LETS-Land of Enchantment Tarot Symposium VIDEO of The Birth of The Oracle of Initiation

My Oracle of Initiation LETS presentation with the image "Sanctified"

I want to share the wonderful video Carrie Paris and I created today from my presentation for LETS- Land of Enchantment Tarot Symposium that was here in Santa Fe this October. Below is also an update about The Oracle and my travels, projects and upcoming adventures. Life is good.

LETS-Land of Enchantment Tarot Symposium VIDEO of the Oracle of Initiation’s Birth {use either headphones or plug into external speakers…the audio is low}

http://vivu.tv/portal/archive.jsp?flow=397-654-7677&id=1291578442700

Carrie Paris Tarot Goddess and co-organizer of LETS

I want to share some wonderful new videos about The Oracle of Initiation deck and keep you up to date about my travels. I will be leaving Santa Fe at the end of January 2011 to go to the west coast to teach and divine and then will be off to Central America for 5 months to learn Spanish. I am currently finishing the book to go with the Oracle deck and look forward to telling you more about that project and the wonderful contributors I have gathered. The deck is a vast and Mysterious creation that has called forth a variety of voices to help illuminate its potentials.

Lisa with one of her De St. Croix Tarot images

Tonight on the Sagittarius New Moon I was doing my manifesting through Beatrex Quntanna’s incredible 2010 Moon Book { to order your 2011 copy:

http://www.beatrex.com} She and Susan Lennox have created a workbook to utilize the moons incredible power to co-create the destiny we desire. The reason I am bringing this up is because there has been some really interesting synchronicities with this moon’s symbolism and my stepping out into videos offerings.

The ladies goofin' it up

Today Carrie Paris, local Tarot Goddess and I recorded my presentation for the LETS-Land of Enchantment Tarot Symposium conference that happened in October. The initial talk had technical difficulties and did not work. Part of the LETS conference’s magic was the potential to see the main presentations online, from anywhere in the world. Carrie and I tried to record my talk again, and the sound was silenced. So today, our 3^rd try, we recorded a great presentation on the birth of my Oracle deck, and the sound is low on some computers. Hmmmmm. here is the link again….

LETS-Land of Enchantment Tarot Symposium VIDEO of the Oracle of Initiation’s Birth {use either headphones or plug into external speakers…the audio is low}

http://vivu.tv/portal/archive.jsp?flow=397-654-7677&id=1291578442700

Jordan Hoggard with his soon to be available Land of Mystereum Tarot Deck- The Death Card

So I am reading about the Sagittarius New Moon in Beatrex’s book and the manifestation Goddess featured is Saraswati. The description speaks of her as “fusing our personality with the light of our divinity…When this fusion occurs, the Law of Sound is made available and we have the ability to manifest our vision through the resonance of our voice!!!!!”  So….it gets better…As Carrie and I created the altar backdrop for the LETS video today we PUT HER SCULPTURE OF SARASWATI BEHIND ME!!!!!

So, it is interesting that my video is muffled at times. Hmmmmm. Still sitting with what this may mean.

Tarot Maven Mary K. Greer with my Oracle deck

It really is a cool video, I am proud of it, and the images that accompany the fascinating story are gorgeous. Some of my early inspirations are really interesting. It is a 55 minute investment, but watch it instead of a TV show or reading something else. It really is a gift to see how another has enlivened her life and stepped into her unique passions and joys. Inspiration feeds the soul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Co-organizer Margaret Letzkus on her sacred geometry presentation

 

I have also included a couple of animoto videos of my earlier work. Good stuff.

Earthen Body Series

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eagle Eye Graffiti-Earthen Body Series

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxEQUY342Og

Weiss Steele Early Art Work

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fire Horse collage

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0jYUc7Hgus

Donnaleigh de LaRose created this wonderful video using the Oracle deck. I will be on her Beyond Worlds Tarot Tribe radio show March 6th 2011. Cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcp8JM2eYc8&feature=player_embedded

January 15^th 2011 I will be speaking to the wonderful Albuquerque Tarot Meet-up…come play with one of the limited edition decks if you are in the area. We will have both juicy depth and raucous fun. That’s a good combo.

