Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry: Arational Learning in an Irrational World [1st ed.] 9783030457440, 9783030457457

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN MOVEMENT ACROSS EDUCATION, THE ARTS AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry Arational Learning in an Irrational World Barbara A. Bickel

Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences Series Editors Alexandra Lasczik School of Education Southern Cross University Bilinga, QLD, Australia Rita L. Irwin Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC, Canada

This series is a new and innovative proposition in the nascent and growing space of movement studies. Emerging and established scholars who are beginning to work within the contemporary practices and methods of movement, seek resources such as this series seeks to provide. Education is very much tied up within an awareness of space and place, for example, a school can begin to take on an identity of its own, with as much learning taking place within its corridors and playgrounds as occurs in the classrooms. As learners interact with these environments through movement it is essential for researchers to understand how these experiences can be understood, allowing for a very interdisciplinary approach. This series specifically explores a range of movement approaches, including but not limited to walking research, a relatively new and exciting field, along with several other paradigmic lenses. The series will be commissioning in the Palgrave Pivot format. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15783

Barbara A. Bickel

Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry Arational Learning in an Irrational World

Barbara A. Bickel Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL, USA

Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences ISBN 978-3-030-45744-0    ISBN 978-3-030-45745-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

I dedicate this book to Helen Bickel, the wom(b)an artist who is my mother, and to the wom(b)an artist in everyone.

Praise for Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry “Sacred song describes the sound and feel of this book. How indeed do we develop a transformative understanding needed for our world? Art as a relational encounter with spirit coming into form....is dropping popcorn from the darkness we have grown around our hearts. We can follow the trusting such acts hold for us. Mahalo Barbara for your own mutual emergence with Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry.” —Manulani Aluli Meyer, Associate Professor of Education, University of Hawaii, West Oʻahu, USA “Bickel’s daring  ritual and trance inquiry leading to educational writing  with inspiring  examples drawn from  artworking—like those of  Maya Deren,  Hélène Cixous, Gloria Anzaldúa, Marina Abramović—contributes to appreciating the radical significance of the woman artist for becoming aware of healing capacities offered through copoiesis between the humans, the treasures of nature, body, and earth and for spiritual knowledge. Thinking of art practices that reach the matrixial borderspaces and interval-times and engage compassionate wit(h)nessing and communicaring, the author offers her own practice-based trance guidelines for entry into a twilight zone of creativity.” —Bracha L. Ettinger, Artist, Philosopher, and Psychoanalyst, Paris & Tel Aviv “Bickel’s text soars to the sacred, to the cosmos, and back, unfolding the blooms of Earth to emerge and inmerge in essential breath. Situating herself in-between, tangled, she plucks the dripping ripeness out of life blood on her journey. Founded in arational governance, artist / researcher / teacher / writer are one, anticipating and honouring the threshold of new beginnings. Read to open yourself in new spaces!” —Pauline Sameshima, Canada Research Chair in Arts Integrated Studies, Lakehead University, Canada “Drawing its strength and evolutionary value from among Indigenous traditions and pantheistic modes of thought, Bickel’s study calls for the rematriation of human consciousness and realignment with the creative life force. This book provides an experiential process yet directs a critical eye upon the practices of educa-

tion, the nature of creativity, and the arational as a valid epistemological realm. It supplies flexible analytical frameworks for thinking about art, survival and one’s own relationship to both.” —Yvonne Owens, Professor of Art History and Critical Studies, The Victoria College of Art, Canada “With poetic prose and artful engagement, this book goes directly to the heart and soul of how trance-based art, and art-based trance, can return us to the kind of earth consciousness that has guided traditional Indigenous cultures for most of human history. Recognizing the current consequences of the loss of aesthetic self-­ expression and truth-seeking, it shows how we can re-create our world.” —Four Arrows, Doctoral Faculty, School of Leadership Studies, Fielding Graduate University, USA “The recent feminist post-secular return to religion and the sacred has taken many forms. Integrating ritual, art, and spirit, this book invites and guides readers to encounter the sacred anew, experientially and through matrixial lenses. Bickel’s perspectives offer a cogent counter to the perverse forms of entrancement currently pervading the symbolic violence of patriarchal culture, while simultaneously offering new important routes to cultural containment, integrity and resistance.” —Mary Condren, The Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and Director of Woman Spirit Ireland “In a world where we may question what it means to be human or more than human, Bickel’s inquiry illuminates these dark corridors of discovery and renewal, immersing the reader in the interconnected fields of spirituality, ritual, and trance, linked to aesthetics and ethics in art. Bickel illustrates how we may transport elements of the numinous to inspire and uplift on an individual and collective level—allowing compassion to impregnate artistic practice.” —Yantra de Vilder, Artistic Director, 5 Lands Walk Cultural and Spiritual Festival, Australia “Bickel fearlessly shares methods for creating art with radical awareness achieved in trance and ritual. Embracing artmaking as embodied sacred inquiry she explicates courageous practices of deep art that can liberate. Theoretically accessible and filled with strategies for expanding our own creative practices, her vision offers the possibility for authentic deep healing to counter individual and collective cultural traumas we live with.” —Helen Klebesadel, Emeritus Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA

“Barbara Bickel has written an extraordinary book that will serve artists, art educators, and all those who understand the importance of internal inquiry! Much like the mother spruce tree, this work by Bickel encourages stillness, reflection, connected knowing, and putting roots deep down into ourselves, into our silences as a way of connected knowing. Let us receive what emerges!” —Holly Cormier, Clinical Psychologist and SIU Clinical Center Director, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA “As bushfires rage in our state, Bickel’s call to breathe healing rituals into our connections with Earth, community and the world seem especially pertinent. Bickel finds, guides, and  engages with liminal spaces of the real world by opening up awake-dreaming, trance and practice-rituals that establish ways of  wit(h)nessing and communicaring with our non/human world. The positioning of connective aesthetics and matrixial theory as ways to explore ritual-as-art validates the role of the intuitive, spiritual, and relational.” —Geraldine Burke, Lecturer, Monash University, Australia

Foreword

Here is a book which goes beyond ordinary understandings of time and space, offering us wisdom marinated in a lifelong artistic practice, connecting the earth and ethereal realms. I receive this book as a blessing and reading is an entrance to a womb and borderland, which traverses into the interior life. One cannot be static in the listening to this book; it is a bright invitation to the relationship between the visible and invisible threads knitted through both the sensuous and sacred. The ancient and contemporary practices of ritual and trance inquiry and the place of dreams and the unconscious are given as a portal to other worlds. These are worlds which can save and heal us where one’s existence cries out for a path more than what is just seen. Truly through an arational view, steeped in the tradition and conversations of many scholars, performance artists, seekers and mystics there is a matrixial, earth-based feminism that is relational and indicative of spirit womanfesting into form. I am emboldened and inspired to attend to what I deeply long for through this work. Bickel’s work is steeped in mystery, and in the reading we are invited into a space which holds us, waits for us to come and be changed in the hearing. Here ritual and art become partners and in a humble and fertile way we are asked to listen to our own hearts and bodies through the meeting of art and everyday life and the more-than-human world. This is the place where dreams are food, and ruminations are the paints for the canvas, and the liminalities of our own lives the movements for creation. This book is truly a piece of art and beautifully written, excavated from the immersion of scholars who bring life, art, poetics, spirit and the sensual xi

xii 

FOREWORD

together. It is both feminist and feminine, giving us room to imagine and reimagine. Not only are we guided by Bickel’s words and practical exercises, but companioned by so many other scholars and artists who fill these pages for ways to bring ritual to the workings of life and art. Art, Ritual and Trance Inquiry is a threshold crossing and the gift of it is to reclaim ritual in the performative learning process, and bringing soul to the academy. I have entered a womb of wonder in reading this book and I invite you to do the same. Burnaby, BC, Canada

Celeste Snowber

Series Editor Preface

This is the second book in a series entitled the Palgrave Studies in Movement Across Education, the Arts and Social Sciences. The series is dedicated to interdisciplinary research that reimagines how movement might be understood, enacted, pursued and lived as research method, practice and praxis. It is open to a deep and broad range of disciplines, fields and paradigms. Barbara Bickel takes up this challenge through her artistic and educational inquiries that study the nature of ritual and trance-­ based practices within collaborative groups of women artists. The work is uniquely sacred and place-based as it seeks geopoetic engagements across countries and other forms of conceptual, ontological, and geographic explorations. Movement becomes understood as travelling across human and non-human realms, across dreams and creative processes, and across natural, historical, and cultural worlds. This book uniquely takes up movement as method, practice and praxis as part of this series through the embodiment and enactment of art, ritual and trance. As a result, we are introduced to an array of concepts that inspire us to rethink popular conceptions of research, art and learning. Bilinga, QLD, Australia Vancouver, BC, Canada

Alexandra Lasczik Rita L. Irwin

xiii

Preface

it’s the artist who writes with the colour of script…. the script roams unimpeded Art, ritual and trance are spaces of the in-between, the liminal realms where traces of the numinous can be encountered. As a non-place the numinous holds the mysteries that oblige our human curiosity to inquire, learn and unlearn while simultaneously frightening us. This book is about learning and finding arational ways to take us to the awaiting threshold. Art led me deep into relationship with the spirit world as an emergent collaborative artist in the late 1980s. Sacred circles with women in the early 1990s initiated me into ritualizing. A dedicated and conscious trance practice was ushered into my life in 1999 when I studied with priestesses in the Reclaiming Wiccan tradition.1 Within this welcoming community I studied and practiced their forms of ritual and trance.2 In 2000, trance entered my art practice. That year, in an effort to work through a difficult conflict with an artist collaborator in a project exploring the woman warrior, we invited a Reclaiming priestess to facilitate and witness our trance journeys as a way to understand the struggles blocking us. The conflict was never resolved in the personal relationship but the gift that emerged from engaging the trance process, as a conflict process, was invaluable. This experience became a door that opened the power for regenerative and healing trance practices in my art, as well as in my life. Desiring to expand and deepen my art practice I undertook an autoethnographic Masters of Arts in Education thesis in 2002 where I expanded upon the then newly developing arts-based educational inquiry method of xv

xvi 

PREFACE

a/r/tography to include a/r/tography as ritual.3 Reclaiming trances as well as Ecstatic Trance Postures4 (facilitated by a friend and collaborating artist Tannis Hugill) were included as inquiry processes of the study into the relationship between the female body and the word. Embracing trance as inquiry in my thesis led to understanding trance as a female sentence unfolding from within a feminine principle, having no need of rigid form or traditional structures. Thus, began my entryway into the enfleshment of writing and breaking of a deep-seeded silencing of my spoken and written voice. Prior to graduate studies I had avoided writing as a burdensome task. A/r/tography embraces a dialectical relationship between art and writing and gave me a significant new perspective into writing as inquiry. Interweaving for the first time, inquiry-based writing, artmaking, ritualizing, trance and study, made it possible for me to move through resistances as restorative and transformative experiential learning. A/r/tography as a ritualizing process assisted the integration of body/ mind/spirit offering a synecdochical (part and whole) practice, urging me to write integrally within the multiple roles of the artist/researcher/teacher. Even so, while writing, my sense of betrayal of the visual image in my use of words haunted me. The title of my thesis art exhibition “Who will read this body?” emerged from a private performance ritual witnessed and documented by two women friends while in a forest surrounding the campus (endowed to the university by the Indigenous Musqueam people). The intention of the performance ritual, which marked the start of my research process was to write stream of consciousness thoughts onto the naked skin of my entire body, bringing the body and text together. This was magnified on the day of the ritual as it coincided with the first day of my menstrual cycle; calling me to write onto my skin with my menstrual blood. I was compelled through the creative research, writing, gallery installation and gallery performance ritual to answer the question that emerged in the forest ritual. I wanted to find a way to bring the female body, image and alphabet into mutual relationship, to be read in a healing way. Although not intending to remain in academia I felt I had only begun to uncover something significant and continued on with a Ph.D. in Art Education.5 Here I returned to my collaborative art practices and engaged a/r/tography as ritual in collaboration. In this study trance as a female sentence continued to materialize within the circle of women spiritual leaders. The years of following the path of arts-based radical relatedness in graduate studies found me transitioning to becoming a professor and arts-based researcher. As a professional artist-educator I continued to carry the female sentence into academia through developing art, ritual

 PREFACE 

xvii

and trance as inquiry and learning processes strongly influenced by participation in the spiritual feminist and Earth-based Gestare Art Collective, a collective co-founded one year into my tenure-track professorship. Most recently, I have been called to teach the process of ritual and trance-based inquiry to artists and arts educators as a way to expand possibilities of the human imaginary. I am grateful for the students in Egypt, Canada and the United States who journeyed with such openness and vulnerability in the first workshops and courses I offered on trance-based inquiry and learning. The curriculum for those classes contribute to the practices shared in each chapter in this book. The process of writing this book was impacted by the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) and its 94 calls to action of. When writing about the places I have lived and created upon, I honour the TRC findings. I acknowledge particular Indigenous peoples and lands throughout the book. Drawing upon the wisdom of Indigenous-based educators I learn from their ways and open myself to the tragic results of colonization as best I can. Endeavoring to recognize and remember Indigenous peoples for their ways of knowing and for their years of caring for the land with respect and reverence. I have observed in myself and others that powerful learning and unlearning can emerge from altered states of consciousness attended to through creative processes, ritualizing, dreaming and trance encounters in and with historical, cultural, sacred and natural worlds. The inquiry work of this book draws from sacred place-based and geopoetic6 explorations that engage life on the Earth with an invitational gesturing to human and more-than-human realms. It is the Earth supported experience of consciously dreaming while awake that I aspire to awaken and share in this book with all life-long learners, academics, artists, healers and seekers of mystery. In November of 2018 I entered a trance to find a double to assist my writing process (see Trance Practice Five). I entered the awake-dream journey while under a tree on a hillside near my home (see Image 1). I then came home, transcribed and re-rendered the trance geopoetically. Throughout a year of prairie-coloured seasons I visited, talked with and received support from these communicaring7 allies while writing. I hold deep gratitude for the mother tree and natural grasses on the hillside that held me steadfastly. As a mutual entry point into the book with you, dear reader, I share at this preface portal the trance-based poetic writing co-­ created with my trance allies.

xviii 

PREFACE

Trance to Meet My Writing Double Stepping off paved path feet touching long grasses hands arms greet mother spruce tree Crouching I lean into her backbone meeting bark in front of me is a tree behind me another tree I am protected Nestling close I encircle her knowing others have curled in sleeping dreaming upon bed of spruce needles smells so good In curled state I burrow pinecone seeding under branches grateful for shelter for rest my fetal position sheltering internal organs secure I leave this nested seed Sliding down one of her roots underground feeders guiding directing me following trusting

 PREFACE 

radical roots descending the escarpment with weight of gravity pulling rolling rolling down Amidst long grasses scent of spruce tree still lingering beat of my heart a steady connection with the mother tree Standing upright I find a path walk eastward bushes beckon me to stop and sit Inhale exhale I invite my double co-conscious collaborator to join with me co-write with me Tall long and thin a prairie grass with curled spiral leaf blade she moves with the elements of wind and sun When the sun shines she’s happy absorbing holding the sun inside when the sun retreats she draws on it still

xix

xx 

PREFACE

And she writes wind assisting her composing the environment she is a script maker a trance-scriptum She gives me permission to be blown by winds reminds me be firmly planted rooted with freedom wind delivers “remember your connection to the source the sun the energy giver” she says Curly blade tip writes hues emerge spiral expands generating sun rainbows from the verve of her trance-scriptions Reaching a point she says “don’t be afraid of colour” by colour she means be creative outside of the box not trapped in academic writing it’s the artist who writes with the colour of script “might even want to make your pages colour” she advises So I am a bit nervous is it the colour making me nervous? she assures me “you have many allies in the grasses

 PREFACE 

the plants offering calligraphic words start with radiant colour in the widest sense” Her writing travels while she remains rooted in place her words move with the wind co-writing moving further and further diverse shades unfurl the script roams unimpeded Aware of my heart beat my humanness my own inner breath my own inner wind creating body movement Her breath comes from the atmosphere as does mine I possess lungs to hold breath momentarily before it infuses my body breath keeps my heart beating my fingers typing my body strong fluently flowing a beautiful gift of the wind Words of wisdom to remember my nervousness in part is ambivalence afraid I’ve received enough while at the same time not enough

xxi

xxii 

PREFACE

She says “it’s okay you can breathe me back in” she’ll still be here I say “thanks thank you for your beauty the simple complexity I’ve got it I’ve got it farewell” inhaling slowly I feel her landing deep in my lungs I retrace my steps walking the bottom of the hill studying the path travelled see the place where I rolled down the hill I lay down tree roots call to me draw me uphill gathering me pulling me back to the seed awaiting under the mother spruce tree Passing through the seed I rise to the Earth’s surface resting on bed of spruce needles In present time now in the warmth of the sun I hear magpie see him fly over the tree see the wind move her boughs thank you mother tree

 Preface 

xxiii

thank you oh thank you Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Barbara Bickel

Notes 1. See http://witchcamp.org/index.php/reclaimingtradition 2. I hold gratitude for Reclaiming Priestesses Sage Goode and Bridgid McGowan, my trance teachers. 3. http://barbarabickel.netfirms.com/barbarabickel.com/masters/ index.html 4. Based on the work of anthropologist Felicitas Goodman. http://www.cuyamungueinstitute.com/ 5. http://barbarabickel.netfirms.com/barbarabickel.com/phd/index.html 6. Initially developed by Kenneth White. http://www.geopoetics.org.uk/ geopoetics-conference-2019/ 7. Communicaring is a matrixial theory term that ‘“communicates” without communication as it takes care of the potentiality of reception in any future seer” 24.

References Ettinger, Bracha L. 2009. Fragilization and Resistance. Studies in The Maternal 1 (2): 1–31. www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk White, Kenneth. 2001. Geopoetics: Place, Culture, World. Edinburgh: Alba.

Acknowledgements

This is my first solo-authored book but it is more truly writing infused within and by community. A community that includes Nature, specifically the mother spruce tree and escarpment grasses who became writing spirit allies. I begin my human acknowledgements by sharing deep gratitude for the visionary co-editors of the book series Alexandra Lasczik and Rita L. Irwin, who never wavered in their confidence in me or their respect and support for this book. Their support was extended by the Palgrave editorial team of Milana Veronikova, Eleanor Christie and Linda Braus who patiently walked me through each stage of the publication. My writing process was kept on track by my Earth regenerative “co-creative cauldron” weekly writing partner Marna Hauk, who energized me with her vast wisdom. I hold much gratitude for two beautiful women friends, Pamela Richardson and Patricia Sereno who attentively read and edited the first draft, treating the manuscript as a precious new birth. Later in the process invaluable feedback was honestly given by creative artists Hallie Morrison, Richard Bickel, Holly Cormier, Tomas Jonsson, Geraldine Burke, and Sheri-D Wilson. Assisting further, many collaborators in the book co-­ edited their sections with me, Medwyn McConachy, Nané Jordan, Wendalyn Bartley, Tannis Hugill, Mary Blaze, and Yantra de Vilder. Thank you! Over the years I have been blessed by many co-writing relationships, many who have also been mentoring co-editors, in particular I recognize my spirit-infused co-editors Susan Walsh and Carl Leggo, who also introduced me to found poems, and Sally Gradle and Peter London. Foundational in my writing evolution was the Women Writing Women xxv

xxvi 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Collective who nourished me through five years of graduate school. I consider myself fortunate to have gardened in soil tilled for the field of arts-­ based educational research by artists, teachers and scholars before and with me, enabling me to plant my own seeds. I am forever grateful for having found this creative and generative garden in the academy. I also acknowledge the many women and artists collaborators from the past 30 years, too many to name here, who have indelibly expanded my creative life. Extraordinary women have held me steadfast on a spiritual feminist artistic path. The beloved women of the Woman’s Spirituality Celebration all of whom have been wit(h)nesses with me the past 20 years. Through this generous circle, future woman artists collaborators emerged, walking alongside me as powerful trance-formative woman artists in this world, many of whom are in the book. I extend gratitude to truth-telling sister and dancing trance partner Tannis Hugill, audacious dancer, poet, and scholar Celeste Snowber, and wise visual artist Mary Blaze. All shed a bright light into the future revealing what can be achieved if you hold true to what you are here for on this Earth. I am forever beholden to my Gestare Art Collective sisters, Nané Jordan, Medwyn McConachy, Cindy Lou Griffith, Wendalyn Bartley and Ingrid Rose. Words cannot pay tribute to the abundance of inspiration, patience and love I have received from each of you as spirit sisters in unique and precious ways. May the gift of our artworkings birthed from the restorative and trance-formative collective wombspace of Gestare continue to touch and transform others. Lastly, I hold deep appreciation for my life-partner R. Michael Fisher, as he is the one who has been asking me, for more years than I can count, “when will you write your book?” Ever patient in his creative frustration alongside me, he lives the wom(b)an artist path in radical trust with me. He is my enduring communicaring wit(h)ness on the path of fearlessness we stepped on together those many years ago, without whom I would not be who I am today. Thank you to those who graciously granted permission for photo images in the book, R. Michael Fisher, Gregory Wendt, Megan Centzone, Medwyn McConachy, Mary Blaze, Leone Leighton, and Yantra de Vilder. For the lyric permission of the chant “The Blood of the Ancients,” I thank Elena Klaver. A book trailer can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/445949152 Thank you Wendalyn Bartley, Yantra de Vilder and Medwyn McConachy for your voices in this trailer.

Contents

1 Introduction: An Earth-Based Sensual Spirituality of Art, Ritual and Trance  1 Sensual Spirituality   3 Art as Compassion   4 Invitation into Ritual   5 Following the Spirit of Art into Matrixial Borderspace(s)   6 Wit(h)nessing Eyes Close(d)  10 Lifting the Veil  12 Overview of Chapters  14 Ritual Practice One: Ritual Space Creation  15 References  18 2 A/r/tography as Ritual and Dreaming in Matrixial Borderspace(s) 21 A/r/tography as Ritual and Radical Relationality  22 Ritualizing  24 Dreaming  27 Dream  28 Matrixial Theory and Healing  30 Becoming a Woman Artist  33 Communicaring Through Performance Ritual  35 Matrixial Gift Economy  38 Art Practice One: Spontaneous Creation-Making  42 References  45 xxvii

xxviii 

Contents

3 Trance, Sacred Place and Collaboration 49 Trance-Based Inquiry  50 Trance-Based Learning  54 Sacred Place  57 Tree Earthvox  59 Artist Collaboration  61 A Collaborative Aesthetic  61 Ma Aesthetic and Collaboration  64 Artist Collectives  65 Trance Practice One: Journey to a Sacred Place  67 References  71 4 Artists and Trance 73 Woman Artists and Trance  74 Trance Practice Two: Awake-Dream Walking  88 References  90 5 The Gestare Art Collective: With Nané Jordan and Medwyn McConachy 93 Art Practice Two: Making and Walking a Labyrinth  95 The Dialogue  97 Trance Practice Three: Tree-Friending Practice  113 References 114 6 Attending to Ancient Voices117 Sound, Art and Healing 118 Voicing the Stones: A Performance Ritual 124 Wendalyn Bartley: A Healing Journey with Art 126 Baba Yaga Soundwalk 128 The Shamanic Artistry of Tanya Tagaq 129 Trance Practice Four: Awake Field Attunement as Sounding/Listening 131 References 134

 Contents 

xxix

7 Performance Ritual: With Tannis Hugill137 Dream 138 The Dialogue 139 Trance Practice Five: Double as Ally 154 References 156 8 Dreaming into Lines of Matrixial Time157 The Day Between the Worlds 158 Women ‘Enduring Freedom’ 161 Art as a Gift of Testimony 166 Ritual Practice Two: Closing Ritual 168 References 170 Index173

List of Images

Image 1.1 Image 1.2 Image 2.1 Image 2.2 Image 2.3 Image 2.4 Image 3.1 Image 3.2 Image 3.3 Image 3.4

Image 4.1

Gibraltar Point Beach, 2013. (Toronto Island, Ontario, photo Barbara Bickel) 9 Barbara Bickel, Without Effort, 2009. Mixed media drawing and collage on canvas, 61 x 51 inches 11 Barbara Bickel, Metramorphosis book, 2012-ongoing. Canvas, paper, acrylic, conté, graphite, silk thread, string, buttons, 12 × 15.5 × 1 inches 29 Bracha L. Ettinger, Eurydice – Medusa – Pieta, n. 2, 2015–2018. (Oil on canvas, 40 × 30 cm, @ Courtesy of the artist)32 Mary Beth Edelson-performance debrief, 2010. (Carbondale, Illinois, photo Gregory Wendt) 37 Making Eye Contact performance, 2010. (Carbondale, Illinois, photo Barbara Bickel) 38 Tree-Leaning, 2017. (Banff Artist Residency, Alberta, photo R. Michael Fisher) 57 Tree-Friend Hug, 2017. (Carbondale, Illinois, photo Megan Centonze)60 R. Michael Fisher and Barbara Bickel, Ludic Transmissions. 2018, mixed media on canvas, 24 × 36 inches 62 Yantra de Vilder writing down lyrics with her Underworld collage and Barbara’s Ninshuba collage on wall behind, 2018. (Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, Alberta, Canada, photo Barbara Bickel) 65 Barbara Bickel, Fallen Tree Time, 2017. (Video still) (https://doi.org/10.1007/000-08p)77

xxxi

xxxii 

List of Images

Image 4.2 Image 5.1 Image 5.2 Image 5.3 Image 5.4 Image 5.5 Image 5.6 Image 6.1 Image 6.2 Image 6.3 Image 6.4 Image 7.1 Image 7.2 Image 7.3 Image 7.4 Image 7.5 Image 7.6

Barbara Bickel, Spinning Red Words on Paper, 2004. Mixed media collage on wood, 12 × 24 inches, MA thesis exhibition, Vancouver, British Columbia 81 Three Circuit Cretan Labyrinth drawing directions, 2019. (Courtesy of Barbara Bickel) 95 Gestare artists with Dream Scroll, Barbara, Cindy Lou, Nané and Medwyn, 2018. (Vancouver, British Columbia, photo Barbara Bickel) 97 MA Pose Twelve (Double goddess pose) with Gestare, 2018. (Vancouver, British Columbia, photo Barbara Bickel) 104 Dakini pose at the first Nap-In with Dream Scroll, 2011. (STAG, Vancouver, British Columbia, photo Barbara Bickel) 107 Labyrinth Making and Walking Barbara’s Birthday, 2011. (Carbondale, Illinois, video still R. Michael Fisher) (https:// doi.org/10.1007/000-08q)108 Placenta Performance Ritual with Nané, Medwyn, Barbara & Wendalyn, 2010. (Gibraltar Point Beach, Toronto Ontario, video still Barbara Bickel) 111 Erinyes, Gestare sounding, 2009. (Gibraltar Point Beach, Toronto, Ontario, photo Medwyn McConachy) 119 Barbara Bickel, Oracular Co-Encounters installation, 2012. (Southern Illinois University Museum, Carbondale, Illinois) 121 Stillpoint installation, 2007. (Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto, Ontario, photo Barbara Bickel) 125 Tanya Tagaq performing at Calgary, Calgary Folk Festival, 2017. (Photo Barbara Bickel) 129 Re/Turning to Her performance ritual with Tannis & Barbara, 2006. (Vancouver, British Columbia, photo R. Michael Fisher) 139 Ahh, Tannis in performance ritual, 2005. (Vancouver, British Columbia, video still Barbara Bickel) 141 Moving with Stones, Tannis in performance ritual, 2012. (Vancouver, British Columbia, photo Yvonne Chew, @ courtesy of Tannis Hugill) 142 Spirituality of Eroticism performance ritual with Barbara and Kathryn McGregor, 1999. (The New Gallery, Calgary Alberta, photo Alanna Lafayette, @ courtesy of Barbara Bickel) 143 Re/Turning to Her performance ritual labyrinth, 2007. (Vancouver, British Columbia, photo R. Michael Fisher) 149 Barbara Bickel, Ancestral Journey III, 2012. (Carbondale Illinois, video still) (https://doi.org/10.1007/000-08r) 150

  List of Images 

Image 7.7 Image 8.1 Image 8.2 Image 8.3 Image 8.4 Image 8.5 Image 8.6 Image 8.7

xxxiii

Tracing the Ancestors, Tannis and Barbara in studio, 2019. (Vancouver Dance Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, video still Barbara Bickel) 152 Ancestral Shawl knitting, 2019. (Calgary, Alberta, photo by R. Michael Fisher) 159 Mary Blaze & Barbara Bickel, Women ‘Enduring Freedom’ V, 2001. Acrylic and charcoal on canvas & mixed media on board, 60 × 36 inches 162 Barbara Bickel, Woman, 2001. Mixed media on board, 10 × 12 inches 163 Barbara Bickel, Rite, 2001. Mixed media on board 12 × 10 inches164 Barbara Bickel, Ghost, 2001. Mixed media on wood, 9 × 9 inches165 Anatomy of Grief performance, Celeste Snowber with Blaze & Bickel art, 2001. (Campbell River, British Columbia, photo by Leone Leighton) 166 Barbara sitting with grasses on Bow River Escarpment, 2019. (Calgary, Alberta, photo R. Michael Fisher) 169

Author Biography

Barbara Bickel, Ph.D.  is an artist, researcher, and teacher committed to weaving the spirit of art and healing with culture and education. An Associate Professor of Art Education, Emeritas at Southern Illinois University she lives in Canada where she co-founded Studio M*: A Research Creation Lab Intersecting Arts, Culture and Healing with her life-partner. She has a multi-media studio and ritual performance practice and exhibits internationally. Her research interests include arts-based inquiry, a/r/tography as ritual, trance-based inquiry and learning, collaboration, socially engaged art, matrixial theory, feminist spirituality, and restorative and transformative learning. She has published articles and book chapters widely in fields such as art education, curriculum, mothering studies, and visual art. She is co-founder, former Editor-­In-­Chief, and Editorial Board member of the Springer International book series Studies in Arts-Based Educational Research, as well as co-founder and co-editor of Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal. Along with Susan Walsh and Carl Leggo, she co-edited the book Arts-Based and Contemplative Practices in Research and Teaching: Honoring Presence. To view her art and research visit www.barbarabickel.ca and www.studiom.space

xxxv

Mother Spruce Tree, 2019. Calgary, Alberta, photo R. Michael Fisher

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: An Earth-Based Sensual Spirituality of Art, Ritual and Trance

Abstract  This chapter begins to explore methods of inquiry and learning to engage a rematriation that includes grieving for and with the Earth our m/other. New old ways of reclaiming and regenerating human arational abilities are introduced through teaching and practicing art, ritual and trance as inquiry processes (not requiring drugs and/or paranormal or psychic abilities) are introduced. The chapter closes with an invitation into a ritual practice of creating sacred space for inquiry and learning. Keywords  Art • Ritual • Trance • Matrixial • Borderspaces • Bracha Ettinger • Art • Compassion • Sensual spirituality • Earth • Rematriation • Arational • Worldviews Tea steeps in blue mug reach for candle, strike a match circle of warmth spreads.

