Spiritual Heritage:
Understanding and Embodying Female Spirituality
Through Creative Practice
(1998-2004)
Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for
Master of Arts (Research) in the Faculty of Creative Industries,
Queensland University of Technology
By
ELISE GOODRICH
March, 2004
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my gratitude to the following human (and other beings) for their
assistance and support on this project over the last five years. To Carla Thackrah and
her husband Moshlo Shaw, Georgiana Antoce, Robyn Hewitt, Lyndal Milani and Sarah
Hopkins for their friendship, wisdom and support. Many thanks to my parents, Rhonda
McComish, Keith Goodrich, Bonnie Goodrich and David McComish and the rest of my
family for loving and listening to me. To Richard Vella for his kindness and insight. To
everyone who has supported my massage business. To Michelle Sheldrake for her
confidence and encouragement. To Roland Adeney and Billy Shannon for joining me
part of my journey.
Thank you to QUT for facilities and staff support, in particular to Brad Haseman for his
gentle assistance in the final stages, to Victoria Garnons-Williams during my creative
drought, to John Armstrong in the early stages, to Don Fitzpatrick in the later stages.
Many thanks to Sufi people, Salima Herr, Tamsin Murray and Karim Zayyani and my
Sufi sister, Sandy Hall. I also wish to express my appreciation to my healers and
doctors, Carolyn Somers, Nicolein Gravemaker, Karen Quirey, Bernard Evens, Jan
Cullens, Probati, and Sahaja and to Dr. Kath O’Sullivan for her spirit and support.
Thanks to Chris Gillespie for his love and holding my hand and to Natalie Bull for her
luminance. Thanks to Florence and her peacocks at Mt Nebo, the goats at Byron Bay
lighthouse, to the trees for all the paper I have used, to the great Energy Serpent, and
thankyou to the Great Goddess...
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or
diploma at any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and
belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person
except where due reference is made.
Signed...............................................
Date..................................................
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .................................................................................... 3
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY ......................................................................... 4
Focus of Inquiry................................................................................................. 11
METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................. 13
The Use of Creative Practice as Research ......................................................... 14
Dimension (1) - Natural Therapies: Massage & Energy Work......................... 14
Dimension (2) - Sacred Arts: Sufi, Drumming, Chanting................................ 15
Dimension (3) - Light Based Media: Digital Video & Stills............................. 19
Autobiography as a Research Tool .................................................................... 21
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK........................................................................... 22
Tree-Serpent-Bird .............................................................................................. 25
The Serpent ........................................................................................................ 28
Serpent - and the ‘Turuq’ (4 ways).................................................................... 30
Pyromancy - the Fire Snake............................................................................... 32
The Moon ........................................................................................................... 37
The Moon & the Labrys ..................................................................................... 37
Sufi and Labrys .................................................................................................. 38
The Moon and the Sacred Goat ......................................................................... 40
Shamanic Turning in Anatolia ........................................................................... 40
Heart-Centre ...................................................................................................... 42
Heart-Cross-Centre ........................................................................................... 44
Heart-Intelligence .............................................................................................. 45
Bird of Fire ........................................................................................................ 37
Queen Pasiphae and the Minotaur .................................................................... 49
The Bull Fight .................................................................................................... 49
Snake-Bird Goddesses ....................................................................................... 50
Moon and Snake................................................................................................. 50
The Queen of Sheba & Medusa ......................................................................... 52
Medusa: the Snake-Goddess .............................................................................. 52
Medusa: High Priestess & Amazon Warrior Queen.......................................... 54
Snake-Hair ......................................................................................................... 56
The Language of Birds....................................................................................... 57
Patience Omnipresence and the Peacock .......................................................... 59
Birds will Travel ................................................................................................ 60
On Nomadic Life, Travel and the Sufis.............................................................. 61
Black Birds......................................................................................................... 63
The Black Madonna ........................................................................................... 63
The Queen of Sheba ........................................................................................... 65
CREATIVE PRACTICE......................................................................................... 68
WEBSITE: Castle of the Connectress (2000).................................................... 68
The Water Snake under the Earth...................................................................... 68
VIDEO: Castle of the Connectress (2001) ......................................................... 70
Glass Architecture and Orgasms with God ....................................................... 70
Eye-Heart........................................................................................................... 72
VIDEO: Lunar Hierophanies (2003).................................................................. 73
The Perennial Moon-Egg................................................................................... 73
The Sacred Goat ................................................................................................ 75
The Lost Stone Mountain ................................................................................... 75
Coming Home to 'Ollin Arageed' - The Sacred Wedding ................................. 77
Sun-Moon Energies............................................................................................ 78
Om-Quantum Physics and the Education System ............................................. 80
BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 82
APPENDIX 1............................................................................................................ 85
Masters Time line: (1998-2003) .......................................................................... 85
Dimension (1) - Natural Therapies: Massage & Energy Work......................... 85
Dimension (2) - Sacred Arts: Sufi, drumming, chanting ................................... 86
Dimension (3) - Light Based Media: Digital Stills & Video.............................. 88
APPENDIX 2............................................................................................................ 89
Spiritual Heritage Timeline ................................................................................ 89
APPENDIX 3............................................................................................................ 92
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1. 'Energy Drawing' by Elise Goodrich 1984 .................................................. 4
Figure 2. Myself practicing Sufi ................................................................................ 16
Figure 3. The Mevlevi Whirling ................................................................................ 18
Figure 4. 'Neck' photograph by Elise Goodrich 1984 ................................................ 27
Figure 5. 'Snakey Arms' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003 ......................... 29
Figure 6. ‘Castle of the Connectress’ website homepage detail 2000....................... 31
Figure 7. Brennan Energetics chakra diagram........................................................... 33
Figure 8. 'Moon Egg' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003 ............................. 36
Figure 9. 'Goat Horns' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003 ........................... 39
Figure 10. 'El Sueno Returno' digital image 2000 .................................................... 41
Figure 11. Myself & two friends at Salvador Dali's funeral, Spain 1989.................. 41
Figure 12. 'Heart Chamber de Fortuito' ( of Chance) digital image 2000 ................ 46
Figure 13. 'Sacred Wedding' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003.................. 47
Figure 14. 'Real Time' installation image,(frozen bulls head), Brisbane 1993 .......... 48
Figure 15. 'Moon & Snakey Arms' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003 ......... 51
Figure 16. 'Archer' video still from 'Lunar Hierophanies' 2003 ............................... 55
Figure 17. 'Lupa and the Peacock' digital image 2001............................................. 58
Figure 18. 'Peacock Spin' digital image 2000........................................................... 60
Figure 19. 'Sheba and Raven' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003 ................ 62
Figure 20. 'Black Priestess' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003................... 64
Figure 21. 'Queen of Sheba' digital image 2002 ........................................................ 66
Figure 22. 'Castle of the Connectress' image from website 2000............................. 67
Figure 23. 'Cante Jondo' image from website 2000 .................................................. 71
Figure 24. 'Egghead' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003 .............................. 74
Figure 25. 'Sacred Wedding' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003.................. 76
Figure 26. Lunar Hierophanies video still 2003........................................................ 78
Figure 27. 'Oooooommm' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003....................... 79
4
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
The Journey: 1984
This inquiry really began in Melbourne in 1984. I was writing a thesis. The day I was
meant to present the paper I had a motorcycle accident. I sustained a serious fracture
to my left lower leg. After the accident, I don’t remember how long, some weeks I
suppose, I took up the paper to read it. Nothing, absolutely nothing made any sense!
All the notes were there but no connections. I was dumbfounded. From a Scientific
point of view, the neural sheeting in my brain had been shuffled like a pack of cards,
because the nerves in my leg had been severed. Any major break in the nervous
system has this impact. It gave me first hand experiential knowledge of disruption to
the mind-body-spirit dynamic.
Figure 1. 'Energy Drawing' by Elise Goodrich 1984
5
There are many factors which stimulated this journey of the Masters. The project
began under the title “Inner Space in Public Space”, knowing only at the outset that
the personal was significant and that there was an uncertainty about which domain in
public space I was to locate my life’s work. Was it to be in contemporary arts, public
arts or something else all together?
The diary extract which opened this chapter ‘contextualizes’ the key philosophical
focus of this inquiry; the relationship between the body and the self and how to
maintain this wholeness in our contemporary life. Many people have out-of-body
experiences during car accidents. Music composer, and my dear friend, Sarah
Hopkins had such an experience. It was the moment in her life which confirmed her
spiritual pathway via music. My accident held a message of a different kind. Instead
of consciousness leaving my body I was catapulted into a kind of hyper-consciousness
whilst still in the body. I lay there on the road holding my leg together just below the
knee where both bones had been snapped, fully awake, fully in my body. One part of
the message seemed to have something to do with “in-the-body experiences”. When I
lose trust in the process of life and in myself, my left ankle becomes very painful. As
it is the left side of the body which relates to the feminine in the self, the intuition, my
leg reminds me when I am not listening to the deep self.
I realised in my earlier pursuits in contemporary arts as well my earnestness in
working in public arts that I had in fact lost contact with my “woman” self. I began
the process of rediscovering her, through trips to the “bath house” with other women
on similar journeys of honouring the feminine in a “yang” culture and also through a
6
series of “women’s circles”. I explored various forms of bodywork and body
awareness classes (see appendix 1). I spent more time in nature. I made the connection
that nature begins with our own bodies. One of my encounters was with the Sufi
work. It really gave me a way forward.
The Journey: 1997
The Sufi workshop went for hours, and it went on again the next day. The following
day was the Winter Solstice Festival... I danced for 10 hours. I felt like I was in some
river... a river of life’s ecstasy. I was shifted... overwhelmed with its beauty. Here
once again in the Sufi, were the wonderful sounds of Middle Eastern music, which I
had first heard in Morocco in 1988. This work was so flowing, unlike the static
asanas of Yoga practices. Sufi integrates breathwork with movement, it involves
dancing, drumming and chanting as well as the curious practice of turning on the
spot.
The Sufi delivered me into a different space indeed. It gave me direction in my life,
strongly affirming that I was to work with energy in the body via the healing
modalities, spiritual growth and movement in space. I had the sense that I had been
reconnected with something very ancient in terms of spirit. The fact that it was a body
centred spiritual practice suggested that the origins of the work were pre-Islamic and
pre-Christian. It also seemed like such a relevant and helpful process for the
disembodying, disconnected, rational impulses within Western Culture. Central to
Sufi awareness is the idea that “tasuwwuf” (the practice or condition of being a Sufi)
“is both a teaching and a part of an organic evolution”.1 The Sufi way is experiential,
truths of life are carved out via a “language of the world”2, making use too of the
power of myth and fable. That is to say, the Sufis use a non-rational means of
communication with the intention to shift and expand consciousness. It is a kind of
lyricism, grounded in experience, similar in some regards to a feminist-spirit-centred
1 Shah, I. (1964) The Sufis, New York: Anchor Books Double Day Publishing, p45
2 Coelho, P.(1988) The Alchemist, London: Harper Collins, p10
7
and earth-connected approach to life. This approach is present and developing in the
fibres of various sub cultures in contemporary Australia.
I was also being beckoned by the healing field, to heal myself and help other people.
In the past I had always thought I was healing myself, through making artwork. I
began to notice that in healing myself I had conveniently avoided the hardest parts!
The process stimulated a period of deep personal healing. The human trait of
compassion was emerging out of years of narcissistic pursuit. During the Masters I
acquired a qualification in massage therapy, began to work professionally and
currently operate a part time practice. I began to channel energy during these sessions.
An awareness of energetics and how it affects the passage of life has always been a
central concern to me. And so, “energetics” became a critical cornerstone in this work
also. “Energetics” is in common use in the natural therapies. There are many methods
for example Reiki, Auric Healing, Brennan Healing Science.3 It refers to the
conscious awareness, receptivity and directing of universal energy through the human
body. It is available to anyone in varying degrees and can be developed.
