Breast Eyes
I'm in the mood to tell you a story tonight. I've been thinking about it a lot recently, this dream I had about 5 or 6 years ago. It was one of those quick flash dreams -- a powerful image arose and then was gone almost instantly. But what I saw was this: a very old, naked woman. Her breasts were long and flat against her body, and my eyes were drawn to them. It was like I was behind a camera that was slowly zooming in on the breasts. And as I got closer, they morphed into eyes! The eyes then were all I could see, and they were dark and penetrating and they stared back at me. Then the dream ended. I remember waking up with a gasp.
(I've solved my image posting problem, but I'm still having some Samhain interference. The picture I wanted to post of goddess Kali on October 16, with my poem, still refuses to appear. I am not really surprised. It's probably fortunate for me. One really shouldn't haul Kali out for anything other than extreme situations because of the danger involved.)
But back to my story. At the time, I was working in a used bookstore as a clerk. It was a dusty, chaotic old place and I took it upon myself to reorganize and spruce up the women's books section, a project I was doing on and off when I had the dream. Only a couple of days later, while back there digging around, I noticed a red cloth-bound book with gold letters on the spine: The Crone. The dream had been so powerful that it was still really vivid, and I sensed a connection. I grabbed the book and took it home with me to examine it.
This turned out to be one of the most influential books I have ever read and has shaped my opinions about feminism in a lot of important ways. It is a fiery, angry book, written by a very articulate women's historian named Barbara G. Walker. I devoured it. It was tremendously upsetting and uplifting at the same time. It left me with a bitter sense of having been cheated out of learning about my own legacy as a woman. All about the Crone archetype, it appeared in my life about the same time as the wife of the store's owner casually prophesied that I was going to have an early menopause. I did not appreciate that because at the time I was only about 40. But it turns out the bitch was right. I did become perimenopausal a couple of years later. And I'm in the middle of all that now... I'm a baby crone. I look young on the outside, but I feel old in a lot of ways. I'm starting to sag all over and get wrinkles and my hair's dried out like witches' hair and I have mood swings and hormone issues and killer intuition and wisdom.
A few years later I decided to try and design a tattoo that honored the dream. I never had it done, but here it is.
I dug up The Crone tonight to flip through it a little bit. I haven't looked at it for a long time, now. I can see that I need to read it again. The stories inside of brutality towards women are shocking and I felt some connection to them -- almost as though I was reading my own personal memoirs. The history of the witch burnings and persecutions in medieval Europe particularly resonated. When I see or read about that stuff, it terrifies and upsets me much more than it should. Reading about other aspects of history in general doesn't usually get me this worked up. I wonder if maybe I had some past lives there, because the feelings are so strong. (And I am not even really sure I believe in past lives, but there have been some times in my life when there could be no other explanation for things -- like knowing my way around Paris, France, the first time I went there? Streets and ways around town seemed familiar. But I digress.) Even more interesting, it led me to further reading on the subject. I saw how things haven't really changed much. The formula for a witch hunt is still used in today's politics (The Clinton impeachment); though it may not be as brutally violent now, it works the same way as it did then. Reading The Crone bolstered my already-formed negative opinions about religion, and caused me to go further -- it influenced me to become extremely negative about it. I am not an athiest. But neither am I a believer or follower. I now feel hostile towards religion. I have had several run-ins with nasty preachers and priests, too. Even Real Live Preacher had to take some heat from me when he came on the scene -- I challenged the poor guy relentlessly to find out if he was one of those icky, hateful evangelical types. But he quickly showed us all he's in a league of his own. RLP has my utmost respect. I ended up having to apologize a few times. That's nothing new, here at Fiona. A day without an apology for me just wouldn't feel right. I mess up so much.
The Crone also got me interested in prehistoric women's culture, which is another fascinating topic. There is all kinds of evidence of prehistoric matriarchal societies, but it has been denied by male scholars for eons. They just didn't want anyone to know that women may have been in charge, once upon a time. Apparently humankind wouldn't be able to handle this information, but it's too bad about that presumption.
The overarching theme is the reclamation of female, earth-based, humanistic values in our modern, patriarchal world. The divine feminine has been tortured, suppressed, censored, twisted and forgotten -- but has never been destroyed. It can't be. Because it lives in the mothers and the daughters that Dr. Omed identified in his poem Theodicy (which I want to thank him for dedicating to me, only the second time in my life that I've had someone dedicate poetry to me, but I suppose many people in this day and age never even get one so I am deeply appreciative). They are real, but "God" isn't. God is an human invention. Mothers and daughters are real humans in earthly time, and the divine feminine just keeps replicating itself with every new generation. It's inside of us, and nothing can take it away. Not even extreme cultural brainwashing, a lot of the time. Motherly compassion is instinctual, and women's compassionate ways to some extent are, too. This is why the female dieties that we are familiar with are portrayed as merciful (The Blessed Virgin Mary) and God is portrayed as wrathful. The forces and conventions of patriarchy are wrathful in the sense that they are destructive and toxic. The compassion of the mothers and daughters promotes forgiveness and healing; the wrath of god brings shame and punishment. Ask yourself which approach you think works better. People who find force and fear attractive will be patriarchal -- conservative, nationalistic, religious, materialistic, and sometimes greedy, sexist, racist and violent. People who find understanding and forgiveness attracitve will be progressive -- liberal, humanistic, pacifistic, compassionate, non-judgmental and willing to share. I notice that the latter group seem far happier than the former, as individuals. These "feminine" values are self-evidently positive and good, even to the 'bad people' when they really think about them. We do need to reclaim and re-integrate them with conscious effort.
9:02:20 PM 
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