© The Author(s) 2020 B. A. Bickel, Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_1

1

2 

B. A. BICKEL

Her artworking on compassion and spirit, the psyche within the cosmos, beyond modernity its “empathy versus abstraction” In Western historical abstraction, such a feminine-matrixial dimension was unimaginable (found in Ettinger1)

Art, ritual and trance inquiry invite an interrelational entrance into fascinating liminal spaces of knowing, not knowing and being. When the entrance is related to a place, geologically and sacredly, the voice of the Earth can emerge and “inmerge”2 with the inquirer. Listening to the voice of the Earth while in the writing inquiry process I awoke to becoming the Earth, answering the call of poets; Hélène Cixous, who beckons us to become “the earth of writing,”3 and Marna Hauk who illuminates Earthvox or the Earth’s voice through dreaming and writing of/with/for/as the Earth’s voice. Because of this I capitalize Earth when it appears throughout the book, acknowledging my place as an earthling.4 This book offers methods of inquiry and learning to engage a rematriation that includes grieving for and with the Earth our m/other. New old ways of reclaiming and regenerating human arational abilities are introduced through teaching and practicing art, ritual and trance as inquiry processes (not requiring drugs and/or paranormal or psychic abilities). The arational, drawing from poet philosopher Jean Gebser,5 is a form of knowing that includes the body, emotions, senses, intuition, imagination, artmaking, the mystical, spiritual and relational, alongside the rational. The arational viewed from the Western rational perspective, has most often been confused with the irrational, thus disqualifying it as a valid and significant site of learning. The arational has historically been acknowledged and valued within mystic traditions, and by artists.6 Through inquiry focused artmaking this book journeys into the arational, numinous experiences of place, ritual, trance-based inquiry and learning. Introduced through a lens of a/r/tography as ritual, the reader is presented with art, artists, theories, and art/trance practices. Within a/r/tography as

1  INTRODUCTION: AN EARTH-BASED SENSUAL SPIRITUALITY OF ART… 

3

ritual the spaces of trance and ritual open up artistic inquiry, extending, deepening, and integrating what is revealed in the process. Interweaving learning, unlearning, and making, with place and sacred space7 a/r/tography as ritual is where one’s existence is opened up rather than closed down. Art and sensual spirituality are the heart and circulatory system of the book, trance-formation is the taught practice, and ritual is the holding vessel. Throughout the book “found poems” embody academic thought co-poetically. They are “poems found in the environment, composed from words and phrases in previous existing texts.” Original words may be altered, omitted or changed. The source of the text is in brackets below the poem.8 Haikus are planted as earthling seeds at the start of each chapter sharing a moment of ritual taking place during the writing process.9 They are offered as a sacred Earth-based reflective pause for the reader to remember the rich soil found in their own daily rituals.

Sensual Spirituality Blood and bone, prayers and praise, sinking into the mystery of all our cells a dancing exegete. Here is the call to dance a sacred space for embodied inquiry. (found in Celeste Snowber10)

A sensual spirituality returns one to embodied ecstatic experiences on the Earth and is ultimately about coming to our senses.11 Acknowledging ourselves as sensorial earthlings indwelling with spirit is a step toward waking up and counteracting the dissociated relationship of humans with the Earth and each other. An interrupted dance that separated mind and body flourished during the Enlightenment in its privileging of rationality, and male-dominated sciences as the one way to truth. In dissociating from feminine and Indigenous Earth-based wisdom we have devolved into living in a post-truth era where irrationality, fed by fear, violence and domination has infiltrated the life world.12 Indigenous teacher Manu Aluli Meyer of Hawaii offers teachings about loving from her tradition that

4 

B. A. BICKEL

distinguishes the differences between knowledge, knowing and understanding, where “knowledge is a noun, knowing a verb, and understanding is the liberating practice.” Teaching how, “truth telling is a higher frequency than the accumulations of facts,” and that the planet is asking for a “new old intelligence” where ‘knowledge’ is for surfacing ideas, ‘knowing’ is to embody and live the ideas, and ‘understanding’ (Aloha) intelligence is based in awareness that is coherent and guides us to meet life through giving service to the greater whole, remembering that “true wealth is about giving.”13 To access new old understandings as Aloha intelligence and interrupt destructive irrational human entrancement, most visible in our crumbling political arenas, and increasing levels of anxiety and psychic pain, we require all of our healthy rational and arational abilities and skills to wake up together. To re-learn how to live compassionately and truthfully with the Earth that Western culture has damaged, many say near to beyond repair for human survival, calls for rematriation14 of ourselves with the Earth and the cosmos. The worldviews and theories presented in this book support practices for returning to our senses and awakening earthling consciousness to a truth telling, compassionate and loving cosmic awareness; they are matrixial, Indigenous, spiritual feminist, and Earth-based ways. The combination of these worldviews assisted in me coming to greater understanding of my implicit role in the tragedy of colonial history as a woman of European descent born and living with privilege on the land of North America, I call home.

Art as Compassion Art as I understand and experience it is a relational encounter and expression with spirit coming into form. It holds the potential to “bring into being objects, events, processes or encounters” that aesthetically and ethically impact the maker and receiver.15 Art as a living inquiry practice opens into ecstatic experience with spirit. Artworking then is to be humbled in the presence of spirit’s incarnation. Artworking is a relational matrixial term offered by artist, philosopher and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger as a process of encountering and breaking ourselves open to the lifeforce of the other.16 In the breaking we experience loss, and thus artworking, as a work of mourning opens to grief and its companion mystery.17 Poet and dancer Celeste Snowber in writing of grief and loss in her book “Embodied Prayer” shares that “Death truly removes the breath of life, but the horror of loss changes the rhythm of our own breath.”18 Through artworking, the rhythm of our breath is altered. Griefwork, when in relationship with

1  INTRODUCTION: AN EARTH-BASED SENSUAL SPIRITUALITY OF ART… 

5

art, draws us to mystery with the desire to rediscover what has faded away; been lost to the world. Relationships between the art, maker and receiver reverberate in unpredictable ways “as the wound that continues unknowingly to bleed from the trauma of the world.”19 Snowber advises wisely that “If we deny ourselves the opportunity to voice our laments as a community, we deny one another the gift of compassion as well.”20 Art understood as a relational encounter with life can lead to the gift of compassion in the presence of trauma, not limited to those professionally trained in art. Art is foremost a birthright we have access to at any time we choose. Art then calls us to develop disciplined practices to acquire technical skills and abilities to express spirits’ gift. We can engage its sensual spiritual qualities, in any of its many myriads of form, be they visual, literary, performative or musical. To create the container for engaging art as an ecstatic experience with spirit I create rituals inside and outside the studio. Ritual scholar Thomas Driver describes the nourishing location of ritual as the making of alternative worlds that sustain us with creative visions.21 Apart from ordinary life, ritual travels within liminal spaces, in the margins and spaces between what we know as ‘the real world.’ It is within the sacred space of ritual that spirit is invoked and encountered. Artworking can thus unfold with a compassionate cosmic consciousness.

Invitation into Ritual Rituals are not “givens,” because we create them as we receive them from traditions and revelations Rituals transpire (trans, spirare + to breath across). (found in Ronald Grimes22)

Anthropologist Gregory Bateson wrote of the danger of a system dominated by rationality and the significance of reclaiming our arational abilities and processes. “Mere purposive rationality unaided by such phenomena as art, religion, [ritual,] dreams, and the like, is necessarily pathologic and destructive of life.”23 To assist in aiding arational practices to come to the fore of inquiry and learning processes, this book offers a simple structural form for ritual to guide ritualizing. You are invited each time you pick up the book to enter ritual space. The simple process includes:

6 

B. A. BICKEL

• setting an intention which grounds and clarifies the purpose of the ritual, • entering a chosen or created sacred space which acts as a safe sanctuary, • engaging an intentional form of witnessing that may or may not include other human beings and, • bringing the ritual to completion with some manner of sacred closure that allows one to leave the ritual space and its process to return to an ordinary state of consciousness and ordinary life. A ritual practice to set sacred space is offered at the end of this chapter and a closing ritual practice in Chapter Eight.

Following the Spirit of Art into Matrixial Borderspace(s) Long before learning about matrixial borderspace(s), the gift of following the spirit of art entered my life offering the radical trust that life, as an artist, demands. I consider myself more than fortunate to have met, at that same time, a life partner also living life in radical trust. Con-joining journeys with Michael, who already was living what he called “the path of fearlessness,”24 we have travelled as inquiring artists-teachers-leaders on an expansive and at times rocky path since 1991. Similar to Carl Jung’s understanding of the collective inheritance of a collective unconscious,25 the path of fearlessness holds inherited pathways and when engaged writes collective stories anew. It is the path where one can developmentally search for non-fear-based practices, structures and bridges to straddle the seemingly impossible task of living life from a base of love rather than fear. An impossible-possible choice made more complex due to accumulation of individual and collective cultural traumas haunting us as visible and invisible ghosts daily. Early in my academic career the gift of spiritual feminism found me.26 I understand the spiritual as inclusive of, but not limited to, the adherence to and practice of particular religious doctrines. It is the regenerative source of all, and ones’ deepest connection and knowledge of the sacred. Spirit then is immanent and transcendent, infusing ones’ mind, body and soul, “moving all that is, and all that will be.”27 Con-joining spiritual with feminist locates my understanding of its purpose as a global wholistic

1  INTRODUCTION: AN EARTH-BASED SENSUAL SPIRITUALITY OF ART… 

7

social justice movement interconnected with and for all beings, sentient and non-sentient, in the cosmos. Following the path of fearlessness led by the spirit of art can become the gift of what educator and psychoanalyst Deborah Britzman names novel education, where education can be posed, presented, and encountered without genetic or dogmatic defenses, when learning and not learning can be read between lines of theory and practice, where education may be presented aesthetically, interminably affected by what is sublime in procedures of its own narration. (found in Deborah Britzman28)

The gift of the spirit of art has been the fearless medium, method, medicine, and novel education enabling me to communicate with cultural hauntings in the world. Art performs as an aesthetic and ethical conduit, in the form of spirit, writing the narrative leading to the portal for entering what Bracha Ettinger names “matrixial borderspace(s);” a borderland, an in-between space, always in presence/absence as a de-centered edge in relationship with the phallic realm. Not in oppositional duality with the phallic but co-existing.29 Attuning to matrixial borderspace(s) we have the opportunity to slide out of the seductive fear-based phallic realm so dominant in our world and to fearlessly be with/in a relational matrixial realm. The matrixial, although not consciously remembered, is experienced pre-­ birth by all of us in our mother’s womb. Matrixial theory, written more fully of in Chapter Two, is womb and love-based intended, and stitched into this book to re-enforce the co-inquiry-based processes of trance, ritual and art out-side of a fear-based worldview. Matrixial borderspace(s) are vulnerable entry points essential for aesthetical and ethical healing, both individually and collectively. To counter accepted fear-based phallic theories obsessed with clarity and control, Ettinger is committed to developing a nurturing matrixial language not

8 

B. A. BICKEL

subsumed by phallic language but in relationship with it. The novelty of matrixial language renders it a challenge to understand, given that language emerging from the “borderspace is susceptible to profound misunderstanding.”30 As difficult and complex as her ideas are, I am grateful for Ettinger’s supply of compelling words to articulate and extend threshold experiences of art, ritual and trance along with healing possibilities. Matrixial theory thus deepens ideas and practices shared in this book within emergent female sentences. Matrixial words are italicized throughout the book and defined as best I can articulate them. To assist the reader, I echo Ettinger’s counsel to listen to the language of the matrixial with a poetic ear, and read slowly, giving yourself permission to not fully understand. Trust the arational sensorialness of matrixial languaging to unfold and come to consciousness through ecstatic poetic awareness. I discovered matrixial theory in 2009 while experiencing an existential crisis regarding the purpose of making feminine-based art in a masculine-­ dominated world. Struggling during an artist residency on Toronto Island to reach a new place of purpose for making my own body-based art, I read articles about other women artists making representational art with the female body. In reading I become more and more disillusioned regarding the ineffectiveness of my artistic focus on restoring the female body to an honoured location in a patriarchal world. I scoured the footnotes of one particular article looking for some redeeming extra and found a link to Bracha Ettinger’s writing.31 I found her article on-line and while not understanding most of what she wrote, I “got it” at a deeply visceral level. Her writing transported me into a state of what I would now call an intellectual ecstatic state of understanding (to the curiosity and amusement of some of my fellow artists, who patiently listened to me read Ettinger quotes aloud throughout the rest of my residency). Ettinger’s theory of art and healing as copoiesis reignited my faith in art as a transformative healing opportunity for culture to encounter trauma and begin to correct its pathological ways, whether conscious or non-­ conscious. Copoiesis takes place while creating through fragilizing the self to the unknown other, awakening the self and other by virtue of sharing. Through her articulation of the matrixial gaze, as a compassionate gaze that welcomes the other, we are thus offered the occasion for seduction into life. Matrixial theory restored my prior understandings of what art and artworks create—“a spiritual knowledge of the Other and the Cosmos.”32 I resonate deeply with Ettinger’s term artworking as a means of doing the work of mourning, and her naming the artist-healer as one

1  INTRODUCTION: AN EARTH-BASED SENSUAL SPIRITUALITY OF ART… 

9

who takes responsibility to become an open channel for both self and other in matrixial borderspace(s). With my trust in art returned, surrounded by the watery wombspace of Lake Ontario, I became an open channel. Wit(h)nessing with my eyes closed, I began a series of trance-based mixed media drawings of the body, working from source photos taken over the years of myself in movement. Wit(h)nessing, as described by Ettinger is the ability to not only see but to be with an/other empathetically and compassionately. On large unstretched canvases I set my herstorical body free, aesthetically rendering the trance journeys I ritually wit(h)nessed each morning. During the artmaking process I listened over and over to each recorded oral trance, allowing its story to filter hypnotically into the art. Each of the seven trances began at the lake’s liminal edge (see Image 1.1). From there they unfolded as transformative and at times deeply healing awake dreams.

Image 1.1  Gibraltar Point Beach, 2013. (Toronto Island, Ontario, photo Barbara Bickel)

10 

B. A. BICKEL

Wit(h)nessing Eyes Close(d) “Wit(h)nessing Eyes Closed(d)”33 became my first exhibition in a large American city at ARC, a women’s cooperative gallery in Chicago. I was determined to bring this art to the world with a matrixial gaze intact; not overtaken by the oversexualized and devouring phallic gaze. I included numerous devices in the installation to interrupt an isolating phallic visual gaze. Thus, in addition to the visual art (see Image 1.2), I included a variety of audio and hands-on engagement elements; a looping video clip of Bracha Ettinger giving a lecture teaching matrixial theory, headsets viewers could put on to listen to my voice speaking the trance journeys while viewing the art created from it, a visually overlapping video of a group and individual performance ritual on the lakeside with vocal soundings (that at times became a dissonant lamenting wail) projected onto a canvas artwork, and an interactive cloth book entitled Metramorphosis that audience members could hold and stitch into, physically engaging the art as theory through threads interlinking with others in their absence. Ettinger describes metramorphosis as “the process of change in borderlines and thresholds between being and absence, memory and oblivion, I and non-­ I, a process of transgressions and fading away.”34 My partner Michael interviewed me toward the end of the exhibition and asked, “How do you know you are correcting the misreading of the body in your art?” I responded “I don’t know…. I am trying to learn and teach a new language.”35 The direct question about misreading the female body in my matrixial-­ imbued artworks foreshadowed a disturbing interchange I had at the end of the exhibition. My artistic intention, supported by the sanctuary of a woman’s gallery was to alter the phallic gaze upon the female body and teach the language of the matrixial. At the closing reception an elderly male doctor engaged me in conversation while not able to take himself out of his phallic gaze and the language of sexual voyeurism in talking about the art. He did this while making advances on me. I was horrified by his response on multiple levels and responded with recoil and shocked silence. The transgressive sexual actions of a privileged white male entering and desacralizing the sanctuary space of the female artist was not transformed by my artistic intentions and efforts. Ettinger’s words, “art as the transport-­ station to trauma”36 echoed painfully in my ears. His actions, and ignorance to the violence of them, validated the urgent and on-going need for healing the source of the deep wounds of sexual violence against women while challenging my methods as a woman artist.

1  INTRODUCTION: AN EARTH-BASED SENSUAL SPIRITUALITY OF ART… 

11

Image 1.2  Barbara Bickel, Without Effort, 2009. Mixed media drawing and collage on canvas, 61 x 51 inches

At the time, I felt my desire to teach a new language outside of the phallic through my art had failed. In retrospect, I remembered it is not my art, but spirit’s art, and the spirit of art transforms in its own ways. I now rarely work with image-based representations of the female body, yet my

12 

B. A. BICKEL

art continues to take people into a sensual ecstatic experience with the body. My art shapeshifts, the writing of this book a most recent shape and form. Very attuned to the collective sexual trauma emerging in the Western world, making itself highly visible with the most recent #Me Too movement, and the blatant sexism, misogyny and racism flaunted by the worlds’ most politically powerful leader, I am ever more determined to teach and share trance-formative shapeshifting art, ritual and trance inquiry practices.

Lifting the Veil Change takes place on multiple levels and in a diversity of ways. My way is inspired through artworking within the liminal space of ritual, coming to new old understandings through the guidance of art’s regenerative spirit. I believe the role of the arts and artists in society can be that of gathering and integrating dissociated cultural experiences. Through the making and re-making of culture, artists can bring awareness to these marginalized experiences through a novel aesthetic and ethical lens and assist society to face grief and understand itself. Hence the motivation to write this book is to share a small part of what I have gathered over the years. Knowledge, knowing, and understandings that have awoken me to tell the truth to myself, and guide me out of the fog of embedded cultural psychic pain with its pervasive hypnotic spell of immobility. Each day I stay home writing, the levels of ecological, social and political crisis escalate in large increments, tragically impacting both humans and the precious ecology of relations we live within. Consequently, I regularly reframe my chosen focus from my privileged location as a descendant of European settlers, living in resource-rich Canada on Indigenous stolen lands, as one of response-ability. Matthew Fox reminds me that “the opposite of guilt is responsibility”37 and the prophetic spiritual path does not exclude the inner path. In fully admitting I am one who has lived for many years on this Earth in relative ease, and for far too many of them, in an entitled cultural “veil of amnesia,”38 I write of art, ritual and trance inquiry in the colonizer’s language of English, as a way to part the veils and step into the responsibility of teaching for the good of the greater whole. A humble act of spiritual or subtle activism.39 Questions I want this book to raise and help respond to are; how can we increase our awareness of the gifts the Earth, trance, art and ritual offer? How can we take authorship of, create from and with them, while also utilizing them as teachings for ourselves, our communities and the world? and

1  INTRODUCTION: AN EARTH-BASED SENSUAL SPIRITUALITY OF ART… 

13

How can we give ourselves permission to seek, learn and teach the wisdom the spirit of art can lead us to? This book emerged from recognizing, in my own and others’ art practices, the possibilities and benefits of art, trance and ritual led by spirit. All are needed ancient, yet novel ways to assist in restoring connection and communicaring with all beings residing on the Earth. In silence nothing can be changed in the narrative which hides itself. If being haunted is the direct testimony of repression, ceremony is the testimony of testimony. (found in Bracha Ettinger40)

I attended three international education conferences while writing this book. At each conference I met and connected with numerous artist academics lamenting the veil of silence cast over spirituality in the research41 and teaching of art in their countries’ educational institutions. Finding supportive academic writing on art and spirituality as inquiry for them was a similar quandary. They were grateful for my publications on art, spirituality and education with the encouraging and supportive academic voice it offered to their teaching and research. I was grateful to hear of the gifts of my arts-based educational writing reaching others. I have always felt that academics hold the unspoken desire for an experience of spiritual wisdom despite of and in the midst of the steadily eroding neoliberal university. These are the professors who refuse to let go of the original meaning of the word “University… a place where one went to experience [their] place in the universe—thus, to find wisdom.”42 I am heartened when meeting academics haunted by the tragic absence of spirituality in academic institutions and scholarship, and grateful for their desire to bring wisdom forward in their own writing, artmaking, researching and teaching. In sharing the practices, I and others artists have learned from and with, this book is an offering to artists, teachers, researchers, healers and all curious and creative learners who desire to consciously engage the Earth sacredly and create with the spirit of art, trance and ritual. As an introductory book it in no way covers the breadth of scholarship in the rich areas

14 

B. A. BICKEL

of art, ritual or trance, nor does it cover the many artists who practice these. My desire is for this book to be an entryway into artworking and discovery through the ritual igniting of a candle—shedding light into the corners of our sensual inspirited world as a ceremony for truth telling.

Overview of Chapters Each chapter opens with a haiku and found matrixial poem and closes with a guided practice of trance, ritual and/or artmaking for the reader to actively engage their own embodied sacred inquiry. The suggested practices invite engagement with the vital components of praxis (theory + practice). Chapter 2 and 3 introduce foundational supportive theories and are thus more academic. Chapter 2 introduces a/r/tography as ritual, dreaming and the matrixial theory of Bracha Ettinger as a gift for understanding radical relationality and the significance of the woman artist. The performance art of Mary Beth Edelson exemplifies the theory. Chapter 3 offers an overview of trance and trance practices as vehicles for listening to the voice of the Earth. Artist collaborations and a Ma aesthetic is illustrated through the art of musician Yantra de Vilder. Chapter 4 introduces exemplar Twentieth Century trance-based woman artists: Katherine Dunham, Maya Deren, Meinrad Craighead, Hélène Cixous, Shirin Neshat, Gloria Anzaldúa, Karen Finley and Marina Abramović. The next three chapters engage Canadian artists and their collaborative, sonic, and performance ritual-based practices. Chapter 5 is a dialogue between co-founding artists of the Gestare Art Collective reflecting on their ten years of ritual and Earth-based co-inquiry experiences. Chapter 6 introduces composer Wendalyn Bartley and musician Tanya Tagaq who offer an expansion of the art of listening to ancestral voices. Chapter 7 is a dialogue between dance therapist/dancer Tannis Hugill and myself exploring the emergence of trance and performance ritual in our art practices. The last Chap. 8, is set within The Day between the Worlds in the lunar calendar and dreams into lines of matrixial time as an invitation into grief and mystery, while we learn to live compassionately with the Earth in her/our current wounded state. A collaboration between Mary Blaze, Celeste Snowber and myself created in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001 returns to be remembered.

1  INTRODUCTION: AN EARTH-BASED SENSUAL SPIRITUALITY OF ART… 

15

Ritual Practice One

Ritual Space Creation Intent To create a ritual container to assist opening an intentional sacred space for inquiry and learning. Creating a container for sacred inquiry processes involves a shift of our ordinary state of consciousness through ritual. Ritual practices, although they can be complex can also be very simple. In its very basic form, the steps of ritual involve preparation, entrance, middle creative/working processes and closure. Sensual spirituality practices of ritual create a sacred container to dwell, create, and work within, to be in process alone or with others, indoors or outdoors. This is accomplished through simple, yet clear gestures to awaken sensorial awarenesses through smell, sound, touch, or sight. Sensory shifting tools can include candles, Nature items (e.g. dried or fresh plants, water, stones, and feathers), bells, and clothing. You may already be familiar with ritual elements from institutional religious rituals, school rituals or your own ritual experiences. Rituals are based on a desire to alter our senses by shifting focus from the ordinary to the other-than-ordinary, the not-yet-­ known. As this is a vulnerable space to enter ensure the location you are engaging in ritual is where you will not be interrupted and feel safe. Guiding Narration “I invite you to prepare the space for your ritual. This may be done through cleaning the space, such as clearing branches fallen in your back yard, sweeping your deck, straightening up your studio or writing desk, or setting up chairs or tables for entering ritual with others. Allow yourself to clear space and shift focus to the ritual intention.” “Decide what items you might need to assist the ritual work and set them up in the space. These may be art supplies, writing tools, musical instruments, candles, etc. Place them strategically for easy access.” “When ready to begin, sit or stand quietly and take a deep breath. Center your thoughts to your intention of creating a sacred ritual space.” (continued)

16 

B. A. BICKEL

(continued)

“Engage with one or more of the sensory shifting tools. This may be lighting a candle, ringing a bell, smelling rose petals, sprinkling essential oil-water, and/or burning incense, or a dried plant such as sage or cedar leaves, or essential oil in a decanter. It may include wearing a piece of clothing, like a prayer shawl or rubbing your hands vigorously together before holding them to your heart or belly. It may be focusing your gaze on a piece of art or tree outside the window, or taking a deep breath and letting sounds from your throat emerge as they gradually shift into a vocal tone.” “These are all simple gestures that let your ordinary state of consciousness know you are willing to shift into a focused altered state of consciousness for the purpose of ritual inquiry and learning.” “With this opening begin a ritual based on your chosen intention and engage processes of inquiry. As your ritual inquiry you can continue to read this book, open a sharing circle with others, engage a writing and/or creative process etc.” To close see Ritual Closure Practice Two in Chap. 8.

Notes 1. Ettinger 2018, n.p. 2. Hauk, 517. 3. Cixous, 156. 4. I am grateful to science fiction writers who introduced earthling into our language. 5. Gebser. 6. Artist educator Kenneth R. Beittel writes of the artist as mystic in 1989/97. 7. An understanding of sacred space as cosmos-centered, in contrast to chaos laden profane space as Eliade describes is how I hold the sacred space of ritual; M.  Jacqui Alexander defines the epistemology of the sacred as “linked to the pulse of energy of creation.” Sacred life force that is simultaneously individual and collective, involving “multiple praxis of embodiment” that includes yet moves beyond the body and involves “rewiring of the senses” beyond the Western rational enlightenment paradigm. 326–328. 8. I am grateful to Susan Walsh and Carl Leggo for introducing me to “found poems.” Walsh et al., 2.

1  INTRODUCTION: AN EARTH-BASED SENSUAL SPIRITUALITY OF ART… 

17

9. The use of haiku was inspired by poet-dancer-scholar Celeste Snowber, a creative collaborator who sends haikus to friends as a gift of prayer. 10. Snowber, 134. 11. Drawn from Fox. 12. Four Arrows 2016. 13. Meyer. 14. Schumacher wrote of this philosophy of life based on “balancing female spiritual qualities that may have been overlooked, overtaken, or neglected.” It is a non-hierarchical practice of collaborative co-existence that honours ancestors and the Earth. 15. Ettinger 2005, 710. 16. Ettinger 2006. 17. Jenkinson. 18. Snowber Schroeder, 159. 19. Ettinger 2006, 168.9. 20. Snowber Schroeder, 163. 21. Driver. 22. Grimes, 543. 23. Bateson, 146. 24. Fisher. 25. Ira Progoff, 59. 26. Christ and Plaskow. 27. Bickel and Hugill, 7. 28. Britzman, 17. 29. Ettinger 2006, 168.9. 30. Ibid. 31. The 2005 article was Copoiesis. When introducing others to Ettinger I direct them to this article. 32. Ettinger 2005, 708. 33. To view art and hear trances http://www.barbarabickel.ca/withnessingeyes-closed.php 34. Ettinger 2009, 20. 35. 12 minute interview with Michael and Barbara https://vimeo.com/manage/45704299/general 36. Ettinger 2000, 91. 37. Christ and Plaskow, 24. 38. Ettinger 2002, 237. 39. Spiritual activism is drawn from Gloria Anzalduá who combines spirituality with social change action (Keating). Subtle activism is an alternative form of activism drawn from consciousness-­based practices to support social and ecological transformation and change. See https://gaiafield.net/ and writing of David Nicol 2016.