Having engaged in the African hand drumming phenomenon just prior to the
commencement of the Masters, I continued to participate with great glee in this
connective rhythmic experience. The African Djembe is also a healing drum.
Drumming is another modality of directness which channels energy through the body.
3 refer bibliography, Brennan, B. Hands of Light & Light Emerging
8
At the outset of the Masters I was concurrently engaged in the heavy materials of
ceramic and stone pavement inlay works in public arts, as well as installation and
temporal sculpture for festivals and events. A shift was occurring away from object-
centred, low vibrational (heavy material) artworks and towards a body-centred,
process based practice. Creatively, I was being attracted to working with
higher/lighter vibrational media such as movement, dance, music, sound and video.
This development is synonymous in spiritual development terms with the individual
opening into a state beyond ego bound definition. The individual integrates and
detaches from the lower three chakras (subtle energetic bodies) and begins opening to
the higher three transpersonal chakras in the body, via the “crucible” of the heart
chakra. This process based work became central to my creative practice as research
and to the “ethos” of my work.
I became increasingly curious about the ancient past. I wanted to understand more
about embodied spiritual practice prior to the dominant patriarchal religions of
Christianity-Islam-Judaism. This reflects a recurrent process and inclination for me
towards etymology - the seeking out of source and origin. I was interested in specific
women who possessed and practised spiritual and secular power simultaneously. I
was also interested in the accumulative holistic insight into the nature of the human
experience, for some hope of a pathway to freedom and integration. I felt as though
something had been lost. It seemed as though a thread of inner connection in the
feminine psyche had been severed, just like the nerves in my leg had been severed in
the accident.
9
Out of these beginnings, three core concerns were identified at the outset of the study.
They were to work with energy in the body, to claim an aspect of female spiritual
heritage and practice and to reflect and articulate my own particular work “ethos” in
the context of the new light based media, including digital imagery and video. This
study occurred through the body, imagery and the word.
This is an investigation into ancient visual symbols and the perennial “wisdom of the
tribe”; archetypal imagery from matriarchal and indigenous mythology. Both the Sufi
and the shamanic seem to form the core of many spiritual practices across cultural
differences. Central to the Sufi is the practice of unconditional LOVE and the
attainment of ecstasy via physical atonements such as dancing. Central to shamanism
is living in an honourable relationship to the earth and treating ill health in through the
whole family/ group or community not just the individual.
I have steered clear of making any claims of reference to Australian Aboriginal
spirituality in particular out of respect for the sensitivities that exist here. Other than
through my own personal, energetic and symbolic connection to this part of the earth,
I do not know how to interact with Aboriginal spirituality, especially in an urban
context, without bumping into protocols and my own fears of causing grief. But
perhaps more intrinsically, my soul connections are more with Europe, North Africa
and Anatolia.
A note on the process of writing the thesis itself, on which one could write an entire
thesis! The process has been characterised by immense struggle! This is an
10
“objectification” of a set of “truths”, a distilling of them into an object. Inevitably the
object becomes separated from its context and network of meaning for a variety of
reasons be it custom, circumstance, chance or whatever. The act of writing and
separating from the body-energetic perspective and context felt like it was potentially
fraught with danger. I resisted writing for a long time. In the same way that my paper
made no sense to me after the accident, the break in my nervous system severed the
connective consciousness. Documents are often severed from their nexus of sense and
context. There is a long and very bloody human story containing deliberate misuse,
gross misinterpretation and fear based responses to words and their authors.
In the course of my research investigating embodied female spirituality and women of
the ancient past who possessed both spiritual and secular power, I came across a
woman named Hypatia. Hypatia was Head of the School of Philosophy in Alexandria
in the 5th century AD. The great library there at the time was reputedly the world’s
accumulation of ancient knowledge. The library was purposefully destroyed and
Hypatia was stripped naked, dragged to St. Cyril’s church and was fed piece by piece
into the fire!4
What, I asked myself, did this library with a woman at the helm contain? And what
knowledge was so threatening to our forefathers that they felt the need to destroy it all
and assassinate the Head of the School?
4 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper p454
their ref: Bertrand Russell A History of Western Philosophy
11
Focus of Inquiry
Spiritual Heritage
I occupy the body and life of a woman of predominantly Anglo-Saxon origin, a
mostly working class/entrepreneurial background, and no specific religious
denomination. I live in the contemporary Western culture of Australia. Where is the
Goddess? Where is spirit in this life?
The study focuses on reconnecting pathways back to ancient wisdom via spiritual
practices, healing modalities and creative practices. These pathways are body-centred
and earth-centred as distinct from the patriarchal religions (Christianity-Judaism-
Islam) that depend more heavily on doctrine and a sky dwelling, head-centred male
God. This is an investigation into a thread through the matriarchal body-earth-centred
cultures, the body-based spiritual practice of Sufi, energetic healing work, and
archetypal imagery and symbol that honours the earth, woman, the feminine, and
spirit. Patriarchal history is based on the tradition of rational-logic doctrine.
Matriarchal ‘herstory’, as Marina Warner says in From the Beast to the Blonde, is
based on embodied mythology, archetypal imagery and story. We can look to
archaeological data and images embodied in oral stories and aural musical traditions.
These stories and symbols are carried in the belly of the great mythological serpent.
The serpent is potentially spontaneously present in the neo-cortex of every person and
especially available to woman through the psychic lunar rhythm of her own body. I
am referring to a person’s capacity to access the collective unconscious via their own
intuitive personal self.
12
Therefore the autobiographical material emerges as a critical component in the
research methodology of this study, in terms of contextualising my own personal
connection to the great mythological serpent through time and humanity. Of particular
significance were my own body experiences, as well as my developing awareness of
energetics within the body, in healing work and in space. But of equal importance was
grasping the relevance and value of my own use of imagery in relation to perennial
world symbolism, the “wisdom of the tribe” and visual imagery inherent also in the
Sufi. This visual language has grown out of my past, (probably past lives), my present
(life experiences) and the future (images I have accessed via intuition). I had set a
focus of developing and articulating my connection to a ‘language of the world’.
This ‘language of the world’ is made up of that which is common to human depth and
experience. What is significant and common are the following; similarities of
experience based on being in a human body, sensory reception of the elements (air,
earth, water, fire), experiences of being in proximity to other humans. Out of this
arises the values of respect and honour of the earth, physical atonement to maintain
balance in ones self, treating ill health (spiritual, psycho-emotional) via the whole
group/ family / community (holistic approach) not the separated individual (which is
an illusion).
Which female heroines were to become like keyholes to mysterious or just forgotten
realms in the articulation of the ‘language of the world’? What was important to ‘re-
member’ about shamanic contexts of healing, spirituality and performance?5
5 ‘re-member’ refers to the reassembly of the whole body-mind, putting the body back together
13
METHODOLOGY
This investigation into embodied female spirituality clearly required an approach
which was able to holistically engage all human faculties - different aspects of mind,
body, spirit, intuition and memory. Consequently it was essential to use my creative
practice as an integrative aspect of the research. I have used my creative practice
across health & healing, Sufi processes and light based media to investigate, develop
and practice ‘embodied female spirituality’. A shamanic-performance paradigm and
feminism have been central, philosophically, to the study. In addition I have chosen to
explicate the connections between these discourses of the body, the text and the
imagery through my own story, my autobiography.
The methodology involves two research strategies; the use of creative practice as
research and the use of autobiography as a research tool. The creative practice can be
seen as a continuum of modalities, extending from the private to the public. Three
dimensions of the practice will be discussed. The following is a description of the
dimension of a typical session in (1) a body-based natural therapy treatment I deliver
(2) a group-body-based Sufi session I deliver and (3) a brief outline of the approach I
have taken to the research within light based media and a list of the works.
14
The Use of Creative Practice as Research
Dimension (1) - Natural Therapies: Massage & Energy Work
The one-on-one treatment work with patients takes place preferably in a private and
enclosed space with the use of a standard massage therapy table. There is a conscious
awareness and use of space and energetics within that space. This includes the
location and orientation of furniture, consideration of proximity to other objects,
doors and windows, air flow & visual clarity. It also involves lighting, the use of
essential oils in the atmosphere and colours in the room. Prior to giving a treatment I
need to ensure that I am clean, clear (energetically), sufficiently hydrated and
receptive. This intuitive bodywork blend modalities of the following; Swedish
massage therapy (a lot of effleurage - smooth full palms of hands and arms over the
body, some pummelling and joint release work), lymphatic drainage (major
eliminatory and immunity enhancement function in the body, involves pumping the
major lymph nodes and very slow massage work), hands on energy work (based on
Reiki and other energywork), body awareness and breathwork (participatory) the use
of sound in healing (the use of “tingshaws”- Tibetan silver metal bells used especially
for opening and closing sessions, clearing energy that has been released, and for use
on 5b the throat chakra), as well as recorded toning, chanting, trance and atmospheric
music and visualisations (creative visualisation work to assist the removal of energy
blockages, especially emotional blockage, white light, grey cloud dissolving, auto
suggestion warm colours to increase circulation and green meditation for the heart,
colour systems that correspond to the chakras - the energetic doorways). At the end of
the session I perform several physical separations and cleansing processes to return
15
my energy field to itself. I need to regularly bathe in the sea or take Epsom & sea salt
baths, as well as cold showers to de-contaminate my energetic field.
Dimension (2) - Sacred Arts: Sufi, Drumming, Chanting,
Dancing
In its essence the Sufi is the embodiment of LOVE as an active principle, both the
mechanism and the goal simultaneously. This version of Sufi is a body-based spiritual
practice sometimes referred to as “Shattari” or “the rapid method”. Actually a lot of
the work is very slow in terms of pace of movement but it puts the participant into a
deep, connected state with spirit very quickly. I came into contact with a form of Sufi
work via two students of the Sufi Master, Adnan Sarhan. Adnan is the Head and
founder of the Sufi Foundation of America in New Mexico. Adnan’s roots are in Iraq.
Sufi can involve any combination of the following body-based physical atonements:
meditative movement, fast Middle Eastern Dance, the Whirling, drumming,
breathwork, chanting and veil dancing. I have both attended and taught this work. I
am not a Sufi Master, but I honour the connection I feel to this work. I see that it has
many pathways and that it has pre-Islamic, pre-Christian roots.
The Sufi sessions I have been conducting are usually between two to three hours in
duration. All the work begins with the breath and the breath is the central component
of the process.
16
Figure 2. Myself practicing Sufi
17
Music is used in all the sessions. Generally a mix of traditional Sufi Music and World
Music is used. The sessions are both structured and intuitive. Once the session begins
there is generally no talking aside from minimal guidance in words. There are both
active and passive components to the sessions. Between the Meditative Movement
and the whirling we may, for example, lie on our rugs on the floor with closed eyes,
breath long slow breaths and listen without moving to improvised drumming music.
The active components to the Sufi work consist of:
The meditative movement is very slow work with the upper body involving the arms,
chest and head whilst sitting on the floor. The focus is on opening the heart,
increasing breath capacity and freeing the neck. This often progresses into rolling
more of the body onto the floor and gentle, but deep, opening of the back and torso
area. It can also often progress into a standing version, with sweeping movements,
still quite slow. The idea is to start the coil deep inside oneself gradually turning. This
can, and often does; progress further into Middle Eastern and other forms of Dance
but ONLY after this preparatory work is done first to initiate the inner coil. Otherwise
the inner connection to spirit is not found.
The Mevlevi Whirling begins very slowly in a standing position, travelling in either
an anti clockwise or clockwise direction, with the arms outstretched; the left arm low
with the palm facing the earth, and the right up high and the palm facing the sky.
There is very particular music used for this process using the Deff drum and the Ney
flute.
18
Figure 3. The Mevlevi Whirling
19
To avoid dizziness it is best to de-focus the eyes, and only increasing the speed of the
movement according to a readiness from within your self, and to gradually decrease
speed at the end. When I work with drumming in the session it is to encourage access
to the intuition and the inherent rhythmic capabilities within people. I do not teach
technique and set rhythms. Usually I will bring in the drumming after significant
amounts of the other breathwork and meditative parts to the session.