Sifu is so cooollll

So happy holiday, and if you want a reading in-person in Santa Fe, you will need to catch me before mid January. I can always do work over the phone as well.  I am seeing a lot of lineage coding coming up in people to be released and have had wonderful success with other clients in transforming those old messages and constrictions that were never truly ours. Break free from the agony of the illusions of isolation, shame and worthlessness. They are NOT TRUE YOURS.

There are also copies of the first edition of 88 signed copies of my Oracle deck on the website..go get your today to help read the landmarks, challenges and gifts along your glorious journey of awakening. www.OracleofInitation.com

Jordan, Marianna & I

So here’s to the intensity, the turbulence, and the great beauty of this Grand Initiation we are all undertaking. I will see you all dancing under the stars as we embody our true brilliance and divinity, together…MelissaBee

Pegasus collage by moi

The Weight of Women’s Worth

Vivacious Venus

I am wading into an extremely vulnerable subject here. This is a core wounding for most females, and my work is women’s empowerment. I am heart broken about how most Western women relate to their bodies and sense of self worth. I do not mean to disregard men’s issues with appearance and body image, they have also been reared in a culture based on separation and disconnection, but I have witnessed that there is a different field men are allowed with issues of body shape and value.

A series of events happened over the last while and a cascade of experiences and perceptions flowed into my mind about my life in this body and the other women I have known well enough to speak frankly about their relationship with their bodies.

Our bodies are our Temples, our homes, the way we bounce around in this pinball machine of life. They are how we play, experience, create, give life, make love to ourselves, others and the world at large.

If there is a perceived “difference” in your external form from the culturally dictated norms, it may cause a host of issues with connection, value and belonging. If one is albino in Africa, or in a wheel chair, or slim in a culture that values the Rubinesque women, it could cause a deep sense of separation and isolation. Our ego desperately wants to be valued, safe, and successful in order to feel good enough. Western culture at this time suggest success should look fame, beauty, wealth, and status. So if our body, our Temple, is different than the color, hair type, or proportions deemed superior and success worthy at this time , where does one find a healthy sense of self? If this year/decade/century women are to be rail thin, where do the Rubinesque women fit? Venus of Willendorf lives, even if she would be called obese at this time.

These same “differences” can also be the distinction that marks you as unique; as an artist, a visionary, the Medicine person in the tribe. But in contemporary Western Culture difference takes a lot of chutzpah and power to carry. Barbara Streisand made the nose her trademark. Lauren Hutton rocks the gap in her front teeth. Queen Latifah carries herself as the royalty that she is.

My relationship to my own body has been a long journey. Three years ago, when I was thirty-nine, I started a series of self-portraits on the land called “Earthen Body.” There were a variety of reasons I did this, but one of them was to witness my value, worth and beauty to myself, by myself. Not what the culture thought, not what men thought, not what my family thought, but how did I feel about this body I have inhabited for so many decades? I was also attempting to find a sense of connection to myself as I age.

What ended up happening over the year and half period with the Earthen Body process was a revolution within myself. I FOUND MYSELF, through the land; through adventure; through creativity; through surrender; through primal wildness; through dancing with The Spirits in ancient ways. I found my way back home. And it was in my body, nude, alone on the land with the Earth and Ancestral Spirits.

I am a different woman now, and I can still get caught up in cultural expectations of value and worth. Each time I have committed to being awake and incarnating more onto the earth-plane I have gained weight. This has happened recently. My jeans do not fit. I wear yoga pants all the time {thank god they stretch}. I have been struggling with the change in my form, judging it at times, feeling less valuable. This is so odd. It’s like a bad hair day. How can the way our hair sits affect our entire psyche? The first time this happened about 5 or 6 years ago I was going to a wedding and wanted a new dress. I went into the dressing room and started trying things on. The first dress horrified me. As I looked in the mirror, I perceive myself as looking  “fat.” I am an anomaly on this issue because I have not consistency battled my bodies size and form. Now I am not saying I was always deeply connected to my body, but I didn’t wake up hating it. But when I had this experience in the department store dressing room I got a sense of how other women feel all the time.

If we are in the middle of a cultural/energetic/spiritual revolution of reclaiming the feminine, where does women’s self hatred through their bodies come in? Where does the violent disregard and over-consumption of Mother Earth’s resources become rebalanced? How do we women carry the dignity and worth of our variant cycles, rhythms and seasons?