18 

B. A. BICKEL

40. Ettinger 2000, 98. 41. Research and inquiry are used interchangeably by many in the field of artsbased educational research. I prefer and mostly use the word inquiry as I am part of the Canadian west-coast artist-academic lineage (eg. Snowber’s Embodied Inquiry, Lynn Fel’s Performative Inquiry, Karen Meyer’s Living Inquiry) that challenges the dominant positivist framing of research in the academy. 42. Fox 1988, 22.

References Alexander, M.  Jacqui. 2005. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. Durham/London: Duke University Press. Bateson, Gregory. 1972. Steps to an Ecology of the Mind. New York: Ballantine Books. Beittel, Kenneth R. 1989/97. Zen and the Art of Pottery. New York: Weatherhill. Bickel, Barbara, and Tannis Hugill. 2011. Re/turning to Her: An A/r/tographic Ritual Inquiry. Visual Culture and Gender 6 (1): 6–12, 7. http://vcg.emitto. net/index.php/vcg/article/view/54. Britzman, Deborah P. 2006. Novel Education: Psychoanalytic Studies of Learning and Not Learning. New York: Peter Lang. Christ, Carol P., and Judith Plaskow, eds. 1979. Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion. New York: Harper and Row. Cixous, Hélène. 1995. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. The School of Roots. New York: Columbia University Press. Driver, Thomas F. 1997. Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual. Boulder: Westview Press. Eliade, Mircea. 1957. The Sacred & The Profane: The Nature of Religion. Trans. W. R Trask. New York: Harcourt. Ettinger, Bracha L. 2000. Art as the Transport-Station of Trauma. In Artworking, 1985–1999, 91–115. Gent/Bussels: Ludion. ———. 2002. Trans-Subjective Transferential Borderspace. In A Shock to Thought: Expression after Deleuze and Guatarri, ed. Brian Massumi, 215–239. London: Routledge. ———. 2005. Copoiesis. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 5 (X): 703–713. ———. 2006. The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2009. ‘Fragilizaton and Resistance’ and ‘Neighborhood and Shechina’. Studies in The Maternal, 1(2): 1–31. https://www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk/articles/abstract/10.16995/sim.141/. Accessed 1 Nov 2019.

1  INTRODUCTION: AN EARTH-BASED SENSUAL SPIRITUALITY OF ART… 

19

———. 2018. Bracha L. Ettinger discusses her life and work. Artforum, July 02, 2018. n.p. https://www.artforum.com/interviews/bracha-l-ettinger-discussesher-life-and-work-75919 Fisher, R. Michael. 2010. The World’s Fearlessness Teachings: A Critical Integral Approach to Fear Management/Education for the 21st Century. Lanham: University Press of America. Four Arrows. 2016. Point of Departure: Returning to Our Authentic Worldview for Education and Survival. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Fox, Matthew. 1988. The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Gebser, Jean. 1985. The Ever-Present Origin. Trans. N. Barstad & A. Mickunas. Athens: Ohio University Press. Grimes, Ronald L. 1982. Defining Nascent Ritual. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 50 (4): 539–555. Hauk, Marna. 2014. Gaia E/mergent: Earth Regenerative Education Catalyzing Empathy, Creativity, and Wisdom. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Jenkinson, Stephen. 2019. Mystery Is the Great Midwife of the Willingness to Be Human. Nurture Your Nature Podcast interview with Dina Drosta, October 8, 2019. https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9udXJ0dXJleW91 cm5hdHVyZS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw&episode=NTg0ZmFjYjBhY2YyNDk 1NTk1ZDIxZTIxMDA2ZjQ4Njk&hl=en-CA&ved=2ahUKEwizgpKn0MblA hUUCjQIHW8lBaQQ4bgEKAJ6BAgJEAc&ep=6&at=1572529356776 Keating, AnaLouis. 2008. “I’m a Citizen of the Universe:” Gloria Anzaldua’s Spiritual Activism as Catalyst for Social Change. Feminist Studies 34 (1/2): 53–69. Meyer, Manu Aluli. 2010. Manu Aluli Meyer on Epistemology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmJJi1iBdzc. Accessed 2 July 2019. Nicol, David. 2016. Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation. Suny: Albany. Progoff, Ira. 1973. Jung’s Psychology and Its Social Meaning. New  York: Anchor Books. Schroeder, Celeste Snowber. 1995. Embodied Prayer: Harmonizing Body and Soul. Liguori: Triumph Books. Schumacher, Erica Paige. 2019. The Earth Is Our Home – Rematriation Puts the Mother at the Heart of Society. Livlihood Magazine, February 11, 2019. https://livelihoodmagazine.org/the-earth-is-our-home-rematriation-putsthe-mother-at-the-heart-of-society/. Accessed 15 Dec 2019. Snowber, Celeste. 2017. Dancers of Incarnation: From Embodied Prayer to Embodied Inquiry. Théologiques 25 (1): 125–138, 134. https://doi. org/10.7202/1055243ar. Accessed 15 Nov 2019. Walsh, Susan, Bickel, Barbara and Leggo, Carl. 2015. Arts-Based and Contemplative Practices in Research and Teaching: Honoring Presence. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 2

A/r/tography as Ritual and Dreaming in Matrixial Borderspace(s)

Abstract  This chapter introduces a/r/tography as ritual and dreaming with the theory of Bracha Ettinger’s matrixial borderspace(s) to unfold the aesthetical and ethical healing practices of the woman artist. The performance art of Mary Beth Edelson offers a matrixial example of communicaring with the stranger. The chapter closes with an invitation into an arts practice of spontaneous creation-making. Keywords  A/r/tography • Ritual • Dreams • Matrixial theory • Performance ritual • Mary Beth Edelson • Bracha Ettinger • Relationality • Connective aesthetics • Ritualizing • Arational • Healing • Woman artist • Gift economy

Sun kisses eyelids third eye leaps skyward, ever slight smile utters bliss.

© The Author(s) 2020 B. A. Bickel, Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_2

21

22 

B. A. BICKEL

In matrixial borderspace, the artist testifies to/for an unknown other or rather, it is matrixial threads the artwork which testify to traumas of an-other in wit(h)ness. (found in Bracha L. Ettinger1)

A/r/tography as Ritual and Radical Relationality A/r/tographers2 inhabit a borderland of reformation and transformation, geographical, spiritual, social, pedagogical, psychological, physical sites of intersubjectivity and intrasubjectivity in and through dialogue. (found in Rita Irwin3) The practice of art is a spiritual discipline that offers a powerful antidote to an age suffering from its loss of center. (found in Kenneth Beittel4)

This book is held within a lived practice of a/r/tography as ritual where I engage a process of relational inquiry as the a/r/tographer.5 It is a particular form of arts-based educational research or inquiry drawing from the dual processes of art and writing (art and graphy). It requires working within the flow of relationships between each part of the self, as an artist,

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

23

researcher, and teacher. I nourish and augment the collaboration of multiple selves within myself as an a/r/tographer through what artist writer Suzy Gablik names the “radical relatedness” of “connective aesthetics.”6 Connective aesthetics continually shift and develop aesthetically and ethically. The a r and t are symbolic of a waking-up of each part with compassion and care to a relationship with the whole in a spiral movement of retraction, awakening and expansion. In modern culture we have been encouraged to focus on one area of expertise in our lives. Our rapidly changing world of depleting resources and a scarcity of stable careers no longer supports this singular way of being, contributing to growing societal impoverishment and mistrust of each other. Working with multiple identities and the spaces between them begins to awaken the regenerative creative possibilities found in liminal borderspaces. This can attune us to the other within and outside of us, whom we too often neglect and abandon. Since developing a/r/tography as ritual in my early graduate research7 it has continually and profoundly led me to new threshold crossings where human, more-than-human, Earth and cosmic connections are revealed, embraced, and/or transcended.8 Rituals re-configure “energy and information that creates and maintains our realities,” forging expansive relationships where the “intelligent powers of the cosmos” can assist us to generate wellness within ourselves and community.9 Stepping outside of ordinary life and into the liminal space of a/r/ tography as ritual can assist access to the arational texts of the body and altered states of the mind. A/r/tography as ritual offers entry into and through matrixial borderspace(s) allowing one to write/draw ignored ghosts and forgotten/hidden knowledge into awareness and being. Engaging what can be vulnerable and challenging processes in a sacred ritual container, potential correctives for repressed and forgotten knowledge and knowing can be illuminated. A/r/tography as ritual and its radical relatedness thus reinforce and augment the underlying purpose of the inquiry, learning and unlearning practices of art, trance and ritual. Living a/r/tography as ritual while writing this book I make art. The art processes I engage alongside writing are knitting and poems in the form of haiku and found poems. I began to knit a shawl to connect to my female ancestral line, women who made textile artworks with their hands that I can still touch. In my second attempt to learn to knit I am taught anew by my artist friend Mary.10 Mary Blaze, Celeste Snowber and I began to knit ancestral shawls for a collaborative art installation that coincided with the start of my writing and will continue after the book is complete. Knitting has become an ancestral fibre braided into this book along with another collaborative ancestral project with Tannis Hugill, introduced in

24 

B. A. BICKEL

Chap. 7. These textile art processes have allowed me to touch mystery and unravel the yarn of the inquiry I am tangled in while writing. My ­a/r/ tographic ritual process has also included reading, poetic writing, walking in Nature, trance, and talking with others. Ritualizing To expand traditional understandings of ritual I draw from ritual theorists such as Ronald Grimes and artists. Grimes notes how artists play a consistent role in bringing “emergent ritual” into society through art and artistic performances, which act as vehicles to awaken reflexive consciousness in society. Feminist artist Mary Beth Edelson describes the unique offering women and the artmaking process bring to “ever-changing and evolving” ritual performances, The unique and sometimes zany way in which some women think is given full reign in our art/rituals, where we have the opportunity to re-create the work in our image. Artists bring the creative process to ritual. This process adds to its contents, stimulates ritual’s evolution, and helps to avoid repetitious stagnation.11

Likewise, film-maker and theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha, whose postcolonial films involve ritual, recognizes rituals as “… dynamic agents in the ongoing process of creating a symbolic world of meaning and truth.”12 Minh-ha validates the aspect of ritual performance by artists and activists, describing artists and activists as, ‘“pathmakers,” and “art” as a way of marking moments in our lives…. [and how one] should treat performance as rituals if one is to step out of the servile one-dimensional mind and turn an instrument into a creative tool.”13 Feminist scholar Kay Turner, writing of contemporary feminist ritual in North America forefronts the importance of women enacting rituals to empower themselves and each other. Poignantly reminding us how the rites of institutional rituals have been bestowed predominantly upon men to the exclusion of women and consequently men have retained direct and authoritative access to cultural power.14 Reclaiming ritual as an emancipatory, performative inquiry and learning process, one can dramatically reaffirm one’s place of belonging and identity within community.15 Rituals engaged in a/r/tography and in this book are not limited by gender and thus offer access to realms of inquiry, knowing, not knowing and being that are genderless birthrights.

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

25

Grimes confirms my own experience of ritual art, writing how rituals assist us in overcoming limiting fears and conditioning, as “[r]itual enactment at once awakens the reflexivity of consciousness and tranquilizes the anxiety provoked by doing so.”16 Of interest, in particular to artists and those outside mainstream religious institutions, is an understanding of “nascent ritual” or emergent ritual focusing not only on historical and established rituals, but also on the new creation of ritual in our lives. Of most interest to me as a ritual-based a/r/tographer is the demarcation of the process of ritualizing from set rituals. Emergent rituals are not set structures but “structurings” that “surge and subside, ebb and flow” where the “knower and known” are conjoined17 in the process of ritualizing. The power of that joining brings to light new awareness that emerges not just about ritual, but in and through ritual creating symbolic worlds of meaning.18 Nascent ritual offers a fluid and adaptable structure for inquiry and learning processes in the practice of a/r/tography as ritual. I have introduced a/r/tography as ritual as I believe it assists in creating restorative and transformative relational sanctuaries that can hold and support nascent trance-based inquiry and learning processes through creating a supportive ground for risk-taking, challenges, and new knowledge to emerge.   Rituals serve as a ‘frame’ whose stabilizing effect, experienced through repetition in cycles and rhythmic recurrences, allows us to see things with a different intensity and,   to perceive the ordinary in an extra-ordinary way. Reinforcing bonds that inspire social change   renew commitment to evolving and   transforming society as a whole. (found in Trinh T. Min-H 19 and Kay Turner 20)

26 

B. A. BICKEL

I do have a desire and motive in writing and artmaking to create compassionate relational bonds that inspire moments and potentially movements for social change and transformation for the betterment of all; human and more-than-human. While noting the restorative and transformative potential of ritual I also acknowledge that the word ritual can elicit a response of mistrust and fear, as it can and has been used to silence and control others in cultural, religious, and political circumstances. It can elicit fear in those trained through established religions that ritual must be sanctioned by a religious authority. These are valid fears and places of wariness, as because of its power and transformative ability, ritual can be used destructively as well as productively.21 Yet, when an intention set in the liminal space of nascent ritual holds affirmation, healing, expressing our experience of mystery, transformation and a re-inscribing of experience, it instead, can subvert limiting societal norms. I close this section on a/r/tography as ritual with a few cautionary guidelines for engaging art, ritual and trance-based inquiry by virtue of the fragility and risk inherent in undertaking these practices in an out of balance phallic-dominated world. • When engaging this form of work ensure you are in a place you feel safe in. • If you choose to engage the work in public space where your actions may draw unwanted attention, take at least one ally to hold watch for you to ensure you are left uninterrupted, and to assist you as needed. Your ally may also take on the additional role of documenting with a video or still camera. This often draws outside attention to the camera holder rather than the one performing the ritual. • When emerging from a ritual it is important to intentionally close the ritual through releasing any beings you have invoked and/or encountered. Thank the support you have received from the liminal space and any alternate worlds you may have entered. • It is then best, as you bring the ritual to a close, to reconnect with your physical body and ground yourself in ordinary time and space. Gently tap or move your body to awaken it. Remembering what day of the week it is helps to bring one into present mundane reality. • Food is another grounding device to bring you back to present and ordinary time. Have a pre-prepared snack, and if you are with others, enter normal conversation. These simple body-based actions assist

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

27

one to re-enter a normal state of consciousness. Think of the social coffee that follows many religious gatherings. Eating and talking together about the experience and the coming week is a return to consensus reality in community.

Dreaming I am awakened by two disturbing dreams, one of a military airplane arriving at a community event I am attending; the other working with traumatized children who have been separated from their parents. In the second dream, I am troubleshooting with other adults to find ways to move past obstacles in the way of helping the children. We are creative, but very limited in our efforts. I awake with the grievous issues unresolved.22 Through dreaming I am working through my own trauma and grief response to events reflecting real circumstances in the world. Events even more devastating in the awake world. I open my morning emails and find a message from my younger brother, who lives on the east coast of Canada, with updates on how they are managing with no power as their community is impacted by the latest hurricane Dorian. My subconscious is deeply connected to the daily environmental and politically sourced social and ecological traumas amassing rapidly around the world. In the arational state of dreaming I am part of a group of creatives trying to develop alternatives for children in the oppressive political system. Dreaming is a form of trance that falls in the spectrum of altered states of consciousness and is easily accessible in our sleep states. Dreams loosen the protective ego23 and offer connective threads to the unknown other. They provide a bridge to personal felt knowing and not knowing, along with the empathy and compassion required to connect with and process the collective grief accumulating daily. Integral dream scholars Fariba Bogzaran and Daniel Deslauriers wrote of the individual and social interconnectedness of dreams and dreamers, As unpredictable and open-ended as they are, dreams fulfil an important role in imaging our place in the world, as simultaneously an individual and social self. Dreams reflect our personal development journey while presenting us with enigmatic, partial, and difficult visions of the dilemmas that tie self and society together in their evolutionary dance; dreams reflect the traces of alienation and fragmentation as well as recovery and remembrance of our state of interdependence.24

28 

B. A. BICKEL

My arational dreaming mind attunes to the struggles of the greater world I am integrally part of. I pick up the phone and call my congressional representative in the American congress. I sign multiple on-line petitions for various issues, and send an email to the Canadian Prime Minister. Small actions I can take as a dual citizen of Canada and the United States in my rational waking state, while I spend nights dreaming and days at the computer writing. Ritualist and artist Sarah Kerr shares in her study on “Dreams, Rituals, and the Creation of Sacred Objects” how dreaming as a state of consciousness moves us beyond limits of the ordinary physical realm and offers direct healing and teaching to the dreamer as a transmission. The dreamer then in the waking world as the “dreamer/ritualist/artist plays a facilitative role and serves as a bridge between the healing power given in the dreams and the place where that healing is needed in this world. It is a process of receiving the healing power from the other world, translating it, and delivering to this one.”25 So how can dreams, ritual and art impact global and local crises and the disconnection we feel daily with others in the world? Giving attention to and recognizing the importance of the dreamworld opens us to our deeper inner selves and concerns, calls us to action in the waking world, and assists in solving seemingly unsolvable problems in waking life. Dreams offer teachings as gifts if we are willing to receive and share them. I share a dream I had while writing this book as I consider it to be a transmission dream from the teacher who holds connection to the great mystery found in matrixial borderspace(s). Dream I am attending an event like a conference, in a room filled with a lot of miscellaneous materials laying on the tables and floor. My mom, sister, a former classmate and male co-workers I seem to know are here. I remember I am supposed to be at work at an old job I had in a kitchen. I do not want to go as it has been a long time since I worked there. Looking about this busy, chaotic room, I notice Bracha Ettinger quietly sitting. I am flabbergasted she is here. She seems to be content just hanging out and observing the room and its culture. I approach her and begin to talk to her. I stumble over my words. I am very inarticulate as I have so many things I want to say and show her. She is very patient and listens to me

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

29

with full attention. I tell her what a huge influence she has had on my life and art. I want to show her my art and writing, but I can’t find it anywhere in the room. Then she gives me a teaching transmission. We sit cross-legged next to each other and I receive the message through our bodies that are touching and not through her spoken voice. “One of us is in one world and the other is in another world, but we are still in each other’s presence.” Receiving this transmission, I really want to share my Metramorphosis art book (see Image 2.1) and the trance that began it. The on-going interactive book is itself the practice of aesthetic co-presencing. But I can’t find it. Instead I ask if she would like to have dinner together. I want to take her to a place that is more conducive for talking than the chaotic room we are in. She agrees to come and I realize she is quite willing to do whatever I ask-even as I bumble in my communication. I really want to honour her and to spend quality time. But she is also okay being where she is. I am the one who feels the need to have structured time with my teacher. I invite her to dinner as I can’t believe she would stay otherwise. I don’t want her to leave. I become aware that she seems to have no place to go and that this is a new culture for her. When I awake, I am very excited and tell my partner, Michael that Ettinger visited me in a dream. We are in co-presence even when unaware. And today is my mom’s 87th birthday.26

Image 2.1  Barbara Bickel, Metramorphosis book, 2012-ongoing. Canvas, paper, acrylic, conté, graphite, silk thread, string, buttons, 12 × 15.5 × 1 inches

30 

B. A. BICKEL

Matrixial Theory and Healing Having briefly introduced matrixial theory as a love-based theory in Chap. 1 I return to Bracha Ettinger’s matrixial borderspace(s) to further unfold the aesthetical and ethical healing framework of this book. I consider Ettinger to be one who inherently embodies the radical relational practice of a/r/tography as ritual in an inspiring and inspirited way. Ettinger’s matrixial theory of relational healing brings aesthetic, ethical and political awareness to our interconnectedness as humans within a web of all beings, human and more-than-human. Here aesthetic domains are the origin of relations followed by the ethical and political. Ettinger posits when aesthetics are not at the base of our relational practices, we compromise the health of ourselves and our life systems. I believe Ettinger’s work contributes healer to the a/r/tographer’s identity, extending it to h/a/r/ tography. She has become a significant healing teacher for me through her art,27 writing, on-line talks and presence in my dreams. Matrixial theory and language, as with any new and emergent theory, is a challenge to hold onto and articulate as my dream demonstrates. I invite you, the reader, to embrace matrixial theory with “beginner mind.”28 Allow the ideas and words to filter through your whole being and serve as a transmission that your rational, logical mind is not expected to understand. That said, I do attempt to pull a thread of logic through in weaving matrixial theory into my writing, but know it is a partial thread pulled from the expansive tapestry of Ettinger’s philosophical artworkings. Ettinger’s theory of matrixial borderspace comes from a deep co-­presence with mystery and the unknown other. Her theory emerged from and is continually enriched through her art and psychoanalytic practices, as well as engagement with philosophic inquiry, teaching and activism. Ettinger’s combination of art with psychotherapeutic practices is powerful in itself, revealing trauma for healing personal and societal wounds. The further combination of philosophical inquiry, an ancient practice of giving considered study and voice to a love of wisdom; and activism, a passionate love response, through direct action for ethical and just change for community suffering, magnifies the potential transformative power of matrixial theory. Matrixial theory, as denoted by its name, holds as its foundation the symbolic metaphor of the matrix/mother/womb. It is distinct from and in relationship with psychoanalytic theories based on the phallic/father/ penis metaphor. In matrixial theory, mother and fetus are co-becoming beings that traverse time and space in an ever-attuning experience of

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

31

connectivity/disconnectivity of the I and non-I. The I and non-I are co-­ emergent, and dance each other in a resonate psychic field of transference in a pre/post/trans-conscious matrixial realm. Within matrixial borderspace(s) an arational imaginary co-exists with rational logic. Whereas phallocentric logic privileges the rational and conflates the arational with the irrational, or hysteria and disregards the arational. The word hysteria is sourced from the Greek word hysteron or womb.29 This locates the irrational in feminine logic and excludes it from male logic. Phallic logic thus remains detrimentally blind to the wisdom of the arational. In actuality, the matrixial sphere can offer healing of inner and outer traumas occasioned by irrational separation from and demonization of the m/other. Within the culturally repressed, but ever-present matrixial sphere, the potential for healing within a relational paradigm with the world still dwells. Art historian Griselda Pollock, who has studied Ettinger’s theory and art for more than 20 years wrote, Ettinger’s artworking aesthetically and theoretically creates a means of escaping the effacement of meaning, which she associates not only with the effacement of a certain femininity, but also the human commonality that heralded the end of ethics. Art is the place, the move, the act that first permits us to signify “impossible “jouissance and “impossible’ relation, and to bring something from/of them into life. As an artist, Ettinger has grasped the gravity of the philosophical predicament of the West after Auschwitz. Through her intense work as an artist of the second generation of children Holocaust survivors and as a practicing psychoanalyst she has come perhaps closer than anyone other than the philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas to imagining a future capable of reconstructing a basis for ethical existence.30

Ettinger has reconstructed this basis through theorising the “possibility of a future in the feminine, through the ideas of Matrix and metramorphosis.”31 Matrix being a womb-based feminine signifier of aesthetics and ethics within a relational theory based on mother and fetus in the womb. Metramorphosis in the matrix is interconnectivity and co-existence as/in the process of change, emergence and transformation in conscious and nonconscious moments of co-encounter. An experience with art, whether between the maker in the artmaking process, or the viewer when meeting the artwork, is a potential entryway into matrixial borderspaces across time and space. Working with historical Holocaust source photos Ettinger

32 

B. A. BICKEL

Image 2.2  Bracha L. Ettinger, Eurydice – Medusa – Pieta, n. 2, 2015–2018. (Oil on canvas, 40 × 30 cm, @ Courtesy of the artist)

dwells for long periods with her subjects. With a muted palette her painterly layers fade while surfacing haunting, if not mystical communication (see Image 2.2). Entering matrixial borderspace(s) consciously and/or nonconsciously, is not done without risk or danger. Dwelling in the inbetween-ness of the matrixial realm can draw trauma and fear to the surface at individual and collective levels. The potential encounter-event of connection or attunement in matrixial borderspaces creates opportunity to heal and transform the very source of trauma and fear in oneself and ones’ cultural embeddedness. Co-poiesis as part of metramorphosis takes place relationally between Is and non-Is, the co-becoming fetus and mother. Copoiesis carries a

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

33

matrixial memory that is unremembered and unforgettable by the artist or others but retained and embedded in the artwork itself.32 Art, artworks and artworkings in matrixial theory are aesthetic, ethical and political opportunities for transforming and healing past, present and future traumas through the feminine as woman artist.33 I translate woman artist literally and metaphorically as wom(b)an artist. One who evolved and came into being through their mother’s womb (as we all have), and who remains aesthetically and ethically connected to this co-relational place of originary matrixial difference. The wom(b)an artist then can be one with a fertile/ non-fertile biological womb or a present/absent womb.34 Becoming a Woman Artist To offer a rationale for and understanding of the woman/wom(b)an35 artist I offer a synthesis of Ettinger’s essay “Weaving a Woman Artist with-in the Matrixial Encounter-Event.” Here “Femininity… transforms from within what it means to be a subject, for it is the kernel of ethical being, the ultimate measure of the ethical relationship.”36 In this way we counteract the predominant phallic focus on “death and foreclosed femininity”37 perpetuated through the philosophies of Freud, Lacan, and until his later years Levinas. A pre-eminent philosopher-psychoanalyst herself, steeped in the study of these partial and limiting male philosophies that position the female as a cut or lack in the psyche, Ettinger unfolds the proposal for the feminine that is inclusive of all others. I want to repeat here the proposal of the feminine as inclusive of all others. Here the artist is a “Woman” [who]is therefore not a radical Other, but a border-Other that can be encountered if we follow upon her threads in the texture and textile of the web.”38 Ettinger positions woman in the interwoven fabric of life as pre, post and trans gender, writing that “Her ungendered yet feminine difference makes sense as an encounter-event Thing. In textile, no identity can work-through its destiny alone.”39 A woman artist as described by Ettinger is one who bridges aesthetics with ethics through compassionate relationality, moving the self and other to experience the possibility of movement and change through art. I recognize all the artists in this book to be woman artists who can awaken and guide others through their artful illustration of co-encounters in matrixial borderspace(s). Ettinger concludes the proposition for the feminine with the radical stance whereby, as woman is always co-emerging with the other, as such

34 

B. A. BICKEL

“she cannot recognize transsubjective-objects in any voyeuristic way. She joins the other-Encounter and witnesses the others’ event: she wit(h) nesses in weaving.”40 Men, having experienced female originary difference as womb dwellers, she further concludes are not excluded from becoming woman artists. Men enter in contact with matrixial time and site through transference relations via art, when affected, like women, by joining-in-difference with other various nonconscious pathways they open to and from originary matrixial difference linked to femaleness not limited to women only. (found in Bracha Ettinger41)

Matrixial theory is a gift that validates while challenging and expanding aesthetic, ethical and political practices. I have found the most generative way to engage with and come to understand matrixial theory is to apply it to creative practices and relational life experiences, whether with oneself, others, or a numinous other. Applying and practicing Ettinger’s theoretically rich matrixial words and terms are a significant way of altering entrenched phallic patterns that impose a phallic language onto lived experiences. This book connects matrixial theory with practices, woman artists and artworkings as a means to teach it. In the next section I share a performance art ritual created by artist Mary Beth Edelson and apply matrixial theory to it. Art can be a portal to transcendence within a numinous threshold.

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

35

The artist strips away clutter   noise of human reality   to reveal an expression of ritual journeying through artistic materials beyond time and space. (found in Yantra de Vilder42)

Communicaring Through Performance Ritual Bringing spirit into form and creating matrixial borderspaces for people to touch mystery through connection with each other can be facilitated through performance art rituals. New York-based feminist activist and artist Mary Beth Edelson43 has utilized performance art ritual since the late 1960s. I have been inspired by Mary Beth’s art since the 1990s. We met on my first trip to New York City while writing my dissertation, and I visited her studio loft in Soho. A few years later, as a new professor, I invited her as a visiting artist to the School of Art and Design where I was teaching. In her mid-70s at the time, she was delighted to come. During the very intense three day visit we orchestrated a public performance art piece originally performed in the 1970s, as part of a collaboration with Suzanne Lacy, where they worked with two communities in conflict in New Orleans. In 2004 Edelson took the performance to Norway, where recently arrived war zone refuges performed with native Scandinavians. This travelling performance ritual is called “Making Eye Contact” and socially engages the community in the performance itself.44 The performance handout for participating students describes how, The focus of this performance is to take steps toward reaching connectivity between people who might otherwise not make eye contact. And to present the potential for a powerful moment of vicarious recognition of the other through the agency of the collective unconscious.45

In this performative artworking Mary Beth engages what Bracha Ettinger would name matrixial communicaring, sourced from the Latin verb “communicare,” meaning “to share.” It is a form of communication that goes beyond verbal communication and opens a hospitable

36 

B. A. BICKEL

com-passion that is an instinctual primary compassion available to all, but not accessible through “phallic” communication. Communicaring can evoke, trauma, beauty and love for the occasion of healing, and seducing us into life.46 To set the stage for the campus seduction into life through communicaring music was composed by faculty musician and composer Ron Coulter in consultation with Mary Beth. The music offered an “other” worldly soundscape creating a sacred acoustic space on campus to assist tapping into the collective unconscious. The music played for the duration of the performance from the campus clock tower and could be heard across campus. In socially-engaged performance art, the woman artist as teacher extends the invitation, sets up the sacred space, develops the structure, the guidelines, and teaches required skills. Students and faculty who stepped in as the performance artists of “Making Eye Contact” took part in a workshop with Edelson where she shared the intention, taught the skills for making eye contact with a stranger, and gave guidelines for the performance (see Image 2.3). The audience would be those who knowingly or unknowingly entered the sacred acoustic field where the performance artists awaited engagement (see Image 2.4). In this way, the artist becomes the active mystic that artist-educators Kenneth and Joan Beittel refer to as “a believer in meditation in action, and as such, out of the hidden order of art finds ways to verify intuitions of certitude.”47 Matthew Fox expands the understanding of the artist as one who engages the centring act of extrovert meditation and prophesy when he wrote; “The creative person then is the Maker of Connections who has first seen these connections at some almost unreachable level of awareness. [They have] learned to trust that vision enough to explore it and express it.”48 Mary Beth enlists art to move others into a meditative action of communicaring. Many years later performance artist Marina Abramović engaged a similar communicaring process as art, written about in Chap. 4. Entering a state of concentrated attention and attunement with the field around you creates an opening to enter an altered state of consciousness. Doing this within a ritual setting, such as the performance did, enhances the opportunity. Writing about the experience of “Making Eye Contact” Megan Sims reflected, “From my experience, every encounter did have a mystical or hypnotic sense…. When you truly look at someone with non-judgement directly into their eyes, thoughts become muffled, everything else around you blurs, and all you can see is the light from each

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

37

Image 2.3  Mary Beth Edelson-performance debrief, 2010. (Carbondale, Illinois, photo Gregory Wendt)

other’s eyes: the soul intensifies.”49 The description of the experience reflects the state of consciousness shift that can take place in performance art ritual. Over the years I have considered myself fortunate to have entered relational connections and gazes through reading, immersing myself in others’ art, and collaborating with woman artists such as Mary Beth and students. I do not do this work alone but in active meditative action and

38 

B. A. BICKEL

Image 2.4  Making Eye Contact performance, 2010. (Carbondale, Illinois, photo Barbara Bickel)

attunement within the gift circle of others; artists, theorists, writers, teachers, ancestors, and allies in the realms of the natural, spiritual and cultural. Underlying this has been what I call the matrixial gift economy.

Matrixial Gift Economy Any work of art, by definition, is a string of generosity.   A work of art is a gift. (found in Ettinger & Virtanen50).

This book is a gift given to myself and offered to others simultaneously. I situate the gift in the framework of a “matrixial gift economy.”51 A matrixial gift economy is created within and through a maternal ecological healing paradigm rooted in practices of originary compassion, com-passion

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

39

and care.52 Originary compassion exists in the “pre-verbal, pre-cognitive stage of life in the womb” and is a co-transformational process “to suffer or experience with.”53 A matrixial gift economy is then a co-­transformational healing paradigm that moves us toward aesthetical and ethical relations. The relational gift begins prior to birth in the womb of the mother who is co-becoming with the as yet unknown other.54 We all come from the womb of a mother and know the experience of being nourished unconditionally by our mothers’ bodies. Upon birth, care for the body and emotional nurturing of the developing child by caregivers continues as a love-based gift not valued and acknowledged for the significance of its support of the capitalist patriarchal-based economy. Genevieve Vaughan’s research confirms “There is a maternal economy, which already exists before, beyond and within the economy of Patriarchal Capitalism. Mothering is a mode of distribution of goods and services to needs. In her book “For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange,” Genevieve Vaughan wrote, The gift paradigm emphasizes the importance of giving to satisfy needs. It is need-oriented rather than profit-oriented. Free gift giving to needs–what in mothering we would call nurturing or caring work–is often not counted and may remain invisible in our society or seem uninformative because it is qualitatively rather than quantitatively based. However, giving to needs creates bonds between givers and receivers. Recognizing someone’s need, and acting to satisfy it, convinces the giver of the existence of the other, while receiving something from someone else that satisfies a need proves the existence of the other to the receiver.55

Artist, philosopher midwife Nané Jordan builds on Vaughan’s work in her 2017 book “Placental Wit” and places “placental relations and thinking” at the centre of imagining the gift economy appearing in utero within, the heart of the primal mother-baby dyad. There, I would locate a specific embodied maternal order of the gift that flows from mother to child, and onwards into the whole social milieu…. In the current market system and exchange economy, placentas are literally thrown out after birth. This is a striking action and metaphor for our social understandings of the maternal gift as being literally worthless. The notion of garbage itself is ‘refuse’ or what is refused. Thus, the gift is refused and made invisible.56

40 

B. A. BICKEL

Nané further notes how “fear of pain, birth and death… become linked to the medicalization of birth, and over use of interventions can disrupt mother-baby bonding, hormonal systems, and unity.”57 Devaluing the life-giving gifts of mothering can and does lead to an inability to care unconditionally and/or well for a child, registered as trauma in the new-­ born baby and developing child. Matrixial theory similarly illuminates how matrixial fragments stored within borderspace(s) are often ill-judged as refuse and consequently devalued. To the detriment of all, they are thrown out by the phallic when brought to the surface to be attended to.58 As the child grows in the patriarchal culture of rationality and reason, natural bodily healing abilities, such as laughing, yawning, crying, shaking and spontaneously talking (babbling), are marked as inappropriate. Likewise, the ability to access altered states of trance, often perceived as and derided as being “spacey” or wasting time daydreaming, are arational healing gifts present early in life that are most often eroded, suppressed and taken away, sometimes violently, in our modern culture. Feeding the refusal of the mother’s gift is the patriarchal history of demonization of the mother and perpetuation of the self-sacrificing mother syndrome leading to a misplaced fear of and rejection of the mother. This pattern repeats itself in the demonization of Nature and the other, resulting in fear of and a drive to overcome natural forces, along with plundering and sacrificing the Earth’s natural resources for human ‘progress’ at the cost of the ecological health of all. Potawatomi scientist Robyn Wall Kimmerer wrote of the role of women in her lineage who are considered the Keepers of the Water. We carry the sacred water to ceremonies and act on its behalf. “Women have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers,” my sister said. “We carry our babies in internal ponds and they come forth into the world on a wave of water. It is our responsibility to safeguard the water for all our relations.59

Kimmerer brings symbolic and embodied awareness to our connection with the elements of the Earth. The Earth being the original gift-giving mother who carries and gestates creation and the life forms of the Earth, of which humans are one part. Honouring the gift of the mother Matthew Fox describes creativity as a sacred generative process, as a “way of living that considers birthing holy and that puts birthing ahead of controlling, ecstasy ahead of objectifying

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

41

and celebrative sharing ahead of conformity. Creativity, [like the Earth, and women as unconditional gift givers are] the celebrative dimension of compassion even though pain accompanies it.”60 Nané Jordan further reflects on how “We would not be here without the eons of human birthing relationships that have come before us, nor without the stream of mother gifts that predates our own lives. We are given the gift, and we can pass this gift to others.”61 Genevieve Vaughan connects the maternal gift and art within the maternal gift economy. “The work of art itself gives [to satisfy aesthetic needs as the mother satisfies the needs of child]. The creative gift of the artist is the ability to make something that gives.”62 Artist educator Kenneth Beittel offers a vision for artists, who are the gestating birth givers/gifters of art to the cultural world. To circulate “artworks freely, outside the official economy, is a secret political act hopeful of art for a new age?”63 By new age Beittel means a world that embraces great traditions of knowledge in our lineages as humans with the timeless knowing and beingness of the Earth and spirit. A call for a needed new age where we can embrace and co-create within seemingly dissonant and dichotomous qualities of spontaneous discipline while embracing integrative lineages of knowledge. Poet-author Lewis Hyde contributes to awareness of the gift economy at work through artists in the 1979 book “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World,” writing that we operate in a world that “exist[s] simultaneously in two “economies,” a market economy and a gift economy.64 Only one of these is essential, however: a work of art [mothers and the Earth] can survive without the market, but where there is no gift there is no art [child or life].”65 I close this section with questions that haunt me. Can we can move toward caring for life with a grace and determination that holds the possibility of counteracting the rapidly growing culture of irrationality, and the dominating market economy drive toward death? Can we interrupt destruction and instead re-connect through communicaring to and with each other and all of life on this Earth? And, based on a matrixial understanding of the gift, can we fearlessly shift to honouring the gift of mothers, caregivers, the Earth, artists, academics and healers with responsibility, reverence and respect through the conscious practice of a matrixial gift economy?

Art Practice One

Spontaneous Creation-Making66 Intent To enter an artful inquiry process initiated through spontaneous creation-making. Guiding Narrative Spontaneous creation-making takes place best: • within a non-judgmental environment that allows the free-­ flowing of expressions, feelings and ideas • when it encourages exploration of materials, creative processes, and if done with others, playful interaction • when it grants permission to make a mess Spontaneous creation-making does not: • interpret • solve problems • focus on teaching or learning art techniques67 Spontaneous creation-making works best when it is done with at least one other person and on a regular basis over a period of time. • Set a limited amount of time to create within (e.g. 15–60 minutes) • Create a sacred space (see Ritual Practice One). • Read an inspirational quote on creativity as a way to center. • Choose your creative medium. Engage/play with the medium with your critical conscious editor off. • When time is complete come back to the circle if you are with others. • Invite witnessing of what was created. Acknowledge that something has emerged out of “endless possibilities in just that moment” for yourself, and for any others you are with or may have co-created with. ‘“Your creation is significant as it is a live “being.” You may not see its significance at first glance. Watch to see that you are not dismissing it because of ‘old tapes’ such as, “this is not art” or “it is stupid and a waste of time.”’68 Welcome the creation as a new born baby where all judgements are suspended. At this time, open to in-the-moment responses to the new birth that are not interpretive or about problem solving but sourced from the arational. • Document your creation through digital media or written description. • Reflectively write about the process. Keep these documents as new understandings. Patterns as ideas may surface over time if done regularly. Spontaneous creation-making can become source material for a future piece of art or an artful inquiry project.

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

43

Notes 1. Ettinger, 93–94. 2. A/r/tography was developed at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada at the start of the millennium, and is a growing international arts-based research method for artists and educators (see http:// artography.edcp.educ.ubc.ca/). Rita Irwin, Alex de Cossen, Stephanie Springgay and Sylvia Wilson [Kind] theoretically locate the a/r/tographer in the liminal spaces between and within the worlds of the artist, researcher and educator. Artists, researchers, teachers and art are all drawn from as sources of theory to support the a/r/tographic inquiry, while artmaking and teaching become sites of emergent understandings to question and extend the a/r/tographic inquiry. See Irwin and de Cosson 2004 and Springgay et al. 2005. 3. Irwin 2004, 30. 4. Beittel 1989, ix. 5. Bickel. 6. Gablik. “Radical relatedness calls for a priority valuation of intersubjective coexistence with others, the environment, the community and the world. It challenges us to move beyond an isolated modernist paradigm and to shift toward an inter-relational attunement of mutual respect and care.” Bickel et al. 86–102. 7. Bickel. 8. Art writer Suzi Gablik’s 1992 call for connective aesthetics is an opening to radical relatedness. “It calls us to attend to both self and other with respect, compassion, and care. This requires an awakening to awareness that is not egocentric, ethno-centric or human-centric but world-centric in its relational awareness of subjectivity and interconnectedness.” Bickel and White, 481. 9. Kerr, 8 & 9. 10. Mary Blaze, a former studio mate inspired the current collaborative project to be exhibited and performed in November 2020. Its working title is “The Colour of Absence.” A previous collaboration was “Women ‘Enduring Freedom”’ written about in Chap. 8. 11. Edelson, 323. 12. Minh-ha, 74. 13. Ibid. 14. Turner. 15. Ibid., 226. 16. Grimes, 69.

44 

B. A. BICKEL

17. Ibid., 62 & 69. 18. Ibid & Northrup. 19. Ibid., Minh-ha, 135. 20. Ibid., Turner, 227. 21. Driver. 22. Personal dream, October 10, 2019. 23. Signell 1990. 24. Bogzaran and Delauriers, 165. 25. Ibid., Kerr, 2. 26. Personal dream, June 24, 2019. 27. Ettinger’s art is not written about in this book. It deserves a full study of its own. See https://www.wikiart.org/en/bracha-l-ettinger 28. A Zen Buddhist word meaning openness and curiosity. Accessed on December 3, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin 29. Pollock, In Ettinger 2006, 36.7. 30. Ibid., 8.8. 31. Ettinger 2006, 8.9. 32. Ibid., 144.5. 33. Estelle Barrette aligns Deleuze and Guatarri’s notion of ‘becoming(s) woman’ with Ettinger’s ‘woman artist’ in creative process, 2010, 258. 34. Acknowledging some do not have a physical womb due to biology or surgery. 35. Wom(b)an came to me as a way to connect all genders, gendered and gender non-identified people to the traditional use of the word woman. In contrast Janice P. De-White in her 2018 book introduces “wom(b)an” [literally to] underscore the centrality of the productive womb to female identity…in Hebrew contexts” and utilized it as a “wom(b)an reading methodology” to shift cultural-narratives (publishers description & 9). 36. Ettinger 2006, 190. 37. Ibid., 176.7. 38. Ibid., 176.7. 39. Ibid., 196.6. 40. Ibid., 197 41. Ibid., 182–182.3. 42. de Vilder, 193. 43. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Beth_Edelson 44. Video created by Mary Beth Edelson in consultation with filmmaker Gregory Wendt. https://vimeo.com/15457496 45. Performance participant hand-out written by Mary Beth Edelson, 2010. 46. Ettinger and Gardiner. 47. Beittel and Beittel, 42. 48. Fox, 48.

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

45

49. Bickel and Sims, 48. 50. Ettinger and Virtanen, 695. 51. Theorized in conversation with R. Michael Fisher. 52. Read more on matrixial empathy-with-compassion in Fisher and Bickel 2015. 53. Ibid., Bickel et al, 172. 54. Ettinger 2006. 55. Vaughan, n.p. 56. Jordan, 150–151. 57. Jordan, 151. 58. Ibid., Barrett, 258. 59. Kimmerer, 94. 60. Ibid., Fox, 111. 61. Ibid., Jordan, 153. 62. Ibid., Vaughan, n.p. 63. Beittel, 50. 64. I regret this book is not an open access gift operating outside of the capitalist economic system, and as a consequence not easily accessible. Our culture still supports public and educational libraries, I invite ordering this book for private, public and educational libraries to assist its gift-giving capacity. 65. Hyde, xvi. 66. Bickel and Fisher 1993. Co-written handbook with my life-partner. 67. Ibid., 21. 68. Ibid., 24.

References Barrett, Estelle. 2000. Mutant Enunciations: Feminist Practices and the Anoedipla. Social Semiotics 10 (3): 253–261. Beittel, Kenneth R. 1989. Zen and the Art of Pottery. New York: Weatherhill. ———. 2003. Art for a New Age. Visual Arts Research 29 (57): 39–53. Beittel, Kenneth R., and Joan Beittel. A Celebration of Art and Consciousness, 1991. State College: Happy Valley Healing Arts. Bickel, Barbara. 2004. From Artist to A/r/tographer: An Autoethnographic Ritual Inquiry into Writing on the Body. Master thesis, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver. ———. 2005. From Artist to A/r/tographer: An Autoethnographic Ritual Inquiry into Writing on the Body. Journal of Curriculum & Pedagogy 2 (2): 8–17. Bickel, Barbara, and Robert M.  Fisher. 1993. Opening Doors: A Guide to Spontaneous Creation-Making. Calgary: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.

46 

B. A. BICKEL

Bickel, Barbara, and Megan Sims. 2014. Making Eye Contact: Mary Beth Edelson’s Performance Art as Public Pedagogy. Journal of Arts and Community 5 (1): 41–53. Bickel, Barbara and Boyd White. 2015. Connective Aesthetics. In The Wisdom of the Many: Key Issues in Arts Education. International Yearbook for Research in Arts Education, ed. S. Schonnman, 481–485. Munich: Waxmann. Bickel, Barbara and Stephanie Springgay, Ruth Beer, Rita L. Irwin, and Gu Xiong. 2011. A/r/tographic Collaboration as Radical Relatedness. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 10 (1): 86. http://ejournals.library.ualberta. ca/index.php/IJQM/issue/view/601 Bogzaran, Fariba and Daniel Delauriers. 2012. Integral Dreaming: A Holistic Approach to Dreams. New York: Suny. de Vilder, Yantra. 2016. Towards the Artistic Moment: A Personal Exploration at the Nexus of Improvised Inter-disciplinary and Cross-cultural Collaborative Performance Through the Metaphor of ‘Ma,’ 184–185. Doctor of Creative Arts, Western Sydney University. De-Whyte, Janice P. 2018. Wom(b)an: A Cultural-Narrative Readings of the Hebrew Bible Barrenness Narratives. Leiden: Brill. Driver,  Thomas F. 1997. Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual. Boulder: Westview Press. Edelson, Mary Beth. 1982. See for Yourself: Women’s Spirituality in Holistic Art. In The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement, ed. Charlene Spretnak, 312–326. Garden City: Archer Press. Ettinger, Bracha L. 1999. Traumatic Wit(h)ness-thing and Matrixial Co/in-­ habit(u)ating. Parallax 5 (1): 89–98. ———. 2004. Weaving a Woman Artist Within the Matrixial Encounter-Event. Theory, Culture and Society 21 (1): 69–93. ———. 2006. The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ettinger, Bracha L., and Kyoko Gardiner. 2010. Communicaring: Reflexion Around Hiroshima Mon Amour & Ettingerian Reading of Feminine-Matrixial Encounters in Duras/Rasnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour. In Postgender, ed. A. Zohar. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Ettinger, Bracha L., and Akseli Virtanen. 2005. Art, Memory, Resistance. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 5 (X): 690–702. Fisher, Robert M., and Barbara Bickel. 2015. Aesthetic With(h)nessing within a Matrixial Imaginary. The Canadian Review of Art Education 42: 1. Fox, Matthew. 1979. A Spirituality Named Compassion and the Healing of the Global Village, Humpty Dumpty and Us, 131. Minneapolis: Winston Press. Gablik, Suzi. 1992. The Ecological Imperative. Art Journal 51 (Summer): 49–51.

2  A/R/TOGRAPHY AS RITUAL AND DREAMING IN MATRIXIAL… 

47

Grimes, Ronald L. 1995. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Hyde, Lewis. 2007. The Gift: Creativity and The Artist in The Modern World. New York: Vintage Books. Irwin, Rita L. 2004. A/r/tography: A Metonymic Metissage. In A/r/tography: Rendering Self Through Arts Based Living Inquiry, ed. R.L. Irwin and A. de Cosson, 27–38. Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press. Irwin, Rita L., and Alex de Cosson, eds. 2004. A/r/t/ography: Rendering Self Through Arts-Based Living Inquiry. Vancouver: Pacific Educational Press. Jordan, Nané. 2017. Placental Thinking: The Gift of Maternal Roots. In Placenta Wit: Mother Stories, Rituals, and Research, ed. Nané Jordan, 142–155. Bradford: Demeter Press. Kerr, Sarah. 2012. Dreams, Rituals, and the Creation of Sacred Objects: An Inquiry into a Contemporary Western Shamanic Initiation. Dissertation, San Francisco: California Institute of Integral Studies. Kimmerer, Robin Wall. 2013. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants, 94. Minneapolis: Milkweed. Minh-ha, Trinh T. 2005. The Digital Film Event. New York: Routledge. Northrup, Lesley A. 1997. Ritualizing Women: Patterns of Spirituality. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press. Pollock, Griselda. 2006. Introduction. In The Matrixial Borderspace, ed. Bracha L. Ettinger. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Signell, Karen A. 1990. Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Women’s Dreams. New York: Fromm International. Springgay, Stephanie, Irwin L.  Rita, and Sylvia Kind. 2005. A/r/tography as Living Inquiry Through Art and Text. Qualitative Inquiry 11 (6): 892–912. Turner, Kay. 1982. Contemporary Feminist Rituals. In The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power Within the Feminist Movement, ed. Charlene Spretnak. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday. Vaughan, Genevieve. For-Giving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange, 1997. http:// gift-economy.com/for-giving/. Accessed 15 Nov 2019.

CHAPTER 3

Trance, Sacred Place and Collaboration

Abstract  This chapter offers an overview of the presence of trance practices across human cultures and its place in contemporary Western culture. To address the culture of irrationality spreading at a disturbing rate globally, this chapter introduces the arational practice of trance as an antidote. Trance-Based Inquiry and Trance-Based Learning are introduced. Collaboration with humans and the more-than-human world offer a bridge to rematriation with the Earth. The chapter closes with a trance practice to journey to a sacred place. Keywords  Trance • Trance-based inquiry • Trance-based learning • Four Arrows • Sacred • Place-based • Collaborative aesthetics • Ma aesthetic • Artist collectives • Collaboration • Earthvox • Trees • Yantra de Vilder • Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory • Tanya Tagaq Sitting in stillness breath slows down, numinous pause holds me in situ.

© The Author(s) 2020 B. A. Bickel, Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_3

49

50 

B. A. BICKEL

She asks Is the information   to be found in the center or on the margin, in the conscious subject or in the anonymous element? Even if the anonymous grain has no consciousness, it is part of the intimate matrixial embrace. (found in Bracha L. Ettinger1)

Trance-Based Inquiry Under the bridge of trance, toxic waters of the irrational flow. Standing on the bridge of trance we can choose to look into the deep waters of irrationality and not be pulled into, swept away, or drowned in them. To address the culture of irrationality spreading at a disturbing rate in our contemporary culture, this book offers the arational practice of trance as an antidote. Trance-based inquiry through ritualizing and the arts is an aesthetic sensorial practice of coming to know and not know. It can assist uncovering access to and exploration of knowledge and wisdom from natural, spiritual and cultural realms. Whether recognized or not, all humans have experienced altered states of trance in one form or another in their lives. It involves an instinctual and dialectic matrixial practice of communicaring, creating learning bridges between an ordinary state of consciousness and non-ordinary state of consciousness, the rational and the arational, the self and more-than-self. Traditionally, trance has been nurtured and practiced in sacred contexts such as within Indigenous shamanism and religious/spiritual-based communities as possession states, active or process meditation, and mediumship. Although numerous Indigenous communities utilize plant-based medicines to enter trance states, the processes shared in this book are

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

51

focused on creating intentional sacred space for trance leading into uncharted territories that are not drug-induced, but rather combined with creative, contemplative, ecstatic, place-based practices not dependent on psychic or paranormal abilities. I value traditional plant medicine practices in Indigenous communities but hold caution regarding the use of plant-­ based hallucinogens in non-Indigenous-based communities and contexts. There is a history of trance-based practices past and present in colonized North America. Early colonies fostered religious tolerance through the philosophies of Freemasonry and Christian mysticism. These philosophies influenced the dawning of the occult and spiritualism at the turn of the Twentieth Century in forms such as mediumship and glossolalia (speaking in tongues).2 Enslaved Africans taken across the Atlantic brought trance dance practices with them from African religions, such as Vodou and Candomblé that were incorporated into Christian religious practices.3 Non-drug induced trance practices have emerged and are practiced in contemporary Western society within psychoanalysis as hypnosis, free association, and active imagination. New Age and alternative spiritual groups also engage trance practices as visualizations and guided meditations. Trance has also had a presence in the arts, in particular in Surrealist art, avante garde art and contemporary experimental film, sound, electronic and performance art. Specific woman artists who draw from different forms of trance are the focus of Chaps. 4, 5, 6 and 7. One form of trance I share elements of in this book I learned within the Reclaiming eco-feminist Wiccan tradition. I combine this practice with my years of ritualizing art and place-based inquiry practices.4 Co-founding Reclaiming priestess and teacher Starhawk describes trance as “a place between the worlds.” Starhawk’s seminal book “The Spiral Dance,” shares, One of the most important realizations is that trance states are both subjective and objective. There is a continuum of experience, part of which is relevant only to the individual’s interior world, and part of which can be shared and agreed on by others. What begins in the imagination becomes real – even though that reality is of a different order than the reality of the senses. It is the reality of the underlying energy currents that shape the universe.5

Trance states are recognized as unlocking “the tremendous potential inherent in our unused awareness through which we can augment our sensitivity, growth, and creativity”6 The Reclaiming tradition teaches trance as a practice of taking charge of our human suggestibility to trance states. This charge is assisted by learning to enter trance, and engage inner communication between the conscious and nonconscious so as to “no longer be easily

52 

B. A. BICKEL

programmed without our conscious consent.”7 Because trance in this tradition engages both the conscious and nonconscious mind, that is both sides of the brain, it requires a non-drugged state to practice it. Consequently, I often describe trance as dreaming while awake or awake dreaming. Studies have revealed the spectrum of trance spans different forms from REM sleep dreaming, to mystical states and possession trance. Trance experiences can extend from the light trance state of day dreaming or watching television, to deep trance levels that enter into astral travel or paranormal sensing. Anthropologists, educators, physicists, and theorists (e.g. Bourguignon, Goodman, Gowan, Mindell), study trance states still practiced around the world. Anthropologists Felicitas Goodman8 and Erika Bourguinon9 recognized, through many years of field study, that all humans possess what could be a gene giving them the ability to enter altered states of consciousness. They also found the small percentage of people not able to easily enter trance can be taught the skills to do so. Trance then, in its diversity with roots in all cultures, is an accessible generative practice of opening to the liminal space of arational modes of knowing and subtle realms of experience. I draw from performance study scholar Richard Schechners’ concise overview of the trance state from a neurobiological perspective as I find it helpful in demystifying the human ability to enter trance. [T]rance is the outcome of simultaneous stimulation of both hemispheres (frontal lobes) of the brain. In brief, the left lobe guides logical thought and speech…. Stimulating the left lobe makes one energized, aroused, and alert. The right lobe guides spatial and tonal perceptions…. Stimulating the right hemisphere loosens a person’s ego, dissolving boundaries between self and other, inner and outer. Ordinarily, one or the other hemisphere is dominant. At slightly aroused levels, this dominance continues. A person usually can’t be tranquil and anxious at the same time. But when one side is fully in play, it “rebounds,” bringing the other side fully into play also…. producing a balance or “tuning” of the two systems; in the third phase both systems operate simultaneously – resulting in intense and varied experiences such as sexual orgasm, yogic or zen meditation, and trance…. Although “opposites,” shamanic ecstasy and yogic samadhi produce the same feeling state. In this state of maximum bi-hemisphere arousal, people feel weightless, or outside of their bodies…. You feel “one with the universe” or “one with the community… This kind of feeling occurs during trancing, ritualizing, and meditating, but also when one is taken over by the “crowd spirit” [e.g. sporting match, riots, rallies]10

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

53

The latter experience described by Schechner, of being “taken over,” can be a powerful unifying experience for the good or it can become a human frailty when used to manipulate or en-trance people for ill and divisive ends. Our present-day patriarchal culture has become savvy at employing exploitive entrancement of the masses with the lubricant of visual media, materialism and fear inducing rhetoric. While we remain mistrusting or asleep to the inherent gift of trance and arational ways of knowing we risk falling and remaining under the spell of the hegemonic “imperialist, capitalist, white supremacist patriarchy” of Western culture.11 Becoming aware of our human proclivity for en-trance-ability and the potential resulting irrational thoughts and behaviours in social, cultural, religious and political ritual experiences, is a significant motive for writing this book. Just as we can enter an involuntary trance state while driving on the highway (i.e. not consciously remembering the habitual drive home from work), we can enter a nonconscious trance state at risk of irrational believe-ability while on the internet or media highway, or at a large public gathering, allowing a “take over” of our psyche at deep subconscious levels. In contrast, we can direct our own entry points into our inherent trance-ability through engaging the arational for creative inquiry, discovery, learning and unlearning for the higher good of all; for individual and collective restoration, transformation, growth and healing. All humans have the ability to move in, around, and with altered states of consciousness individually and with others in community. Engaging trance-based inquiry is a return to healing and learning practices of trance with historical roots in all cultures and religions. A cross-cultural gift that has been suppressed, particularly in developed countries, first by monotheism, followed by science and rationalism. This has resulted in the colonization of and attempted erasure of Indigenous people and their ways of knowing, as well as women’s ways of knowing.12 It has included colonization of our imaginaries and right brain abilities. Within the liminal space of trance the mind can imagine and re-­imagine, hence practice performing the body and mind outside of limiting conditioned “regulatory norms” that our learned minds and culture repeatedly perform.13 Jacqui Alexander, a transnational feminist educator, in her poetically infused scholarly book “Pedagogies of Crossing” shares her African Vodou heritage inclusive of trance “as an antidote to oppression, healing work, that is, spiritual labor, assum[ing] different forms, while anchored in reconstructing a terrain that is both exterior and interior.”14 Within sacred psychology, Jean Houston teaches trance as an inquiry method of “gaining...knowledge from...states of consciousness that are

54 

B. A. BICKEL

deeper than your ordinary state...that can avail you of more subtle and comprehensive knowledge.”15 Adding a communal aspect to the work, eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, addresses the overwhelm earthlings are experiencing and advocates for a communal practice of deep listening to past and future ancestors. Macy shared in a 2017 interview that “If you are going to wake up, you have to wake up together. Never has that been more true than now, at this stage of late stage corporate capitalism.”16 With the eco-political arising of Indigenous knowledge keepers and Earth stewards, and the social-political arising of women and people of colour in the face of the world’s current life crisis, Starhawk, Alexander, Houston, Macy, my own and others’ teaching of trance as restorative and transformative inquiry, learning and unlearning skills, become essential for accessing the subtle and comprehensive knowledge and understandings being called for in this time of global crises.

Trance-Based Learning In Indigenous ceremonies, the energy of the land, plants, animals, fish, insects, rocks and rivers are respected and evoked. In Indigenous worldview trance relates to this energy. Understanding the phenomenon as   a holistic, naturalistic shift of energy that allows for subtle but profound changes, which in turn open   extraordinary powers within us. (found in Four Arrows17)

In a committed effort to Indigenize curriculum in the field of education, Indigenous-based educator Four Arrows calls for the teaching of “Trance-Based Learning” (TBL) in all schooling curriculums to assist dehypnotizing the mass entrancement of people caught in our cultures’ fear-based spell (Four Arrows, 2020). I greatly appreciate the theory and practice of Trance-­Based Learning Four Arrows developed and teaches; mnemonically named CAT-FAWN. As Four Arrows is the first educator, I know of, to call for the teaching of trance in Western-based educational

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

55

systems, I offer a brief overview of the theory and encourage study of his books.18 Four Arrows’ theory emerged from a near death experience (NDE) followed by his vision of a wild cat and fawn in a mutually caring relationship. This led to an apprenticeship and study of the Indigenous worldview, along with development of the theory and practice of CATFAWN. Concentration Activated Transformation is Trance-Based Learning and engages practices of Concentration Activated Transformation. TBL practices are for centering and pursuing the “highest state of consciousness and health,” which for him are meditation, self-­ hypnosis, engagement with athletics, purification lodges, and music.19 CAT is the core practice centered in the medicine wheel. From this center, TBL engages the ‘“four directions with an Indigenous worldview rather than a dominant [Western] one in mind as it relates to the four influences on TBL: Fear and the direction of “Courage and Fearlessness;” Authority and the direction of Community-based Self–Authorship;” Words and the direction of “Sacred Communication;” Nature and the direction of “Nature is All.”20

Trance-based inquiry performs in relationship to and with TBL. Since learning of Four Arrows scholarship I have included TBL within my teaching. The practices of trance-based inquiry and learning are ultimately trance-formative and call for willingness to step outside of comfortable individual conscious awareness. Thus, experiencing altered states as more than individual, and recognizing trance states as sites of significant collective memory holding. We are indebted to Indigenous elders who have kept trance-based processes and cultural traditions alive despite the attempt by colonizers and Christian missionaries to erase them, labelling them as barbaric, dangerous and punishable, sometimes by death. As more Indigenous artists are recognized in western culture (particularly in former British colonies of Canada and Australia) ancient traditional creative practices are appearing in the contemporary artworld and having a positive impact in exposing Western audiences to sacred ways of inquiry, knowing, not knowing and being through art. A 2017 article entitled “Why Shamanic practices are making a comeback in contemporary art” explores the art of numerous Indigenous artists who do not practice traditional Shamanism in their art, but do draw from it. The article expressively concludes, “To get the West out of its current morass, we may need not only the knowledge of indigenous cultures and the tools of modern science, but also the awakening of

56 

B. A. BICKEL

consciousness brought by art—some experience of “God” or the “numinous.”21 Some Indigenous artists access this knowledge through learning and practicing their traditional art forms. A 2018 interview with Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, an Indigenous artist who draws from uaajeerneq, a traditional Greenlandic mask dancing form, reveals how she draws from this practice passed on through her mother, and utilizes it “as the praxis for live performance, an eyehole for writing, and a foundation for her ways of thinking about human beings.”22 Laakkuluk savors performing with another Indigenous artist Tanya Tagaq who draws from the Inuit Throat singing tradition. Laakkuluk remarks, “Once we started performing together, we realized how much we sink and fly through the same realms of consciousness to create performance – her through her voice and me through my mask dancing.”23 Laakkuluk’s comment reveals the altered states of reality or trance-based reality that two women artists can tap into through art steeped in their cultural traditions. In parallel, not necessarily or directly connected to Indigenous communities, there are many contemporary artists who hold space for trance in the artworld and beyond. It has been noted that it is artists in general who have kept the practice of trance-based inquiry and learning present in secular Western culture. This has been despite the arational being mischaracterized and repressed due to patriarchal monotheism and the rational science of the Enlightenment. Spiritual mestiza poet Gloria Anzaldúa who brought forward “mestiza consciousness” as an arational borderland consciousness wrote, When we refuse to consider the value of knowledge that is rooted in the body, in the psyche, in the paralogical experience, we fail to challenge colonialist, post-Renaissance, Euro-Western conceptions of reality. We need… to embrace other theoretical paradigms inclusive of embodied and in-­ spirited knowledge.24

Poet Lewis Hyde and others note the traditional devices artists have used to challenge rational-based conceptions of reality by engaging paralogical inducing practices, such as “drugs, fasting, trances, sleep deprivation, dancing—to suspend the will so that something “other” will come forward.”25 Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s bestselling book Flow explores light trance experiences that most artists easily access, framed within the domain of psychology as an optimal experience.26

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

57

I am grateful for artists who have nurtured mystical and trance realms in their art. It may be my bias as a spiritual feminist who has her antennae tuned to woman artists in search of kindred spirits, but I have also found it is women artists, for the most part, who both explore sacred realms and keep arational processes central in their art practices. Building upon Ettinger’s invitation for a feminine aesthetic, I encourage people of all and no gender to become a woman artist and expand the movement for sensorial, aesthetic and ethical healing with each other and the Earth.

Sacred Place An understanding of place as the Earth we live, walk and sleep upon is the terra firma under me. The Earth being an “inspirited, alive, interconnected web,”27 the holder of historical wisdom and teachings as well as wounds and traumas. Our constant companion, the Earth, is most often taken from and taken for granted by humans without respect or regard. While on walks in the forest during an artist residency in the Rocky Mountains I found myself frequently called to make direct contact with a tree by placing my forehead on its trunk and leaning into it. A practice I have continued to engage when in Nature. A deep sense of gratitude often accompanied by grief floods through me as I attune to tree, forest and myself simultaneously (see Image 3.1).

Image 3.1  Tree-Leaning, 2017. (Banff Artist Residency, Alberta, photo R. Michael Fisher)

58 

B. A. BICKEL

In 2003, while in her 80s, dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin, was filmed in the beautiful documentary “Returning Home.” In the film she shares how Nature can infuse the body and transport one into another world. That “we’ve been alienated from the natural world and need to find a way to re-enter, to once again be at home with Nature.” In moving improvisationally with/in/on the Earth the experience of returning home to the natural world unfolds. She viscerally describes how, We can look at our own individual bodies as a microcosm of a larger body. The water, the waves, the wind. The wind is breath. The ground under us is our support. The rivers are like our veins carrying our blood. There are all kinds of connections between what we experience within ourselves and what we experience in Nature. That connection creates a wholeness. We are not the center for the universe, we are part of the universe. We are not in control.28

Given that we are part of the Earth, we can learn to open ourselves to listen to the Earth and receive its guidance? I appreciate how educator and poet Marna Hauk, has built an Earth-based vocabulary from studying the dreams of women who practice Earth Dreaming. She found that Earth e/ mergence and inmergence is experienced in Earth learners through dreams and creative engagement. The phenomenon found in the shared dreams she names Earthvox. Earthvox as “a kind of emancipated, polyvocal, prophetic, and generous provisioning of guidance, tools and encouragement” emerging from the Earth. Deeply listening to and with the Earth we prepare ourselves to attend to the “e/mergent Earth.”29 Dreamers dreaming Earthvox accessed expanded imaginal skills and abilities to merge with Earthpresence “as a form of continuous connective creation and inmergent holism and earth creativity.”30 I resonate with Marna’s findings of earthling experiences of Earthvox and e/mergence and inmergence with the Earth through dreaming and connecting with Nature. The significance of the Earth’s voice deepened for me when I began to set the intention of listening to the Earth and entered trance-­based inquiry outdoors. Engaging trance directly on the land amplified the messages Earthvox offered to me. Through practicing trance-based inquiry and learning we can expand and develop life-art-ritual experiences as trance-formative and restorative within matrixial borderspace(s). We can build self and community resiliency to support needed recalibration and rematriation with the Earth. We face an unknown fragile future, due to our colonial-based departure and

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

59

disconnection from Earth-sourced knowledges and wisdoms. I believe it is essential to invoke the presence of ancestral and sentient beings as guides, allies and teachers for living into the future, while learning and unlearning for the past and present. Tree Earthvox Tracking Indigenous Poiesis on the land is profound participatory pedagogy, a process that makes and unmakes me. “Making” needs soil of the soul to enact its active alchemy. In its unfolding, it renders  transforms us, makes us available  resonant to the world around us. (found in Vicki Kelly31)

My Southern Illinois colleague and friend Sally Gradle explored artists’ connections to the sacredness of place in her study on “how artists experience and express the sacred in art making.”32 It was Sally who brought me to the Shawnee forest. The traditional lands of the twelve tribes of the Illiniwek people. Her words clearly situate the significance of place entwined with our experience of the sacred, [A]rtists’ connections to the sacred suggest multiple reasons as to why places are so significant. First, an attachment to place suggests belonging is necessary for all subsequent creation. Second, place offers an important access to the sacred, however one understands the term; and that does not seem as likely without strong ties which anchor one to a specific community, group, culture, or location. Third places offer an opportunity for metamorphosis that include the continuity of the self, experienced as an ongoing pattern of growth, unfolding over accumulated time. As a counter to the dilemma of Western culture’s increasing ‘placelessness’ that appears to favor unlimited access and freedom from confinement at the price of worthwhile orientation, being ‘placed’ has tremendous value for the art maker and all who might wish to heal a sense of spiritual dislocation as well. Cultivating and nurturing a sense of place in order to experience the sacred appears to be essential: and art is one mode of expression which may occur when one is so placed.33

60 

B. A. BICKEL

Living and teaching at a university surrounded by the Shawnee forest I found myself repeatedly visiting particular places where the Earth held nurturing resonances. In each of these places I was drawn to a particular tree who became an enduring friend to share time with, listen to, and feel heard by (see Image 3.2). Through trees I experienced Earthvox as a generous provider of guidance, care and support. When I moved back to Canada, I befriended the crab apple tree in my friend’s backyard. A tree who generously gifts me with applesauce for the winter months. The geopoetic writing in the Preface was birthed underneath the spruce tree I visit

Image 3.2  Tree-Friend Hug, 2017. (Carbondale, Illinois, photo Megan Centonze)

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

61

on daily walks. Sheltered by the tree’s boughs, this mother tree offers a sacred place for me to open to Earthvox. I return again and again to the grassy hillside sharing updates on my inmergent book writing, that has folded back into me with and in e/mergent Earth presence. These sacred places, grasses and trees are steadfast providers of guidance and nurturance drawing me closer to an experience of connective aesthetics and inmergent wholeness with the Earth. Nature has become one of my steadfast collaborators. A Trance Practice to find a sacred place is shared at the end of this chapter. “The Mother is abysmal space, a place. A hole, the hollow is hallowed hallowed it heals. Here the holy dead are seeded in her dark matrix, take root and are remembered.” (found in Meinrad Craighead34)

Artist Collaboration I get an idea, that sends you off on a strange tangent, then she sees what will pull it all together. (found in Persimmon Blackbridge35)

A Collaborative Aesthetic The practice of creative collaboration is complex. It can be fraught with conflicts and be extremely transforming and liberating. Artist collaborations, collaboration with people, places, art forms and materials energize my spirit and art practice. Sometimes collaborations hold a disturbing or frightening energy that propels me into the unknown--into mystery, while drawing me closer to new awareness and unimagined possibilities. Based on many years of practice as a collaborative artist I have come to recognize a collaborative aesthetic. A collaborative aesthetic is one that is committed to attune, listen and respond to/with an/other; whether human or more-­ than-­human.36 It is receptive and gravitates to common values or understandings while being completely unpredictable. Consciously engaging a

62 

B. A. BICKEL

collaborative aesthetic goes beyond a singular idea or any one understanding of beauty. It requires vulnerability and courage to momentarily let go of comfortable stylistic aesthetics, preciousness and attachments. It calls one to welcome an/other sensibility into one’s individual aesthetic, altering one’s entrenched personal aesthetic enough to reveal a novel and at times numinous aesthetic of beauty (see Image 3.3).

Image 3.3  R.  Michael Fisher and Barbara Bickel, Ludic Transmissions. 2018, mixed media on canvas, 24 × 36 inches

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

63

Working as a collaborative artist influences and at times alters the direction of my art. Agreements made at the beginning of a collaboration sometimes change part way through. A spiritually-based art collaboration, as I have experienced it, can disrupt and/or transcend cultural agendas that de-value women and Nature and ultimately all. Feminist  artist-­ educator and member of the Kiss & Tell collective, Susan Stewart wrote of the importance of collaborative work: Collaboration is an alternative and highly resistant model of creative interaction. It is a process that demonstrates a method of art making which can be democratic, transformative, and empowering, and which has the potential to renew and build community.37

Collaboration is a “with/and” experience. It is an artworking relationship that calls each participant to join with the other, and extend beyond their own personal self to create something that is greater than the individuals involved. A 1998 artist statement I wrote reflects how, “The very nature and characteristics of a successful collaboration involves a mutual understanding of the vision, an ability to trust, and a commitment to transcend fears that allow the essence of the art to be the final guide that leads the participants to the ultimate discovery.”38 Collaboration when entered without clear intent can cause misunderstandings, harmful fractures and conflicts. This often arises from different perceptions and understandings of collaboration and often manifests as issues of power and control within the relationships. Despite and maybe due to the risks, collaboration is also a powerful learning and inquiry tool. Performance artist, Lizard Jones of the Kiss and Tell collective echoes my understanding of the role of artist collaborations as an important relational practice; Artists don’t work alone. Their ideas are a product of their time and place, formed as much by circumstances as by inspiration…. Working collaboratively flies right in the face of that. It acknowledges that much of the art in the world is made by people working together. It forces us to deal with our ideas in a new way–to challenge the notion of a universal aesthetic, and simultaneously explore our common values. It’s a dynamic and fluid process.39

64 

B. A. BICKEL

Ma Aesthetic and Collaboration The space of Ma holds “inquisitiveness, desire, imagining, learning, positioning, being, becoming.”40 In these ways the concept of Ma has resonate cross-cultural vibrations with Ettinger’s matrixial borderspaces(s) that I explored through a collaboration with ritual-based musician and composer Yantra de Vilder. When I met Yantra at an artist residency in the Rocky Mountains she had recently completed a study exploring the Japanese concept of Ma as the interactive space between artists and their creative mediums in inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural performance contexts. Like myself, she is a collaborative artist creating in the continuum between the arts and spirituality, where each is present in the other.41 Yantra’s interest in the spiritual in art and Ma resonated with my own art practice and my collaborations with Gestare Art collectives’ development of “MA Poses,” which are based on combining embodiment of Neolithic goddess figurine postures with a trance practice, followed by spontaneous artmaking.42 Ma, described by artist-educator Pauline Sameshima is “the interval between two markers; the space that is somatically constructed by a deliberate, attentive consciousness to what simultaneously is expressed, repressed, or suppressed between two structures.”43 Ma as understood by both Yantra and Gestare is the artistic moment(s) of expansion and loss of the self simultaneously. In “MA Poses” it is the moment of embodying ancient art historical feminine knowing. For Yantra, the space of Ma is a portal for Ma, presenting an ultimate paradox in the Artistic Moment, that of emptiness or existence.44 The Artistic Moment in the between space of Ma, Yantra discovered, can be felt as the shared experience of ‘mind meld,’45 “an unspoken communication that is felt through the bodies of collaborators, not discussed or processed cognitively.”46 While at the residency we embarked on a co-­ trance journey following the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna. In this journey I (Ninshuba) guided and remained above on the Earth while Yantra (Inanna) descended into the underworld passing through seven gates. We began this process by first journeying to a sacred place as shared in Trance Practice Two at the end of this chapter. After our journey we spontaneously created collages (see Image 3.4). Creating alongside each other assisted in the integration of the powerful descent and return journey we undertook as allies, in the at times difficult passages, where support to pass through the liminal gates of Ma was crucial. Upon completing her collage Yantra sat down at the piano and proceeded to spontaneously play,

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

65

Image 3.4  Yantra de Vilder writing down lyrics with her Underworld collage and Barbara’s Ninshuba collage on wall behind, 2018. (Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity, Alberta, Canada, photo Barbara Bickel)

sing and compose her return journey. The audio recorded trance carried the muse for Yantra’s larger multi-layered project “Faith in the Underworld,” a full opera and art film based on the trance. Her trance-­ formation on that day continued to influence her future composing through the seven gateways and her return.47 Yantra names the elements that support collaboration within a Ma aesthetic as “connection/nexus, cross-cultural influences, ritualized contexts, and blurred boundaries.”48 Our collaboration moved into an aesthetic of ritualized connectivity. A Ma aesthetic transported us into the Artistic Moment where the opportunity for compassionate wit(h)nessing and communicaring with the other was enlarged.

Artist Collectives Artist collectives provide connectivity and carriance with an intensity that builds within fields of interconnectivity outside and beyond our conscious awareness. Matrixial theory through carriance holds that art serves the

66 

B. A. BICKEL

essential role of carrying or bearing the burden of suffering of the other while supporting a future world that is love-based.49 The impulse for artists to form collectives is often to expand their practice and presence in the world. It can also be to share the burden of the aesthetic and ethical purpose of art, a load that, when shared, is lighter. Collectives have the ability to create an energetic field that ripples outward with varying impact into the culture. Through creating alternative realities with supportive others, collectives can create culture anew with stories that crack through cultural entrenchment and narratives that no longer serve the greater whole. Artist collectives inherently resist co-optation by the dominant culture or commercialization of new cultural forms. The purpose of a collective can range from creating a coalition of artists to move a philosophical way of thought forward into the world, such as Surrealism that joined through a singular theoretical manifesto and shared practices with each other; to artist’s working together and creating art that does not have one author, while also moving a philosophical way forward, such as the Gestare Art Collective. Feminist collaborative artists such as The Hummer Sisters, and Lacy and Labowitz began to surface as a social response to the civil rights and women’s liberation movements of the mid-1960s and 1970s in Western culture. This began the reconceptualization of art and collaboration within contemporary society.50 Likewise, many current collaborative artists continue to challenge the modernist myth of the singular artist genius, most often male, and further, disrupt the idea of what an artist can be (e.g., TouVA, Dempsey and Millan, Fusco and Gomez-Peña, Guerrilla Girls, Kiss and Tell). These artistic collaborations and their collaborative aesthetics “point to a new direction for society as a whole. Theirs is a new model based on a new order of cooperation that demands the redefinition of the concept of artist.”51 Many of the artists I write of and whose art I share are collaborative women artists, some with whom I have worked directly, significantly impacting my trance-based art practices and infusing my collaborative aesthetic sensibilities over the years.52 These woman artists are reminders that there is no one universal aesthetic but many ways of aesthetically, ethically and spiritually experiencing, engaging with, and impacting the world.

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

67

Trance Practice One

Journey to a Sacred Place Intent To enter into trance and find a sacred place. Before I introduce this trance practice, which includes entering, finding a sacred place and returning from a trance journey, I include a few suggestions to assist the practice. • I recommend working with a friend or partner as you begin to learn trance journeying. The partner serves as a witness and ally and practices listening attentively. They witness and anchor and assist the journeyer as needed. The partner as witness is in close physical proximity to the journeyer, listening to the unfolding journey spoken aloud by the journeyer. The witness can ask the journeyer if they would like help. When engaging this way, the witness shifts into a more active wit(h)ness. But for the most, the role of a partner is listening with unconditional regard and without judgement to the journeyer and the trance journey. • As both the conscious and nonconscious are actively part of this practice, know you are in full charge of your trance. As in lucid dreaming you can alter the journey with your conscious awake mind if you find yourself in a place you do not feel comfortable. Create the assistance or support you need to keep going. e.g. if what you are experiencing frightens you, acknowledge you are not ready to go there, imagine the vehicle you need to leave (eg. a door to leave or grow yourself wings to fly away) or bring in a protective element to continue your journey (eg. make yourself invisible). • Speak your trance journey aloud. This helps focus your attention on the trance journey so you do not meander into unfocused thoughts. If you have a partner, it allows them to travel with you and offer support as needed. If you are recording, it serves as a direct record for future creative work. Guiding Narration “Find a comfortable position to sit in or lay in. You may want a blanket. Laying down supports shifting into a deeply relaxed state. Having knees bent with feet flat on the ground can be more comfortable. Eyes closed or in a soft-focus downward gaze.” (continued)

68 

B. A. BICKEL

(continued) “Your conscious mind may hear sounds from the environment. If they are distracting or attractive sounds, accept the sound as part of the trance, and use the sounds as a tool to take you deeper into trance. You are not separate from your conscious awake mind and environment while in the trance. Allow your conscious mind to work in supportive relationship with the nonconscious mind.” “Feel your body on the floor, supported by the ground, breathe deeply, inhale – hold briefly – exhale. With each exhale allow your body to relax.” “inhale – hold – exhale.” “inhale – hold – exhale.” “Release any thoughts, be fully present with yourself. Your body is completely relaxed.” “Visualize and sense roots coming out the soles of your feet moving through the floor and entering the ground beneath. With each exhale send your roots deeper into the Earth.” “Now you are securely connected to the place, supported by the land. In your imaginary mind take yourself to a special place, a sacred place, a safe place for you. It can be a place you know well, a place you would like to go to, or an imagined one. Attune to your senses; listen and watch for images, sounds, smells, or sensations taking place in your mind, your felt body and in the environment you have entered.” “Now turn yourself in quarter turns to face each of the four directions. Bring all your senses into active awareness. Be aware of your conscious editor and allow it to recede. Let your dreaming imaginary come to the fore.” “Really take in this place. What does it look like? Sound like? Smell like? Feel like? Listen and observe deeply and patiently with all your senses. Fully notice the environment you are in.” “Notice any thoughts. Do not edit or judge them. If words come, do not try to understand them, just listen. You may hear sounds, a song, or random noises from the environment. Fully take in what you have been guided to with all your senses and without judgement.” “Spend time exploring this sacred and safe place you are in.” (continued)

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

69

(continued) [spend 5–10 minutes on your first visit exploring]. “Bring your exploration gradually to a close” “Thank the place and any part in particular you want to acknowledge and thank before you bid farewell.” “Become aware of the soles of your feet and the roots that have held your body in this place during your journey.” “Return to your breath. Become aware of your inhale and exhale. When you are ready, let you’re inhaling breath pull your roots back up into your body.” “inhale – exhale.” “inhale – exhale.” “inhale – exhale.” “When you feel ready, slowly open your eyes and bring your awareness back to the room, to the present and those around. Without speaking, take your sketchbook/note pad to write/sketch the trance experience of your sacred place.” “If you journeyed with a partner take time to share experiences and observations with each other.”

Notes 1. Ettinger 2000, 51. 2. Horrowitz. 3. Wilke. 4. All trance practices shared are introductory. I recommend further study within Reclaiming Communities or in Ecstatic Trance Posture training. 5. Stawhawk, 154. 6. Ibid., 157. 7. Ibid. 8. Goodman. 9. Bourguignon. 10. Schechner, 167. 11. hooks, 197. 12. Belenky et al. 13. Butler, 234. 14. Alexander, 312. 15. Houston, 173.

70 

B. A. BICKEL

16. Macy and Dahr. 17. Four Arrows 2016, 28–29. 18. See Don Trent Jacobs (aka Four Arrows). 19. Ibid., Four Arrows 2016, 146. 20. Ibid. 21. Tess Thackakara, n.p. 22. Chan Centre for Performing Arts. 23. Ibid., n.p. 24. Anzaldúa, 230. 25. Hyde, 289–290. 26. Csiksznetmihalyi. 27. Jordan, n.p. 28. See director Andy Abrahams Wilson. 29. Hauk, 257. 30. Ibid., 259. 31. Kelly, 19. 32. Gradle, iii. 33. Ibid., 225–226. 34. Craighead, 19. 35. Blackbridge, 31. 36. Animism is an ancient Indigenous worldview understanding all animate and inanimate aspects of the world to be alive and possessing of life spirit, interconnected with all, I experience animism with trees and places as gifts fed by mutual reverence and respect. 37. Stewart, 43–44. 38. See http://barbarabickel.netfirms.com/barbarabickel.com/artist/statements.html#Spirituality%20Of%20Eroticism 39. Jones, Ibid., 28–29. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 5–6. 42. http://www.gestareartcollective.com/ma-poses.php 43. Sameshima, 4. 44. de Vilder, 5. 45. Pearlman, 5. 46. de Vilder, 23. 47. https://www.yantra.com.au/ 48. ibid., 17. 49. Evans and Ettinger. 50. Green, n.p. 51. Sollins et al., n.p. 52. I include my intimate life-partner R. Michael Fisher as a wom(b)an artist collaborator of 30 years. See Image 3.3.

3  TRANCE, SACRED PLACE AND COLLABORATION 

71

References Alexander, Jacqui M. 2005. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. Durham/London: Duke University Press. Anzaldúa, Gloria E., and AnaLouise Keating, eds. 2009. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. New York: Routledge. Belenky, Mary, Blythe Clinchy, Nancy Goldberger, and Jill Tarule. 1986. Women’s Ways of Knowing. New York: Basic Books. Blackbridge, Persimmon (Kiss & Tell). 1994. Her Tongue on My Theory: Images, Essays and Fantasies. Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers. Bourguignon, Erika, ed. 1973. Religion, Altered States of Consciousness, and Social Change. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Butler, Judith. 1999. Bodies that Matter. In Feminist Theory and the Body, ed. J. Price and M. Shildrick. New York: Routledge. Chan Centre for Performing Arts. 2018. Q & A with Laakkuuluk Williamson Bathory, January 9, 2018. https://chancentre.com/news/q-a-withlaakkuluk/. Accessed 1 Nov 2019. Craighead, Meinrad. 1986. The Mother’s Songs: Images of God the Mother. New York: Paulist Press. Csiksznetmihalyi, Mihaly. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of the Optimal Experience. New York: Harper & Row. de Vilder, Yantra. 2016. Towards the Artistic Moment: A Personal Exploration at the Nexus of Improvised Inter-disciplinary and Cross-cultural Collaborative Performance through the Metaphor of ‘Ma.’ Doctor of Creative Arts, Western Sydney University. Ettinger, Bracha. 2000. Artworking, 1985–1999. Gent/Bussels: Ludion. Evans, Brad, and Bracha Ettinger. 2016. Art in a Time of Atrocity: Evans & Ettinger Interview. New York Times. The Opinion Pages. December 16, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/art-in-a-time-of atrocity. html?_r=0. Accessed 14 Oct 2019. Four Arrows (Don Trent Jacobs). 2020. Sustainability Education, Responsible Truthfulness and Hypnotic Phenomena. Journal of Sustainability Education Vol. 23 (April): n.p. Four Arrows (D.T. Jacobs). 2016. Point of Departure: Returning to Our Authentic Worldview for Education and Survival. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Goodman, Felicitas D. 1990. Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Gradle, Sally. 2004. Everyday Encounters with the Sacred: Artist, Action, and Image. Dissertation, Champaign: University of Illinois. Green, Charles. 2001. The Third Hand, Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

72 

B. A. BICKEL

Hauk, Marna. 2014. Gaia E/mergent: Earth Regenerative Education Catalyzing Empathy, Creativity, and Wisdom. Dissertation. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. hooks, bell. 1994. Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. New  York: Routledge. Horowitz, Mitch. 2010. Occult America: White House Séances, Ouija Circles, Masons, and the Secret Mystic History of Our Nation. New York: Bantam. Houston, Jean. 1987. The Search for the Beloved: Journeys in Mythology and Sacred Psychology. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc. Hyde, Lewis. 2007. The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. New York: Vintage Books. Jacobs, Don Trent. 1998. Primal Awareness, 1998. Rochester: Inner Traditions. Jordan, Nané. 2013. Goddess Puja in California: Embodying Contemplation Through Women’s Spirituality Education. Paideusis 21 (1): 13–25. Kelly, Vicki. 2019. Indigenous Poiesis: Medicine for Mother Earth. Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal 4 (1): 19. Available at: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/atj/ vol4/iss1/3. Macy, Joanna, and Jamial Dahr. 2017. Learning to See in the Dark Amid Catastrophe: An Interview With Deep Ecologist Joanna Macy Dahr Jamail. Truthout, February 13, 2017. https://truthout.org/articles/ learning-to-see-in-the-dark-amid-catastrophe-an-interview-with-deep-ecologist-joanna-macy/ Pearlman, Karen. 2012. Intuition and Collaboration. In Lumina Australian Journal of Screen Arts and Business. Sydney: AFTRS. Sameshima, Pauline. 2019. Ma, I’m Thinking About Nothing. In Ma: Materiality in Teaching and Learning, ed. P.  Samashima, B.  White, and A.  Sinner. New York: Peter Lang. Schechner, Richard. 2002. Performance Studies: An Introduction. New  York: Routledge. Sollins, Susan., & Nina Castelli Sundell. 1990. Team Spirit. Collaborative Arts: Conversations on Collaborative Arts Practice. http://collabarts.org/?=68. Accessed 15 Mar 2011. Starhawk. 1989. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. New York: Harper San Francisco. Stewart, Susan (Kiss & Tell). 1994. Her Tongue on My Theory. Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers. Thackakara, Tess. 2017. Why Shamanic Practices are Making a Comeback in Contemporary Art. Artsy. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-shamanic-practices-making-comeback-contemporary-art. Accessed 1 Nov 2019. Wilkie, Laurie A. 1995. Magic and Empowerment on the Plantation: An Archaeological Consideration of African-American World View. Southeastern Archaeology 14 (2): 136–148. Wilson, Andy Abrahams. 2003. Returning Home. Sausilito: Open Eye Picture.

CHAPTER 4

Artists and Trance

Abstract  This chapter introduces eight woman artists as contemporary exemplars of trance-based artworkings. Multiple languages of art assist in articulating their ritual and trance-based art, including audio, visual, somatic, and poetic renderings. Artist exemplars in this chapter are Katherine Dunham, Maya Deren, Meinrad Craighead, Hélène Cixous, Shirin Neshat, Gloria Anzaldúa, Karen Finley and Marina Abramović. The chapter offers an Awake Dream Walking trance practice at the end. Keywords  Artists • Trance • Women artists • Surrealism • Woman’s time • Earth • Walking • Visionary • Earth dreaming • Katherine Dunham • Maya Deren • Meinrad Craighead • Hélène Cixous • Shirin Neshat • Gloria Anzaldúa • Karen Finley • Marina Abramović Stand in front of tree arms arched earthward and stretched wide hold hands with branches.

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this chapter (https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. © The Author(s) 2020 B. A. Bickel, Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_4

73

74 

B. A. BICKEL

In the matrix she is a border-other becoming-between in withness. (found in Bracha Ettinger1)

While on an awake-dream walk (see end of chapter Trance Practice Three) I meet and have encounters with eight woman artists who are contemporary exemplars of trance-based artworkings, although they may not specifically name it as such. These woman artists are part of a lineage of matrixial border-others creating arational female sentences through art that disrupts rational phallic language. Multiple languages of art assist in articulating their ritual and trance-based inquiries that include audio, visual, somatic, and poetic renderings. Their creative practices offer diverse examples of art emerging from a spectrum of altered states of consciousness. Their trance states range from dreaming to possession, some based on Indigenous practices and others not. Many of these pioneering woman artists have developed methods to teach their artistic forms, inspiring others through their teaching, collaborations, and art sharing.

Woman Artists and Trance I find resonance with woman artists whose creative practices dwell in the interconnected energetic field of spirituality, ritual and trance in relationship with a connective aesthetics and ethics of art. Many have been associated with Surrealism. In contrast to male Surrealists who focused on male sexual desires and fears, women surrealists2 enter an inner realm of spirit through their dreams and subconscious.3 Early Surrealists embraced the occult, mysticism and Western religions. They engaged dreams, free association, meditation, the double, ritual, psychoanalysis, and “the extraordinary space of the in-between in which mundane rules no longer apply.”4 Only recently have feminist art historians and curators begun to write more about and exhibit women artists, bringing them into the historical canon. This section addresses the double-blind spot in the world of art to both women artists and to spirituality. With difficulty I focus on some

4  ARTISTS AND TRANCE 

75

women artists and not others. In introducing you to the following woman artists as exemplars, it is my hope you will begin to take note of and search out other visionaries whose creative practices interconnect art, trance and ritual. Each woman artist is introduced with a found poem taken from their recorded spoken words, writing by or about them. foot sliding backwards on the earth arouses a dream world (found in Katherine Dunham5)

I slide back in time with Katherine Dunham (1909–2006), a choreographer, dancer, anthropologist, educator and social activist who studied, performed and wrote of the religious dance forms of the Caribbean and Haiti. I discovered her work in the archives of Southern Illinois University, where she taught many years prior to my teaching there. I am grateful for libraries that hold remnants of the past, awaiting re-discovery. In early anthropological field research, Katherine both recorded and performed religious dances in Haiti. The ritual intent of the rhythmic communal dance experience was to bring Yoruba gods and goddesses to the Earth through possession trance to heal and guide humans. In a recording from 1983, she described observing the West African Mahi dance as an Earth-­ sourced portal to the dream world, Feet are very strong…. their feet stay on the ground, if they want to lift up, they do ….. otherwise they slide and move and make patterns along the ground. This gave me the idea of the importance of the palm of the foot. Their feet are constantly rubbing against the earth and from this, whether from the earth’s rhythm… from this comes the god. The name of the dance is Mahi and it undoubtedly represents the Mahi guide of West Africa. I’ve always felt that the foot sliding backwards on the earth arouses a dream world. They could be preparations for war or they could be preparation of bringing in a god that may be angry rather than just beneficent.6

Katherine’s early writings significantly influenced the subfield of dance anthropology. Although leaving an academic career for one in dance, research into rituals remained a core part of her choreography, dance and teaching. She became a hounci or initiate in the dance and music-based Vodou religion of Haiti, eventually becoming a mambo asegue or female priestess, its highest level.7 Dunham dance techniques and choreography translated religious rituals into performances for the stage and were taught

76 

B. A. BICKEL

and performed internationally through the Katherine Dunham Dance Company. These performances combined African American, Caribbean, African, and South American movement styles. Katherine’s “philosophical choreographic methodologies” sought to “‘legitimatize the culture, artistry and professional performance of secular and sacred “folk” forms.”’8 Dunham choreography helped shape African-American modern dance. She felt one of her most significant contributions to modern dance was freeing the movements of the pelvic girdle. Reflecting on the significance of the human body with its simultaneous access to cultural, spiritual and personal aspects-of-being without boundaries, she wrote in 2005; The constant interplay of conscious and unconscious finds a perfect instrument in the physical form, the human body which embraces all at once. Alone or in concert [wo]man dances [their] various selves and [their] emotions and [their] dance becomes a communication as clear as though it were written or spoken in a universal language.9

I experience this bodily communication as communicaring in the dance studio with my collaborator Tannis Hugill where we wit(h)ness each other and our bodies simultaneously. Our bodies crossing time and space into ancestral bodily memory (see Chap. 7). I find inspiration in how Katherine holistically connected the ancestral with and through art, “to restore psychic balance, to compensate for the spiritual inadequacies of the present.”10 Time is built into her body in the sense of becomingness. She sees everything in terms of it being in the stage of becoming. (found in Kudlácek11)

Maya Deren (1917–1961), an avante garde experimental film-maker possessed by rhythm, slid her feet backwards on the Earth moved by Katherine Dunham. She worked for a time with Katherine as her personal secretary in the dance company. Later travelling to Haiti on her own, supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, she came to serve the gods and goddesses of the Vodou religion as a priestess for all of them, most frequently possessed by Erzuli, the goddess of love. Her films are dream-based poetic

4  ARTISTS AND TRANCE 

77

expressions, and Maya would claim them as altered states of consciousness themselves that open to an “interior miracle, like vodou… that transcends ourselves.” Films as moving ritual in the realm of “creative geography” for Maya, were how she could “make the world dance.”12 Through beautiful oneiric infused films Maya re-wrote phallic language, countering the patriarchal linearity of the commercial films of Hollywood, thus inspiring many women artists and impacting future filmmaking.13 Maya “envisioned experimental cinema as an alternative, low-cost, creative, and ethical medium;… establishing a model of independent film production that is still used today.”14 Maya, like Katherine was a trailblazing, wholistic thinker and collaborative creator who struggled financially throughout her career.15 Unlike Katherine, who lived into her 90s, Maya died much too early and in poverty. Discovering and dwelling with Maya Deren films offer a place on the Earth for me to slide my feet back toward woman’s time through my own video art practice, new patterns emerging in foot movements across time and geographies. An example of moving into the quality of women’s time in my trance-based video art is found in “Fallen Tree Time,”16 where supported by a tree, ordinary time is altered through delving deeply into tree roots embedded in the bedrock of my mother’s island home. Here I/we touch into the greater time of the mother and the Earth (Image and Video 4.1).

Image 4.1  Barbara Bickel, Fallen Tree Time, 2017. (Video still) (https://doi. org/10.1007/000-08p)

78 

B. A. BICKEL

time stone time tree time water time wind time circling spiraling traversing time reversing time time time returning time time time turning time down down down (found in Bickel17)

Maya beautifully expresses the time quality of woman as the time of the dream becoming, my films…very distinctively, they are the films of a woman and I think their characteristic time quality, is the time quality of a woman. I think the strength of men is their great sense of immediacy. They are a now creature. And a woman has strength to wait. Because she has had to wait. She has to wait nine months for the concept of a child. Time is built into her body in the sense of becomingness. She sees everything in the terms of it being in the stage of becoming. She raises a child knowing not what it is, at any moment, but seeing always the person that it will become. Her whole life, from her very beginning, is built into her, is the sense of becoming. In any time-form this is a very important sense. I think my films, putting as much stress as they do on the constant metamorphosis  – one image is always becoming another. It is what is happening that is important in my films, not what is at any moment. This is a women’s time sense.”18

The quality of women’s time in matrixial borderspace(s) is brought forward in Maya’s films as they are poetically rendered through the creative geography she moves through in one scene; from the shot of feet climbing stairs to the next footstep landing outdoors in one locale and then another. One image always becoming another. Maya freed herself to travel great distances across land/mindscapes through the medium of film. In doing so, she initiated other young artists into the possibilities of trance-­formative creative practices of the artist priestess. I feel surrounded by spirits any spirits. Enter into the gaze of spirit,

4  ARTISTS AND TRANCE 

79

the divine gaze holding you in existence. (found in Meinrad Craighead19)

Digging into the holy soil of the Earth is a recurring act of worship for visionary visual artist Meinrad Craighead (1936–2019). Recognized as an artist mystic, Meinrad first entered into an altered state of consciousness in her seventh summer, and recalls the experience in her book “The Mother’s Songs: Images of God the Mother,” The day, the dust, the sun was red; the roses were wide open. I lay with my dog in a cool place on the north side of my grandparents; clapboard house. Hydrangeas flourished there, shaded from the heat. The domed blue flowers were higher than our heads. I held the dog, stroking her into sleep. But she held my gaze. I watched the dog and she watched me, a balance of equal weights. As I looked into her eyes I knew that I would never travel further than into this animal’s eyes. They were as deep, as bewildering, as unattainable as a night sky. Just as mysterious was another movement, the rush of water deep within me, the sound in my ears resounding from my breast. I gazed into the dog’s eyes and I listened to the sound of the water inside and I understood: “This is God.” I spent the rest of the afternoon digging a hole. I spaded and shoveled the hole for many days until its walls collapsed, my act of worship exhausted.20

I was introduced to the art and writing of Meinrad Craighead21 by my friend Sally Gradle who studied religious icon artists. Both Sally and Meinrad practice art as a form of prayer with its direct link to the divine. Meinrad also understood prayer as preparation for creative work. Through dreaming and painting her visions of mystery were revealed. Spirit guides identified themselves to her through imagery; animal, Nature and female in form. Raised in the Catholic mother church and a cloistered Benedictine nun for 14 years, Meinrad’s art images merge Catholicism, ancient mythology, and shamanism with her personal mythology. A mythology experienced as flowing from her mother’s body into her body. Painting was the throughway to ancestral connections flowing deeply through her grandmother, all her foremothers and to her “origin in God the Mother.”22 For 50  years she kept these visions secret, protecting them from the Fathergod. Although loving the contemplative life, in response to

80 

B. A. BICKEL

recurring dream messages, she left the cloister and moved to New Mexico, a land that matched her inner landscape, where “what [her] eyes saw meshed with the images [she] carried inside [her] body.”23 Influenced by the memory of the land and the Rio Grande River near her home, visions continued to be revealed through painting. Facilitating art and spiritual groups for women, Meinrad taught how “The dark wind of my Mother expands and contracts…. She spirals, uncoiling and recoiling, leaving and returning to her source; her spirit evolving, involving the entire universe.”24 In a dreaming vision of birthing she wrote; I dream I am with four young novices…. “Shall I teach you to fly” I ask them. Three look at me suspiciously and shake their heads. The fourth, her name is Mary, says: “Yes, I’d like to try.” We walk to the center of the field and I take her hands. I swing my body violently in narrow circles and Mary lifts off the ground. We gain momentum. She spins off horizontally, rising into the air. She is attached to a cord unravelling from my body. The cord feeds through my hands and I fly Mary like a kite. She climbs up, drifting in the mild wind, growing smaller in the distance, and disappears. The long cord drops slowly into the field and lies in the grass like a twisting snake. The three novices are alarmed: they are angry. Mary has flown away. They run back to the monastery in confusion.25

Flying is woman’s gesture flying in language making it fly. (found in Hélène Cixous26)

I have spent many nights in flight, happily out of reach of what I was escaping. Recurring dreams of flight continued into my late 30s. Then I began to reclaim my voice and write – reluctantly, cautiously. My night flights ended. I missed the sensation of my body flying through the air while dreaming, so I began to let the female body fly in my visual art. Text, torn and scrambled on paper joined the body in flight (see Image 4.2). I discovered the writing of French-Algerian feminist writer, poet, philosopher Hélène Cixous (1937–) while working on my master’s thesis. I am grateful for her English translators and her invitation to women’s writing. I am fortunate to have attended one of her lectures while at an artist residency in Paris with artist-scholar Nané Jordan in 2015.27 Despite not understanding the French language, I listened to the cadence of her voice

4  ARTISTS AND TRANCE 

81

Image 4.2  Barbara Bickel, Spinning Red Words on Paper, 2004. Mixed media collage on wood, 12 × 24 inches, MA thesis exhibition, Vancouver, British Columbia

and the laughter of the women in response to her words, a gift to be awash in the energy of the room. I let go with Cixous, She doesn’t speak, she throws her trembling body forward; she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes into her voice, and it’s with her body that she vitally supports the―logic of her speech. Her flesh speaks true. She lays herself bare. In fact, she physically materializes what she is thinking; she signifies it with her body.28

The voice of woman, she writes, emerges from the daily altered state of consciousness accessed easily when we let our conscious mind recede into sleep, into our dreams. For years Hélène has kept a large blank pad of paper near to her bedside and upon waking in the night, writes the dreams in large script while still in the cloak of darkness. I used to feel guilty at night…. I always used to live in two countries, the diurnal one and the continuous very tempestuous nocturnal one…. What a delight to head off with high hopes to a night’s course, without any knowledge of what may happen! Where shall I be taken tonight! Into which country of countries.29

82 

B. A. BICKEL

Dreams from the dark of night are her archives and through these she escapes the conscious mind and writes. What happens at the end of a text? Here again we have much to learn from what dreams, our masters, do with us; the author is in the book as we are in the dream’s boat. We always have the belief and the illusion that we are the ones writing, that we are the ones dreaming. Clearly this isn’t true. We are not having the dream, the dream has us, carries us, and, at a given moment, it drops us, even if the dream is in the author in the way the text is assumed to be. What we call texts escape us as the dream escapes us on waking, or the dream evades us in dreams. We follow it, things go at top speed, and we are constantly – what a giddy and delicious sensation! – surprised. In the dream as in the text, we go from one amazement to another. I imagine many texts are written completely differently, but I am only interested in the texts that escape.30

Hélène slides her feet back into the dream through “the earth of writing,” orienting herself to the Earth rhythms from which she writes, “we must work to the point of becoming the earth.”31 What haunts her is her Iranian past What she is witnessing is the suffering of American people What is interesting is they are not that different. (found in Shirin Neshat32)

My dreaming feet return me to the concrete sidewalks of downtown Vancouver and Artspeak Gallery where I first viewed the raw beauty of the 1997 “Women of Allah” photographs by New York City-based and Iranian born artist Shirin Neshat (1957–). Like Hélène and Meinrad, Shirin draws from personal dreams and flies dreamward to her estranged mother/ land.33 Protagonists in Shirin’s films, art videos and photographs are always women and most often rebellious Iranian women. What she experiences as the innocence of dreams have informed her aesthetically poignant and politically contentious art practice. Significantly influenced by surrealist film-makers Maya Deren and Man Ray, Shirin draws upon magical realism, fiction and poetry. She directly addresses through art what is escaped in waking life. Artist Phong Bul in a conversation with Shirin commented,

4  ARTISTS AND TRANCE 

83

“She dreams all the time. She dreams when she is awake, dreams at night and she dreams in her work.” Shirin’s art awakens us to the source power of dreams where she notes we cannot commit sins and thus are free to reimagine ourselves and the world.34 esta hoya is the body discover its sensitivity   intelligence when all your antenna quiver your body becomes a lightning rod a radio receiver   a seismograph detecting recording ground movement when your body responds every part of you moves in synchronicity (found in Gloria Anzalúda35)

Sliding the soles of her feet backward on desert sand, the poet-writer Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004) enters the dream-body, the intersecting point of the nepantla. Gloria’s writing straddles multiple genres and fluidly flows between languages; English, Spanish, Nahuatl, and Spanglish. Within a relational worldview she includes “fluid, cosmic spirit/energy/ forces” as embodied and in all of existence “[d]rawing on Indigenous philosophies, Eastern thought, psychic literature, and her own experiences.”36 She is best known for the hybrid poetry and prose book “Borderland/La Frontier: The New Mestiza”. Nepantla, in the Aztec Nahuatl language, means “middle.” Gloria uses this term to describe the in-between state of trance she experiences through the dream-body. Nepantla is where Coatlecue resides as Earth Mother, a place she calls home as a new mestiza, a hybrid person living in the American Mexican borderlands.37 Nepantla, is an altered state of consciousness where one can fluidly embody both she and he, they and us, him and her, I and we, white and brown, and the human and more-than-human. I myself know the experience of shapeshifting and being visited by ancestral allies in trance practices. I too have come to trust these beings as messengers of knowledge and guidance for my waking life.38 Gloria’s writing and teachings cross thresholds of creativity, the gateway to imaginal universes and the dream world through fluidly switching modes of consciousness. Like Hélène and Shirin, she questions how,

84 

B. A. BICKEL

We are told by our culture that waking is one state of being and dreams are the other, that never the twain shall meet. But why must these boundaries and stratifications be made? Some of us are awake while dreaming and dreaming while awake.39

A teaching artist and a spiritual activist, she wrote of spiritual activism in the 1980s teaching its relational and holistic worldview where inner and outer concerns are given concurrent and entwining attention.40 An artist has to stay focused on the point of intersection (nepantla) between inner and outer worlds through her senses. Listening to an inner order, the voice of real intuition, allows it to come through the artist’s body and in the body of work. The work will pass on this energy to the reader or viewer and feed his or her soul.41

Gloria Anzaldúa approached creative work within a holistic politics of life, one of radical interconnectedness fed by self-trust and intellectual humility that is invitational, and paradoxically inclusive of the external and internal, leading us through emotions to our wounds and ultimately healing.42 I pick up and feel people. Spirits come on stage. Different energies visit me. I talk to them. I believe there are things that are invisible. I am a medium. I want to relieve people of suffering. That is my struggle. (found in Karen Finley43)

Foot sliding backwards sometimes leads to the dreamworld in preparation for bringing in the god who may be angry. Performance artist Karen Finley (1956–) shared in interviews that she hates performing.44 Despite personal discomfort, her ultimate call in life is to relieve suffering in others. She serves others through her psychic abilities in her performances and in painting psychic portraits of people. She describes her embodied performances on stage as very exhausting and draining as she is called into a “very high state of concentration” or trance state. In this way, there is an

4  ARTISTS AND TRANCE 

85

activation of Trance-Based Learning described by Four Arrows in the CAT FAWN model. Reading her performance through the CAT FAWN lens, the trauma-­ based narratives are performed by moving into CAT or ‘concentration activated transformation.’ Fear being the entry point into trance. Through the performing body she powerfully, and at times disturbingly embodies the spoken word narrative. In a fear-induced CAT state, she moves into FAWN (see theory in Chap. 3) drawing directly from the fear to fearlessly engage the medium of pain and suffering. The term fearless is used here in the Indigenous sense Four Arrows teaches, as an experience beyond willed courage that relies on a radical faith in the universe.45 When pain and suffering are your medium, to sustain yourself as an artist, another medium is required that will wit(h)ness the performance. This can be an inspirited medium wit(h)ness who may come from external spirit guides or a deep inner spirit guide. The matrixial term of wit(h)ness includes both witnessing in the present/future and remembrance of the past. Through engaging the wit(h)ness, Karen’s body, sound and word art become vehicles to free herself (and others) from fear. In this creative act of performing while wit(h)nessing pain and suffering, self-authorship is claimed for herself and others. To wit(h)ness another, you do not have to be in their presence or in their time/space. Karen is an artist who operates in liminal borderspace(s) as words shift into sacred communication with and for the other. In traditional shamanic healing there is often an ingesting of the illness of the person and/or culture required on the part of the shaman to heal the culture or person. Karen seemingly does not enter trance performance through a classical aesthetic of beauty, but through an aesthetic of the abject that “beckons the subject ever closer to its edge” in “relations which consciousness and reason find intolerable.”46 The rhythm of the Earth, Nature is the last element of the CAT FAWN model. It is through Nature we can restore ourselves. As artists engaging in trance-based inquiry and learning, whether through an aesthetic of beauty or the abject, Earth is the restorative element that sustains the artist and the practice. I find myself wondering how Karen restores herself and sustains her art practice. the last month was the culmination I removed the table. felt a powerful connection to everybody sitting the energy of every visitor

86 

B. A. BICKEL

remained in layers in front of me even after they left. (found in Abramović47)

Feet steadily pounding upon the Earth while moving into the dream world can be a way to prepare for war. Performance artist Marina Abramović (1946–) was raised in a military family in Yugoslavia. In her memoir Marina reveals how her mother, a war hero, parented with harsh discipline, possibly to circumvent the fear, pain and trauma of life. I was not attracted to Marina’s early ritual-based performance art focused on extreme and often dangerous performative acts with and upon her body. It was her retrospective at the MOMA in New York City in 2010, entitled “The Artist is Present” that shifted my view. In teaching socially-engaged art I introduce students to consider art as life through sharing the documentary. If students are not familiar with her art, they are almost always blown open by witnessing the simple power of this performance. With a long and committed career, Marina considers herself to be the grandmother of performance art. Reflecting on her early work I situate it within Four Arrows CAT FAWN model and recognize that like Karen, she was working with her fear to enter CAT and induce trance states that shaped the trajectory of her art. She has lived a creative spiritual journey that was minimally written about prior to this retrospective. I have come to understand that hers is a spiritually-infused art practice with a desire to integrate and heal all aspects of herself through living life as art. A spiritual search unfolds in her memoir of 2016 entitled “Walk Through Walls.” Early in her career, working collaboratively with her lover and art partner Ulay,48 they immersed themselves for three months with Australian Pitjantjatjara and Pintupi aboriginal peoples in the outback. Here she was taught by traditional women, and her “work” was to watch the daily sharing of drawing pictures of the prior night’s dreams in the sand followed by playing the dreams out performatively. In this community she experienced telepathic communication. At one point she  realized she was being communicated with, not through spoken words, but through the mind.49 Interpreting this through a CAT FAWN lens, she was an individual interconnected with the community yet still making her own decisions through community-based self-authorship. Through communion with Nature her creative practice of motionlessness – staying in stillness was also self-­authored. In the extreme heat of the outback, her body was forced to remain in stillness to make it through the pounding heat of the day. Nature was her teacher.

4  ARTISTS AND TRANCE 

87

Later meditation practices of mindfulness developed through her study with a Tibetan guru and at different monasteries. In her retrospective performance, she sat for three months during open gallery hours.50 In reflecting on this monumental performance she notes that in earlier performances she took energy from audiences to sustain her performance. In this retrospective a profound shift occurred to giving and receiving love unconditionally with the audience. Here she engaged sacred communication wordlessly, the third aspect of FAWN, described in her writing, I was there for everyone who was there. A great trust had been given to me—a trust I didn’t dare abuse, in any way. Hearts were opened to me, and I opened my heart in return…. My physical pain was one thing. But the pain in my heart, the pain of pure love, was far greater…. the unconditional love of total strangers was the most incredible feeling I’ve ever had. I don’t know if this is art, I said to myself. I don’t know what this is, or what art is…. but this performance went beyond performance. This was life. Could art, should art, be isolated from life? I began to feel more and more strongly that art must be life—it must belong to everybody.51

She appears to have emerged from this experience with a deep, fearless trust in the universe and a commitment to teaching the mindfulness practices that strengthened and led her to this experience of fearless trust. Since the retrospective she has travelled and researched “places of power in [Brazil] to seek out people who possessed certain kinds of energy that the rational mind cannot understand.”52 In these travels she writes of connecting with the power of the natural environment, spending “a lot of time in the rain forest, among waterfalls, rushing rivers, and magnificent rock formations.”53 Nature as the ultimate healing place for her reflects Four Arrows model as the place of restoration and sustenance. In writing about Marina, Mary Beth Edelson’s performance ritual art (see Chap. 2) of communicaring comes to mind. Mary Beth began community performances of making eye contact a decade prior to Marina and Ulay performing “Nightsea Crossing” in 1980, when they sat silently gazing at each other across a table, a precursor to Marina’s solo performance in 2010. Shortly thereafter I learn that Mary Beth Edelson’s 1972 collage artwork, entitled “Some Living American Women Artists” has become part of the MOMA art collection in New York City. I am struck by synchronicity in this time/space and heartened knowing these woman artists are gaining recognition in art museums and will continue to impact future generations.

88 

B. A. BICKEL

These ground-breaking artists have and are digging into ancient-known knowledge of dreams, trance and ritual, much of it still practiced in Indigenous communities worldwide. Dwelling further with these trance-­ infused artists and their practices, I realize I am in the virtual presence of a collective of woman artists vibrating in an energetic field across time and space. They are an artist collective that is in presence/absence, inspiriting and inspiring me and others to remove the confines of ordinary understandings of time and space. Modeling aesthetic and ethical ways to move the culture out of its entrancement into healing and self-authorship through trance-based art. I fully take in that we can collaborate across time and space with the spirit lineage of woman artists that precede us through wit(h)nessing, attending to, and communicaring with all interconnected dreams and Earth dreamers. The next chapter is a conversation amongst the Gestare Art Collective, reflecting on a decade-long collaboration among woman artists who have gifted me greatly.

Trance Practice Two

Awake-Dream Walking Intent Indulge your pre-logical child. Take yourself out for a meandering walk in the spirit of play to encounter the world with freshness. Guiding Narrative “Invite the child-like pre-logical stage of your eight-year-old or younger self to take you on a walk where you will daydream while walking. Engage both the conscious and nonconsciousness parts of your mind as well as your body. Your rational self will keep your body safe, ensuring you do not walk in front of a car and will observe without judgement. Your arational younger self will allow you to engage your inner dreaming mind. If you feel encumbered by your rational mind, shift focus to body sensations to assist connection to your arational mind.” “On this walk you will be aware of the external world as well as your inner world. Both are present and this walk gives space for the inner realm to emerge unedited, as in the imaginary play of a young child walking. Your adult self is a witness who does not interfere.” “When you return from your walk, journal/sketch about your experience as you might after waking from a sleep dream.”

4  ARTISTS AND TRANCE 

89

Notes 1. Ettinger 2002, 230. 2. I encourage exploration of international women surrealist artists (eg. Varo Remedios, Eva Svankmajerová, Francesca Woodman, Dora Maar, & Frida Kahlo). 3. Ilene S. Fort et al. 4. Rabinovitch, 210. 5. Dunham 1983. 6. Ibid. 7. Dunham 2005a, 519. 8. Gonzalez, 33. 9. Dunham 2005b, 551. 10. Ibid. 11. Kudálcek. 12. Ibid. 13. Rabinovitz, 199. 14. Berger, 301. 15. Maya Deren’s first film with Alexander Hammid, 1944 Meshes of the Afternoon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KamHwKHg64o At Land 1944 silent film by Maya Deren. https://vimeo.com/113082270 16. Fallen Tree Time, 5  minute art video https://vimeo.com/manage/ 240590107/general 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., Kudálcek. 19. Dosser. 20. Craighead, 1. 21. Meinrad’s art https://www.meinradcraighead.com/ 22. Ibid., Craighead, 29. 23. Ibid., 67. 24. Ibid., 65. 25. Ibid., 47. 26. Cixous 1997, 356. 27. See Jordan and Bickel. 28. Ibid. Cixous, 351. 29. Cixous 2007, n.p. 30. Cixous 1993, 98. 31. Ibid., 156. 32. Shirin Neshat in conversation with Phong Bul. 33. Neshat: Land of Dreams film excerpt https://www.facebook.com/thebroadmuseum/videos/486436175536961/?v=486436175536961

90 

B. A. BICKEL

34. Neshat and Bul. 35. Anzaldúa, and Keating 2009, 292. 36. Spiritual activism is drawn from Gloria Anzalduá who combines spirituality with social change action. In Keating 2008, 60. 37. Anzaldúa, 46. 38. See the art video trance where I shapeshift into a worm. It took me three years to realize the worm was offering needed knowledge regarding my chronic illness with mineral deficiency and heavy metal toxicity. I began ingesting edible clay and my symptoms rapidly dispersed. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/atj/vol2/iss1/8/ 39. Ibid., Anzaldúa in Keating 2009, 106. 40. Ibid., Keating. 41. Ibid., Anzaldúa in Keating, 292. 42. Ibid., Keating. 43. Jacemba. 44. Finley and Bruguera artist talk https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=CONFbrG3bWA 45. Fisher. 46. Grosz, 73. 47. Abramović, 316. 48. Ulay shared “I think we should be more radical… ‘aesthetics without ethics are cosmetics,’ and it is more than ever the case today.” https://news. artnet.com/art-world/ulay-marina-abramovic-memoir-1278743 49. Ibid., Abramović. 50. Film Trailer, The Artist is Present with Marina Ambramović https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=YcmcEZxdlv4 51. Ibid., Abramović, 318–319. 52. Ibid., 343. 53. Ibid., 344.

References Abramović, Marina. 2016. Walk Through Walls: A Memoir. New  York: Three Rivers Press. Anzalduá, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute. Berger, Sally. 2010. Maya Deren’s Legacy. In Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, ed. C. Butler and A. Schwartz. New York: MOMA. Cixous, Hélène, 1993. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. The School of Roots. Trans. S. Cornell and S. Sellers. Columbia University Press.

4  ARTISTS AND TRANCE 

91

———. 1997. The Laugh of the Medusa. In Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. R.R.  Warhol and D.P.  Herndle, 347–362. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. ———. 2007. Dream I Tell You. Trans. Beverley Bie Brahic. Columbia University Press. Craighead, Meinrad. 1986. The Mother’s Songs: Images of God the Mother. New York: Paulist Press. Dosser, Amy (Kellum). 2010. Meinrad Craighead: Praying with Images, Minnow Media Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South. https://vimeo. com/3868417 Dunham, Katherine. 1983. Mahi. Video. Retrieved from Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200003815 ———. 2005a. Notes on the Dance. In Kaiso! Writings by and About Katherine Dunham. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ———. 2005b. Performing Arts Training Center as a Focal Point for a New and Unique College or School. In Kaiso! Writings by and About Katherine Dunham. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Ettinger, Bracha L. 2002. Trans-Subjective Transferential Borderspace. In A Shock to Through: Expression After Deleuze and Guatarr, ed. Brian Massumi. London: Routledge. Finley, Karen, and Tania Bruguera. 2015. Artist Talk  – Guggenheim Museum, NYC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CONFbrG3bWA. Accessed 1 Nov 2019. Fisher, R. Michael. 2018. Fearless Engagement of Four Arrows: The True Story of an Indigenous-Based Social Transformer. New York: Palgrave. Fort, Ilene S., and Tere Arcq with Terri Geis, eds. 2012. In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gonzalez, Molly E.  Christie. 2008. Katherine Dunham’s Methodologies of Form and Function, Intercultural Communication and Socialization Through the Arts, as a Choreographic Model. The College at Brockport: State University of New York. Grosz, Elizabeth. 1989. Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists. Wellington/ London/Boston: Allen and Unwin. Jacemba, Tom. 1990. Karen Finley: An Interview. Video. Chicago. Jordan, Nané, and Barbara Bickel. 2020. Gifting a Healing Education Through Writing Life and Art: A Paris Studio Residency. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies 18 (2). Keating, AnaLouise. 2008. “I’m a Citizen of the Universe”: Gloria Anzaldua’s Spiritual Activism as Catalyst for Social Change. Feminist Studies 34 (1/2): 53–69. ———, ed. 2009. The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader. New York: Routledge.

92 

B. A. BICKEL

Kudálcek, Martina. 2001. In the Mirror of Maya Deren, film. Neshat, Shirin, 2018. Presentation ‘Dreamers by Shirin Neshat.’ December 20. https://www.ivorypress.com/en/video/presentation-dreamers-by-shirinneshat/. Accessed 19 Dec 2019. Rabinovitch, Celia. 2002. Surrealism and the Sacred: Power, Eros, and the Occult in Modern Art. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press/Perseus Books Group. Rabinovitz, Lauren. Points of Resistance: Women, Power & Politics in the New York Avant-garde Cinema, 1943–71. Urbana: University of Illinois.

CHAPTER 5

The Gestare Art Collective: With Nané Jordan and Medwyn McConachy

Abstract  This chapter is an exploratory conversation with core founding members of the Gestare Art Collective, Nané Jordan, Medwyn McConachy and Barbara Bickel. Through dialogue, they connect threads of experience spanning a ten-year period of collaboratively exploring art, ritual and trancebased inquiry practices together. The chapter includes two Gestare-­based art and trance practices, Making and Walking a Labyrinth, and Tree-Friending. Keywords  Gestare Art Collective • Artist collective • Labyrinth • Walking • Earth-based • Altered states of consciousness • Trance • Art • Ritual • Place • Women circles • Gift economy • Trance • Womb • Healing • Performance ritual • Artscape Gibraltar Point • Spiritual feminist • Women’s movements Briskly walking hills plateau hollow cheeks chilled, wind caught breath touches mountain view.

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this chapter (https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. © The Author(s) 2020 B. A. Bickel, Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_5

93

94 

B. A. BICKEL

Her matrixial gaze cannot be encompassed entirely by only-one subject it was never a lost wholeness nor an endless multiplicity it remains partial allowing for com-passionate screening without identity because while it breaks your imaginary wholeness it also conducts you to its (and your) margins out of its (and your) own one-space (found in Ettinger1)

Engaging collaborative a/r/tographic ritual, mid-wifed by Earth-based and birthing philosophies and matrixial theory, the Gestare Art Collective challenges, resists and contradicts an artworld view of hyper-individuality, while it carries and expands collective and collaborative art practices of feminist woman artists. If the Gestare Art collective is an artwork in itself, in a matrixial sense, utilizing Bracha Ettinger’s matrixial language we can view it as a collective artworking, doing the work of connecting with the spirit of the other and the cosmos, as premised on “differentiation and difference in co-emergence” attuned to what is both present and absent.2 The artworkings of Gestare Art collective are a flow of complex female sentences read through a matrixial gaze. A collective artworking not confined to a phallic gaze and sentence structures. An Art and Trance Practice that originated within Gestare are shared at the start and close of this chapter.

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

Art Practice Two

Making and Walking a Labyrinth3 Intent To make and walk a labyrinth as an entryway into meditation or an altered state of consciousness. Guiding Narrative “Labyrinth’s are a sacred and early cross-cultural architectural form through which we can enter a third space to transition into non-ordinary reality, a trance state. There are many different patterns for labyrinths. A three circuit Cretan or Classic form labyrinth is the easiest to make and walk (see Image 5.1).” “Choose a location for making a labyrinth, in your home, yard, or the beach, wherever you feel called to create a temporary sacred space for yourself and/or others. A temporary labyrinth can be drawn with tools on different grounds, such as chalk on pavement or cement, a stick or your heel in sand or loose soil, string on a carpet, or theatre (gaffer) tape on a carpet or hard surface.” “When your labyrinth is complete set an intention for your walk. Walk the path until you reach the centre, open to mystery, remain in the centre as long as you like, and then walk back out. Write and create art from the experience.”

Image 5.1  Three Circuit Cretan Labyrinth drawing directions, 2019. (Courtesy of Barbara Bickel)

95

96 

B. A. BICKEL

We invite you to walk with spirit into the labyrinth of Gestare practices. Matrixial practices and ways of being in creative relationship will be shared reflectively through our collective stories in the conversation to follow. Our dialogue takes place at the time of the fall equinox in 2019 with an on-line interface. It is recorded, transcribed and later co-edited by Barbara, Nané and Medwyn. Present on the call are Nané, Medwyn, and Barbara borderlinking at a distance-in-proximity with Cindy Lou, and former Gestare members Ingrid and Wendalyn who are with us in presence/absence. We live at a geographical distance from each other, currently in three different Canadian cities, Vancouver, where Nané, Cindy Lou and Ingrid live and the place we all met on the unceded traditional land of the peoples of the Coast Salish and Musqueam Nations. Victoria, where Medwyn now lives, on the unceded traditional, occupied lands of the Lekwungen speaking Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples in British Columbia, and Calgary, where Barbara now lives, on the lands of the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Pikani), Stony Nakoda and Tsuut’ina Nations and Metis Nation (Region 3) of the Treaty 7 people in Alberta. The unbeknownst moment of conception of the Gestare Art Collective was in the spring of 2007 when Nané, Medwyn, Barbara and Wendalyn walked and performed ancient Neolithic goddess postures guided by Nané’s labyrinth workshop at the annual Women’s Spirituality Celebration (WSC). An annual conference held at the Vancouver School of Theology on the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus in Vancouver (1992–2009). Moments of connection through labyrinth walking and making continued over the next few years, and in the summer of 2009 on Toronto Island during an artist residency we midwifed the birth and naming of Gestare as a collective of woman artists (see Image 5.2). Gestare being the Latin word meaning “to carry in the womb.” Gestare is a gift we birthed while it simultaneously birthed us. We, as members of the collective care for it, while it cares for us and all others that encounter its presence and practices. It is a sacred liminal space, a compassionate wombspace that has holistically unfolded and evolved within a maternal gift economy.4 Gestare performs in the ecological healing paradigm of an unconditional gift economy and offers itself as a sacred restorative vessel moving within the midst of the dominant paternal market

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

97

Image 5.2  Gestare artists with Dream Scroll, Barbara, Cindy Lou, Nané and Medwyn, 2018. (Vancouver, British Columbia, photo Barbara Bickel)

economy that imbues our daily lives as artists, sisters, mothers, stepmothers, grandmothers and lovers. Our website5 serves as a portal to our on-going co-creative practices. We describe our practices as “visual, textural, vocal, performative, moving, ephemeral, earth-related and time/space-based…. The source of our artistic collaborations comes from our shared engagement with the Divine Feminine and the Earth, gestated in a labyrinthine container of wombspace.” Much of our communication as a collective is through on-line conversations, emails, and our website, as well as during annual or bi-­annual artist residencies and retreats where we gather in each other’s homes or, at artist residencies, such as Artscape Gibraltar Point on Toronto Islands, Ontario on the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the New Credit, where Wendalyn lives.

The Dialogue To begin to intentionally reflect on our shared biography as an artist collective working with trance, art and ritual we open with a ritual lighting of candles.

98 

B. A. BICKEL

Birth itself is a naturally transformative experience where we go into a natural trance state.

Barbara. I want to note we are the three core members able to be here in this Zoom conversation, who were called to be midwives at the birth of Gestare with Wendalyn. In presence/absence on this call is our fourth current member Cindy Lou Griffith who joined the collective in 2012. We also acknowledge the presence/absence of both former members, Wendalyn Bartley and Ingrid Rose. Over the years each woman has significantly nourished and gifted Gestare; Wendalyn with her feminine-based composing and sound art or as she calls it oracular art, Ingrid with her astute poetic writing sensibility and movement practices, and Cindy Lou’s creative connection with the neurodiverse mind, so connected to other realms in her paintings and writing. I’m curious how each of our backgrounds have influenced Gestare? Medwyn. What comes to mind for me is a very strong visual memory of the first Gibraltar residency where I was using my hand drum and walking around the perimeter of the labyrinth. Drumming was a practice I did in ritual and in teaching at witchcamp.6 It was foundational to what it meant for me to be a witch7 and to move into realms of shifting and shaping energy and dropping into that in-between state of waking dream. It was very grounding. It felt important to find my place and using the drum and trance beat I learned in the Reclaiming teachings was a way into the work we were doing together. B. Reclaiming is a common thread you and I have, both having been part of the Vancouver Reclaiming community and learning their trance practices. M. I was apprenticing with Sage Goode in 2002, a very respected member of that community. As an apprentice I was teaching core classes with her and Bridgid. I had been doing a lot of trance work through the 4 core classes: The Elements, Rites of Passage, Iron Pentacle, and Pearl Pentacle. In that whole process we learned all the different forms of trance work, from visualization into trance journey, pairs trance, group trance and then full trance possession as a practice in some of the rituals we did. I remember leading a workshop at WSC and casting a circle in a chapel and thinking wow, this is amazing, as this is crossing the spiritual lines for me. It was a very profound experience.

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

99

B. I remember you talking about someone who came through you in that chapel experience. M. There was an identity that had shown up in an early trance experience who I saw as a sort of alter-ego, she told me her name was Blanche Fleur. She was able to do many things I lacked the confidence to do, so not surprising she came through to help me with the work of the witch in the Christian chapel. B. Sage and Bridgid were my teachers too. I did intense trance work with Sage while working through conflict with another artist collaborator. Nané. In regard to my background. I was training to be a midwife but we did not have legal midwifery so we did it in this grass-rootsy birth practice in the community. Reading about the early Tennessee farm women and the midwifery work they were reviving in the 1970s.8 It was back-to-the-­Earth spiritual midwifery, which was so radical, based in reclaiming female bodies and birth itself. When I think about what we were doing right in East Vancouver, working with our teacher Gloria Lemay, and the home birth midwifes and water birth in the 1990s, those were pretty amazing days too, very alternative, outside the controlling hospital ways around birth. I know those threads of really understanding deep birthing energies, as a philosophy and way of being, and also as women’s power or Earth power or Mother Earth, were so significant for me. When I came into Gestare, that is what I was learning to articulate more of—the birthing red threads. All my red thread artwork came out of wanting tangible symbolism that captured women’s blood powers of creativity and birth. I had been living it and embodying it and understood it. Birth itself is a naturally transformative experience where we do go into a natural trance state. So my experience of trance would be related to these natural female body states where we access embodied trance, or are in a way forced to surrender to, in order to do birthing work. Learning from inside the bodies of women themselves, how the patriarchal medical culture had shut that down for women. In the circles I was travelling in, that was all blown open. It was like a collective experience of reawakening these birth powers. It is the lovely line of crossover for me between Gestare and my work with the placenta and birth—which have mutually reinforced each other so I could develop my voice and writing. Gestare has been so

100 

B. A. BICKEL

supportive of my birth writing and art interchangeably with our collective artmaking. We have been at it 10 years with Gestare, but 20 years ago was the start of the timeline of coming to this work together. I was deeply committed not only to women’s birth but to women’s spiritual power. I was not working with a specific witch community as you each were, but with a very broad community, some of whom were witches like Starhawk, and also shamanic-identified women like Vicki Noble. Such an amazing container I feel I have been blessed with, in these teachers and mentors in California at New College in their Women’s Spirituality graduate program. Those are the threads I carry. To bring these teachings and ways of being through to what we have developed through Gestare, a lot about sensing and holding each other in midwifery-like ways of birthing selves. B. Can you talk about your experience of the Virgin of Guadalupe you encountered in San Francisco and mothering while at New College? N. Yes, mothering, birth is mothering. The mothering energy of the labyrinth really started to come forward in my travels back and forth to California from my home in Vancouver during the early 2000s, and walking the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral, then drawing labyrinths in the sand on birthdays. My friend, Gillian said to me “you need to go to Grace Cathedral, with your name connection to Ariadne.” Her whole MA thesis was on the labyrinth, its history, places and modern revival. What an amazing, crazy, but really, I mean sane group of women, whose work was allowed to come into being through us at New College. That’s what brought me into my PhD research,9 not wanting to be separated from this female shakti energy. Shakti is that creative, life-giving energy, the birth energy itself. Really, my whole life is about unfolding these many layers. I remember those other lifetimes. It’s quite clear to me that being in this lifetime is about navigating patriarchal systems, but really, I am on for opening up other ways of being. [laughing] Circles upon Circles

B. While holding your labyrinth thread let’s re-connect with the circles of women that each of us have been part of, including the WSC where we all met. Circles upon circles. N. Circles, circles and circles, I always feel like that is what we were born from, the WSC circle.

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

101

B. I found myself creating and leading women’s circles in conscious community in Calgary almost 30 years ago. But I did not have a women’s spirituality background and made it up from reading and being in circle. When I moved to Vancouver, I knew I wanted to connect with women spiritual teachers and mentors. The Reclaiming community showed up through Starhawk coming to UBC to teach a tree workshop that led to my introduction to trance work. When I think about the WSC and my attraction to it in tandem with my connection with Reclaiming, it was an opportunity to integrate my conservative Missouri Lutheran background, having been raised by a clergy father from clergy lineage. Lutheranism managed to completely eradicate the feminine from Christianity, where only men were allowed to carry out rituals and women had no divine attributes, as Mary and the Saints do in Catholicism. Integrating the spirit of the feminine really was an intervention for the shift to a multi-faith context of the WSC. When I stepped into that planning team, not as a Christian but as a self-acknowledged witch who knew the empowered feminine belonged in Christianity too, it caused a great disturbance. A big part of my dissertation struggle was about owning the gift of my Christian ancestral heritage. Prior to my dissertation study with the WSC conference, the planning team was quite conflicted because I came out as a witch soon after I joined. At that point the women were not all Christian, but were assumed to be Christian. When I ‘came out’ I was told I did not belong there by a few of the Christian founders. Some women did not see this as a problem, and also some who did not solely identify as Christian. They reached out to support me and encouraged me to stay. So I stayed, realizing I was being called to hold the place of the feminine in that Christian school of theology that hosted the conference. Aware every time I took my chair in the circle of women surrounded by all the past male school president portrait paintings on the wall. That was hard work. Then I invited Reclaiming Priestesses (Sage and Bridgid) to lead workshops and be part of the large group rituals. It was pretty powerful to be reclaiming those Christian chapels for feminine-based rituals and raising feminine spiritual energy in those spaces. N. It’s amazing, Barbara how that eventually shifted the whole thing. It was almost non-Christian by the end. We came to publicly name it as multi-faith where all spiritual traditions were welcome. B. Part of it is because many of the Christian women left when I stayed. N. When I came in there was a tension. I remember struggling, as compared to my more radical teachers and mentors in California that were

102 

B. A. BICKEL

blowing the lid off these things. The WSC was part of a more conservative struggle. But paths where intertwined, and it was interesting to experience the variations of these dynamics. M. In the late 1990s I had been holding my own circles and I attended the WSC event. I went to one planning meeting afterwards, but did not like the archaic structure, sensed the friction and decided it wasn’t the right place for me. Some years later I was at a meeting of Glen Valley Organic Farm Cooperative and Valerie Lys who had joined the WSC planning team told me it was a very different group now and suggested I might be interested. I came to organic farming through one of my original mentors in witchcraft, so for me, there is a thread around organic farming and growing food connected to my journey with spirituality. Small circles that became a larger circle then became a smaller circle again, and still continue. My next profound circle experience was with your dissertation Barbara, which started the year my sister died, a hugely significant time for me to be held in a circle of women. B. My dissertation study was part of my desire to combine arts-based research (a/r/tography) with ritual and sacred creation-making processes. We dove deep through the artmaking and circle sharing processes into what women’s multi-faith leadership was in that particular circle of women.10 M. It struck me Nané, that your women mentors were just coming into maturity at a time when there were huge pushes against the socio/political status quo and the patriarchy. The late 1960 and early 1970s were a transformational time. Through the Goddess and women’s spirituality your mentors were strengthened and empowered and passed that on during your years of study with them. N. That was the movement I went to study with. Those were the foremothers of women’s spirituality, if you want to call it a social movement. It was the woman’s movement and really the birth movement that I was learning in, a result of those transformative times. My dissertation is about that social movement, as in What is women’s spirituality? What was going on with religion that left women and women’s experiences out? And why is the goddess not there? Where did she go? Why do we need to go back to the Neolithic to find the goddess? B. This social movement connection has prompted me to pull up our website and look at our annual practices over the years to connect social political movements that underpin Gestare art practices with the circles of circles we are connected with. Nané you bring the birthing aspect along

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

103

with your path with the labyrinth that was our first annual practice of “Wombwalks” in 2011.11 In that practice we walked and acknowledged our births. Our next project was the “Ancestral Journeys.” We wanted to connect with our ancestors and be grounded and rooted with them. I am thinking how for me the social political aspect of it came in strong through conversations we had on why we were doing the work we were doing. How you Medwyn connected to the Earth and alternative ways of living on the Earth. Which is political. Along with Nane’s knowledge of alternative ways of women giving birth also so connected to the Earth. M. Living on the Earth through organic farming is a political act. Modern ways of farming are destructive to the earth and are why it is important to grow and eat organic. B. I connect that with how we choose to follow the wheel of the year and the Earth cycle in our annual practices. It is kind of like secret teachings

N. That is so the witchy pagan part of all of us that beautifully comes out. I love the part of Gestare that holds the value of art very highly. We talk a lot about art not being ego-based, or only individual-based object art. I like that we get to drop all of that, and do these processes together, so art is also our collective experiences and practices. M. I always remember a conversation I had with Barbara. My view of art was that art is a painting on the wall, and you explained to me that much of what I was already doing with ritual, drumming, labyrinth making and walking—all of that was art as well. Gestare became the container that allowed me to explore the process of artmaking as a significant part of my life. It has grown from there and I now exhibit as an artist. B: Gestare has definitely fed my artist-self too. We formed the year after I moved to the USA and was teaching full time at the university. So many of our creative practices became central to my a/r/tographic research as an artist-academic. It fed the artist part of me, kept me spiritually alive and flourishing in an environment calling me in different directions. Having connection with student artists and the cycle of the year, Earthwork with Gestare really helped keep my artist spirit alive. Even when I was not doing art, I knew there was collective art going on. N. I think that’s true for me too, while I was in my doctoral process and writing. I was engaged with art practices with the women in my study doing ritual and healing practices as arts. Which is the combination of Gestare

104 

B. A. BICKEL

processes as well. I feel there is a richer esoteric life we have had together through Gestare. It is kind of like secret teachings. These are hard to get to in a regular paradigm and it’s sometimes hard to explain to the world out there. It is not just a rational, linear thing to talk about—it’s based in experiencing, which interestingly goes back to birth itself. I know we get there at times with groups in our teaching workshops. Like the beautiful “MA Pose” practice workshop, based on our years of developing the “MA Pose” curriculum we just taught at an education conference at UBC.12 We touched into it, and people were able to understand it, get an experience of the body, as artful and engaged. It is about being in relationship. We do art on our own, but certainly Gestare comes through our relationships with each other, and our commitment to what we call “Gestare,” who does indeed hold and “carry us in the womb” (see Image 5.3). Gestare is an altered state of consciousness itself!

B. In thinking about political movements, like the spiritual feminist movement we talked about earlier, I have come to fully realize recently that Gestare itself is a movement.

Image 5.3  MA Pose Twelve (Double goddess pose) with Gestare, 2018. (Vancouver, British Columbia, photo Barbara Bickel)

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

105

N. Yes! B. Relationships are movement. People moving together and interweaving and growing and expanding and shifting and changing. That is movement! And how we have done this creative relationship work, holding the threads at a distance. Even now when Cindy Lou is not able to be with us and is at a distance. Yet, she is in the conversation as well. I think about past Gestare members, Wende and Ingrid. They are in this conversation too, even though they are not here. We hold the threads of connection through other realms not limited by time and place. Not limited to the material, concrete realm of art being a painting on a wall. We are doing this distance artworking ritually within multiple realms. M. As we did at the very beginning with Wende in 2010 at a residency on the Toronto Island beach when we did the “Ocean Day Labyrinth Making and Walking” performance ritual as a healing action for the Gulf of Mexico, and to counter the G20 Summit at a distance on the beach, across the water from downtown Toronto where the actual police guarded summit meeting was taking place with political world leaders. B. We had police interrupting us on the beach asking what we were doing. Art as subtle activism.13 M. And we were collectively lifting that heavy piece of found concrete and moving it into the center of the labyrinth to energetically assist the capping of the wellhead.14 N. And sending our sounding energy outward. M. That was establishing connections to the otherworld dimensions that are always vibrating and present even after we are gone. This entity that is Gestare has a life of its own, and we may be the three core physical presences here that continue to bear witness but the life of Gestare is more than us. It is a bigger presence. N. Which is what you are touching into Barbara, when you say it is a movement. We share the practices with others and that expands the movement of Gestare. B. Yes, now others are doing Gestare practices and making them their own after taking our workshops, hearing our talks and reading our writing. Gestare is a movement, but at another level I think Gestare is even more than that. It is an altered state of consciousness itself! A state of consciousness each of us can tap into. M. Yes!

106 

B. A. BICKEL

B. It holds us and is an altered state we can step into when we choose. I want to add that there is something different that goes on when we do physically get together. We can and do work at distance, able to cross the geographic distances through entering alternative realms, but having our real body connecting retreats and residencies is important to sustain us too. M. We have really developed altered state work by doing those distant practices. N. But as we began to trust working through our processes, there were more resting and trance-type spaces to hold us in co-creating. It seemed even funny and very unconventional to us at the time, in creating the “Nap-In” practices15 in 2011 at the STAG residency in Vancouver. We had such a good laugh at ourselves! But knew we really needed to deeply rest, and decided we could communally sleep and dream as a practice, and allow the importance of resting and dreaming to come forward and learn from. It all makes sense in hindsight, as resting and dreaming are roots for creative process. In it all, we have been learning how to blend our energies to allow this placental entity to move through us so there could be birthings and emergences. Gestare as a specific container for co-experimenting—maybe in itself, this is our art form. I think it is interesting your book is about trance states Barbara. I wonder if there has been a softening of ourselves, to blend and relax more, so the trances can be there more as the trance of Gestare. Like connecting with the subtle realms and subtle energies. I was trained in yogini work with Vicki Noble where women as yoginis and the spirit realms of the Dakinis’ work together for personal, community, and even planetary healing. I have thought about this through our Gestare years together, how we seem to tap into and embody Dakini work—which is really very trance-­ based, especially when we consider the interconnecting gifts of body, art, Earth, and spirituality. B. And Dakini energy appeared with the “Dream Scroll” when we took that photo at the close of the very first “Nap-In”! (see Image 5.4). We work with the celestial as well as particular places on the land.

M. I have very strong recollections of our series of moon phase practices, particularly of myself outdoors, seeing and feeling the presence of the moon. I clearly knew in doing that practice I was not alone, sensing the other-dimensionality of what we were doing. I was connected to each

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

107

Image 5.4  Dakini pose at the first Nap-In with Dream Scroll, 2011. (STAG, Vancouver, British Columbia, photo Barbara Bickel)

of you, whether you were doing the practice at that moment or not was irrelevant. The time constructs we put around things is much more constricting than it actually is due to our mundane understandings. It is partly a condition of trance that makes me very aware of the intention of others practicing while also connecting with the moon in its phase, whether full or dark.

108 

B. A. BICKEL

B. I like that we are naturally shifting into talking about place, Earth, land and the cosmos. We work with the celestial as well as particular places on the land. And I think how ritual has always been part of our practices. Ritual is so embedded in everything we do. It is hard to actually tease out. We don’t even need to pull it out to talk about it as something separate. N. Yes. B. Place is also embedded in our practice. At one level we are working in the space of altered timelessness and placelessness, and at another level we have the tangible Earth, moon, sun and body connection. M. When I think about living 10 years in Courtenay and the co-­housing land there, my strongest memories of that land and place are all connected to being in Gestare practices. N. Because we were outside so much. I remember your labyrinths. I remember all the places you did your rituals Medwyn. I remember me doing your birthday walk while I was in San Francisco and outside at Grace Cathedral. I just loved walking the labyrinth, whether at St Paul’s labyrinth or out on the beach and knowing you were each walking too. There is a sense of nourishment in the practice. Maybe it’s the nourishment of ourselves or nourishment of the Earth? (See Image 5.5 and Labyrinth Making & Walking Practice at start of chapter).

Image 5.5  Labyrinth Making and Walking16 Barbara’s Birthday, 2011. (Carbondale, Illinois, video still R. Michael Fisher) (https://doi.org/10.1007/000-08q)

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

109

B. I have that same memory connection to place while living in the USA. My most impactful experience with Southern Illinois as a place was in doing Gestare practices, which I did mostly outdoors. Those are very vivid. We turn our experiences of practices into art, create with and from them, but they are also embedded inside my own being, as these very vivid, permanent pieces of art I carry within me. N. And I carry the places where you each did your practices too and not just my own! B. Yes! M. Yes! N. I am imprinted by each of yours. I remember where, whether from looking at them on video or listening through audio. Barbara, I remember when you were by that lake. I have this felt sensation of where you each where. It is kind of beautiful, even though I was at English Bay, or at home, or at Trout Lake where I did my tree practices, I felt your location too. M. There is something profound here in terms of relationship to place. Not just in relationship to our own place, but a deeply embodied experience of others’ relationship to their place through doing this shared practice. N. I know the places you were in! I loved it as I got to enter them through your art sharing. It calmed me down to feel so connected with each of you and your Earth-places. B. That is part of how it extends for me too. I had multiple places where I could ground when I was ungrounded. Not just my own place but yours as well. M. The more we talk about it I recognize how central the trance practice has been for everything in our work together. [We stop and take a five-minute break from the on-line interface] In that womb surrounded by the fluid of the mother lake.

N. Can I share something? I want to catch it. Going in and out of the Zoom now I am noticing how I am often in a place of complete overwhelm when we have our calls. Yet, Gestare is this place that once we get there, we get to enter it and it holds me and us in other ways. Takes me out of my overwhelm world. B. We are in an altered space just doing this conversation on-line.

