PASS EXHIBITIONS

"The Flute Player"was displayed in the show "words within" at the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, Columbia/Barnard University, 606 West 115th St.,New York, NY. The show later traveled to the Rubin Gallery at the BU Hillel at Boston University.

The painting "Wall St. Wall" was displayed at the New Mexico Printmakers gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

FELLOWSHIP OF ISIS

If you are looking for a way to begin your spiritual path toward the goddess, the Fellowship of Isis offers a helpful guide.Click here to read excerpts taken from the Introduction to "Dea, Rites and Mysteries of the Goddess" by Olivia Robertson. Also seeLinks Page for link to Fellowship of Isis.

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Two reports have been published recently that show evidence of active leadership roles that women once exercised in Pre-Columbian Mexician and Peruvian cultures.

PERUVIAN WOMAN OF AD 450 SEEMS TO HAVE HAD TWO CAREERS

by John Noble Wilford

A woman buried with a golden bowl on her face was wrapped in mummy cloths and buried with military items, hinting at a role as a ruler.

She was a woman who died some 1,600 years ago in the heyday of the Moche lculture, well before the rise of the Incas. Her imposing tomb suggests someone of high status. Her desiccated remains are covered with red pigment and bear tattoos of patterns and mythological figures.

But the most striking aspect of the discovery, archaeologists said yesterday, is not the offerings of gold and semiprecious stones, or the elaborate wrapping of her body in fine textiles, but the other grave goods.

She was surrounded by weaving materials and needles, befitting a woman, and 2 ceremonial war clubs and 28 spear throwers — sticks that propel spears with far greater force — items never found before in the burial of a woman of the Moche (pronounced MOH-chay).

Was she a warrior princess, or perhaps a ruler? Possibly.

"She is elite, but somewhat of an enigma," said John Verano, a physical anthropologist at Tulane University, who worked with the Peruvian archaeologists who made the discovery last year.

Christopher B. Donnan of the University of California, Los Angeles, was not a member of the research team but inspected the mummy and the tomb soon after the find.

"It's among the richest female Moche burials ever found," said Dr. Donnan, an archaeologist of Peruvian culture. "The tomb combines things usually found either exclusively in male or female burials — a real mystery."

The National Geographic Society announced the discovery and is publishing details in its magazine's June issue. The excavations, more than 400 miles northwest of Lima, were supported by the Augusto N. Wiese Foundation of Peru.

The Moche culture flourished in the coastal valleys of northern Peru in the first 700 years A.D. The people were master artisans and built huge adobe pyramids. The woman's tomb was near the summit of a pyramid called Huaca Cao Viejo, a cathedral of the Moche religion.

Dr. Verano's X-ray examination revealed that the mummy was a young adult. Lying near her was the skeleton of another young woman who was apparently sacrificed by strangulation with a hemp rope, which was still around her neck. Such sacrifices were common in Andean cultures.

Radiocarbon analysis of the rope indicated that the burial occurred around A.D. 450.

"Perhaps she was a female warrior, or maybe the war clubs and spear throwers were symbols of power that were funeral gifts from men," Dr. Verano said. (New York Times, May 17, 2006)

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DIVINE AND HUMAN: Women in Ancient Mexico and Peru

This is the title of an exhibit currently on display at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC from March 3 to May 28, 2006.

"In ancient Mesoamerica and Andean civilizations, women had daily roles in both the spiritual and actual worlds. They were not only daughters, wives, mothers, and grandmothers, but also healers, midwives, scribes, artists, priestesses, warriors, governors, and even goddesses.

DIVINE AND HUMAN brings together 400 archaeological treasures from the unparalleled museum collections of Mexico and Peru. Magnificent sculptures, textiles, pottery, and jewelry explore the feminine “sphere” in cultures as varied as the Aztec, Mayan, Zapotec, Moche, Mixtec, and Incan."

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STONE-AGE BASQUE WOMEN

Stone-age Basque Language Remains a Mystery,
Sinikka Tarvainen, San Sebastian, Spain (MAIL&GUARDIAN, online, 03 June 2006 07:53)

Scientists remain puzzled by the Basque people of northern Spain and southern France, believed to be the oldest Europeans, whose language appears to date from the palaeolithic age and whose origin is a mystery.

