“In the Vedas, creation is likened to the spider and its web. The spider brings the web out of itself and then remains in it. God is the container of the universe and also what is contained in it”
Ramakrishna
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San Gabriel
The old grey mountains outside
Live inside our bones
Where the heart swells in its home
And the wild smell of earth
Comes to coat your nose
like a light stint of rainfall
on the mountain trail road
You do not belong there
Tucked away inside your
Painted box of wood
All your senses locked in their quiet
Obfuscation - your mortal eyes
Trapped in the long line of stop lights
Under these towers made of glass
where the worried heart
forgets its real nature
John Muir says the mountains
Are calling and I must go.
The journey begins where the road ends:
This smell of earth lives
Inside the codons in our genes
It makes the lungs swell with air
It lives inside the electric current
In the apex fibers of the heart muscle
You do not belong there.
The mother talks to you in turbid dreams
That leave a sheen of sweat on your skin
And a roll of blankets
lie covered in your water made of fear
This mountain calls - it speaks -
This is God’s country:
Where the old rainfall left a mud trail
Where the birds take to the mountain breeze
Like little autumn leaves - elevation gaining
And the great cliffs drop away
in their vertiginous longing
for the mother dirt
How long will you stay
in your temple of occlusion?
The cold air outside
enlivens the bleating heart strings
And the skin bristles in its gooseflesh
When the golden protuberance of sunlight
Touches down upon its surface
And this case of bone becomes alive again
Walk from your cage, your dying body
These trails have written your name
In the mud
Where the paved road ends
And the rocks of gravel start to grip
Under your toes. -
No Where to Go
In these wild wanderings
we begin to find the tune of our music
like lotus water and red painted sindoor
paper folded cranes in a sun stained window
and the shadow of the master
standing on the wall
Bhavatarini: a woman dances in circles
and screams at her mother.
We all touch her feet in this carnal church
adoring only this rapture:
this tantric window that whittles away
the barriers at the tops of our skin
We confront those stained glass windows
that cover the cave of the heart
like sun shadows moving in the daylight:
I’ve got no where to go
I’ve turned right at every fork in the road
all these cobbled pathways lead back home -
Comparative Theology: Hindu Pantheon and the Greek and Roman Pantheons
Artfully adorned Aphrodite, deathless
child of Zeus and weaver of wiles I beg you please don’t hurt me, don’t overcome my spirit, goddess, with longing,
but come here, if ever at other moments hearing these my words from afar you listened and responded: leaving your father’s house, all, golden, you came then,
hitching up your chariot: lovely sparrows
drew you quickly over the dark earth, whirling on fine beating wings from the heights of heaven, down through the sky
Sappho’s Ode to Aphrodite translated byIn the Great Courses lecture, Hans-Freidrich Mueller, PhD comments on the comparative theology between these two seemingly distant pantheons of the ancient world
Other gods of interest include Varuna, who, like Greek Poseidon and Roman Neptune, was a god of waters, earthquakes, and justice. Surya, god of the sun, may be compared with Greek Helios and Roman Sol; Chandra, god of
the moon, with Greek Selene and Roman Luna. Vedic Vishwakarma was like Greek Hephaistos and Roman Vulcan; the Aswins were like the twins Castor and Pollux (also known as the Dioscuri). Ganesha has been compared to Janus; Balarama with Bacchus; Kartikeya with Ares and Mars; Durga with Hera and Juno; Sarasvati with Athena and Minerva; Sri with Aphrodite and Venus;
and Kama with Eros and Cupid.I can only imagine a world in which western Paganism was not eradicated by Christianity. This world would probably be somewhat like India, home to a handful of the worlds extant major religions, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. India’s ancient and medieval tolerance of religion was markedly different from the medieval world of the west. Though there’s little truth in the Wiccan sentiment of continuity between Pre-Christian paganism and modern Wicca, the idea of the “burning times,” is an interesting setting in which Western paganism was almost totally lost. Many times, the only surviving texts to reference, such as Snori’s Poetic Edda, are actually Christian reflections on Paganism that situate the Pagan world in a Christian cosmology. Unfortunately today, India appears to be losing some of that tolerance that it once held. But perhaps many Hindus see this as a method of survival, in the face of the eradication of Paganism by the monotheistic traditions. I would hope a spirit of religious plurality survives, but not at the sake of losing the gods.
