Solar Lionheaded Sekhmet of Primordial Fire
Solar Lionheaded Sekhmet of Primordial
Fire (oil on hardboard, 1992)
Lionheaded Sekhmet, whose name means “Mighty One”, is a very primordial Egyptian deity. She is Goddess of the creative fire that gave form to energy in the beginning of time. She carries the solar disc on Her head and the magic powers of the uraeus serpent emerges as the Third Eye on Her forehead. The serpent has been called “fire-spitting”. Sekhmet was one “Great of Magic” and Her sorcery made Her a matron of doctors, veterinary surgeons and bonesetters. In ancient times, women and men priest-physicians practised side by side in the temples of Egypt. Papyrus have been found from the third millennium BC with prescriptions for both contraception and abortion. The shaman-priestesses of the Goddess were also healers and midwives, and they guided the dying on their journey back to the Spirit realms. The precincts where the women gave birth were the most ancient sacred enclosures. Oracular priestesses dwelt by the birthing wells prophesying and healing. Sekhmet is a goddess of Nubia, African upper Egypt or Khem: Land of the Blacks.
The Patriarchs, however, thought Sekhmet was blood-thirsty and war-like. By them She was called “Crusher of hearts”, a demonic messenger of death. They feared the power and fierceness of the lioness like they feared the great creative/destructive power of Kali, ancient Black Mother of India.
When the patriarchs took power, they always demonised and distorted the meaning of the Goddess with her creative and destructive powers, her darkness and light. Many aspects of the Goddess were cast as simply evil, dark and destructive. Women’s menstrual, active, powerful and wild sexuality was resisted because it was not fertile. To the patriarchs, only receptive, child-bearing heterosexuality in women was acceptable.
We are now living at a time when the Pacific ring of Fire, the volcanoes of the Pacific rim, are becoming alive. I did this painting while there were volcanic eruptions in the Philippines. It is also a tribute to the Hawaiian Goddess Pele of the volcanoes. The Earth Herself is erupting in volcanic rage and earthquakes. We must recognise the great creative fire within ourselves and fiercely become active on Earth’s behalf. We need to resist those who are out to rape, slay and exploit Her.
click for larger version
Sekhmet Temple in the Nevada Desert
(mixed media, 2000)
My painting of Sekhmet now belongs to the Sekhmet Temple in the Nevada desert but as it is open to the elements, the painting is housed in the women’s dormitory nearby. In the temple are sculptures – Sekhmet and La Madre del Mundo – by the late Marsha Gomez, an indigenous Mexican American artist and activist.
Maltese Great Mother of Ggigantija on Gozo and Hagar Qim on Malta
click for larger version
Maltese Great Mother of Ggigantija on Gozo and
Hagar Qim on Malta (oil, 1998)
I spent a week drawing every day on Gozo at this ancient Goddess temple when I was recovering from breast cancer. I have also included the beautiful carvings found at the Tarxien temple on Malta.
Matronae – Triple Mothers
Matronae – Triple Mothers (mixed media, 1983)
I was travelling in Germany and in Scandinavia in the early 80s with an exhibition called “Woman Magic, celebrating the Goddess within us”. We were four women artists and it was shown, in amongst many other places, at the Frauenmuseurn in Bonn and the Women’s cultural centre Rhiannan in Cologne in the Rheinland. Whilst there I was taken to visit the German/Roman museum next door to the cathedral. In there I saw a number of very impressive stone carved images of the seated Matronae/Dea Matris or Triple Mothers. They showed dignified, mature women wearing great lunar or afro headdresses, holding fruit and bread in their arms. I believe that they are most ancient and, like the Scandinavian Norns or Disir, belong to the Pre Indoeuropean peoples of old Europe.
The Romans feared the Matronae and called them “Sorceresses of early days”. Under the Cologne cathedral there was a Roman temple dedicated to Dionysius with a large mosaic floor intact but at an even much older level there was a holy well venerated by the Celts. The Matronae, their oracular priestesses, presided over the sacred wells within great enclosures that were surrounded first by wooden groves and later built in stone. There were more than a thousand such enclosures in Gaul and Germany. Uppsala, the great Pagan centre in Sweden, was originally dedicated to the Disir or Norns, deified ancient Mothers of the Vanir people of the north. I believe that theirs were great mysteries now lost to us.