The breathwork is core to all these body-based Sufi practices. Often a session will
begin with the focus on just breathing for some time. The Sufi teacher will guide
people in their breathing through the postures. eg “inhaling up” (which means as you
raise your arms up breathing in ), and “exhaling down”. Often to do the chanting we
gather in a smaller more intimate circle and join hands. Once everyone has the chant
in them we close our eyes and run the words through our bodies. The chanting can be
accompanied by movement either large or small. Perhaps the most beautiful of all is
the veil dancing. This is done ideally with silk scarves. An all-women group is
effective, so too a basically balanced number of women to men in a group.
Dimension (3) - Light Based Media: Digital Video & Stills
This dimension of the practice involves the conscious examination of my intuitive use
of symbols and their relationship to the hierophant or perennial wisdom of the tribe,
the use of those symbols cross-culturally. Through investigating the use of symbol
within Sufi, theosophy, the ancient world, matriarchal culture, philosophy, and dream
analysis I gained a greater sense of the use of these images at large.
20
I took a performance based approach to the making of the first two videos, Castle of
the Connectress and Lunar Hierophanies They were recorded on video first, then
story-boarded and edited these works. The third video, Sex, Drugs & String Quartets
was created in collaboration with a standard hierarchical film crew, in which my roles
were Art Direction and Co-Direction on set. In this instance, the video was scripted
first, and then came the storyboarding, shooting and editing process. Sex, Drugs and
String Quartets was recorded on Video Pro 50. Castle ‘and Lunar’ were recorded on
standard Mini- DV.
These are the four pieces of creative work being submitted for examination:
(a) Castle of the Connectress - website www.geocities.com/lupaliss (2000)
(b) Castle of the Connectress – 5min. video (2001)
(c) Lunar Hierophanies - 9 min. video (2001-2003)
(d) Sex, Drugs & String Quartets – Leon’s Story 7 min. (1 of 4 stories (27 min total)
Art Director and Co-Director, fictionalised documentary for TV. Producer/Director
Carla Thackrah, (Sep 2002-Mar 2003)
21
Autobiography as a Research Tool
The other research strategy I have engaged is the use of autobiography. I have
documented my personal experiences in terms of milestones of psycho-emotional-
spiritual integration and consciousness development. I have recorded my personal
experience in the form of visual images and the written word. These images and
memoirs form the iconographic ‘language of the world’ outlined in detail in the next
chapter - the Conceptual Framework. Some of this material is presented in the form of
diary extracts, as well as being embedded in the imagery in the Light Based Media
component to the study.
Autobiographical data has been critical in terms of the ‘Energetics’ component of this
study. My knowledge and awareness of ‘Energetics’ has grown out of my experience
in healing work and through studying text based material. I have documentation of
over 100 treatments of massage & energy work performed as part of this study. This
has been an important part of the ‘Energetics’ section of ‘Embodied Female
Spirituality’, and in terms of understanding how ‘energetics’ operates through my
particular auric and energetic field. There is a sample client form included in the
Appendices. Also in my own healing process, I have made notations about the
behaviour of particular energetic chakras as well as responses to the processes of Sufi.
This has been valuable in my evolving knowledge of the behaviour of energetics and
the understanding and embodying of female spirituality. As my creative practice
progressed and personal discoveries were made, a number of key concepts were
established. These create the conceptual framework for the study and are detailed in
the next chapter.
22
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
There are two key factors to the conceptual framework of this study ‘Understanding
and Embodying Female Spirituality through Creative Practice’. They are ‘Energetics’
that I refer to as ‘the great serpent’ and experienced archetypal image/symbol which I
refer to as the ‘language of the world’. I use these terms interchangeably for the
‘serpent’ also contains within its belly all archetypal imagery and certainly energetics
is also the ‘language of the world’. This is how the world of symbolism and
mythology operates, one cannot grasp a ‘shape changer’ too tightly or it dies or loses
all power!
‘Energetics’ (love) is the means and force which turns the wheel of the cosmos, and
what connects all of its parts. It can best be understood as a wave vibration field. At
any particular moment the wave vibration field is in a certain state. By tuning in to the
energetic flow of the universe and connecting to this way of being we are able to
affect the outcome, the organic evolution, the turning of the cosmos, the wheel. In the
same way as this the ‘tassuwwuf’ of the Sufi is both a teaching and an organic
evolution. ‘Energetics’ could be spirit itself, the great serpent that travels all
dimension and cosmic terrains. For our human purposes we experience it in a personal
and universal dimension. The healer and the patient, once connected, enter a relaxed
alpha state, recorded (by magnetic field detector and EEG) world-wide as being 7.8 to
8Hz.6 This magnetic pulse rate measured through the healers hands and brain waves is
equivalent to the magnetic vibration of the earth. The healer harmonises with the earth
and then harmonises the patient with the earth’s rhythm also. The ‘language of the
6 Brennan, B. (1993) Light Emerging, New York: Bantam Books, p5
23
world’7 is the “clothing which the spiritual borrows from the material plane”.8 The
potential danger with symbolism is literal interpretation. A bloody and catastrophic
example cited by Sjoo and Mor in The Great Cosmic Mother is the misinterpretation
of the yoga of Quetzalcoatl in Mexico. The meaning of the phrase “the opening of the
heart to the light of the Sun” was not the literal mass heart ripping sacrifices that the
Aztec Priests conducted, but the opening of the heart chakra of the subtle energetic
body.9
Embodying spirit, living with an awareness of energetics, is about knowing how to
read the world of experience, to understand and connect with life where we see the
images in the world as omens (or sign posts). It opens us to an ancient, perennial,
shamanic perspective. The shamanic perspective is a place where many cultures share
some truths of the nature of life. This is reflected in cross cultural commonalities in
archetypal imagery and symbolism. There are numerous interpretative variations of
how the ‘Moon’ or the ‘Serpent’ or ‘Birds’ functions in the worldview of particular
cultures. But are there common threads of these approaches to life which still hold
valuable and useful in a pragmatic sense in our contemporary world? The central
concept of a shamanic perspective is a state of interdependency between humans and
the cosmos; between humanity and the earth.
Neither we, as humans, nor our surroundings have full identity or meaning
without the other. This picture of mutual dependency could characterize an
avant-garde ecological position, but it is also integral to the shamanic view of
the world in which everything - not only animals, but also plants and rocks,
wind and rain - may be imbued with spirit.10
7 Coelho, P ref: p6 Background to the Study
8 Underhill, E. in Shah, I. The Sufis, pp46-47
9 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p225
10 Vitebsky, P. (1995) The Shaman -Voyages of the Soul, Trance, Ecstasy and Healing From Siberia to
the Amazon, London: Duncan Baird Publishers, p12
24
The condition of the earth is reflected in the condition of the human psyche. The
contemporary Western world is preoccupied with the violence of analysis and
separating and compartmentalising. This is an ego-based vision of life and the world.
The convention of each person needing to own and radically alter their portion
violates cosmic law. Humans, it seems, are consistently violating cosmic law.
An example of the tendency towards separation and individualisation is the approach
taken to treating depression and clinical depression. Typically it is the individual
alone who is the “problem”. It is recognised that only certain individuals with
particular character traits, often the more sensitive ones will manifest the condition of
depression. A holistic view of the whole family or community recognises that the
symptom however relates to the psychology of the whole family. In Australia a
common approach to treating depression is treat the individual only. Often the person
suffering from depression is encouraged to take anti-depressant drugs. Is this the best
way to heal? Is this healing at all? Or is it more suppression?
The Shamanic approach to healing the self and the earth is to treat the whole
community. The role of body-based Shamanic Performance practices is to assist in
balancing the world and therefore in the balance of the humans who belong to it. For
millennia male and female shamans from Siberia to New Zealand have used the body-
based spiritual practices of drumming, chanting, movement, dance, mythology, the
embodiment of animal imagery, trance, and ‘flying’ to ‘work’ the language of the
world in order to balance the cosmos. This study is an investigation into these
resonances at large through my own healing work; body based spiritual practices and
visual imagery. Inherent within shamanic practice is the use of ‘psychic maps’ and
25
‘cosmic maps’ to navigate the self and the dimensions beyond or through the self.11
The Tree-Serpent-Bird is one such map and a metaphor for the development of higher
consciousness.
The Tree-Serpent-Bird image is triplicate in nature, it is inherently related to the
iconographies of matriarchal culture and the central worship of the moon and the
great Goddess, triple in nature also. Remember the bird species actually evolved out
of the reptilian species, scales became feathers. This symbolism also relates to the
“oroboros” - the female zero: zero. The snake swallowing its tail is symbolic of the
eternal and cyclical nature of the Goddess, the divine water bird with the long neck.
Tree-Serpent-Bird
There was a point in time when my attention was being drawn consistently to largish
birds perched in trees. I puzzled over this. When I first moved into this valley in
Paddington in 1998, I came into contact with the infamous scrub turkey which, I was
to find out, roosted high in the eucalypts in the late afternoon.
I was being shown via the “language of the world” something about my journey and
the spiritual pathway I was taking.
Oh backbone of the world, show kindness to the seekers of beauty (Rumi).12
The world tree is a universal symbol. When the shaman embarks on her journey into
trance, she is climbing the world tree, the human spine. The cosmic tree expresses the
three sacred dimensions; heaven (the branches), earth (the trunk) and the underworld
(the roots).
11 Vitebsky, P. (1995) The Shaman -Voyages of the Soul, Trance, Ecstasy and Healing From Siberia to
the Amazon, London: Duncan Baird Publishers, pp5-17
12 Reinhertz, S. (2001) Women Called to the Path of Rumi, Prescott, Arizona: Hohm Press, p207
26
The Tree-Serpent-Bird imagery also relates to the three aspects of the human brain;
the reptilian brain stem (the snake), embraced by the mammalian cerebrum, (the tree)
and the human neocortex represents the (luminous flying bird). The flying bird sits
high in the world tree (the spine), the kundalini is aroused through the chakras and
maintains connection through them also.13
13 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p101
27
Figure 4. 'Neck' photograph by Elise Goodrich 1984
(note the similarity of the image to the trunk of a tree)
28
The soaring bird is spirit/spirituality. It is all that is light and positive and
synonymous with the “winged’ state of illumination. In order to marry these two
aspects one dives into or becomes the collective unconscious; the great serpent.
The world tree incorporates serpentine and lunar symbolism, shedding bark and
leaves like skin or light, being reborn in the spring, growing rhythmically with
the monthly moon phases. At least two thousand years before the Hebrew
patriarchs wrote of the Garden of Eden, the Neolithic Great Goddess had her
magic Garden of Immortality.14
The Serpent
The first year I began drumming was in 1997. During that year I went on a drumming
retreat to Kondalilla Falls. We drummed all weekend. At the end, I literally could not
drum any more. I did not stay to do the “performance”. I somehow managed the
drive home, dropped off the friend who was travelling with me, got home and
promptly fell into a semi sleep in the bath tub. Then, I had a vision, of a huge snake
rising up out of my throat. The earth stretched out in front of me, parched and dry.
The snake slithered across the cracked reddish earth and then quickly turned and
writhed back towards me. I awoke in a shock with the sense of this huge snake going
back down my throat!!! Perhaps, I was having a kundalini rising experience...?
A huge mythological serpent extends back and forth through time, and certainly
crosses culturally. The serpent contains all archetypal imagery and symbolism;
including the heart, the eye, the spiral, the moon, the sun, the birds, snakes, entries
and exits, and the tower. This perennial imagery is deeply embedded in the human
psyche.
14 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p101
29
Figure 5. 'Snakey Arms' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
30
The snake has a variety of meanings, and I think we must hold its
“regeneration” to be one of the most important. The snake is an animal that
“changes”. Gressman tried to see in Eve a primitive Phoenician goddess of the
underworld, personified by a snake.3 The Mediterranean deities are represented
with snakes in their hands (the Arcadian Artemis, Hectate, Peresphone and so
on), or with snakes for hair (the Gorgon, Erinyes, and others).15
Feminine archetypal energy, earth energy – the Great Goddess is represented cross-
culturally as a serpent, frequently being killed. Within this framework, the legends of
knights in shining armour slaying the dragon are interpreted as being about the demise
of matriarchy; the destruction of the earth-mother-goddess; and the erection of a sky-
dwelling male godhead. The physical manifestation of this is demonstrated by the fact
that many Christian churches in the U.K. were erected over the top of sacred sites of
the old Goddess religions. 16
In fact, an abnormal number of Christian churches dedicated to St. Michael
and St. George, the other British dragon-slayer, are built on high places along
the ley-line (or dragon path) that runs from Land’s End in Cornwall through
the Goddess monuments at Glastonbury and Avebury in southwest England.17
St Michael wrestles with and kills off the connection to the deep consciousness. From
this point on, rational-logic-deductive thought establishes its foundation and begins to
erect its hierarchical authority and separation from the earth. It severs the thick nerve
of the feminine energy. This lost connection is re-engaged by the Yogic-shamanic-
ecstatic dancing practices, like the Sufi, in which the personal human skeleton takes
upon itself to embody the universal world tree and awaken the serpent-kundalini
energy coiled at the base of the spine. The spirit bird is set flying.
15 Eliade, M. (1958) Patterns in Comparative Religion, New York : Sheed & Ward, p168
16 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p108
17 ibid, p108
31
Figure 6. ‘Castle of the Connectress’ website homepage detail 2000
32
Serpent - and the ‘Turuq’ (4 ways)
The Serpent is at once the life force energy (kundalini) of the individual but also the
deep subterranean Serpent energy of the universe (one song), expressed, utilised and
identified as geomancy (earth), pyromancy (fire), hydromancy (water), and
aeromancy (air) as in the symbolism of the magician’s card in the Tarot.18
According to Idries Shah in the Sufis (1964:449), the Tarot cards have their origins
with the Sufis. The word “Tarot” is derived from the Arabic turuq, (four ways).
Initially the tarot cards were devised as an allegory of Sufi teachings. They embodied
the knowledge of cosmic influences upon human behaviour. Although the
contemporary version of the Tarot has been affected by Judaism and Cabalism and no
longer retains all original meaning. Some of the derivation has been caused by poor
translations from Arabic.19
Pyromancy - the Fire Snake
From an internal viewpoint, within one’s own body this energy
serpent is depicted as a spiral which can travel in either
direction. From a cosmic viewpoint this spiral/spinning is
synonymous with the spinning of the planets and the movement of the universe.
Within body-based spiritual practice the serpent annotates the choreography of the
Mevlevi Dervish “Whirling”. The kundalini rising is also the mystic fire and
18 Sharman-Burke, J. &Greene, L. (1992) The Mythic Tarot Book, East Roseville NSW: Simon &
Schuster Publishers, p21
19 Shah,I. (1964) The Sufis, New York: Anchor Books, Double Day, p449
33
Figure 7. Brennan Energetics chakra diagram
34
“burning” spoken about and experienced in association with spiritual development.20
The potential serpent power is equivalent to dormant cosmic fire.
Body Notes 1998: The night before I whirled for the first time, my
hair caught on fire. I was in the bath and I had a small candle
burning on the corner of the bath, I must have leaned towards it as
I got into the tub. I slid my body down into the warm bath, the rose
petals and essential oils... uhhhh! I could see FIRE reflected in the
white tiles straight ahead of me! I looked behind me and then
realised it was ME that was burning! I put my hands to my head to
put out the flames, and dived into the bath water. I lay there quite
shocked with black ash floating around me and the smell of burnt hair in my nostrils.
The serpent within the domain of the natural therapies could be equated with
knowledge of the use of energetics to heal. In the Brennan Healing work, which
describes the individual’s energy as the HEF - the human energy field, and the UEF -
the universal energy field, healing occurs via the balancing of the chakras, which spin
in a clockwise direction when functioning well and in the reverse direction when not.
The Brennan work also involves the release of blocked energy trapped in various
parts of the body. The healer channels energy through their own bodies into the
patient. The intention is to shift energetic blockages and allow the chakras to resume
their positive motion again. This allows the patient to once again “take in” and
integrate via their own energy doorways/keyholes - the energetic chakras, vortices.
There is the convention in the East of depicting these vortices as lotus flowers.
20 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p75
35
Within archetypal imagery, the serpent represents the ability of the individual through
their own unconscious (dreams) to connect to the collective unconscious of humanity.
Contained within this great serpent reaching from the personal to the collective are
common images which Western psychology regards as being related to Jungian dream
analysis. “Depth psychology” has called this “a priori” image that we carry within our
souls as “imago”. However as Idries Shah points out in The Sufis, Western
psychology is limited in its grasp of the complexities of the human spirit, and did not
originate with Freud and Jung.
The Jungian archetypal theory did not originate with Professor Jung, but was
stated by the Sufi master Ibn El-Arabi as Professor Rom Landau notes in The
Philosophy of Ibn Arabi. (New York, Macmillan, 1959. p.40 et seq) Modern
psychology has done some good, where, for instance, it has pointed out that the
urge to make money may be a symptom of insecurity. But it has not yet
integrated itself; ...Psychology learns as it goes along, Sufism has already
learned ...Freud’s sexual arguments are noted by the Sufi Sheikh Ghazali in his
Alchemy of Happiness (written over nine hundred years ago) as being standard
among Moslem theologians.21
21 Shah, I. (1964) The Sufis, New York: Anchor Books, Double Day, pp58-59
36
Figure 8. 'Moon Egg' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
37
The Moon
Queen of the Night she was called, the moon is the Goddess presence on earth and
refers to the first woman. The time keeper: synonymous with woman and her
menstrual cycle. The Moon was of central importance to the Matriarchal Goddess
cultures. For many thousands of years women have been keeping time and rhythm
with the universe via their own menstrual cycle and the moon. They were
unequivocally the first time keepers. There are quite extraordinary commonalities and
recurrences between lunar worship world-wide from ancient Greece (Hectate and
Medea) to ancient China (#2 of the 12 emblems of the Empress) through Egypt (Min),
Europe (Oestia or Easter, goddess of spring). The White Rabbit, often depicted in the
arms of the crescent moon is sacred to the moon goddess also. In some parts of the
Christian world the Easter Rabbit lays or brings the Egg.
The Mayan Queen is also called “Lady Rabbit”.22
The Moon & the Labrys
The Moon was the “Queen of the Night”, always in
process, transforming. The moon changes from dark moon
Labrys – double axe
to crescent moon to full moon, crescent moon and back to a new moon. It has a
relationship the human experience of the past present future in time. This triple aspect
has been symbolised by the “double-headed axe” or “labrys”. The labrys is a double
headed crescent shaped axe. For at least 4,000 years and probably much longer,
women used a practical version of the labrys in the field, the Amazon warrior women
of North West Africa and around the Black Sea (1700BC - 350BC) used a version of
22 Goodrich, N.L. (1989) Priestesses, New York: F Watts, pp89-90
38
it in battle against the Greek invasions, and the ceremonial labrys was often depicted
in Crete. The Neolithic matriarchal cultures in the Near
This image is not
available online.
Please consult the
hardcopy thesis
available from the
QUT Library
. Labrys - detail drawing by
Monica Sjoo23
East used it in the Jordan Valley. The double-axe, or
labrys symbolised among other things the changing
phases of the moon and the cyclical transforming nature
of life. It was the symbol of the Great Goddess.
Sufi and Labrys
The Sufis, through the body-based spiritual practice of the Mevlevi whirling embody
the two directions of the universe. The right turn direction was used to build, and
maintain momentum/ energy, or forward in time. The left turn direction or
widdershins was used to destruct or transform and has to do with the past. Sjoo &
Mor claim that the Sufi double crescent ceremonial axe is a “direct descendent of the
double axes used by the priestesses on Matriarchal Crete”.24
I had this sense of remembering something very ancient in the embodying of Sufi
movement. I was experiencing the language and rhythm of the cosmos through my
own body. Even just watching the movements I felt transported as if I was whirling
myself. It was like there was no separation between people whirling in front of me and
me. Sometimes too I begin to get this burning feeling.... I feel compelled to whirl, then
I start and it is as though I am being whirled not that I am whirling...
The Shamanic performance context is also characterised by an interdependence of
audience-performer and health of the whole community. The shaman has a job to do.
She has to balance the tribe, release suppressed blocked energies, create harmony and
travel in any of the three realms the underworld, topside world and sky world.
23 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p214
24 ibid, p119
39
Figure 9. 'Goat Horns' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
40
The Moon and the Sacred Goat
All manifestations of the crescent moon on earth were regarded as sacred, and meant
the presence of the triple Goddess. The curving horns of the goats who wandered wild
on the Anatolian plateau (which forms part of present day Turkey) before the
domestication of animals. Bulls, oxen, and other herd animals were deemed sacred.
Horn shaped crowns were donned in battle by warrior women and men. It belonged to
the tradition of the Goddess and the moon. So too the horned “Pan”, the pagan god of
Nature; and therefore also the “devil”, all that had been sacred within the matriarchal
Goddess cultures was within the patriarchal brethren religious traditions to become
“evil”. Any mention of the moon or the astrological meant “taboo”.25
Shamanic Turning in Anatolia
The Anatolian plateau is also where the
Mevlevi Whirling was formalised into a body-
This image is not
available online.
Please consult the
hardcopy thesis
available from the
QUT Library
Woman about to “turn”26
based spiritual practice that was to continue for
700 years up to the present. Until very recently,
Women had been excluded from the practice of
Whirling for the last 200 years. Before the
arrival of Islam into Anatolia Nomadic tribal
life and shamanic culture was alive and well. The famous Sufi poet Jelaluddin Rumi
is credited with the inception of this practice.
25 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p99
26 Reinhertz, S. (2001) Women Called to the Path of Rumi, Prescott, Arizona: Hohm Press, p42
41
Figure 10. 'El Sueno Returno' digital image 2000
Figure 11. Myself & two friends at Salvador Dali's funeral, Spain 1989
42
But mention must be made of his son, Sultan Veled and as well as the many women
around him, within his circle of family and friends who helped to establish the order.
For in the days of Rumi in Turkey, women and men whirled together, both formally
and informally.27 Within the traditions of the shamanic nomads there existed a form
of ecstatic turning. The Sufis of the Qalander tradition were dervishes who wandered
from place to place embodying both the great earth wisdom and the mystic
transmissions of Islam. Shams-i-Tabriz, Rumi’s teacher, came from this tradition.
Some scholars suggest that it was Shams who introduced Rumi to the whirling as a
form of body-based prayer which possibly is rooted in shamanic practices. 28
Heart-Centre
The experience and concept of heart perspective is of central
significance within the imagery of Sufi. The expansive heart
perspective is associated with the image of the rose. At the
still centre is the heart analogous to the practice of Sema in
the Sufi, which has to do with listening to the heart centre.
‘El Sueno Eterno ‘is a key image I produced for an
Installation at Picaron Gallery in Amsterdam in 1991. It
means the eternal dream/sleep. The term was used in the
Figure 15. ‘El Sueno Eterno’
1991
newspaper caption which accompanied a photograph of myself and two friends at the
funeral of Salvador Dali in Spain in 1989. It read “La atraccion por el sueno eterno”,
which means ‘the attraction for the eternal dream/ sleep’. At his request Dali’s body
was embalmed upon his death.
27 Reinhertz, S. (2001) Women Called to the Path of Rumi, Prescott, Arizona: Hohm Press, p13
28 ibid., p9
43
I have utilized this same heart-centre imagery on my website, the ‘Castle of the
Connectress’. The core image has been re-grafted onto a background image of an
architectural interior. Note that the image of El Sueno Eterno contains a spiralling
helix encircling the other objects in the image of the heart and a skinned resin-coated
goats head. The little head is staring straight at the heart below it. This emerged in
1991 as a kind of structure of the self. What is of central importance is its
embodiment of the dynamic dualism between the mind and the heart represented by
the head and the wax heart.
This stage of the journey could be described as the integration of these two facets.
This section of the spiral refers to the personal process of integration of the opposites
of thought and feeling. At the universal dimension, Robert Graves, according to
Juliette Wood in The Concept of the Goddess, went so far as to describe this age old
antagonism between thought and feeling as being reflected in the demise between
History and Mythology in general.
44
Heart-Cross-Centre
At the personal embodied dimension this dynamic integration takes place in the heart
centre, depicted often as the organ of the heart in many spiritual systems and within
the Sufi in association with the image of the rose. As it occurred in my life, this part
of the journey manifested as a situation of dual
occupancy. I was living both in the city and in
nature, between Brisbane and the hills behind Byron
This image is not
available online.
Please consult the
hardcopy thesis
available from the
QUT Library
“Bird Cross”
Goddess from Vinca culture
circa 4000 B.C.29
Bay. I understood after a while what was happening
and attempted to allow the process to occur. I did
experience periods of homelessness at the time, and
was financially destitute. In standard Western
psychology, the answer to this scenario would be to
‘straighten the wheel’ to what looks right, it would
be suggested probably that I just make a decision to be in one or the other. From a
Sufi perspective, the approach would be to allow the wheel to find its own
momentum, and that will allow the organism to propel itself forward.
What only recently became apparent was seeing this process embodied in a body
dynamic dimension in the image of the cross. The cross itself, at least initially, seems
to represent the integration of dynamic dualism at the psychic dimension. Integral to
this map, is the diagrammatic representation of the subtle energy bodies and their
energetic doorways or energy centres/chakras in the human body. This is the energetic
highway between the personal and universal (refer chakra diagram, p 34).
29 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p92
45
Within ancient esoteric disciplines across the world from India to Mexico, through to
contemporary articulations of the practice of energetics, the heart chakra is of central
significance. The energetic heart chakra, located in the centre of the chest, mediates
the left and right sides of the body through the arms.
The right arm embodies the masculine, intellectual, time-bound, rational principle and
the left arm embodies the feminine, unboundedness, emotional, divine principle. This
delineates the horizontal axis of the cross. There is also the dynamic transformation
from the personal to the universal; (or what parapsychologist Ken Wilber calls, the
‘transpersonal’), the progression from the lower three chakras via the heart to the
opening of the top three energetic chakras. This delineates the vertical axis of the
cross as expressed in the human being and possibly represented in the “bird cross”.
(refer illus. p44)
Heart-Intelligence
The Sufis talk about a kind of ‘heart intelligence’ which is far more expansive than
the limited faculty of the intellect, although that too has its uses. It has just become
dominant to the point of detriment. There are extensive heart-eye image references
within theosophical texts, which is interesting to note although the theosophists were
not interested in worldly application of spiritual knowledge. Rudolf Steiner, a well
known writer on spirit, philosophy and energetics, broke with the theosophists over
this central issue, he went on to bring his grasp of philosophy and energetics into
worldly application through devising and implementing the Steiner Education system.
The heart is a keyhole/ entry to divine intervention. As Paulo Coelho weaves into his
story, ‘The Alchemist’, a fable about following your dream.
46
“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer.” the boy told the alchemist one
night as they looked at the moonless sky. “Tell your heart that the fear of
suffering is worse than suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when
it goes in search of its dreams, because every second is a second’s encounter
with God and eternity”.30
Figure 12. 'Heart Chamber( de Fortuito)' (of Chance) 2000
For the Sufi, the sound of the Ney flute, (the musical instrument used in the body-
based Sufi practices of the Sema and the Whirling), represents the sound of the heart.
It is the sound made as the transformed breath passes through the holes of the flute.
The holes of the flute are the holes of the heart, the injuries which become doorways.
One hundred holes in the heart are the one hundred wounds, are the one hundred holes
in the beak of the phoenix bird.
30 Coelho, P. The Alchemist, London: Harper Collins p137
47
Bird of Fire
The Phoenix is a beautiful bird with a long beak that has almost one hundred
holes. Each hole produces a different note and each sound contains a particular
secret. It lives for almost a hundred years and knows the exact moment of its
death. When the yearning to return to its true home begins to fill its heart, it
gathers a pile of date palm leaves and upon entering the mound, utters a
plaintive cry sent out from the depths of its soul as its body trembles like a leaf
shaken helplessly by the wind. At the sound of this cry, all the birds and the
wild beasts gather to witness its passing. While the Phoenix still has breath, it
beats its wings and ruffles its feathers causing the date palm leaves to catch fire.
The bird and the fire become one. Finally there remains only one spark from
which a new Phoenix arises.31
Figure 13. 'Sacred Wedding' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
31 Reinhertz, S. (2001)Women Called to the Path of Rumi, Prescott, Arizona: Hohm Press. intro, (xx)
48
Figure 14. 'Real Time' installation image (frozen bulls head), Brisbane 1993
49
Queen Pasiphae and the Minotaur
Another notion of the centre other than the heart is the Minotaur and the labyrinth.
What is relevant here from mythology is the story of Queen Pasiphae, the great
mother incarnate who reigned as Queen of Minoan Crete, and was the wife of King
Minos II. Queen Pasiphae, as the story goes, was meant to have had sexual relations
with a bull thus producing the Minotaur, a monster - half man and half bull. She was
also the mother of Zeus Amon, whose Oracle was in Egypt.32 As she was the “Lady
of the Underworld” she wore snakes on her head. Sir James Frazer thought that the
legend of the sacred wedding reflected a union of sun and moon, and that it was
enacted as a solemn rite by the King and Queen of Knossus. They wore the mask of
bull and cow respectively. 33
The Bull Fight
Whilst living in Spain between1988-1991 I had attended the bullfight... I just went to
see what it was like. The event was well underway by the time I arrived at the ring.
Before finally getting to a seat, I was suddenly rendered “frozen” by the sound
coming forth from the first bull dying in the ring. The matador’s sword was piercing
the heart of this huge beast, and it bellowed like nothing I had ever heard before or
since! This unbelievable sound that rang out around the ring was so deep and
painful; it stopped me in my tracks and penetrated my being. This was my induction
into participation with the “heart-eye-bull” archetype relating to the centre of the
labyrinth. On returning to Australia, I carried in my “centre” a frozen bull’s head - it
was to become the focal point of my first installation work here in Brisbane.
32 Goodrich, N.L. (1989) Priestesses, New York: F Watts, p98
33 ibid., p101
50
Snake-Bird Goddesses
The symbolisms of snake, egg, horns, fish, and doe along with the female
images of vulvas, triangles, and spiralling circles - all related to water -
originate in Stone Age times. The horned rams and bulls of Neolithic ritual
were sacrificed to the ancient Bird-and-Snake Goddess. The snake-spiral was
the basis of ornamental composition in ancient Europe, its peak expression
being 5000B.C.34
Moon and Snake
Pregnancy itself was thought to be caused by the moon. The ancient moon cults were
in fact menstrual cults, menstrual blood being both
sacred and biological because it is like liquid flesh
and therefore magical and powerful.35 In some ways
pregnancy does come from the moon. Along with
woman’s normal once a month ovulation time, a
woman can also conceive during her lunar cycle
fertile times. That means when the moon is in the same phase as it was at the time of
her birth. That is, if a woman was born on the full moon, she will be potentially fertile
at the full moon each month as well as at her mid-cycle ovulation time. Women and
men and their cycles are affected by the moon via light emissions, ionization, electro-
magnetism and gravity. These factors impact on their fertility, emotions and psychic
abilities.36 One connection between moon and snake has to do with the shedding of
the womb material at menstruation mirrored by the shedding of skin by snakes.
34 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p60
35 ibid., pp151 & 189
36 Naish, F. (1991) Natural Fertility, Birchgrove NSW Australia, Sally Milner, pp98-99
51
Figure 15. 'Moon & Snakey Arms' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
52
Women who were in particularly strong resonance with the moon-mind became
shamans, oracular priestesses, witches.37
The Queen of Sheba & Medusa
Further there is the relationship between the snake-bird goddess imagery so dominant
in Goddess cultures throughout the world; and particular iconic women such as
Medusa who is synonymous with snakes and the Queen of Sheba who is inextricably
bound up with bird imagery. Both female icons in the past possessing both spiritual
and secular power. The body-based spiritual practices are integral to the process of
female embodiment of spirituality and re-connective threads with ancient spiritual
pathways.
This is what the Snake-and-Bird Goddess meant, symbolised; and the Thracian
Maenads and all other legendary schools of priestesses in service to the Goddess
were guardians of these original yogic-shamanic techniques. ...they “flew” into
other realities... the consistency and ancientness of these images, of ecstatic
dancing and the pulling of the serpentine bio-mystical energies up the human
spine to achieve “wings”, or illuminated consciousness, argues for an intuitive
knowledge of shamanic-yogic techniques amongst our earliest ancestors.38
Medusa: the Snake-Goddess
Medusa was a High Priestess in a long line of African
Amazon Warrior women. She wore snakes entwined in her
hair; “high crowned with rows of cobras’ heads, adorned
over the third eye”39 as the Egyptian Queens and High
37 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p189
38 ibid, p 225
39 Goodrich, N.L. (1989) Priestesses, New York: F Watts, p176
53
Priestesses had done. The domain of Medusa - North-West Africa was celebrated and
feared for its huge snakes. In Africa, snake imagery is associated with the powers of
the third eye and the pineal gland located behind the nose. The snake-hair of Medusa
had the same reference. It was well known in the ancient world that injecting already
immunised people with the same snake venom opened doors in the self to
clairvoyance, illumination, creativity, prophetic visions and extraordinary mental
abilities. The Egyptian Cobra Goddess is thus explained. It is likely that the “sacred
snakes” kept at the Goddess’s oracular shrines were not only symbolic but the actual
means through which divine revelation was attained. Some forms of snake venom
have similar chemical properties to mescaline (peyote) or psylocibin in mushrooms.40
The connection between snakes and transcendent power is not restricted to the
African continent:
To the Chinese, for instance, snakes are at the bottom of all magic power, while
the Hebrew and Arabic words for magic come from words that mean “snakes”. 41
40 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, pp 60-61
41 Eliade, M.(1958) Patterns of Comparative Religion, New York: Sheed & Ward, p168
54
Medusa: High Priestess & Amazon
Warrior Queen
Medusa was the Queen of Libya (Nth West Africa,
This image is not
available online.
Please consult the
hardcopy thesis
available from the
QUT Library
including what is now Morocco). She was the
High Priestess of Africa, but perhaps also of Italy
and Spain. These Amazon Warrior-Priestesses
fought the Greek invasions, which is recorded in
Achilles killing the Amazon Queen
Penthesilea, painted by Exekias,
530B.C42.
Greek art and literature. The Greek heroes such as
Heracles (Hercules)43 refused to condone the
practice of women ruling over men and so destroyed their “race” in North Africa.
Heracles was the worst of their enemies; but all the Greek heroes; Bellerophon,
Dionysus, Pelops and Achilles, were foes to the Amazons. They salted the earth of
Asia and destroyed the Asian social system - a Matriarchy, which they despised. They
were “combatants of mother-right”. These people were called “emetchi” which meant
descended through women. (i.e. the children took the name of the mother, not the
father). The Greeks misunderstood and called them “Amazon” thinking it meant
“without one breast”. The Libyan (African) tribes worshipped the mother Goddess -
her white naval stone was the Omphalos. It is said that the word “OM” “recalls the
grief of the two immortal Gorgons, Stheno and Euryale after the death of their mortal
sister, a priestess, named Medusa”. The moon was revered as was their goddess Neith
- “great one of the bow”.44
42 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p246
43 Goodrich, N. L. (1989) Priestesses, New York: F Watts, p32 mentions Heracles with Hercules in
brackets indicating they are one and the same.