Dance has also been a major way for me to embody myself. I came to it in my mid- thirties and like the Earthen Body photography it has completely changed my life. I am taking Haitian dance classes now and have found that a little extra junk in my trunk is a good thing. Not all cultures have disregarded curvier women; Sir Mix A Lot made a career glorifying bodacious bottoms.

I am also forty-two, and single. There are entire books focusing on how I need to be less “picky” in choosing a man because my days of being desirable are over. If my body and looks are deteriorating I am “used goods” and no longer the choice of the litter. This is outrageous, and many women subliminally operate on this notion. Remember the statistic that it was more likely for a woman over thirty-five to be involved in an airplane crash than find a mate….wacky. What happened to our position being elevated by age? We mature women are in a different cycle than the maiden, but we can also be wiser, calmer, and for many of us more relaxed and juicier. If our greatest value still lies in our looks, what do we do when that power position is weakened?

Most women spend a huge amount of time judging their bodies. Worrying about their thighs/tummy/ass being too “fat.” This shuts women DOWN. This is a place of constantly not being enough, of being afraid to have the lights on when you make love, of fearing the foods you want to eat, of judging other women and how their temples are transforming.  A friend was talking to a group of men and women and it came to light that most of the men did not know what their butts looked like. They have not inspected, judged, and cataloged every square inch of their flesh for its {perceived} positive or negative characteristic. Think of all the time, energy and resources women are using to try to fix themselves when they could be exploring their inner worlds, having more rest from raising the children, or creating the next revolution.

I am part of this revolution, and my part is to find the places within me that shine and expand through my own challenges and gifts. I am also unpacking the messages I digested as a child about my value through money, a mate, a career with status, and a skinny “pretty” body {and persona I will add-be the nice accommodating girl…not the fierce and powerful WOMAN we fear. We ALL have The Dark Mother in us somewhere}. I write and dream and dance and laugh as I age, much more able to unplug from my younger woman’s judgments, and I still have days when I think I should have a washboard stomach. I am not willing to become a slave to these external ideas of worth, and I still have not made it out the other side of consistently holding my value beyond my package.

This week I am attending a women and girls rights of passage retreat on the land. I am thinking about what we teach our children, overtly and subliminally. How do we carry ourselves, how do we open their worlds to their beauty and brilliance for simply existing? How do we nurture their sense of worth and help them find the unique light within themselves? How do we honor the earthened beings that we are, and come back in to alignment with her beauty and wisdom? I mean this for our boys too. What is our responsibility as Elders and Wise Ones to create a saner and more sustainable world for all of them?

I will be off-line for a week, so if I do not answer your comments to these musings immediately, have patience, I am doing my joyful work…

Thank you to another woman of great dignity, Jeanne Abella, for these words of wisdom; may we all hold this vision of walking this way together.

IMAGINE A WOMAN

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is woman.

A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.

Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.

A woman who listens to her needs and desires.

Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past’s influence on the present.

A woman who has walked through her past.

Who has healed the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.

A woman who exerts, initiates and moves on her own behalf.

Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.

A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.

Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.

A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.

Who celebrates her body’s rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.

A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.

Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.

A woman who sits in circles of women.

Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

Written by Patricia Lynne Reilly, 1995

Returning to Mother Ocean

Returning to Mother Ocean yesterday, I cried.

The desert has called me to her arid climate, yet my cells spent nearly four decades at the seaside. Your cells do not forget these things. I was also reminded how much you learn about her ways over time. A friend from Hawaii said you never turn your back on her, she is fierce and wild and unpredictable; deserving of great reverence. When you have spent your formative years dancing at the hems of her undulating skirt, you sense when you may get swamped by a big wave;  you can feel when the tide is retreating;  you know when not too get too close. Mother trains you.

The Ocean in Big Sur is untamed and free, crashing wildly against these glorious rugged black cliffs. It’s enough to make a coastal girl swoon. The power and force of the surf here reminded me of an incredible Earthen Body photography shoot I did in 2007 at Whariki Beach in New Zealand. The Earthen Body series of self-portraits were the beginning of my exploration of merging with The Earth and reclaiming my sovereignty through disrobing before the Mother. The Painted Body images within The Oracle of Initiation came directly from this transformative process.

Today in Big Sur I was reminded of the intensity of that  Whariki experience as the waves pounded in and out of the beautiful eroded chambers within the rocks. There is a primal energy to the crashing surf that is unmistakable. I actually find it terrifying at times, completely out of my human understanding of elemental power and force. That level of base survival instinct also has the ability to awaken a compelling intensity within a ritualistic context. You can see it in the images below from New Zealand. I was actually within a cave as the surf pounded into the  caverns worn into the craggy mound. I did not actually know if the waves would engulf me, breaking through whatever barrier was keeping them at bay. Boy was that a day.

So much of the work I do is about facing fears, and finding my own strength and passion within that place; the Ocean is an invaluable ally. These Whariki images below  are what the wild ocean feels like to me. I have returned to her, and my cells  are singing in profound love and reverence.

She even offered a rainbow at dusk. How does it get any better than this?

I shall kiss the ocean for all your desert and interior dwellers. She is a Queen.

The Mystery of Ecstatic Union

I am going to break a Western taboo now. I am going to admit that I do not fully understand, or have “control” over something I am involved in. This is a radical idea, because many of us were taught to pretend we have it all together, we are the master of our own ships. Living through your intuition has been so misunderstood and maligned in this culture. If you can’t show it, explain it, recreate it, it’s not real. How did we get here??? The scientific empiricism only goes so far, and then we have the very real world of dreams & synchronicities & miracles.

Ecstatic union is an interesting thing. I believe it is what many people are actually yearning for when they reach for distorting substances or intense experiences in an attempt to access this place. We are hardwired for spiritual connection and altered states that we historically accessed through rites of passage and cultural ceremonies & rituals.

In the influential book, Crossroads-The Quest for Contemporary Rites ofPassage, author Christina Groff: “Joseph Campbell believed that the psyche of each human being contains a rich array of mythological symbols, archetypal impulses, and initiatory images which must be expressed and affirmed within a ritualistic context.”

We live in a culture that has elevated the profane over the divine, that has glorified a very shallow and immature form of union and expansion. Most of us do not have groups or organizations that offer truly transcendent experiences. Most do not even realize what they are missing because the externalized distractions and addictions have become so prevalent. To step out of this world of illusion is a revolutionary act.

And…most of the time when some of us actually reach this place-of-the-other-place it is not something that can be quantified, articulated or even understood. The work I do is truly a surrender, an allowing; channeling with no expectations to the outcome. It is not cognitively accessible; it is a visceral, kinesthetic experience; a union with energies and locations. It is setting out, making the time and space, and allowing what wants to come through you; a faithful act of coming back, again and again to that place of opening, and the unknown.

And so much comes through the unknown; The Mystery.

“Each woman/person has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, this river beneath the river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayermaking, singing, drumming, active imagination, or any activity which requires an intense altered consciousness.  A woman arrives in this world-between-worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out of the corner of her eye. She arrives there  by deep creative acts, through intentional solitude, and by practice of any of the arts. And even with these well-crafted practices, much of what occurs in this ineffable world remains forever mysterious to us, for it breaks physical laws and rational laws as we know them.” page 31, Women Who Run With The Wolves; Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

“much of what occurs in this ineffable world remains forever mysterious to us”…

this is so true.

So, this leaves an interesting predicament for we messengers-how do we share the transformation available through dancing with your inner depths when we ourselves are not always cognizant of what really happened-and who we just danced with?

So….How do you access this level of Mystery in your own life? What are the projects and ideas that keep knocking at your door waiting to blossom into something truly unique and magical? How does one reach the archetypal, the limitless within time and space?

Deep listening, allowing, returning again and again to experiences that open you up to your expanded capacity for the imaginative and visionary. I’m not going to say that I know what your gateway is. I can co-create a container for people to explore their inner lives, but if you actually go there or not is really up to you. It takes a tremendous amount of refocusing away from the judgments, voices and miss-interpretations that many of us bought into. It takes a profound trust in the non-linear impulses & yearnings that over time initiate you into reclaiming those more subtle and esoteric skills. It takes courage in yourself to be different. I will not say this happens over night, and it can. I have spent the last 17 years apprenticing to a different rhythm, a different form, expanded truths.

It is a practice.

It really depends on what you want your life to be. What are you willing to risk to reside in the magic and Mystery again?

I am going to share a quote form an earlier post again, I believe we can hear great wisdom again, and again, as it sinks to other levels, so here is Ms. Audre Lorde’s thoughts on reclaiming the erotic {see link to this blog post here..}

https://melissaweisssteele.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/recliaming-the-erotic/

“We have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge….We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued in western society. But The Erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the person who does not fear its revelation….The Erotic is a measure between the beginning of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.…It is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing…We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.”

We will return to this subject again, this is HUGE, and as I have acknowledged, I am in the process of  exploring it all myself, so lets sit in the innocence and wonder together…and see what emerges!

If you want to comment on this from Facebook, would you link back to the Blog itself and do it there…thanks!

https://melissaweisssteele.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/the-mystery-of-ecstatic-union/

The Series aspect of the work: Sami Graffiti in The Valley of the Moon

The series aspect of the work is some of the most interesting parts of the process.  The photos above are from my Earthen Body series taken in 2007 and 2008. These particular images were taken during a break from a fantastic Sami/ Norwegian/ Norse  Shamanism workshop by Ailo Gaup through Michael Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies. We were in the achingly beautiful Valley of The Moon in Sonoma, CA.  I am such an Earth Baby, and I had reached my limit of  being separated from those honey-colored rolling hills in the  September sunlight. I skipped an afternoon session and went to frolic on the land. I had a blast and got some great shots-a lovely mix of process and product. The photo below is from an algae covered stream  called “Sami Vacant.”.

I do not actually consider myself a photographer. I cannot tell you the ASA of a shot or make Gelatin Silver Prints in the darkroom. I see the camera as simply a tool to document a ritualistic process. The main goal of the work is to create communion with the Land and Spirits and get the hell out of the way. All of The Earthen Body work was done with a very small digital camera, and The Painted Body series used only a slightly bigger one; God Bless the Canon G9.

Because it really is documentation of ceremony, I take hundreds to thousands of images during each photo shoot. It actually ranges from about 300 to 4000 pictures, with extended groups of different angles and locations. It’s really interesting to look at the progressions during the process-it becomes a range of moods and reactions, a montage of human expression and engagement.

The four Sami Graffiti photos above represent the first graffiti images within the work. While exploring the Sonoma landscape I found a handful of large feather. I initially thought they were from a Turkey Vulture, but was later corrected by Maria Yraceburu;  They were Eagle feathers. I found the tunnel with the aerosol art  just after collecting the feathers. I took off my glasses and top, descending into the darkened tunnel, dancing with the sacred eagle gift. The final photo of the 4 is a miracle of composition and proportion. I do not see well without my glasses, and all of the images are taken VERY quickly and spontaneously.  So to have the background, feathers and my eye line up like that was only possible through Divine Intervention. That was when it really really hit me that I had somehow slipped into a co-creation with The Universe. It was so exciting and humbling at the same time. I had been kissed by the Angels.

So the series aspect of the work is really the true representation of creativity in its wild and undulating complexity. It’s not all beautiful or perfect, but if we show up we can meet the entire range of expressions that want to spill forth. And we may occasional reach excellence, with a little help from our friends…

Reclaiming The Erotic

In Audre Lorde’s seminal lecture from 1978, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” from the book Sister Outsider, she beautifully articulates the essential need to return to living within the broadest reaches of creativity, sensuality and intuition. This piece was crafted during the seventies when some Feminists had their own  ‘Backlash” again the masculine, but this piece is ultimately a call for all of us to reclaim the power and potential of embracing our connection to ourselves, our work, and others through a broader definition of The Erotic. With primal respect to Ms. Lorde and her original expression I am moving this into inclusive language….

“We have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge….We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued in western society. But The Erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the person who does not fear its revelation….The Erotic is a measure between the beginning of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.…It is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing…We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.”

My work is Erotic. It is also a political act to live from deep within a radical and simple return to each of our authentic knowing.

When I began my self-portrait photography it was a way to explore my own sense of power and identity through the camera lens. I was still in the resurrection process after my husband’s death from cancer, and most of my ideas about life, stability, trust, safety, justice, hope, faith, and love had been blown apart.  The initial Earthen Body photographs were my search for who this woman was now that she had been thrust out of the castle. I had been ensconced in the Princess/Knight “white-picket-fence” paradigm, and now had been released to find my own truths.

I used the ritualistic photographic process to claim who I was beyond external opinions or expectations. Because I was alone, I was able to really open up and release most of the self-consciousness I can be controlled by. This new woman was much fiercer and more intense than I had previously recognized.