By c.500 AD the Christians set about demolishing their shrines and delighted in knocking off the heads of the Matronae, a symbolic form of Matricide. It was said that powerful rituals were performed where the Matronae presided, rituals involving music, dances, ecstatic sexuality and magic. Also men’s societies met in the enclosures of the divine grandmothers and there they danced wearing crane masks imitating birds with arms outstretched, bells on their toes, gyrating hips and spiralling into a shell or vulva/labyrinth. Obviously most “unmanly”. From the Matronae’s German name “Die Beten” comes in all German languages the words for “to pray” as in Swedish “att bedja”.
I found in German (non-feminist) texts that the Matronae were Sun, Moon and Mother Earth. The Norns, who are older and more powerful than all gods, keep the World tree alive and to them belong the life-giving, healing and wisdom-giving holy wells. They, like Spiderwoman of the Hopis, weave, maintain and cut the thread of life. They create the cosmic electronmagnetic web that vibrates, dances and is ever changing. The Norns brought about Ragnarok, the end of the world when the New Indoeuropean male gods had offended the cosmic order through their deceitful and warlike ways. Will this happen again?
The painting belongs to Alice Walker.
Maltese Goddess of the Upper and Underworld
click for larger version
Maltese Goddess of the Upper and Underworld (oil, 1998)
I did this painting after a visit to Malta and Gozo, ancient islands of the Goddess. Her temples there are the oldest freestanding temples in the ancient world and are contemporary with Avebury and New Grange. They are formed in Her corpulent gigantic image. One enters into them as into Her body. The temple on Gozo is called Ggigantija, House of the Giantess, and legends say it was built overnight by a giant woman. Some of the stones weigh fifty tons. On Malta in December, 1997 I was able to finally visit the Hypogeum, subterranean oracular temple. It was awesome to be in there in the Mother’s great womb within the rock and earth. Here is the sleeping priestess within rounded chambers, smeared with red ochre evoking the womb, listening to the voices from the Underworld. Here also is a priestess from the neighbouring temple of Tarxien.
St. Non’s Well – Holy Grail
click for larger version
St. Non’s Well – Holy Grail (oil on hardboard, 1993 – 8 feet long)
The Matronae priestesses healing and scrying at St. Non’s Well where St. Non supposedly gave birth to St. David. An ancient sacred yew and Earth lights in my painting as well as a Green man.
Tarxien Goddess
click for larger version
Tarxien Goddess (oil, 1994)
Tarxien is a seamless and beautiful temple and is younger than Ggigantija. The golden stones are carved and fit perfectly.
Inside the entrance stands a broken statue of the gigantic, corpulent Goddess. Here I have envisioned how she might have looked once. Everywhere are beautiful carvings of spirals, plants and animals. We were there at sunrise once and here is a Maltese friend meditating at that hour.
Triptych of Diana, Asiatic Lunar Mother, African Sun Goddess and Earth/Underworld Crone
click for larger version
Triptych of Diana, Asiatic Lunar Mother, African Sun
Goddess and Earth/Underworld Crone (oil, 2000)
Here is my freestyle/more recent interpretation of the Dea Matris in which the Moon Mother is Diana/Artemis of the Amazons. The Sun Goddess or Solar Mother is African and the Crone dwells inside West Kennet Longbarrow on Wiltshire plain in the south of England. I repeated the image of the predynastic Egyptian Bird Goddess with outstretched arms in each image and for this I used a stencil that I had cut for making graffiti on Bristol pavements and walls, a bit of urban direct action as some of us in our women’s spirituality and politics group attempted to lay a brief spell on the city. We also wrote the words “The Goddess returns, protect the Earth”.
I would like to see this Triptych in a Goddess shrine and I would like to see “God giving Birth” adorning the altar in a great Church instead of the, to me, obscene image of a dead man hanging on a cross.