44 ibid, pp33, 86, 175 her ref: J.J. Bachofen, Robert Briffault, Siculus
55
Figure 16. 'Archer' video still from 'Lunar Hierophanies' 2003
56
I visited Morocco in 1989 for 10 days whilst I was living in Spain. I had never heard
of Sufi, or knew anything about the Amazon warrior women or the Gorgon race. We
entered old Fez through the keyhole of the city... What a device I thought to myself. I
loved everything around me, the bath house, the vats of dye, the rug making, the
donkeys, the courtyards with ceramic tiles, and the orange orchard... the medina.......
but mostly the music... Berber music - Najat Atabu from the Atlas Mountains and
Egypt’s Oum Kaltoum - I had no inkling of a possibility that Medusa may have been a
real person, let alone a Queen and that she had ruled over that very region. But I felt
immense connections with that place when I visited. Never in my life have I had the
sense of loss as I did when I left the shores of Nth West Africa. It feels like something
is waiting for me there...
Snake-Hair
According to Eliade, there is the central European
superstition which claims that taking the hair of a
woman who is being influenced by the moon (that is
menstruating), and burying it, will transform the hair
into a snake.45 This symbolism is connected to the
“oroboros” - the female zero: zero and the snake
swallowing its tail. Snakes, because they live
underground, are thought to embody dead souls,
secret wisdom and the aspect of clairvoyance.
Anyone, therefore, who eats a snake becomes conversant with the language of
animals, and particularly of birds (a symbol which can also have a metaphysical
meaning: access to the transcendent reality): this is a belief held by a
tremendous amount of races.46
45 Eliade, M. (1958) Patterns of Comparative Religion, New York: Sheed & Ward, p168
46 ibid., p168
57
The Language of Birds
It is believed that the bird species evolved out of the reptilian species, scales became
feathers. The eternity symbol of the “oroboros”, the snake swallowing its tail and the
Goddess as the divine water bird with the serpentine neck, reside here together.
Cormorants travel all three elemental territories, earth, air, water which can be
equated with the three cosmic territories of earth, heaven and underworld. The curlew
makes the call of death. The peacock - with its “all-seeing” tail of a thousand eyes is a
symbol of immortality reputedly with a flesh that does not rot. The Leda and the Swan
belongs here also, along with all the long-necked birds: the ibis: the flamingo: the
swan: the goose: and “Mother Goose” which relates to the female oracle tradition of
the middle ages and the wise Sibyls. So too, the story of the Queen of Sheba and King
Solomon, along with Attar’s The Conference of the Birds, the famous Sufi story. King
Solomon understood the language of birds, and the Queen of Sheba was oft portrayed
in stories and depicted in prints in the Middle Ages as possessing a “bird -footed” or
“gryphon-like” limb visible as she raised her skirt from what she thought was water
on the floor of Solomon’s palace but in fact was “glass paving”.47 The Hoopoo bird
that brings the message of Bilqis (Sheba) is a much revered bird in Middle East; it is
able to find water in the desert.
47 Warner, M. (1995) From the Beast to the Blonde, New York: Straus & Giroux, p112
58
Figure 17. 'Lupa and the Peacock' digital image 2001
59
Patience, Omnipresence and the Peacock
We had had the sessions of Sufi at Cuchimudlo Island... Whirling by the sea, the
music of Omar Faruk Tekbelik and the call from the islands resident peacocks, all
three elements are bound together now for me personally. So powerful were these
sessions with the Sufi.
The peacock - that long-necked, thousand-eyed bird, with the flesh that doesn’t rot,
named “Pavo-Real” or Royal Turkey in Spain. The Peacock is a bird that loves to
travel. You can see it everywhere, especially in the best ‘locals’ like the royal courts
in the Middle East , in the Castle gardens in Portugal. I have often thought how the
peacock is like the Sufi itself. It is such an adaptable bird , it seems to acclimatise to
differing cultures and terrain like the Sufi, always searching, and eating rosebushes,
swallowing thorns as well as rose petals as it goes. This is what makes it such a
beautiful bird. Each thorn swallowed turns into an eye on this bird’s incredible tail.
Each painful experience endured is a doorway to another dimension of freedom in the
developing consciousness. That tail - a wizardry symbol of omnipresence with its
continuous eyes! Here again is the motion of the Mevlevi whirling. When we get a
taste of spirit, how clear, how sweet, how elated we feel. The temptation, the urge, is
to reproduce it....
I wanted to somehow instil my experiences with Sufi and the peacock into my artwork.
I looked frantically around town for more peacocks to photograph. Of course I didn’t
find any. I had to be content with book reproductions as my starting point. This was
about waiting for them to come to me.
60
Figure 18. 'Peacock Spin' digital image 2000
Some months later, installed on Mt Nebo... I began teaching the Sufi. Florence was
the woman who looked after the key to the local hall. Amazingly, Florence had
peacocks! I was greeted by not one, but eight beautiful peacocks!!!!! Some months
after this, a peacock from the valley below Nebo came to live with us! It was the same
day I began receiving the second round of Brennan healing treatments.
I had a similar lesson in a bodily way about having to wait in 1999.
Body notes 1999;
I came to the idea that the next step on my journey was to go directly to the Sufi
Foundation of America in New Mexico. The next day my back seized completely and I
was bedridden for several weeks. I did not know what to make of this. I lay there
unable to affect anything... was this the work of the saboteur? Or was I being shown
in no uncertain terms life was going to proceed quite differently from here on?
Patience and acceptance are what kept coming to my mind. The old ways were just
not going to work any more.
Birds will Travel
In 2002, I lived between Brisbane and Rosebank, behind Byron Bay in the Hills. I
journeyed a lot back and forth between the two places and the two cultures.
Sometimes whilst driving, I would start to “wind up”. Sometimes worry projection or
fear would take over. When this happened some kind of bird would fly at the car! It
would come dangerously close, with enough disruption to my path to cause me to
slow down substantially...This “message from the birds” had begun some years
before, but because I have been on something of an accelerated journey the last few
years, and because I was doing a lot of physical travelling on the road, the instances
increased dramatically. The” message” seemed to be about remembering the
61
gentleness of spirit, synonymous with “bird” for me. That if I pushed the state of
consciousness I was in any further it would collide with “spirit”. Did I want to kill
that gentle little bird? No I did not.... so SLOW DOWN!!!!
On Nomadic Life, Travel and the Sufis
I was what they call “the perpetual traveller” at this stage of the project. Running,
probably in fear… I had almost no topside life security at all at this stage. In his book
The Sufis, Idries Shah says;
Travel both physically and metaphorically, can be an important part of dervish
activity. The dervish travels in his own land (internally) and also through the
countryside and from land to land (externally). Some Sheikhs spend no more
than forty days in one place... On dead skins, by tanning, the effects of purity, of
softness, and of delicacy appear; even so, by the tanning of travel, and the
departure of natural corruption and innate roughness, appears the purifying
softness of devotion and change from obstinacy to faith... Yet dervishes may not
travel at all... Those who have no teacher sometimes travel permanently.48
48 Shah, I. (1964) The Sufis, New York: Anchor Books, Double Day, p302
62
Figure 19. 'Sheba and Raven' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
63
Black Birds
When I lived at the Ashram last year in Rosebank NSW, I learnt from people around
there that the Black Cockatoos were a signal of coming rains. I would watch this and
sure enough it happened many times, that they came in large numbers before big
rains and in small numbers with light rain. They didn’t come when there was no rain.
The Black Madonna
In this section I wish to refer to
Queen of Sheba
stories that suggest relationships
between the earth- centred Black
monarchies of the ancient
world, the Queen of Sheba, and
the icons of the Black
Madonnas that still physically exist. The Queen of Sheba is associated with the black
bird of the ‘raven’. The raven is also associated with ‘hermeticism’. There are Black
Madonnas in different parts of the European continent. The famous and celebrated
Shrine of the Black Madonna housed at the Cathedral of Montserrat, located just
outside of Barcelona is a wonderful example. Montserrrat is a very holy place. The
land mass of the site itself is very powerful, consisting of very high solid bald stone.
The monastery is located towards the summit. To ascend the mountain involves a
cable car journey over a steep ravine. The Cathedral adjacent to the monastery has a
courtyard surrounded by archways with impressive views. People come from very far
away in order to receive miracle healings from the Black Madonna. They stand in line
for hours waiting to have their opportunity to touch the statue of the Black Madonna
dressed in gold. When asked about the “blackness” of the Madonna of Montserrat,
people would say that her blackness had to do with the Madonna being “burnt” in
one of the fires, and how that region was prone to fires.
64
Figure 20. 'Black Priestess' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
65
The Queen of Sheba
In different parts of Africa and the Middle East, there are differing versions of the
story of the Queen of Sheba. The Ethiopian Church had venerated the Queen of Sheba
for centuries. Unnamed in the Koran, but referred to as Bilqis by Middle Eastern
Historians; the Queen of Sheba is a fascinating icon. This story is present in all three
of the brethren patriarchal religions, signals the shift in power from matriarchy and
the nature/female centred cultures to the patriarchal God centred, and urban centred
religions. It is a significant story. Sheba stood for pagan wisdom. She is one of our
links to earth wisdom.
Marina Warner in From the Beast to the Blonde, recounts a version of the story
named, ‘The Glass Paving and the Secret foot of the Queen of Sheba’ In folk tales in
the Middle East, Solomon hears from his messenger the hoopoo, (a bird) that a
fabulously rich queen, called Bilqis has come to the throne in the South, she worships
the sun, not Allah. She stands in relation to the Muslim Solomon as a pagan, just as
she does to the Jewish proto Christian King and just as Sheba in the Old Testament
realises the truth of King Solomon’s God so she does in the Koran.
Sheba or Saba is associated with ‘south’. Sheba was the exotic and sensual Queen of
the South. This so called “splay-footed queen who tested the Wisdom of Solomon
with her questions” was restored, according to patriarchal religious texts, when her
recognition of the “true” God occurred. That is to say, whenever she began to honour
and worship a patriarchal God as opposed to her earth wisdom. 49
49 Warner, M. (1995) From the Beast to the Blonde, New York: Straus & Giroux, p115
66
She is depicted as the raven head, black and black hair, characteristically discernible
by her “secret foot”, which over time, cultures altered and transformed considerably.
Very often the Queen of Sheba is associated with birds, and depicted as having a bird
or reptilian like limb.50 The idea of the deformed limb beneath the dress changes in
meaning at times suggesting abilities at witchcraft at other times it refers to demonic,
monstrous or “hairy” qualities of women. All the superstition, curiosity and fear
related to the male apprehension of women and what lurked beneath the dress.
Figure 21. 'Queen of Sheba' digital image 2002
Warner describes the ubiquitous quality of such stories and the capacities of story and
fairytale in general. She says they can be,
anarchically heterogeneous, absorbing high and low elements, tragic and comic
tones into often simple structures of narrative that turn up on parchment in
Medieval Persia, in an oral form in the Pyrenees, in a ballad sung in the
Highlands, in a fairy story in the Caribbean .51
50 ibid, p112
51 ibid, p xxi
67
Figure 22. 'Castle of the Connectress' image from website 2000
68
CREATIVE PRACTICE
WEBSITE: Castle of the Connectress (2000)
The Water Snake under the Earth.
The imagery on the website, Castle of the Connectress was created around ideas of
sacred spaces, my personal reconnection to my feminine self and the integral and
ancient associative symbology with water. We are here in the realm of Hydromancy.
It is also a lament (although the home page appears more like an act of defiance rather
than resigned lamentation!), at the energetic loss caused by the rectilinear structured
layouts of cities in the west which trap the great serpent beneath the ground.
Catal Huyuk was an ancient city in the Near East. Archaeologically, it is one of the
most extensive and significant sites in relation to data on the Neolithic Goddess
cultures. Twelve layers of civilisation have been excavated dating back to 6500BC.
