Arts & Healing artist feature:"Art heals because it can arise from the "language of the soul".

Lauren Raine is our featured Arts & Healing Artist. Her work is about reverence and Divine Feminine. I love the power of transformation in her project.

"Art  heals because it can arise from the "language of the soul".  When we create, alone or in collaboration,  we are expressing from a deeper layer of ourselves, a language of symbol and archetype, story and dream, often both a personal as well as a universal language.  That process can be extraordinarily revealing.  For example, in the years I provided masks of the Goddess for women to dance, in telling and finding for themselves the "voice of the mask" they found they invoked and communicated with that Goddess form inside themselves.  Making a personal mask, inviting it to gradually become a "persona" based upon one's own face, is always equally revealing, empowering, often beautiful, and full of stories that the maker didn't know were there." ~ Lauren Raine

Lauren’s Arts & Healing Project
 In Lauren’s words:
 THE MASKS OF THE GODDESS,  was a 20 year project, with many collaborators, and many stories I have tried to gather and archive in my book about the Project, and in the website.  I closed the project with an exhibit at HerChurch in San Francisco in 2019, a show that included a talk and performances.   

There is a lot of material gathered in 20 years....................
The best way to show the scope of the Project is in a PowerPoint slideshow I gave about the Project for the 2021 Virtual Parliament of World Religions: HERE

The collection of masks I made called "The Masks of the Goddess" travelled throughout the U.S. and were used by many communities and individuals to explore archetypes of the Divine Feminine through performance and storytelling. Here, for example, is an audio of a piece devoted to Grandmother Spiderwoman:   HERE

Some of the performances I wrote, but most were collaborations within different communities, and most of these were not facilitated by me. 

I don't know what exactly to say:  the Balinese say that masks are "vessels for the Gods" and I know deeply that working with sacred masks and aspecting/invoking the Goddesses can be profoundly transformative.  I take the liberty of copying some comments from participants over the years in various Masks of the Goddess events.  
Thank you,  
Lauren
www.laurenraine.com


Herstory and Performances

Reflections on the Goddess - 

Participant comments 1999 - 2005

"Kali is so much about contemporary life.  Women need to become angry about the women of Afghanistan, the meaningless wars, the destruction of our environment.  The demons of insatiable greed, like the ancient myth, are devouring our planet again. We need to call upon the spirit of Kali, because those who await the future are being denied their birthright. Kali is the catalyst for saying "No more".  It's time to embrace the sword of Kali and cut away the delusions that are destroying our world.

Drissana Devananda, "Kali" in 2001, 2002 performance

"Pele is about the great elemental builders of our planet. Long before people walked upon any lands, the Creatrix of Kilauea brought forth islands from the Earth's hot, molten core, slowly cooling through the ages.  Human beings are recent arrivals, and the fires of Pele burn through  the eons,  stirring up the Pacific, and shaping our very atmosphere."

Karina McAbee, "Pele" in 2001 performance

"Corn Mother's story is about the wealth that comes from the hard work of forgiveness.  How can we be fed, feed each other, how can we create peace, if we cannot learn the lessons of forgiveness, if we cannot learn tolerance for our differences?  That is the beginning place we will need in order to evolve into a peaceful Rainbow Nation. To me, the Rainbow as actually a circle.  Half the rainbow disappears into the ground, into an underworld realm, where it exists beneath the Earth, dark and hidden, but at the foundation never the less.  Like the Corn Mother."

Christy Salo, "Selu" in 2002 performance

"Lilith, to me, is an utterly intelligent archetypal power.  She rules the liminal landscape between the subconscious and the conscious mind, and can help make that information conscious and usable in your life.  Lilith is the bridge, and "What you believe" is just a shell that keeps you imprisoned.   Lilith is about breaking the shell, because sometimes you have to fall apart to be put back together, that's the only way to be re-integrated. You cannot veneer Lilith’s teachings on top of who you think you are..”

David Jeffers, Composer and Musical Director for 2002  performance

"The Dark Goddess, who is found in many cultures by many names, is not aspected lightly.  Working with Her calls forth one's internal capacity for psychic empowerment. I found myself wanting to slide away when it brought my own way of being to the surface.  In Buddhist art, a cobra is depicted rising over the head of the seeker.  I felt ridden by the Dark Goddess.  The small "me' was beneath the cobra.  The work was larger than my concerns, and ultimately impersonal.  I was a brief vessel for an immense archetypal intelligence manifesting itself within the ritual drama we created."

 Anne Weller, ritualist, performer, 2000, 2002

“Who is She? She is your power, your Feminine source. Big Mama. The Goddess. The Great Mystery. The web-weaver. The life force. The first time, the twentieth time you may not recognize her. Or pretend not to hear. As she fills your body with ripples of terror and delight

But when she calls you will know you’ve been called. Then it is up to you to decide if you will answer.” ― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

Are you ready to answer?

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