Sheela Na Gig St Non’s Well
click for larger version
Sheela Na Gig St Non’s Well (mixed media, 1992)
A vision I had at the well of the Goddess/Sheela as the gateway to the Otherworld or Faerie realm. She straddles the portal, giving blessings and healing to the people, over the portal of St. Non’s chapel which here becomes transparent. The “Sheela” is in fact Freya as she is shown on a stone carved in the 5th century CE (common era) on Gotland, which is an island belonging to Sweden in the Baltic. There are many ancient remains there such as large labyrinths and Bronze Age stone ship settings.
African Goddess of the Paleolithic Caves
African Goddess of the Paleolithic Caves (oil, 1997)
I felt fear for a long time of the Paleolithic caves because I had visited such a cave in the Basque Pyrenees the day before my young son died. I feared we had somehow encountered spirits, had summoned powers we didn’t understand. That night was the full moon. Recently, however, when spending time with my son Toivo and his family in Andalusia in the South of Spain, we visited some Paleolithic caves deep under the earth. One was called “The Hall of the Goddess” and to my amazement I found there a large freestanding rock formation that looked just like an African woman in profile on one side. I started drawing and suddenly realised I was alone in these vast caverns. Drawing, I had become oblivious to where I was. At the instant I realised I was completely alone, my son returned and all was well.
Remains of habitations left by African people dating back to more than a million years ago have been found in the south of Spain. Our earliest ancestors came out of Africa.
I lived with the fear of the ancient caves for the fifteen year since my son’s death in the Basque country in 1985 even though I have always known that the caves are the womb of the Mountain Mother and that they are full of spirits of animals and of humans. Early humans found protection there during the Ice ages in Europe, spirits moan and whisper deep in the subterranean waters of the Underworld seeking rebirth. Everywhere there are uterine forms and crevices coloured red ochre, the colour of the Mother’s menstrual flow.
I finally revisited Iztarits, the cave in the Basque Pyrenees, as I had to confront my fears to be able to live and to move on. There the spirits whispered in my ear that they had nothing to do with my son’s death. I was freed at last.
Celtic Mysteries – St Non’s Well
click for larger version
Celtic Mysteries – St Non’s Well (oil, 1993)
For five years I lived just twelve miles down the road from St. David’s in south-west Wales, the smallest cathedral city in Britain, and to St. Non’s Well. During medieval times there was a very important pilgrimage that went from St. Winifred’s Well in north-east Wales to St. David’sand the Holy Well of St. Non, supposedly St. David’s mother. The legend went that when Nonita was about to give birth, she was for some reason out on the wild coast in a storm and as she sank down and gripped the rocks in birth pains, the well burst forth and she was enveloped in a great light. My interpretation would be however that the reason she was there in the first place is because there was the well, a spring that aided birthing women. Quite likely a priestesshood dwelt there, the Triple Mothers who were midwives, healers, mediums and astrologers.
When travelling in Brittany/Bretagne, another Celtic land, I found it was thought that not only did St. Non travel to Bretagne with St. David as a child and later died there but She is also thought to have been born there. We found the grave of St. Non in a small town called Dirinon in a very old chapel and not far away is St. Non’s Holy Well. When I travelled to France on a pilgrimage with two friends, we started our journey asking St. Non for protection here at her holy well and we were indeed protected.
To me, St. Non’s Well is a most sacred place. I love it and visit it often although I no longer live in Wales. It is situated on the coast, above the cliffs and the blue green sea, so beautiful. There is a catholic retreat and the well is protected as is St. Winifred’s Holy Well, also a catholic shrine. There is a small chapel built with ancient stones found in the area and in it are stained glass windows of St. Non, St. Brigid and St. Winifred as well as a plaster-cast statue of the Virgin with child. I have had many visions in that chapel.
The old pilgrimage-way went past St. Brynach’s church at Nevern and so I included in my painting the Bleeding Yew Mother at Nevern where there is an alleyway of ancient Yews. There is perpetual darkness there even on the brightest day. Pentre Ifan cromlech – the womb of the Cerridwen – above Nevern on the slopes of the Preseli mountains is lit by the full moon.