What I really came into contact with during my work was my own internal sense of The Erotic. By being nude and exposed on the land I remembered a deep knowing of my place within the earth. I was the soil and the raven and the stream; my boundaries became permeable and I returned to the oneness of all that is.

I gratefully “lost” the sense of self that can be constricting and became a wild and free dervish on the land. It was a place where I can meet the “chaos of my strongest feelings” in a non-linear, visceral, primal way that allows movement and integration from those unconscious and hidden realms.

I also reenter the sacred place of joy and union that is constantly available through stepping deeply into anything that makes us really alive. I stepped into The Erotic.

This blossoming into my passionate  creativity opened the doorways for The Painted Body images here in New Mexico that have been some of the richest work I have done to date. When we open to our larger potentials, we never know what may magically and blessedly materialize. My emergence into my Erotic Self has transformed every aspect of my life from dancing to dreaming, to loving and grieving. I am awake, and it’s not always easy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is a blessed journey we are on, and I want to experience all the twists and turns.

This is Eroticism lived.

The Locations-how in the world did I get there?

I can’t talk about the Painted Body series locations without bringing in the Earthen Body series first. Over time I will revisit certain pivotal shoots from the Earthen Body series, but for now we shall just share their profound impact on my sense of power, trust and joy.

The Earthen Body series began in Texas after a particularly successful 5 day retreat  Kate Vigneron and I taught at her ranch with women and horses. I had found an incredible bone mask, and took some shots that blew me away-so much so that I hid them for 4 months. My sense of trust in my artistic process and the Universe at large was a little  shaky at that time so I was not sure if the energy that came through the photos was a fluke.

Four months later, on my birthday, I decided to revisit the process at my father’s cabin on The Olympic Peninsula. It is an incredible place, one of 6 cabins grandfathered into the National Forest there. It is perched above the coastal beach, and can only be reached through locked logging roads. I set out barefoot for Seafield Creek, not knowing what I might encounter. As I climbed down a fern covered embankment my Spirits told me, “this is your work.” That second series at the creek also blew me away, and spent the next year taking the photos whenever I could.

Part of why this process was so life-changing was that I uses to carry a lot of fear and anxiety. For me to be naked, alone on the land was HUGE. The other transformational part of the journey was how I was lead to locations. It really was a form of enchantment. I love the Earth; I am a happy pagan- just let me loose  in nature and watch me glow. So I would come upon places that were so beautiful or interesting that I just HAD TO play. And play I did. It got to the point where I would just get in my car and be lead to amazing locations. I learned to trust in my safety, and the wisdom of this guiding force that knew when and where to co-create this incredible ritualistic process.

I took the Earthen Body photos throughout the Pacific coast, The Southwest, and magical magical New Zealand. I never encountered another person during a shoot until New Zealand. I feel like a container, a “field,” was created around the process so I would be left in peace.

So the Painted Body series came directly out of this trust and confidence in the journey and my relationship to the Earth and Unseen Guidance that I was able to step into.

There have been five main locations here in New Mexico where The Painted Body work has been done. Some are graffiti covered tunnels, some arroyos, some mesas and caves. I have taken the photos 27 times myself, once with another. Other than the collaborative shoot I am always alone {earth-plane beings at least}. There are almost 30,ooo photos in this series alone.  As you see in the photos above, I have even stood in rushing water to get my images.

So I continue to be open to delightful and sacred places that draw me to this work, and the emergence of The Oracle of Initiation deck- boy have I manifested well!!

Tribal epiphanies in graffiti tunnels

So back to the story of how The Oracle of Initiation divination deck was created… in 2008 I had  made the biggest geographic move of my life {other than a youthful jaunt in Italy} to New Mexico. This relocation occurred  six months before The Painted Body series emerged for the deck. I had been working on the deck for over two and a half years and had been stymied by what the artwork would be. Because I am so visually oriented, having grown up in the art world, it didn’t seem “real” to me until I could show people the images. There had been many dreams about humans and animals shape shifting and the creatures on the cards actually moving around. I had no idea how I would do that. I had considered 3-D cards or transparent ones to layer, {LOVE the Transparent Tarot by Emily Carding!!   Holla} but nothing was settling.

I had fallen in love with monotype printing, a very painterly and instantaneous process of working directly on a plate and then running it through a printing press. I spent one of the most joyful days of my life printing with my father and his collaborator Uncle Walty Lieberman at the Pilchuck Glass School-I was hooked. I got to make art in the woods-how does it get any better than that??? When I arrived in Santa Fe I threw myself into monotype courses at the community college and created a series of totemic creatures. The problem was they didn’t have the movement and  power I was seeking. They were flat. I wanted lush, evocative and mysterious.

