking turns yelling and beating the ground, often in the direction of two Jesus and Mary votive candles I'd found and had placed on the stove inside. It was truly something. As each muscled adult took their turn, what might have evoked fear brought up compassion and empathy instead. You could hear the hurt in the whorls of peoples wails. The parent who couldn't show up, the sting of rejections not fully healed. These were not dangers to recoil from, rather they appeared more as pained and frustrated infants, birthed by the greater divine.
From there it was on to a wishing well, where a wizardlette named Jeffrey withdrew a leaking bucket of water from the earth. This bucket was hoisted up into a large tree, where our water nymph Danielle gleefully anointed her followers with its contents. Apples were taken from the ground to provision our journey into an increasingly dark forest, in which we passed a silent Tara shrine (pictured at right above) to arrive at our final obstacle (not pictured).
A felled tree had crossed the path leading through a circle of standing trees. The downed tree branches created a thicket to climb through, while the standing trees served as columnar backdrops to rounds of wood painted with various images of Gods on one side, and Goddesses on the other (see example at top right). Rounds were flipped from masculine to feminine portrayals as we passed. Wanting to pay my respects to a sparrow carcass I had happened upon earlier that had been laid on a brass plate at my request, I determined to crawl through the branches to reach it, getting genuinely stuck and mildly embarrassed in the process.
Back up the hill at the starting lodge we shared stories of the feminine figures in our lineages as we strung our apples like beads onto an offering garland to lay at the feet of the Tara statue presiding there. Layman finished with our planned pyrotechnic flourish, and people danced and talked late into the evening. The following days included many talks, walks and free creativity periods topped off by the fabulous home cooking of the Lady of the Manor, Erin Dempsey.
The Why
Our facilitator named three "key ingredients" for a successful gathering of this kind, consisting of "receiving numinous blessings, pageantry and role playing, and opportunities for personal disclosure." There was no one reason to show up for such an immersion, various people had their different motives. While there certainly was some degree of pageantry and role playing, it wasn't like traditional role playing where people become a character. Everyone showed up as their authentic selves, albeit into a highly altered space.
My drive was primarily social. I didn't so much personally crave constructing a ritual design experience so much as I knew I needed to be around like-minded people who'd be willing to engage in such an activity. At one point a gratitude circle was conducted, and even among very new friends my cup never felt so full! Some people were sharing their books, others honing their teaching skills, yet others sharing their own original frameworks or theories.
I wasn't dead set on literally meeting "The Goddess" at this program, although some sensed Her in strong ways during our ritual and I remain open to the possibility of her palpable presence. For me I believe our capacities to sense the divine are like a refined skill. In the spirit of lyrics from the late George Michael, our task in post-post modernity is to "make these lies real somehow." Essentially I believe there is great value in sincerely "faking" it 'til you make it. Rehearsal changes us in meaningful ways, and yes, you can't know what those are until you try them.
Reverence in the Review Mirror
Arriving home in my familiar living room after a month away from my husband and my beloved Spokane I found myself asking, "What does this space want?" I feel a new agency over my surroundings, both physically and affectively. Ritual can be invited into any moment. If I can transform a yurt into a ritual temple, what else is possible for us to do together? I now find my garden calling to me in the same way. One of our closing activities was to create a large group mandala in the grass, a practice I pledge to share with my neighbors at Haystack Heights Cohousing this coming year.
Most surprisingly, I've discovered that I seem to be cured of a lifelong history of typical school-based nightmares . Like a lot of people, I've intermittently suffered from academic anxiety dreams since I can remember. Since my travels, not only have these unpleasant dreams of forgetting tests and not being able to read ceased, they've been replaced by shockingly positive dreams taking place with various peers in classroom settings at different stages of life. Never have I ever had such a dramatic and noticeable positive shift in my dream life. Our teacher says there is a "deeply interconnected and carefully counterbalanced ecology of the deep psyche." I wonder if it took creating a dream-like journey to work on my deep psyche at this otherwise elusive level of awareness? Whatever the mechanism, something palpable and precious has shifted for me here. Hallelujah!
Interview of program leaders and participants, including the unusually quiet author, on the Portals of Perception podcast:
