RCG-I Seasonal Salon Summer Solstice 2007

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Wheels and Spirals

Solstice is coming again, and then at the end of June, the final pass of the Saturna-Neptuna opposition. A last chance at dissolving negativities and releasing bonds before the next round. That is when Urania steps up to take Neptuna’s place. Her signature is sudden change and lightning flashes of awareness. One thing for sure, it won’t be dull. But then, it hasn’t been for some time.

I can’t seem to stop writing about transformation and the turning, turning, change that is underway. It’s the mystery of the great Wheel, not only the wheel of the solar year, but the Wheel of Fortuna and of Nemesis, the Wheel of Rta (later known as Dharma). It’s the Medicine Wheel, the Sacred Hoop. It’s the revolving spindle of the Fates and of Wyrd. It’s the spindle of the female great Nummo, resting in the upturned calabash of Space itself.

According to the Dogon tradition of Mali, Nummo is the primal vitality coursing through all being. It is like water, like sun, like cowries (and thus vulvas and vibrancy and riches), and also like words. Its primary symbol is the zigzag line of a river running full, cascading power. And there are other symbols that resonate with the movement of the Wheel:

A woman spinning is the seventh Nummo... the twirling of the spindle is the movement of the copper spiral which propels the sun... the large bobbin which is wound off in spinning, is the sun rolling in space.

Similarly, Latvians speak of the sun as ridolele, rolling through the heavens. An intriguing parallelism runs through these traditions from northern Europe and western Africa. In Dogon cosmology, the spiral propelling the sun is symbolically repeated in the path of Nummo through a woman’s body. Nummo (life-vitality, and also speech) enters her ears, passes through her throat and liver, and then spirals eight times around her womb. The womb and sun are both encircled by this copper spiral.

Several bronze discs from ancient Denmark repeat this association of the spiral with the solar disc and with the womb. A bronze sculpture from Trundholm, circa 1400 BCE, shows the sun disc, gilt and filled with coursing spirals in concentric rings, being pulled in a horse-drawn cart. Archaeologist Klaus Randsborg at the University of Copenhagen has shown a possible calendrical significance for the numeric pattern of spirals and circles. The sun-cart symbolism accords with Indo-European myths of the sun goddess, especially Lithuanian stories of the sun goddess Saulé driving her chariot across the sky.

The Solvogn ("sun-cart") of Trundholm, Denmark

But there’s more: other bronze discs cast in the same concentric spiraling patterns have been found as women’s belt ornaments in Danish burials from the same period. Long ago, before there was a Denmark, women wore these solar discs over their wombs. One of the most celebrated of these solar belt discs comes from the Egtved barrow where a young woman was buried in a string skirt, a very archaic style that goes back to the paleolithic era.

Another Indo-European expression of this radiant circular is Rta, the old Vedic name for divine law and cosmic order. "By the ordinance of Rta the heaven-born dawn was lighted." Rta is the twelve-spoked solar wheel, with "a burning countenance," and governs the seasons. It also is connected with a chariot and two long-maned red mares. The dawn goddess Usha is also described as shining immortally in her horse-drawn car of light, and as moving high over the worlds "like a wheel." Another passage of the Rg Veda calls Dawn and Night "the young mothers of Rta."

Like Nummo, Rta manifests in many forms, both fiery and watery. The Vedic poets also described it as "flowing streams" from which fire and lightning are born, and as present "in the womb of the waters." They refer to "the milk of Rta" and "the lowing milch-cows of Rta" whose udders overflow with milk. The wise are described as following the paths of Rta, striving after it, according with its ways. Rtam satyam vijñani: wisdom is knowing the truth of Rta.

This Indic concept is related to our word English right and German recht, which carry multiple meanings of true, rightness, and law. (As Judy Grahn has noted, a related name Rtu lies at the root of our word ritual and also had to do with women’s blood cycles.) Another form of this name shows up in Italy, where Venetic inscriptions circa 700 BCE invoke the goddess Rehtia. She is also depicted in little bronze amulets, which show her with spirals coiling around her body, or with concentric circles or sun signs stamped on her robes. She is clad in all forms of circles.

The Maya calendar is made up of multiple wheels-some smaller, some longer, intersecting each other in shorter and longer cycles. Some cycles are immense, like the great 13-baktun round of the Long Count which is due to conclude on the winter solstice in 2012. This culmination takes place at a time when our sun aligns with the galactic center of the Milky Way. The Maya never predicted the end of the world, as some have claimed, but simply the end of a Long Count that began in 3114 BCE. It’s notable that this timespan coincides with the upsurge of patriarchy, the first states, and written history. The great Powers are moving through time, and they want change. We want it too.