My work tends to come through epiphanies. An image or an idea literally flashes in my minds eye, and if it’s enticing enough, I follow the inspiration. The series that made the The Painted Body work possible happened this way. The Earthen Body photographic series emerged in 2007 out of three years of travels across the west experiencing the intuitive horse world. That is another pivotal piece of the story-much love and honor to the horse spirits as carriers-but more on that later. The Earthen Body series began when I was teaching women’s workshops with horses on a ranch in west Texas. I had found the most incredible mask-like bone I had ever seen, and had a vision of myself lying nude on the land with the bone. Maybe those Santa Fe Opera posters from my childhood with Georgia O’Keeffe’s skulls floating over the arid landscape had sunken in. I had never done anything like this, and was both excited and intimidated by the thought. Everything is prickly in the desert, and I was still a neophyte. Those photographs sent me on a yearlong trust walk that completely changed me.

See Texas Bones Mask above-the very first image in the Earthen Body series.

Part of the adventure travels reopened a profound connection I have felt to nature since I was a child. The red earth called me to New Mexico, and I spent the first year ambling around exploring every road I could find that lead into a deserted looking mesa or canyon. I had learned to simply follow, and be guided to locations during the Earthen Body process. I had gotten good at this.

During these travels I found some amazing graffiti in hidden waterways and tunnels. For some time I had been considering how to incorporate my profound love of Hip Hop into my work, and this became one of the ways. I had been musing over some especially beautiful graffiti pieces I had just found with pastel colors whose vibrancy  literally resonated within my body.

And then the epiphany came.

I saw myself painted tribaly, dancing in the tunnels with the swirling aerosol rainbows.

I was stunned.

I think on some level this was what I had always been searching for. I had been drawn to shamanism years before because of a core need for ritual and ceremony. I had never found the creative aspects  of sacred ceremony  combined with the depth and intensity I intuitively sensed I needed within the groups I knew.I had taken all of the Earthen Body photographs alone, and found I could open up and be more expansive by myself. This was how I woke up before dawn on June 27th 2008 and went down into a tunnel, alone, beginning this transformative journey… to be continued…

Ana Mendieta-ritualistic earth artist

This is the first  in a series of posts about women photographers who have used their own bodies as the primary vessels for their artistic expression. The articles will explore what motivated these women to step beyond cultural expectations of the feminine and use self-portraiture to examine identity and relationship through the camera lens. I am very excited to share these brave and brilliant women with you as I give my respect and gratitude to them for leading the way for my own process of discovery.

Ana Mendieta- ritualistic earth artist

Ana Mendieta was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948 and at the age of 12 was sent into exile in the Unites States. This removal from her homeland became the catalyst for her work, her attempt to find a sense of belonging through merging with the natural world-“using the earth as my canvas and my soul as my tools.” [ Michael Duncan]

Her most famous works are her “Silueta” Series {silhouette in Spanish} begun in Iowa as a student. She would carve the shape of her body into the earth, using a variety of materials to highlight the form including flowers, stones, gunpowder, tree branches, and fire, leaving haunting feminine figures etched into the landscape.

An important influence on her development was the Afro-Cuban and Santeria ritualistic traditions she was exposed to as a child. The ceremonial nature of her work reveal her desire to touch something deeper, “The turning point was when I realized that my paintings were not real enough for what I wanted to convey, I wanted my images to have power, to be magic.”

She is one of my elders, one who walked before me redefining what a woman artist could explore, unraveling her own questions about self-identity, cultural belonging, and the elemental nature of our connection to the land. Interestingly, I did not consciously remember her work when I began my own Earthen Body series. I grew up in a family of artists, so I may have been exposed to her, but I did not recall them as an influence. I learned of her “Earth Body” series after I had chosen Earthen Body as title for my book. www.Earthen-Body.com

Ana’s life ended tragically at the age of 36 by falling from her NYC apartment window. Her husband, the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre was tried for her murder, but was later acquitted. Did she pay a high price for being a maverick at a time when women were just emerging into their own power? She remains a potent role model for the universal search for belonging and integration through exploring our timeless connection to the earth.