Researchers are also looking into traditional Basque culture to find clues into what Europe was like before the arrival of the war-like, patriarchal Indo-Europeans.

Certain traditions, such as the strong position of women and the worship of the goddess Mari, have led some scholars to conclude that old European societies were at least partly matriarchal and that life was remarkably peaceful.

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WOMEN SURPASSING MEN IN COLLEGE

A recent New York Times article (July 9, 2006) reports in a series of articles on education that women are not only enrolling in college in larger numbers than men but also are surpassing men academically with higher grade- point averages.

"A quarter-century after women became the majority on college campuses, men are trailing them in more than just enrollment.

Department of Education statistics show that men, whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get bachelor's degrees — and among those who do, fewer complete their degrees in four or five years. Men also get worse grades than women.

And in two national studies, college men reported that they studied less and socialized more than their female classmates.

Small wonder, then, that at elite institutions like Harvard, small liberal arts colleges like Dickinson, huge public universities like the University of Wisconsin and U.C.L.A. and smaller ones like Florida Atlantic University, women are walking off with a disproportionate share of the honors degrees.

It is not that men are in a downward spiral: they are going to college in greater numbers and are more likely to graduate than two decades ago.

Still, men now make up only 42 percent of the nation's college students. And with sex discrimination fading and their job opportunities widening, women are coming on much stronger, often leapfrogging the men to the academic finish.

"The boys are about where they were 30 years ago, but the girls are just on a tear, doing much, much better," said Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington."

For the complete New York Times article see,Women are Leaving Men in the Dust

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MANDALA

The mandala is an ancient religious symbol used in India to aid in meditation practices. It was designed to center the mind and to provide a graphic map of one's spiritual journey toward God, the Buddha, the Ultimate Reality.

Traditionally, the mandala consists of circles which symbolize various stages in ones spiritual journey. The outer most circle depicts the gates by which the seeker enters a sacred enclosed space which will eventually bring him/her to the center (God, Buddha, the Ultimate Reality). The first barrier that is encountered is the circle of fire. Each successive concentric circle symbolizes another stage on the path to enlightenment, heaven, nirvana.

The mandala design is not entirely a product of man's imagination. It can often be found hidden in nature, from the radiating spokes of galaxies or the radiating petals of a flower to the inner design found at the core of sliced fruit, such as an apple, orange, onion, pepper, or kiwi. It is like the hidden mathematical equations that serve as a skeleton for the universe.

In the paintings shown here the mandala is used to create a sense of the Spiritual Cosmic Energies that permeate the Universe. I believe these Cosmic Forces can be known and experienced by every individual. I use the nude figure in these paintings to emphasize the fact that we can not approach these Divine Fields of Energy so long as we cling to masks, disguises, or subterfuges. The nude figure is a metaphor for a certain mental nakedness that is required of us before we can enter through the first gateway into the Mandala.

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GODDESS GALLERY: AWAKEN MY BELOVED

The image at the top of AWAKEN MY BELOVED is an ancient representation of a Paleolithic goddess that has been called the Venus of Laussel. It was carved in rock guarding the opening to a cave in France ca 25,000 BC. You can also find a reference to it in Layne Redmond's book, WHEN THE DRUMMERS WERE WOMEN, p. 32. Redmond states that "This is the oldest image so far discovered associating a Paleolithic goddess with a moon symbol." The bison horn that she is holding symbolizes the crescent moon. It has 13 vertical marks inscribed on it which may represent the 13 months comprising a lunar year.

The triptych of three paintings called AWAKEN MY BELOVED is an attempt to provide a way for women of the 3rd Millennium to make a connection between who they are today and that part of their spiritual self that is 25,000+ years old.I believe such a connection is important because the patriarchal system we live under has tried to completely demolish the origins of women's past identity. Redmond describes the herstorical roots of this lost very well and I was first made aware of it after reading her book. I believe that unless you know who you were herstorically when you first became a conscious being, you can't fully know who you are in the present or who you can be in the future. AWAKEN MY BELOVED is the call of the ancient goddess speaking to the heart of the spiritual seeker.(Also see Willendorf Goddess.)

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