Cities such as Catal Huyuk were built over sacred water wells where blind springs
appeared over the earth. These were places of great harmony, imbued with of great
healing capacity and therefore held as sacred. These sites were regarded as the centre
of the Great Goddess religion. This is where she dwelt. Temples, as well as keyhole
entries to cities were built over the top of these holy water sites because it protected
the entry and exit of the inhabitants.52
52 Sjoo, M. & Mor, B. (1987) The Great Cosmic Mother, San Francisco: Harper, p126
69
The sentiment of the artwork ensued out of my own visits to the bath house with
women friends here in Brisbane. I did indeed hold these trips as sacred. The sensual
body practice of resplendent shared bathing in a protected environment is a wonderful
experience. These trips to the bath house restored and regenerated my being at many
levels. This revitalization of the Goddess of Mythology at such a personal level and
experience of inner harmony is what is significant. This is another example of female
spirituality embodied in contemporary life, linking back to the Goddess, the source,
via the great water serpent through time and space. Recently a friend saw a Russian
woman at the bath house using large amounts of honey on her body in between
entering the sauna and the spa. We’ve reintegrated that one! The Melissal Goddess
bee connection is lovely.
70
VIDEO: Castle of the Connectress (2001)
Glass Architecture and Orgasms with God
The Castle of the Connectress Video is constructed with excerpts of myself
performing Sufi movement immersed in ‘unsolid’ architectural structures. The
background images of interiors of sacred buildings are images from the website of the
same title.
For a very long time ideas and evocations of glass architecture have been flowing in
and out of my focus. The Spanish mystic, St Teresa d’Avila wrote a work called El
Castillo. I resonated deeply with this idea when I encountered her story in Spain in
1989. I titled my exhibition of blood paintings at the time; ‘El Castillo Interior -
Viajando in el Sistema Nervioso’. Her experience of divine embodiment is well
known – as her “orgasms with God”. She writes on the expansion of the soul,
The soul is a castle made entirely out of a diamond or a very clear crystal, in
which there are many rooms.53
One concept at the foundation of this work extends from the use of light symbolically,
and in a consciousness sense, to challenge the dominant mechanistic and
materialistic paradigm of the time bound intellect. Here is what St. Teresa had to say
about the unboundedness of the soul...
53 Bielecki, T. (1996) Ecstasy and Common Sense, Boston USA: Shambala Publications, p20
71
Figure 23. 'Cante Jondo' image from website 2000
72
Let us imagine that within ourselves is an extremely rich palace, built entirely of
gold and precious stones... The things of the soul must always be considered as
plentiful, spacious, and large; to do so is not an exaggeration. The soul is
capable of much more that we can imagine.54
These elements of reflectivity of building materials, and human interaction with those
materials, are a recurring focus in this work. It arises again with the imagery of the
Queen of Sheba story, The Glass Paving and the Secret Foot of the Queen of Sheba
which is detailed in the Conceptual Framework. There is the glass paving, which
Sheba thinks is water, and hence lifts her dress.
Eye-Heart
The ‘eye-heart-centre’ imagery in Heart Chamber de Fortuito was discussed in detail
in the Conceptual Framework. This image is used both in the Castle of the
Connectress Website and the Video of the same title. This image speaks of the
expansiveness, holistic, and quantum perspective of “heart intelligence” and its
natural superiority over the limited intellect. This materialistic mono-focused-linear
approach to life has improved the quality of life for some people on the planet. It is a
partitioned view of life which is unsustainable for the planet. It exists at an enormous
cost to the earth.
54 Bielecki, T. (1996) Ecstasy and Common Sense, Boston USA: Shambala Publications, p20
73
VIDEO: Lunar Hierophanies (2003)
The Perennial Moon-Egg
This cut of the video is about 75% complete, equivalent to a late rough /early fine cut
of the video within industry standards. The major symbols employed in Lunar
Hierophanies are discussed in the Key Conceptual Framework Chapter beginning
with the ‘Moon’. The title of the video was borrowed from Mercia Eliade’s book
Patterns in Comparative Religions. As Eliade reminds us, the moon is in constant
change, rhythm and periodic recurrence, and so symbolically represents the holistic
nature of life. This is in stark contrast to the linear trajectory of the dominant world
view that we are on some journey in a rocket ship of no return. The perennial
presence of the moon and other elements indicates something other than this. Almost
all the music is Sufi music which conveys a similar sentiment. From a Sufi and
quantum physics perspective, we are the rocket ship. It is all up to us!
The moon by her nature looms egg-like in the night sky. The whitish-orange moon
footage on Lunar Hierophanies subdivides and hovers. The image on Video was
created by recording the moon through a palm frond waving in the breeze. I
discovered this effect by accident. The image shifts and changes resembling an insect
head then a lotus flower, and then becoming bouncing planes of light emissions.
74
Figure 24. 'Egghead' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
75
The Sacred Goat
The goat and other hoofed animals have acquired unfortunate associations in
Christian thought. There is an intention to reinscribe original meanings around the
image of the goat. As Christian thought has dominated Western Culture for a long
time these associations are deeply ingrained. In the Conceptual Framework (refer to
pages 40-41), the goat horn and moon connections based on their meanings within the
old earth religions are discussed.
The Lost Stone Mountain
The “Egghead” image developed out of a dream I had one morning last year in which
I saw a woman standing on the top of a stone mountain, balancing a large egg on her
head. I had been reading Goodrich’s Priestesses and walking in the mists of the
mountains a lot in New South Wales. I am conscious of re-connective threads of
meaning forming between the “Egghead” image to Medusa, the Goddess of
Mountains and that section of the world (Morocco, North-West Africa), to the Berber
women who live in the Atlas Mountains, and the original inhabitants of the Canary
Islands. I have read references to the Atlantean myths regarding this region. My mind
always draws towards the chilling story I was told by a Sanyasan man who has a
spiritual retreat on the Canary Islands. He told me that the indigenous people were
harassed for centuries by the Spanish, and finally instead of submitting to Spanish
rule, the remaining inhabitants ran to a cliff on the island and jumped to their death as
one... I am left wondering what golden threads of knowledge they took with them and
were these people Atlantean?
76
Figure 25. 'Sacred Wedding' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
77
Coming Home to 'Ollin Arageed' - The Sacred Wedding
The scene involving the scrub turkey towards the middle of Lunar Hierophanies has
several resonances. The scrub turkey is scratching the ground, this much is clear; the
bird is preparing to nest. The scrub turkey creates a huge mound of leaves in which to
lay its eggs. The actions of the turkey are nervous, unsettled, and wiry. Is this the
place? Will I nest here? My own life situation felt like that of the turkey. Can I settle
here? Where is home?
But there is another resonance to this scene. I chose the music of Hamza El Din’s,
Ollin Arageed, which is a lively Nubian Percussion piece. Now we have a dancing
scrub turkey as well! Ollin Arageed turns out to be a significant piece of music,
because it is traditionally played but once in a person’s lifetime - at their first wedding
celebrations. I registered the connection between the Attar quote (p48) describing the
Phoenix creating transformational fire in the date palm leaves preparing to return to
its “true home” and the motions of the scrub turkey in the leaves. So there is also
another marriage resonance!
Rumi’s son, Sultan Veled devised Shebi Arus - (the Wedding Night) to honour his
father’s death, his return to home and union with the Divine. The Moon is said to have
glowed red on the day of Rumi’s death on the 17th of December, 1273. At about the
same time as all these connections became apparent, a good friend’s father, who had
been a jazz player, died. At his funeral they played at his request, The Golden
Wedding, but without any conscious references to a union with the divine.
78
Sun-Moon Energies
The working of the energetic fields, personally and universally; always striving for
peace, harmony and personal empowerment is what is significant. Personal
empowerment is the embodying of the feminine spirit principle, and that is centred in
“blamelessness” and “forgiveness”, being neither made bigger nor smaller by the
comments of other people and learning to embody the fullness of our soul without
“burning” other people. This does not mean the suppression of anger.
Figure 26. video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
79
Figure 27. 'Oooooommm' video still from Lunar Hierophanies 2003
80
Om - Quantum Physics and the Education System as a
Significant Public Space
In the early part of the video just before the “morphing” moon footage, a silhouette
appears of myself in the edge of the frame. I am sounding the word “OM”. As part of
my Masters, I participated in workshops with Frankie Armstrong (of As Far As the
Eye Can Sing notoriety) when she was in Australia last year. Frankie travels the world
connecting and collecting aural vocal traditions. One sound process she works is
around the creation of goat/herd calls based on her research into these traditions. This
sound image came out of this process.
This is just a fragment in the video but the roots of this sound image travel deep.
There is a critical link between aural based vocal traditions around the world, Medusa,
hoofed animals and the element of stone; Stonehenge, stone mountains and the
Omphalos. This great ganglion of meaning hangs from this brief sound-image of
myself chanting “OM”. There is a hypothesis about the ability and practice of humans
of the ancient world to have used sound vibration to “move mountains” or to construct
large stone monuments around the world. Quantum physics reminds us that “reality”
is just not as concrete and binding as our fearful minds have led us to believe. Our
fixation on constructing a material reality to secure ourselves rests “squarely” on
“some wobbly waves”. On the subatomic level matter with a certainty of place does
not exist but rather shows tendances to exist. Particles can be created from energy and
vanish into energy!55
55 Brennan, B. Hands of Light, p24 Barbara Brennan is a scientist as well as a practising healer and
psychotherapist - she worked as a research scientist for NASA at the Goddard Space Centre and has a
MS in Atmospheric Physics.
81
Reality, the quantum physicists tell us now, is a field of possibilities. A field of
potential wave vibrations determining what will become real. This field of wave
vibrations is responsive to our human wave vibrations in the form of sound waves but
also to our thought patterns or waves. Early in this project I was considering what
public spaces could be relevant for the application of my study. Education is one such
public space. I question the relevance of current dominance of rational-logic
approaches to philosophical, creative and academic inquiry. The nature of the
universe is not separate - it is a whole.
Parts are seen to be in immediate connection, in which their dynamical
relationships depend in an irreducible way on the state of the whole
system...Thus, one is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies
the classical idea of analysability of the world into separately and independently
existing parts.56
An ‘embodied connective’ approach to life is also applicable to the Education system.
The study of the universe, with whatever focus, could take place quite differently. It
could entail broader contexts of learning and understanding, it could intend to foster
“heart intelligence”, it could contain connective aesthetics, it could engender
wholeness and maintain awareness of our incredible mechanism (the body organ)
simultaneously as we investigate areas of study. It could honour its inception and
origins, and it could accommodate more cross-disciplinary study given that the
borders imposed around disciplines are artificial. Spiritual practice can be thought
about in relation to health and healing - in relation to video making - in relation to
ecological principles and practice. All can be embodied in a modality reflective of our
current awareness and the knowledge of the nature of our holistic existence as
experienced and articulated through quantum physics spiritual practice and personal
life.
56 Brennan, B. Hands of Light, p25 from David Bohm The Implicate Order
82
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Womens Press
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Boston: Shambala
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Body-Mind Centering, Northampton USA: Contact Editions
Barks, C. (1992) Lalla – Naked Song, Athens: Maypop
Betterton, R. (1996) An Intimate Distance: women, artists and the body, London;
New York: Routledge
Bielecki, T. (1996) St Teresa d’Avila: Ecstasy and Common Sense, Boston USA:
Shambhala Publications
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Society
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83
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England: Polity Press
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Dying, UK: Rider Books
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Simon & Schuster Publishers
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84
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Publishing House
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85
APPENDIX 1
Masters Time line: (1998-2003)
Dimension (1) - Natural Therapies: Massage & Energy Work
1998
My own healing: counselling sessions w/ Jan Cullis
Received Kinesiology & massage from Sahaja.
Received Kahuna massage treatments.