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Living the Wheel of the Year: Samhain
On Samhain we honored the goddess in the form of the crone, the Cailleach, who reigns over the winter months in the Celtic tradition. Brighid, who oversees the summer season, passes Her reign over to the Cailleach as the days get longer and the nights get colder. Though, traditionally folks carved Jack-O-Lanterns from turnips, we carved ours from pumpkin, the fall vegetable of Turtle Island. I chose to carve the pentacle, the five elements, the Pancha Mahabhutas, on the face of our locally harvested gourd. This way we live in closeness, in ever increasing proximity to the land that we call home.
We shared a dumb supper with our ancestors, offering bread, honey, wine, and salt. The somber occasion marked a stark difference between the Halloween festivities and the sincerity of the Samhain ritual as we invited the dead into our home. As tradition demands, we lit the bonfire and conducted the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids solo Samhain ritual. We offered our regret to the Cailleach and invited the ancestors to enter into our circle, noting their presence and accepting their tokens and blessings. We finished the night full of joy and wonder at the Other World, at the greatness of the Goddess who has taken so many forms to please Her devotees.
Photo from: https://www.druidspider.org/druid-journal/celtic-deities-cailleach-ancient-old-crone-of-winter -
Shodashi Puja
Beautiful artwork by Tamojit Dev depicting Shodashi Puja when Ramakrishna worshiped Sarada Devi as the goddess Shodashi, the topic of my masters thesis -
Venus of Willendorf
I crafted this Venus of Willendorf just before my child was born for our birthing shrine this year. In a recently published paper, Weber et al. (2022) placed the Venus at ~30,000 years old. She was rediscovered by Szombathy et al. in the Danube in Willendorf/Lower Austria in 1908. According to Weber et al. (2022), the depiction of the Venus “represents a symbolized adult and faceless female with exaggerated genitalia, pronounced haunches, a protruding belly, heavy breasts, and a sophisticated headdress or hairdo.” Vandewettering (2015) states that hundreds of these types of “Venus” figurines were discovered “across Eurasia from Southern France to Siberia,” and that these figures varied greatly in material. Further, Vandewettering groups scholarship on the purpose and function of the Venus statues into themes, “sex, fertility and beauty; religious functions and matrifocal societies; and representations of actual people with practical functions” (2015). Though many sources question the validity of the Venus as a symbol for fertility, a recent paper (Johnson, Lanaspa, & Fox, 2015) affirms that, “Because survival required sufficient nutrition for child-bearing women, we hypothesized that the undernourished woman became an ideal symbol of survival and beauty during episodes of starvation and climate change in Paleolithic Europe.” The problem with ancient goddess traditions is that we understand very little about what those cultures actually practiced in their day to day lives. So we are left with assigning modern meaning to ancient custom. Whether the Venus of Willendorf represents divine goddess or mundane woman, I think we can assert our own goddess theology here and recognize the divinity in all women.
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The Great Goddess and the Golden Asse
The Metamorphosis of Apeluis, dubbed the Golden Ass by Augustine, written in the 2nd century AD, details Lucius Apeluis’ encounter with the Goddess,
“When I had ended this orison, and discovered my plaints to the Goddesse, I fortuned to fall asleepe, and by and by appeared unto me a divine and venerable face, worshipped even of the Gods themselves. Then by little and little I seemed to see the whole figure of her body, mounting out of the sea and standing before mee, wherefore I purpose to describe her divine semblance, if the poverty of my humane speech will suffer me, or her divine power give me eloquence thereto. First shee had a great abundance of haire, dispersed and scattered about her neck, on the crowne of her head she bare many garlands enterlaced with floures, in the middle of her forehead was a compasse in fashion of a glasse, or resembling the light of the Moone, in one of her hands she bare serpents, in the other, blades of corne, her vestiment was of fine silke yeelding divers colours, sometime yellow, sometime rosie, sometime flamy, and sometime (which troubled my spirit sore) darke and obscure, covered with a blacke robe in manner of a shield, and pleated in most subtill fashion at the skirts of her garments, the welts appeared comely, whereas here and there the starres glimpsed, and in the middle of them was placed the Moone, which shone like a flame of fire, round about the robe was a coronet or garland made with flowers and fruits. In her right hand shee had a timbrell of brasse, which gave a pleasant sound, in her left hand shee bare a cup of gold, out of the mouth whereof the serpent Aspis lifted up his head, with a swelling throat, her odoriferous feete were covered with shoes interlaced and wrought with victorious palme. Thus the divine shape breathing out the pleasant spice of fertill Arabia, disdained not with her divine voyce to utter these words unto me: Behold Lucius I am come, thy weeping and prayers hath mooved mee to succour thee. I am she that is the naturall mother of all things, mistresse and governesse of all the Elements, the initiall progeny of worlds, chiefe of powers divine, Queene of heaven! the principall of the Gods celestiall, the light of the goddesses: at my will the planets of the ayre, the wholesome winds of the Seas, and the silences of hell be diposed; my name, my divinity is adored throughout all the world in divers manners, in variable customes and in many names, for the Phrygians call me the mother of the Gods: the Athenians, Minerva: the Cyprians, Venus: the Candians, Diana: the Sicilians Proserpina: the Eleusians, Ceres: some Juno, other Bellona, other Hecate: and principally the Aethiopians which dwell in the Orient, and the Aegyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustome to worship mee, doe call mee Queene Isis. Behold I am come to take pitty of thy fortune and tribulation, behold I am present to favour and ayd thee, leave off thy weeping and lamentation, put away all thy sorrow, for behold the healthfull day which is ordained by my providence, therefore be ready to attend to my commandement.”
Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Asse, trans. William Adlington (Apple Books, 1566), 433.Though a work of fiction, the goddess theology apparent in this text remains germane today. Compare this with the theology of the Devī Māhātmya of the Indian subcontinent. The great goddess multiplies Her forms when slaying a host of demons, and encountering the demon Śumbha, He declares,
“10.3 ‘O Durgā, who are corrupt with the arrogance of power, do not show your pride here, for though you are haughty, you fight depending on the strength of others.’
Kali, Devadatta. Devimahatmyam: In Praise of the Goddess. Berwick, ME: Nicolas-Hays, Inc., 2003.To which the Great Goddess responds,
“10.5 ‘I am alone here in the world. Who else is there besides me? Behold, O vile one! These are but projections of my own power, now entering back into me.’”
Kali, Devadatta. Devimahatmyam: In Praise of the Goddess. Berwick, ME: Nicolas-Hays, Inc., 2003.Although we cannot necessarily come to the conclusion that there was a comprehensive and global goddess cult in the ancient world simply from this comparative theology here, we can at least note that goddess theology has a recurring theme: (1) The goddess has a singular great form, and (2) the goddess multiplies her names and forms across time and place. This establishes a sacred cultural window by which the goddess touches the mundane world and reaches to Her devotees in the form that they understand best. Or as Ramakrishna said so beautifully,
“The mother cooks different dishes to suit the stomachs of her different children. Suppose she has five children. If there is a fish to cook, she prepares various dishes from it—pilau, pickled fish, fried fish, and so on—to suit their different tastes and powers of digestion.”
Mahendranath Gupta, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, trans. Nikhilananda (New York, NY: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 2007), 127. -
Oak Wood
Sea of pine and waves of oak The Forest is a home And I will always go there A cold breath moves the branches In the wood, Cooling the rocks with patterns of moss The oaks are old gods and I thank them Nonetheless, fear is thunder It beats the drum of the heart And for a time I am its muted prisoner Though this sound blisters, I can still hear the old muffled whisper The hills and trees are alive With a kind of thought Unknowable. In the Other World, They arise and fall Arise and fall I declare my love for them, Old gods, old noble creatures Though fears tympani beats continuous, I see faces in the wood And bones in the mountains I call these beings my long time friends I shall sit with them a while and wonder At the rocks stuck between my toes
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Sweet Mother
One thousand times I have failed you
Folly in that notion of a mustard seed
This body wrought of insufficient faith
And this heart of pulp seems
covered over by Father stone
like asphalt redolent from the new smell of tar
Still this nascent string of undivided love
moves inside like the coil of a spring
brick by brick along the vertebrae of bone
What creature stirs in that eternal cavern?
I’ve no sense of justice
bitumen - a Red Sea of taillights incessant
dragging wastrel in the tortuous Highway
He was a man they said - that Lord -
called God in iron wrath who dangled
His creations on the tip toe of His Finger
Held in utter horror aghast over
that Lake of liquid fire - well I
never wanted that from start to finish
Fear ranks high among the qualities of survival.
Then they - saving grace over the ages
called It woman.
Oh hold at bay those night terrors
the jackal of sermon leaving white pellets of spittle on the mouth corner:
Wait. What fear is there of Mother?
Oh Dear - will you speak to Father for me?
He always seems to follow your command.
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