Well then. Fortuna granted me an invitation to teach in Wisconsin, by the shores of lake Michigan. What a gift, to sit by those lapping waters after many decades, on limestone boulders, with immense cottonwoods rustling behind, and milkweed spurting up through the sand. To decontract, bathing in the blessedness of Mother Nature, and to immerse in the lake. (But only for a moment, because that water is cold, even at the tip of June). It felt marvelous and transformative to dip into purity and vitality.

The news from the land in these parts is the emergence of the 17-year cicadas-the "locusts" of my West Chicago childhood. For long years they live underground as eggs and larvae, then surface for a summer blowout of sun, song, and sex. They lay their eggs and later in the year they die. I saw them perched on a peony bush, still and silent, looking back with unblinking red eyes. Later, they sang by vibrating their abdominal membranes, glorying in the sunlight. This buzzing song thrummed like ten thousand tiny sistrums in the trees and meadows.

So I was in Racine, by serendipity, to present at a Gaia’s Womb retreat themed as The Voice of a Woman. As we gathered for ritual the first evening, the wind was rising in the trees and thunderheads scudded across the dusky sky. An inversion layer hung in the east, the uppermost clouds flattened while below them waterspouts spiraled slowly down toward the lake. It started to rain as the ceremony began. Angie Buchanan spoke one sentence: "The power of one woman’s voice can change the world." There was the slightest pause - and the first burst of thunder rumbled and crescendoed.

Wooo. Everyone laughed, but we sat up and took notice. The Thunder Beings were in the house, and they had underlined this ritual declaration. The omen was timely. We’re at that moment of finding our voices yet again, speaking our truth in another round of discovery and clearing away barriers.

There were more omens. On the third day, I awoke at the crack of dawn, though by no stretch do I fall into the lark category. Menopause has taught me that at such times, there’s no point in just lying there. Least of all with the great lake a few hundred paces away. So I slipped outside, to the edge of the hill overlooking the water, and danced and sang to the eastern sky. It was good to be moving on the fragrant land, hearing bird calls and gazing out over the lake. I was finishing dancing the dawn, with my body turning - and there, walking across the grass, came three grayhaired women carrying spinning wheels.

That’s not a sight you see every day. The spinners approached smiling and nodding and sat down on nearby benches where they began to work wool. It was beautiful to watch them carrying out the ancient craft, sacrament of the Fates. Turns out they were local women attending the retreat, who raise sheep and card and spin and crochet the wool. We sat together and they showed me how to spin on a wheel. They told me about the kinds of wool as their fingers deftly spread the fibers and then twisted and fed them into the strands of yarn already wound onto their spools. All this reminded me of Wendish stories about the Pshi Polnitsa, who appears to people in the fields and loves to talk about all the phases of spinning and weaving. In that spirit of faerie apparitions, one of the women gifted me with a marvelous fluffball of carded white wool.

I told them about the clay spindle whorls of Troy, incised with the sign of whirling winds, a symbol which was still traditional for Russian distaffs in the 19th century. Lithuanians also carved the solar wheel on their distaffs, along with goddesses and serpents and trees of life. In Northwest America, the huge spindle whorls of Salish weavers were made for yarn as thick as a child’s finger. Some of the antique wooden whorls depict Raven and the sun with Frog and the moon. (The same pairs show up on the other side of the Pacific, on fine silk robes from ancient China). The frog in the moon is described as a weaver in several aboriginal traditions of Northwest America.

Back in San Francisco, women’s voices sounded the other night at the opening ceremonies of Mishkan Shekhinah. This movable sanctuary of the Jewish Goddess was convoked and priestessed by Deborah Grenn. She named it for "the Sanctuary in the wilderness and the dwelling place for the spirit of the Sacred Feminine on Earth." It has no fixed home, no physical temple space, as is the case for nearly all our communities wandering as landless children of Goddess. The longing for temples is palpable and on the minds of many. But in the meantime, like the wandering Hebrews, we create sacred space on the move.

Qadeshah. Watercolor by Max Dashú

For this Rosh Khodesh (new moon), we gathered for a reenvisioning of Judaic tradition with the female restored at the center. D’vorah Kelilah sang for us the classic cantillations, (including one in northern Canaanite dialect) in the most evocative way. It was spine-tingling to hear Cerise Beatty chanting the Yemenite and Sephardic and Ashkenazi melodies to harmonium and drum, with congregants singing along. I chanted an invocation of the divine names from Canaan, Judah and Israel. We anointed ourselves with water and with cedar oil, and everyone offered a mixture of barley and lavendar flowers with their prayers.

This convocation is part of a flowering new movement , conjoined with Kohenet, a priestess training program in the Jewish tradition. A restoration of women’s voices is under way, expressing and invoking the Sacred in their own right, as leaders and as co-creators and as advocates for life, peace and justice, throughout the spectrum of cultures.