Jan - May: own self bodywork: Ashtanga Yoga asanas
Aug-Oct: attended Ashtanga Yoga w/ Ian Clark
Jan-Dec: attended some classes in Somatic Yoga & Qi Gong w/ Fran Archer
Aug-Oct: attended Hatha Yoga w/ Peter Bisson
1999
Feb; attended weekly Body-Mind-Centering workshops w/ Corola Crusche Paddington
Feb- May: Certificate in Therapeutic Swedish Massage: Anatomy & Physiology, Massage
techniques. Supervised Clinic. Academy of Natural Health, Brisbane
May - Oct : working from home in Massage
Oct- Dec: continued from home & began working for The Float Centre Paddington
Received treatments & knowledge of Kinesiology, clairvoyance, inner energy instruction,
psychic protection & clearing w/ Karen Quirey
Received Remedial Massage w/ Bernard Evens after my back seized completely
2000
June: Brennan Healing work received from Nicolien Gravemaker X 3 (1 - 1/12hrs each)
Oct: Brennan Healing work received from Probati (Haric Healing) (3 sessions)
Aug; relocated to Mt Nebo to be in the forest, to keep my energetic field clear.
Reiki Training at Clear Mountain
2001 Certificate in Lymphatic Drainage (a Massage technique) ACNM, Brisbane
2002 Dec: Received self sabotage release sessions ini Horstman technique Carolyn Somers, Bush
flower remedies; Fringed Violet, Grey Spider, Five Corners essences
2003
Jan: Received self-sabotage release sessions Horstman technique Carolyn Somers
Nov-Dec: Working in Port Douglas Day Spa & Sheraton Hotel in Massage & Energy work
(one on one treatments) in FNQ
Dec-Feb: Working in Hastings St Massage Clinic, Noosa Heads and Sea to Sky Massage
Centre Peregian Beach in Massage & Energy work
86
Dimension (2) - Sacred Arts: Sufi, drumming, chanting,
women’s circles
1997
1998
SUFI
July: attended weekend w/shop w/ Tamsin Murray: Sufi teacher from Sufi Foundation
America, New Mexico
DRUMMING
African Drumming workshops with Elliot Orr
African Drumming retreat Kondalilla Falls Ne Tete – (had Kundalini experience)
SUFI
Aug: Resumed my own practice of Sufi
Oct- November: attending Sufi workshops w/ Salima: a long term student of Sufi Master
Adnan Sarhan of the Sufi Foundation of America in New Mexico.(weekly workshops 3 hrs)
Nov-Dec: Resumed own practise Sufi: averaging 4 mornings per week
1999
SUFI
March: Salima ( student of Sufi Master - Adnan Sarhan) returned: resumed classes
April-Sept: Gathered people to practice Sufi at home, every week for 2hrs
Sept-Dec: Lead Sufi at the Local Hall, free of charge every week for 2hrs
2000
WOMENS CIRCLES: Sat 26th? Full moon gathering round the fire (3hrs)
‘Moonday’57 July 5th at Sandys (4hrs)
‘Moonday’ July26th at home at Paddington(4hrs)
Friday 13th August at hm. (4hrs)
‘Moonday’ 30August at hm. (4hrs)
‘Moonday’ 18th October at hm. (4hrs)
‘Moonday’ 8November at hm. (4hrs)
SUFI
July-Aug: Salima returned:resumed classes.
Sept-Oct: Began teaching Sufi workshops at Mt Nebo Hall.
July-Dec: Private practise Sufi at home. (2-6hrs per week)
met Karim Zayanni - Namatullah Sufi Sheikh
57 The word Monday originates with Moon so too the other days of the week are linguistically and
energetically connected with the other planets.
87
2001
2002
2002
2004
WOMENS CIRCLES:
March 4/5 “building the Bird Spirit Tower” for International Women’s Day
‘Moonday’ March: at Paddington
Wednesday 21st June Toms Gateway, Mt Nebo
Friday 13th October Gadgara Mt Nebo.
SUFI
Jan-Feb: Lead the Sufi work at Neal Macrossan Hall Paddington Brisbane
maintained email connection to Namatallah Sufi Sheikh.
DRUMMING
Nov: Performed at all night Rave Party, RNA Showgrounds Brisbane. Improvisation with 6
other drummers over DJ techno music.
SUFI
April-June: Lead the Sufi work at local hall at Rosebank
maintained email connection to Karim
CHANTING /VOICE WORK
Chris James Toning Sessions Monday nights at the Sound Temple Rosebank NSW
Workshops w/ visiting Frankie Armstrong, at Mt Nebo Hall
Performance Workshops w/ Jondi Keane Griffith University Gold Coast
SUFI
June: Salima returned: 1 class at Samaya Osho Ashram Rosebank
Feb-June: sporadic drumming at markets in Byron Bay Shire
Feb: attended Sufi workshops with Tamsin Murray at Jagara Arts Hall South Brisbane
2002
2003
DRUMMING
Oct-Dec: Brisdjembe; participating in drumming circles at Roma St Parklands each Thursday
Jan-April; Brisdjembe; participating in drumming circles at Roma St. Parklands each
Thursday
88
Dimension (3) - Light Based Media: Digital Stills & Video
This dimension is an investigation into archetypal imagery & symbolism in static and
time-based light media and its analogous relationship to dream imagery and the
connection to the great Serpent through time i.e. the collective unconscious. It
involves the development of a ‘language of the world’ through the conscious
connection between personal intuitive imagery and the image bank of perennial cross-
cultural wisdom.
(a) The static digital stills imagery (2000-2003)
Lupa and the Peacock Series
Cante Jondo
El Sueno Returno
Chamber de Cegar
Divergent Eye
Convergent Eye
(b) The website: www.geocities.com/lupaliss
Castle of the Connectress (2000)
(c) The video: Castle of the Conectress(5mins) (2001) Myself performing Sufi movements in a non
solid architectural background. The background images were centred around explorations of ideas
about sacred space.
(d) The video : Sex, Drugs and String Quartets- Leon’s Story (7mins) Art Direction & Co Direction on
Set for 7min fictionalised documentary for TV. Producer/Director Carla Thackrah (Sept 2002- Mar
2003) purchased by the ABC in 2004. A more mainstream investigation into the use of the energetics
and symbolism referred to in the thesis as a ‘language of the world’.
(e) The video: Lunar Hierophanies (9mins) (2001 -2003)
Performance sketches with back and front projection, bird imagery mostly peacock and raven,
moon and goat imagery with focus on the horns and their relationship to the double crescent labrys.
89
APPENDIX 2
Spiritual Heritage Timeline
This Spiritual Heritage Timeline is neither complete nor totally accurate. It is a
beginning. Some of the dates are conjecture. It is helping to build a picture. The dates
correspond to the text beginning on the line below it.
7000BC
Anatolia , Jordan, Persia ... Goddess Cultures.. wild goats wandering on the
Anatolian plateau .... the name Rumi derives from “ Rum”; the name for Anatolia.
(The Great Cosmic Mother, p88)
6500 BC
Catal Huyuk
One of the most complete sites excavated of Neolithic Goddess culture in the Near
East: (Sjoo & Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother, p89)
5300BC-
4000BC
1000BC?
4000BC
1400BC
323BC
2000BC
1800BC
1450BC
Thrace, South Eastern Europe - the Balkan people worshipped Diana, Selene
(one of the bow) Vinca culture near present Belgrade in Yugoslavia, “snake-bird
imagery”. (2,000 figurines of the Goddess in snake-bird form found. Thrace is
thought of as the original home of witchcraft-woman wisdom. (The Great Cosmic
Mother, p93, their ref: Apuleius)
Queen of Sheba - probably Ethiopia
Patriarchal cosmological texts
Scythian, Hittite cultures around the Black Sea. Amazon warrior Priestesses,
Gorgon culture Nth West Africa. Amazon warrior women fought the Greek
invasions. Amazon warrior women defence through the Trojan Wars and the
military conquests of Asia by Alexander the Great ( Sjoo & Mor, The Great
Cosmic Mother, their ref: p33 Adolphe Reinach: Historian of Religion & master
of Asian languages)
Stonehenge II, UK.
Amazon warrior Women (Priestesses) The wars between the Greeks and the
Amazons took place on the southern shores of the Black Sea and on the Nth-
Eastern Anatolian plateau ( modern Afghanistan) (Goodrich Priestesses p33 her
ref.J.J. Bachofen ,German Scholar)
Libyan (African) population migrated to Crete.
1000BC?
1000BC?
800BC
429BC
347BC
350BC
384BC
322BC
500AD
800AD
1273d
1320
1391?
90
Medusa - Queen of Libya, Nth-West Africa (Morocco), Gorgon culture,
Amazon warrior High Priestess of Africa and possibly Italy and Spain as well. She
is inextricably bound up with snake imagery. (Goodrich, Priestesses p 172)
Queen of Sheba - probably Ethiopia
“The final result of the Greek invasions into Asia minor was the migration of the
Amazons to the North Shore of the Black Sea. By 800BC they had joined the
Scythian people. (Goodrich Priestesses p45 her ref: Reinach)
Plato: Greek Philosopher (Ficino, M. The Book of Life, glossary)
Last Amazon wars. Time of Alexander the Great. (Goodrich, Priestesses)
Aristotle: Greek philosopher
Hypatia, The female Head of the School of Philosophy in Alexandria assassinated.
The Great Library of the world’s ancient knowledge (including a lot of
astronomical and astrological knowledge) purposefully destroyed (The Great
Cosmic Mother, p454)
Rabi’a of Basra (Sufi woman prior to Rumi) (Reinhertz, Women Called to the
Path of Rumi, p15)
Shamanic practices of turning still prevalent amongst the nomadic peoples of
Anatolia. (Reinhertz, Women called to the Path of Rumi, p13)
Muhammad Jelaluddin Rumi (Turkey) Development of Sufi Mevlevi order -
Sultan Veled (Rumi’s son) The whirling becomes formalised. Women and Men
whirl together in Turkey both formally and informally (Reinhertz Women called To
the Path of Rumi, p16)
Lalla - (speculative facts based on the poetry) Indian Mystic born in Kasmir. Only
2 words have meaning in Kashmir, Allah and Lalla. also known as Lal Ded, Lal
Didi, Mai Lal Didi, meant granny, Grandmother Lalla was a great yogini,
prophetess and practioner of Yoga. She was known for wandering naked, dancing
and singing songs. “Many doctrinal streams were merging: Shavism, Sufism.
Vedantic non- dualism, Lalla is beyond religious categories.
(Coleman Barks trans. Naked Song, p9)
1400’s
1515
1582
1600s
1800s
91
Shattari Sufi - Sheikh Shattar brings the “rapid technique” to India. Its mother
order Naqshbandi was most widely distributed in Afghanistan, Turkistan and other
parts of Central Asia and Ottoman Turkey. (Idries Shah, The Sufis, p415)
Black Death
Wanton tree cutting - possibly attributed to the imbalance on the planet
manifesting in the plague.
(Sjoo & Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother, p 255 )
Jean of Arc (France)
St. Teresa d’Avila
“Sharp as a sword as Toledo, bright as a sun-drenched plain, firm as the stone
towers of Avila, Teresa harnessed not only her mules but the deep recesses of her
warrior energy. Then she travelled the Spanish countryside, using her parlour
charm and wit for a mighty purpose.” She was born in Avila ... noble city of saints
& songs, she reformed the Carmelite order, founded many Carmelite monasteries,
mystical marriage with the divine bridegroom. “El Castillo Interior” ref: my
artwork
(Tessa Bielecki, Teresa of Avila – Ecstasy and Common Sense, p xvi, xvii)
The Wicker (Britain)
The ideas we have about witches (who were also herbal healers and midwives) are
based almost exclusively on the Inquisition trial records from the 16th-18th
centuries. The Christian Church of Europe backed by the European medical
profession was intent on cleaning out all traces “earth based wisdom”, the life of
the pagans. The aspiring profession of male doctors wanted no economic
competition from the witch/earth wisdom women. Prior to this,
…many of the great early European doctors of medicine and pharmacology,
like Paracelsus, claimed openly that they had learned all they knew of
healing and drugs directly from women’s witchcraft (The Great Cosmic
Mother, p203)
92
APPENDIX 3
Sample Healing Treatment Forms.
This appendix is not available
online. Please consult the
hardcopy thesis available from the
QUT Library