An Online Retrospective

Andalucian Madonna and Phoenician Priestess (oil, 1996)

My son and family were staying in the mountains beyond Malaga and beneath a small town called Comares which cradles the summit of a high mountain. It has a strange presence as there is a town of the living that looks like a cubist painting and a town of the dead. Since it is not possible to bury the dead in the earth, they are kept in boxes on enclosed shelves. Rows and rows of the “apartments” of the ancestors painted white, heightened by the sun and bedecked with flowers, photographs and images of the Madonna. A very surreal and also beautiful place. The Madonna in my painting I caught from those graves. With her is La Dama de Elche, a Phoenician priestess of Asht’art or of Tanit of Carthage. The semitic Phoenicians, the same people as the persecuted Canaanites of the Hebrew Bible, had colonies all over the North African coast as well as in the south of Spain. La Dama (and fifteen more Damas have been found) was originally life-size and probably seated on a great throne. On her back is a pouch where the ashes of the dead were kept. Some of the Damas were found in great burial chambers. Tanit is a protector of the dead as well as the living and she says “I am the beginning and the end”. Her mystery religion was profound but was wiped out by the Romans who hated the Carthaginians and carried out many wars against them. Carthage was demolished, raised to the ground and Tanit forgotten, except on Ibiza where her mysteries lived on.

Next: Tanit – Phoenician Goddess of Death and Rebirth

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The Mother of All Crop Circles/Barbary Castle Crop Circle Goddess
(mixed media image, 1991)

The summer of 1991 became to me the summer when I found myself again and again in or by crop circles in the Wiltshire area. I was a ‘teacher’ doing workshops at the Oak Dragon “Ancient Albion” camp near Swindon and we explored the huge crop circle formation at Alton Bames. I slept one Full Moon August night on Silbury with some friends and when I awoke in the early morning at dawn, I saw a small crop circle in a field across the road from Silbury. I sat in that circle as the sun rose, drawing and listening to the ripe corn popping all around me – an eerie feeling here in the stillness and all alone as I was.

I arrived with a friend to take part in the “Wise Women’s Weekend” in July at Lower Shaw Farm, also near Swindon, where I was to do a slide show of my art. After lunch the twenty-five women decided to go to a newly formed crop circle under Barbury Castle earthworks and naturally we went with them. We were absolutely knocked out by the beauty and vastness of this geometric and intricate formation and felt lost, as if in another time space. And so it went on. I took part in crop circle discussions … what are they, what creates them and why … are they messages from the world of the spirits … is Mother Earth warning us, etc., etc and I found myself exhibiting some images and listening in on the “Corn-ference” organised by Roland Pargeter in Glastonbury at the end of July where I was angered by the male dominance, New Age men setting themselves up as “experts” on crop circles. They fabricate patriarchal theories of how “Secret Masters”, “Space Brothers”, “Aliens” – you name it – create the circles but never, never Mother Earth, Herself. John Michell did say though to his credit “Be quiet and listen, Earth Mother is speaking.

During this conference I went for a breather to the Chalice Well gardens, nestled in the skirts of the Tor …. to meditate and dream by the Holy well of the Goddess known as “Blood Well’ because of its red waters. As I was sitting there, this image of the dark winged and radiant Bird Goddess emerging from within the Barbury Caste crop circle came to me. She is also creating the circle and is its spirit.

Chalice Well produces trance states if one allows one’s mind to empty and wander and I have found both images and poems coming to me there in this state of mind.

Crop circles started to become more and more noticeable from c. 1988 when they started to appear around Silbury. Warminster was another centre and this also happened to be the very area where so many UFO sightings had taken place years earlier. Inevitably people started to make connections between the two unexplainable phenomena.

Many crop circles have appeared below ancient earthworks and below the turf-cut White Horse images that represent Epona, the shamanic white mare Goddess of the white chalklands in the south of England. It is therefore inevitable also to make the connection between the Goddess or Corn Mother and the crop circles that appear under or by so many of Her sacred places. Terence Meaden, scientist and meteorologist, sees the crop circles as created by plasmic vortex whirlwinds. But then, one can well ask what is a “whirlwind” and might it not be an emanation of spirits that are not visible to us since they come from another dimension of reality or the Faery realm.

I can only say that as an artist I have been amazed at the beauty, the gently swirling and spiralling patterns created by the corn, the blissfulness and awe felt within them by so many and the opening of people’s psychic awareness which has happened thanks to the crop circles during the last few years.

Next: Solar Lionheaded Sekhmet

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 Tanit: Phoenician Goddess of Death and Rebirth (mixed media, 1997)

I was on Ibiza – an ancient island of the Phoenicians in the Bronze Age and a sacred centre of their Great Goddess, Tanit, who said I am the beginning and the end” – when I discovered that I had a cancerous tumour in my breast. It was February of 1997. Although the tumour was five centimetres by then, I had never noticed it. I learned that Ibiza, which was called “The Island of Pine Trees”, was a place where people came to be healed and also to die. It was a colony of the Carthaginians/Phoenicians from north Africa. There are many wells here sacred to Tanit, whose mysteries were forgotten when the Romans destroyed Carthage (Tunisia). She was the same Goddess as Astarte of the Canaanites (also a Phoenician-Semitic people) who was hated by the Hebrew prophets and their Jahweh. Tanit was also African Berber in origin. In this image are the hand of Tanit (later the hand of Fatima?) and other symbols. Here is La Dama de Elche, found in Andalucia and representing the Goddess herself or Her priestess, wearing extraordinary headplates and heavy jewellery, so mysterious. Apparently Ox T’art means “womb of the Earth”, so in Ash T’art there is the word “womb”. The Siren or Serene carries the soul of the dead to the Otherworld.

Next: Maltese Great Mother…

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.

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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.

Next: Matronae – Triple Mothers

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 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.

Next: Maltese Goddess of the Upper and Underworld

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.

Next: St Non’s Well – Holy Grail

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 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.

Next: Tarxien Goddess

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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.

Next: Triptych of Diana, Asiatic Lunar Mother

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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.  

Next: Sheela Na Gig St Non’s Well

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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.

Next: African Goddess of the Paleolithic Caves