110 

B. A. BICKEL

N. It totally is. This is part of what we do. I like entering it. I didn’t think specifically about our work being trance-based before but I like this thread. It is another space. B. Yes, it’s a third space/place we choose to access. Trance has such a broad range of what it can be. When I look back on our annual practice of “Moonly Dreaming.” Dreaming is on one end of the spectrum of altered states of consciousness that we enter for numerous hours every day as humans. M. Yes. B. I want to bring forward our “Tree Encounters of the Full Moon” practice. One of the impacts of the Gestare art practices is they have seeped into my life and fed my other art practices outside of Gestare. Even in the writing of this book. Learning how to encounter and get to know trees as allies was huge in developing intimate relationships with trees over time. A practice I am engaging while writing this book. (See Tree-Friending practice at end of chapter.) N. The tree is the placenta form itself, and the word “place” is in “placenta.” In French, place-en-terre –means our place-on-earth. M. Ahh, right. B. Beautiful! N. Place and placenta brings that birth thread through again. I did my first independent placenta project art piece at one of our first residencies on Toronto Island. When I put the red felted placentas in all the trees. M. That was incredible! And then we did the Placenta Performance Ritual with your felted placentas on the beach (see Image 5.6). N. And my placenta birth-art and writing work has all come out of that. B. Yes, your placenta teachings and recently published book anthology about working with the placenta as part of birthing practices. I think about Gestare being birthed at the artist residency on this island surrounded by the womb of Lake Ontario. We were in that womb surrounded by the fluid of the mother lake. It’s great we have circled back to the place our origin on the island, such a magical transformative place, a huge gift. Feeling the nurturing importance of being with women for healing, on the Earth.

B. I have one more question for us before we step out of the ritual labyrinth we have made and been talking in.

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

111

Image 5.6  Placenta Performance Ritual with Nané, Medwyn, Barbara & Wendalyn, 2010. (Gibraltar Point Beach, Toronto Ontario, video still Barbara Bickel)

Are there any particular profound or significant gift(s) you have received in working with the collective and our practices? N. I remember one residency, when I was very ill and not with you. We did a healing trance together for me, on-line and at home. I imagined being on the island next to a tree being circled by a group of women, us and many other women, and really feeling the nurturing importance of being with women for healing, on the Earth and next to a tree. B. That was powerful. A gift I return to is the ancestral work. Coming to know the ancestors of a place as well as my own in our Earth-based practices. That went really deep for me through our tree practice, the ancestral practice and all of our artworkings with moon cycle practices. M. Well, one gift for me has been the labyrinths, particularly the “Wombwalks” when I drew labyrinths in the sand at low tide. There is something about mark-making and walking in the liminal space between the land and the water, deliberately and consciously making and walking in a place where the labyrinth would disappear, where I could watch it disappear. In terms of relationship with place, in as much as a labyrinth is a place, no matter where I go to mark and walk one, I carry with me all the

112 

B. A. BICKEL

labyrinths I have made and walked. The form has this incredible ancient resonance with the earth. B. Yes! The gift is on-going.

N. We have not mentioned gift economy, but the gift economy of Gestare and the healing piece that comes out when we talk about social movements. I love that feeling when we are resting in the Gestare practices and our consciousness is opened. Gifting as healing in a very feminine way. B. Gestare came at the point I had done the integration work with the body and writing to be able to create curriculum with the spirit of art. Gestare has allowed that to continue and I have been blown away by the teachings and curriculum that Gestare has birthed. So easily taught and shared with others. When you allow the spirit of art to come into being it takes you to whatever work needs to be done. The gift is on-going for me through our relationships, as we continue to publish and share as a collective and each of us moves through the world. The container of Gestare manifested collaboratively and is bigger than each of us. It contains more that we do not yet know. That is where the Gestare movement, the bigger movement comes in. I am in awe of this spirit named Gestare. N. To weave into what both of you are saying. It is so much about healing and spiritual development together. The kind of spaciousness that opens up when we are together that also allows our individual gifts to emerge. There is something beautiful in thinking about art in this way. Non-object art that can also be object art, but really it is art as life. The beauty of touching into that bigger spirit and healing. To blend our gifts and create a bigger gift is enormous. M. For me the obvious thing is the practice of art, and art as life. If Gestare had not happened after your dissertation Barbara, I do not know that I would have continued to make art. And now the practice of art has become an integral expression of the values in my life. I reflect back on the early years being a nice English girl and coming to Canada and jumping on the career road, and then blasting on that until getting ill and then doing big time healing work, and then came Gestare. The person I have become since being part of Gestare is a whole new person. I am who I am now, in large part, because of Gestare. B. Wow. That’s a huge affirmation Medwyn. I know I have witnessed so much transformation in you. I think we have each witnessed

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

113

transformation in each other. I think part of the drive and desire to share the work of Gestare is knowing the power of it, and to share it so we all can become the fullest we can be. I’d like to add before we close that in research while writing I found the work of John Curtis Gowan17 who completely validates our individual and Gestare artworkings. He tracks the path of art, trance and creativity. It begins with the numinous (the secret mystery school you spoke of earlier Nané), and then there are us humans on the Earth terrified of the mystery. Then he explains the many forms of trance practices that help humans get closer to the numinous, to spirit. I love it as art is the last most evolved practice that assists us to touch mystery. And this then has such an impact through culture on the future of humanity. N. That’s cool. B. I am so grateful to have Gestare as an exemplar chapter about makers of art who engage trance, art and ritual for healing and transformation. I hope it will guide others to become makers and transformers on this Earth. N. That’s so great Barbara—it all comes back to art. [all laughing]. [We close our ritual conversation in the altered state of Gestare by sounding together.] Trance Practice Three

Tree-Friending Practice Intention A tree relationship practice is to open and expand all the senses available to you with the support of a tree. Trees are hospitable and relational beings and holders of generational wisdom. Guiding Narrative “Take yourself on a walk to find a tree to establish a friendship with. Once finding a tree, greet the tree and take time to connect. Ask if the tree would like to be in relationship with you. If you sense this tree is a receptive and welcoming tree continue to visit when you can. If you find it is not the tree for you at this time, look for another tree. Allow the relationship with the tree to unfold with each visit. It is helpful to make a commitment to the tree, to visit it, remember it and support it. For example, commit to cleaning the environment surrounding the tree.”

114 

B. A. BICKEL

Notes 1. Ettinger 2002, 233. 2. Ettinger 2006, 110.0. 3. See Lauren Artress’s 1995 book, Walking a Sacred Path to explore labyrinths. 4. Jordan, http://redthreadprojects.blogspot.com/2015/07/white-inkgifted-within-presence-of.html. Vaughan. 5. Gestare collaborative practices www.gestareartcollective.com 6. Witchcamp is an intensive week-long spiritual retreat as part of Reclaiming communities internationally. 7. I acknowledge the word ‘witch’ can elicit deep fear as witches have been maligned and demonized by Christianity since the Inquisition and forced underground. I was shocked and intrigued meeting my first self-identified witch and found myself questioning internalized fear and judgement of what I had been taught religiously and secularly. Witch is an identity being reclaimed and returning to its original meaning as one who shapes “a creator who bends the unseen into form, and so becomes one of the wise, one whose life is infused with magic.” Starhawk, 22. See The Burning Times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ow_kNnoro&fbclid=IwAR3qeO IL4lnW8f4jv_nUxQzJ6rxHgLbfXSCAv1QRFpt0SyPrn5Xi2-CqCss 8. Gaskin. 9. Jordan. 10. See dissertation http://barbarabickel.netfirms.com/barbarabickel.com/ phd/index.html 11. Bickel et al. 2015. 12. Bickel et al. 2019. 13. An alternative to frontline activism through prayer, meditation or ecstatic dance etc. http://www.gaiafield.net/library/what-is-subtle-activism 14. Performance ritual in response to the worldwide call from Veriditas labyrinth facilitators on June 8, 2010, World Ocean Day. https://vimeo.com/ manage/12873387/general 15. Bickel 2015. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/atj/vol1/iss1/12/ 16. Wombwalk II video https://vimeo.com/manage/25205545/general 17. Gowan.

References Bickel, Barbara. 2008. Living the Divine Spiritually and Politically: Art, Ritual, and Performative Pedagogy in Women’s Multifaith Leadership. Dissertation. Vancouver, BC: The University of British Columbia.

5  THE GESTARE ART COLLECTIVE 

115

———. 2015. Socially Engaged Art Education Beyond the Classroom: Napping, Dreaming and Art Making. Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal 1 (1): 79–91. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/atj/vol1/iss1/12/ Bickel, Barbara, Medwyn McConachy, and Nané Jordan. 2015. Wombwalks. In Creating Together: Participatory Community-Based and Collaborative Arts Practices Across Canada, ed. D.  Conrad and A.  Sinner, 161–178. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Bickel, Barbara, Nané Jordan, Medwyn McConachy, Cindy Lou Griffith, and Ingrid Rose. 2019. MA Poses: A New Material Feminist Art Practice. In Ma: Materiality in Teaching and Learning, ed. P.  Sameshima, B.  White, and A. Sinner, 245–259. New York: Peter Lang. Ettinger, Bracha L. 1996. Metramorphic Borderlinks and Matrixial Borderspace. In Rethinking Borders, ed. J. Welchman, 125–159. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2002. Transcryptum. In Topologies of Trauma: Essays on the Limit of Knowledge and Memory, ed. L.  Belau and P.  Ramadanovic. New  York: The Other Press. ———. 2006. The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gaskin, Ina May. 1975/1990. Spiritual Midwifery. Summertown: Book Publishing Company. Gowan, John Curtis. 1975. Trance, Art and Creativity. Buffalo: Colleague, Creative Education, Foundation. Jordan, Nané. 2011. Inspiriting the Academy: Weaving Stories and Practices of Living Women’s Spirituality. Dissertation, University of British Columbia. ———. 2015. White Ink: Gifted With/in the Presence of Women. Red Thread Projects Blogspot, July 3. http://redthreadprojects.blogspot.com/2015/07/ white-ink-gifted-within-presence-of.html Read, Donna. The Burning Times Documentary, National Film Board, 1990. Starhawk. 1989. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. San Francisco: Harper Collins. Vaughan, Genevieve, ed. 2007. Women and the Gift Economy: A Radically Different Worldview Is Possible. Toronto: Inanna Publications.

CHAPTER 6

Attending to Ancient Voices

Abstract  This chapter explores the power of the voice as an entryway into the mysteries. The sound-based trance work of composer Wendalyn Bartley and experimental Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq are introduced. These artists demonstrate how a practice of working with the body as a vocal chamber resonating with ancient voices can awaken and attune us to the self, the other and the cosmos simultaneously. A sounding/listening practice is shared at the close of the chapter. Keywords  Sound • Art • Healing • Wendalyn Bartley • Tanya Tagaq • Pauline Oliveros • Soundwalk • Gestare Art Collective • Oracle • Deep Listening • Performance ritual • Artscape Gibraltar Point • Sound Dreaming • Baba Yaga • Inuit throat singing • Arational • Sounding • Field attunement • Trance Sitting cross legged hands resting on heart, eyes close deep hum surfacing

© The Author(s) 2020 B. A. Bickel, Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_6

117

118 

B. A. BICKEL

Listening to her art will always escape organization, and vibrating strings between ethics and aesthetics will always escape political noise (found in Ettinger & Virtanen1)

Sound, Art and Healing I was introduced to the power and depth of sound as art and healing by electro-vocal composer Wendalyn Bartley in 2007 during an artist residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point on Toronto Island. The island is on Mississauga-Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Wendat territories and where descendants of the Mississaugas New Credits regularly come for ceremony. It holds history with Indigenous people as a shaman’s healing site, where people come for healing.2 “It is liminal, sacred, or ambivalent for some island residents.”3 As a studio home for more than ten years, it was an exceptional place for Wendalyn’s creative practice, nestled between lake water and cosmopolitan city. It has also been an artist residency home for me during eight different summers where I had the gift of working in collaboration with other artists, the place, and as a teacher of emerging artists. It was with Wendalyn, during my very first artist residency, that I went on a soundwalk in Nature, walking through the island wearing a headset, with a microphone in hand to amplify the soundwaves I was moving through. My audial world was blown open. Soundscape4 composer Hildegarde Westercamp wrote of soundwalks, As acoustic ecologists we know—in the spirit of genuine ecological consciousness—that we are positioned inside the soundscape: like all human beings we are listeners and sound makers in this world and therefore active participants in the creation of our soundscapes. Soundwalking is a practice that wants to bring our existing position inside-the-soundscape to full consciousness.5

Soundwalking along with a practice of listening deeply and sounding with others can be a direct portal into a communal trance state experience.

6  ATTENDING TO ANCIENT VOICES 

119

Soundwalking calls us to attend to place and presence; our place and the place of all others we most often don’t release from the unconscious reservoir in our psyches. Expanding the audio field of awareness walks us into a transit experience, to what Ettinger refers to as “relating without relations” and names metramorphosis.6 It is the aesthetic and ethical process of soundwalking, of sounding, of oracle singing, of artmaking while attuning to a sharable resonant field. Wendalyn was a co-founder of the Gestare Art Collective, along with myself, Nané Jordan and Medwyn McConachy. The collective’s creative practices are explored in Chapter 5. Due to Wendalyn’s early artistic contribution to the collective, a sounding art practice she has come to call “oracle singing,” became a core Gestare artworking process. Artworking, as a matrixial term is a work of mourning through the process and gift of art. It is through artworkings that we can open to the interconnected lifeworld of all and touch the collective fragility of life, that is both traumatic and joy-filled. The Gestare Art Collective is committed to artworking processes that dwell within and attend to the womb of the greater m/other, the Earth as the original source of compassion for all earthlings. They describe the embodied experience of what we call “wombsoundings” (see Image 6.1) as,

Image 6.1  Erinyes, Gestare sounding, 2009. (Gibraltar Point Beach, Toronto, Ontario, photo Medwyn McConachy)

120 

B. A. BICKEL

The gestures and formless soundings that coalesced within the performance ritual upsets rational phallocentric language and pre-given “socio-linguistic and gender arrangements”7 Our movements and utterances are drawn from a nurtured connection to the land and each other. Our soundings at times invoke what can be seen as the dissonant qualities of what theologians8 know as the via negativa, and the apophatic spiritual paths, and what ancient Greek physicians [misinterpreted and] called hysteria, a woman’s ailment…. Our soundings can be harmonic, sensual, and humorous—at other times dissonant and mournful, filled with the ache of longing and desire…. Sounds follow their own path and are ephemeral, caught for the moment, then released.9

Gestare directly experiences the mysterious communication that collective sounding experiences augment. Sounding serves as an artworking of listening and attuning to each other’s emotional, spiritual and bodily frequencies. In entering the altered states that sounding affords we engage in direct communicaring with each other and the environment. Communicaring in matrixial language is communication not limited to ordinary realms of consciousness. It grants access to multiple levels of consciousness with the self and other, human and more-than-human. Four Arrows wrote how the holders of the Indigenous worldview recognize language as sacred and use “words, songs, art, drumming, ceremony, visioning, telepathy, and other forms of communication to better understand and express the complexities of reality, create new realities, share experiences, and maintain relationships with the natural world.”10 Wendalyn articulates the many levels of communication she has experienced through the practice of oracle singing that holds much resonance with this Indigenous worldview. She shared with me how oracle singing uses, the voice as a way of receiving wisdom, guidance, and connection through aligning with an intention or question. Using the voice is also a way of divining the sound stories that live in the land, in a particular place, that are present in the waters and trees, and in the ancient sacred places. It opens up one way of connecting with mythical and archetypal consciousness, the legends and characters of specific places. It is a way of receiving wisdom from the earth and establishing a deep relationship with the spirit of Gaia. A dialogue and communion. Through the voice, we can connect with the deeper wisdom that dwells within us, and with the larger sacred field of life.11

6  ATTENDING TO ANCIENT VOICES 

121

Engaging the voice through vocal sounding with the intention of connection to human and more-than-human realms can re-attune the whole body-voice to an ancient inner resonance that can be healing or create transformational shifts. It also awakens us to the greater energy fields we are dwelling within that includes collective grief, mystery, joy and trauma. Oracular sounds, movements, and images inspired by the oracle chamber found in the ancient hypogeum in Malta12 introduced to me by Wendalyn became part of an art installation I called “Oracular Co-Encounters” during an artist residency at the STAG in 2011.13 Entering the gallery became a potentially healing encounter-event for those who walked the labyrinth to stand and gaze through the oracular veil (see Image 6.2). Here they listened and sounded in response to the artwork on the other side of the veil. Rather than objectively viewing art on the wall they

Image 6.2  Barbara Bickel, Oracular Co-Encounters installation, 2012. (Southern Illinois University Museum, Carbondale, Illinois)

122 

B. A. BICKEL

were led into the arational matrixial sphere of precious aesthetic moments of inteconnectivity and jointness-in-difference within the energy field. A Western healing practice through the voice has its genesis in the work of Alfred Wolfsohn, a German singing teacher, who suffered combat trauma after World War I and restored his own voice through exploring the full range of the human voice. This led to understanding vocal problems as a psychic condition and not only physical. In Wolfsohn’s demonstration recording, entitled “The Human Voice,” he explained how the method of voice training reaches into the inner realms of consciousness, Here I want to stress once more that when I speak of singing, I do not consider this to be an artistic exercise, but the possibility, and the means to recognize oneself, and to transform this recognition into conscious life. Singing is, however, … the gift, bestowed on everyone by nature in order to express [them]self.14

Wolfsohn understood, through his personal trauma and recovery, the sacred gift of Nature that included the human voice. Roy Hart, a student of Wolfson’s reading his teacher’s paper in a 1961 lecture described the mystical artistic dimensions that a singer can restore within themselves to then share with others, In this work the singer can penetrate more and more the depths of [their] body and so achieve a new and until now unknown sound, to which the singer listens as if [they] were listening to a strange voice. But only if the singer experiences that “it” sings, is the state of childhood in the adult restituted, the real active state of creation in the human being. Only then can [they] be sure that the “it” in the listener hears too and thus art fulfils the same function as religion which, by touching the depth in the human being, leads to the height.15

The lineage of voice teachers dedicated to touching into mystery is carried on by many. Richard Armstrong’s work, based on the Roy Hart method re-traces the origin of the singer’s voice back to birth; The sounds we make are the audible glue that binds our inner and outer worlds together through the container of our bodies and the boundless universe of our imaginations…. The training…a conscious return to the uninhibited sounds of the newborn, with its dynamic unraveling of the repression imposed by the conditions of growing up, and leads to a free and unchained yoice.16

6  ATTENDING TO ANCIENT VOICES 

123

We can re-connect with the original gift of the voice present at birth. It is recoverable, if we choose to fully inhale and exhale sound that expresses the life-spirit of our breath. Another thread of sound healing work comes through Karina Schelde, the founder of SoulVoice. Teaching a method that “explores the human voice into its ultimate depths and potential…. our voice will remember what we have forgotten. It reveals… our light and dark sides. It carries any suppressed or painful memories and indicates our spiritual path.”17 Wendalyn studied with Karina and also attended workshops with the late American musician and composer Pauline Oliveros, another revered teacher who created “Sonic Meditations.” Sonic Meditations, according to Oliveros have the goal of expanding consciousness for humanitarian purposes; specifically healing. They are listening meditations that direct “attention to what is heard, gathering meaning, interpreting and deciding on action.”18 “Deep Listening” and “Sonic Meditations” validate the communicaring experience in the practice of sounding brought forward in Gestare artworkings. William Obsborne reflecting on “Sonic Meditations” suggests, Perhaps this “process-of-empathic-resonance” is related to the deepest aspects of human music-making. Through complex patterns of synethesia, humans also seem to have a capacity of empathic discernment. Through Deep Listening we come together by sounding the depths of otherness.19

Communicaring has nourished the members of the Gestare Art Collective since its conception. Even when apart for an extended period of time, when we gather and sound collectively, we find an almost immediate connective resonance to/with each other. It is a mystical attunement offered to us through the frequency of the life spirit that moves us into empathic care and deep gratitude for the other. We listen and attune to each other through more than our ears. Pauline Oliveros’s “Deep Listening” practice distinguishes between hearing and listening. “Hearing is a function of the ear. Sound vibrations are carried to the brain. Listening is more of a mystery. It is what happens after the sound vibrations go to your brain.” The purpose of Deep Listening is creating “an atmosphere of opening for all to be heard, with the understanding that listening is healing.”20 In Deep Listening practice, attuning to the electromagnetic field that surrounds and is in our bodies helps us to listen to the whole environment, as well as the particular within the

124 

B. A. BICKEL

environment. “Deep Listening” is a restorative experience when practiced alone or with others. An Awake Field Attunement as sounding/listening practice is shared at the end of this chapter.

Voicing the Stones: A Performance Ritual21 Creatively focused while at my first artist residency at Artscape Gilbraltar Point in 2007, I stepped into the world of sound art that revealed new thresholds to be crossed and expansive resonate spaces to be entered. As Wendalyn was interested in trance practices, we began a collaboration by entering a co-trance state where we spoke in trance aloud and entered a journey together. We did this while listening to one of her musical compositions created using vocal improvisations and soundscape recordings made in the Skoteino Cave and other locations in Crete.22 These recordings were part of Wendalyn’s exploration of resonant sound at sacred sites. The co-trance and music provided the inspiration for the performance ritual entitled “Voicing the Stones” performed in my studio installation, entitled “Stillpoint”23 (see Image 6.3). The installation was the culmination of a month of creating mandalas and labyrinths on the island. It included a central labyrinth altar that became the backdrop to the performance ritual. We ritually performed on the labyrinth I made from canvas and stones collected from the beach. The labyrinth’s path is in a particular pattern found in Southern India, Chakra-vyuha, which in Sanskrit means a big wind. Its path has a spiral leading into the centre. Walking it often invokes a sense of play and joy. The “Voicing the Stones” collaboration was fed by our common interest in ancient and contemporary understandings of the divine feminine. In the performance we accessed memory and voices of the land through stones, trance and our voices. With a full moon rising in the sky and a circle of friends and artists gathered in the studio, we invoked the spirit of the ancient Goddess and danced with the energy of stones. Below is a description of the performance ritual written shortly after. Picking up stones along the walk and listening to their sounds as we played them, enlivened our bodies, the stones, and the space. While in the center of the labyrinth we poured stones onto each other’s hands. The movement and energy of the stones passed through our hands to our bodies, magnified by the pulsing rhythm of the music. Our bodies extended themselves, reaching up and outward until physically spent and complete. We then began the

6  ATTENDING TO ANCIENT VOICES 

125

Image 6.3  Stillpoint installation, 2007. (Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto, Ontario, photo Barbara Bickel) descent—the return walk out of the labyrinth. At turning points on the ­labyrinth path in our leave-taking, we would pause and share arm and hand mudras, gestural tokens inspired from our stone energy-infused bodies. Exiting the labyrinth, we walked a full circle to the Labyrinth altar and faced our guests in a spontaneous closing body gesture of the “Double Goddess,” a motif of “women sharing power.”24

In an email correspondence after my departure from the Island, Wendalyn shared the following quote in response to the description I had offered of her work as a healing and sound artist to another friend.

126 

B. A. BICKEL

We are all born with this ancestral heritage, with the ability to “read” and respond to the sensuous Earth. But with the discovery and learning of written words, literate cultures lost something special—even something sacred— that had been integral to the oral traditions. With the written word, language fell silent, and we became strangers in our own land.25 I found this in my notes this morning… It resonates with your phrase it was a sensory ability that we used to have and that people have lost the ability for the most part to hear the sound and memory of space. For me, the delightful twist you contributed was the insight that hearing and sounding space is a sensory ability. (wende)

Within the collaborative performance ritual of “Voicing the Stones,” we reclaimed the sacredness of a lost and suppressed feminine language. Wendalyn’s sound composition offered a sacred feminine musical aesthetic. Our soundmaking, derived from listening to the music and stones through our bodies, further realized the power of a non-linguistic language imbued with spirit. The stones I gathered on the beach became a conduit to the voices and prayers of the wordless language of the Earth.

Wendalyn Bartley: A Healing Journey with Art She rises up from primordial seas to greet me with her Siren Song, leading me into vast legions of the ancient feminine. Within the shadowy depths of ritual caves, her memory arises from my breath, my breast, my womb. (found in Wendalyn Bartley26)

Wendalyn’s path as a composer was shaped by the emancipatory spirit of the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s.27 Her career began by composing and writing instrumental music, but in the early 1980s shifted into working within the burgeoning field of electroacoustic music. A 1984 electroacoustic composition entitled “Rising Tides of Generations Lost,”28 was both awarded for its innovation and caused much discomfort for some listeners. This early piece reveals an interest in restoring the lost voice of the feminine. The recording became known by some as “that devil’s piece” because of inclusion of quotes from the 1440s church document Malleus

6  ATTENDING TO ANCIENT VOICES 

127

Maleficarum as well as sounds of burning fire as a reference to the historical silencing of women’s voices through the Catholic church-led Inquisition and the witch-burning period which took place between 1450 and 1750. Inspired by the text of Susan Griffin’s 1978 book “Women and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her” where the female voice is inserted into history alongside the patriarchal voice, Wendalyn included recordings of women speaking in the composition. During her time involved in a reformational alternative Christian community, Wendalyn questioned the absence of the divine feminine in biblical doctrine. Later on she struggled to be a female composer in the midst of a profession dominantly made up of men. Continuing to bring the female voice forward in compositions she gradually began working with recordings of her own voice, “working with invisible energetic fields of the human being I decided one day to record the sounds coming out of me.”29 From these recordings were created the electroacoustic composition “Dreamspin,” which delved more deeply into “the vibrational power of sound and the human body.”30 Not fully understanding what was happening to her through the sounding experiences prompted an exploration of the voice in ancient sacred sites. In Malta, Crete and Greece she would work with ancestral memory held within ancient sites using her voice like a divining rod. Some archaeologists have theorized that sound was used for dream incubation in the hypogeum of Ħal Saflieni, an underground temple in Malta. While in the hypogeum she noted, “you lose all sense of anything when you are in there.”31 Based on sounding experiences in sacred sites she reflects on how, The human voice is a map of the inner worlds and has the ability to reveal the story held within the body. The power of vibratory sound through the human voice can unlock our inherited remembrance that is encoded into the DNA structure. Intuitively, I expanded that understanding to include the ancient memories held within the stones and the sacred geometry of these places.32

In the Hypogeum, a statuette was found of a woman lying on her side sleeping, known as the Sleeping Lady.33 In subsequent work with her Hypogeum recordings made in 2004 and 2007, Wendalyn encountered a potent field of archetypal energy emerging through the soundmaking, and thus decided to rename this statuette “Sounding Dream Woman” to reflect her experience. Through composing with the recordings, she became more aware of “how sound can shift consciousness, awareness and

128 

B. A. BICKEL

perception.”34 The understandings continued to deepen in her 2012 CD, “Sound Dreaming: Oracles Songs from Ancient Ritual Spaces,” a series of compositions based on the vocal improvisations she made in several ancient temples and caves. Attuning to sacred spaces furthered the intent to “align my voice with ancestral wisdom and through the primordial language of sound dream my way into connection with the sacred life-force energy.”35 Her electro vocal art practice continues to explore altered states of consciousness and the wisdom of the body-voice as she bridges these ancient ways of entering sounds within a contemporary context. Another work created simultaneously with the “Sound Dreaming” pieces was entitled “Baba Yaga’s Journey: A Storytelling Soundwalk.” This was a community soundwalk that told the story of another female archetype, Baba Yaga, and her story of the “ancient songs of the earth beginning to awaken, and how the relationship between humanity and Nature was beginning to be restored.”36 Baba Yaga Soundwalk37 In 2008 I took part in the community soundwalk led by Wendalyn and produced by Vancouver New Music. The soundwalk was a prepared and composed performance ritual with a story script written by Wendalyn, and a choral improvisational score sung by local women singers. The story script was told by Medwyn McConachy, who had narrated a performance script by Wendalyn in Malta in 2007. In this soundwalk Wendalyn brought the maternal mythological story of Baba Yaga into presence in the British Columbia rainforest. In Wendalyn’s reimagining of the traditional story, she brings the reclusive Baba Yaga out of seclusion to tell the tale of loss of connection to the ancient songs of the forest due to those who feared her. Set deep in the forest on a peninsula, we soundwalkers heard the sweep of Baba Yaga’s straw broom, her tale of fear and loss, interludes of choral vocalizations, along with the natural sounds of the forest and ocean we walked amidst and alongside. Supporting the awakening of ancient songs of the Earth, archetypal stories are made visible through Wendalyn’s committed life as a woman artist. Through art, she enlivens trance-based healing through oracle singing and archetypal reconnections needed for healing estranged modern lives. Bringing Earth and ancient ancestral wisdom further into our lives through the unrestrained female voice in art I next share another Canadian artist’s artworkings.

6  ATTENDING TO ANCIENT VOICES 

129

The Shamanic Artistry of Tanya Tagaq After returning home from a residency on Toronto Island I found myself at the Vancouver Folk Festival on a Sunday morning sitting on the grass transfixed in front of a small stage with a handful of other audience members. Transported into an awake dream experience I witnessed what I can only describe as a shamanic performance ritual by experimental musician Tanya Tagaq, accompanied by an electronica DJ. Tanya’s artistry is based on Inuit throat singing, which traditionally is a call and response between two women or girls. Tanya’s performances involve an improvisational process of this female tradition while collaborating with musicians and electronica (see Image 6.4). She and her collaborators engage a form of deep sonic listening to and with each other to create a wordless landscape that can be trance-inducing for audiences. Through performances Tanya embodies and gives voice to the ancient wisdom of the foremothers, the land, sky, water and the animals of the north.38

Image 6.4  Tanya Tagaq performing at Calgary, Calgary Folk Festival, 2017. (Photo Barbara Bickel)

130 

B. A. BICKEL

Tanya’s first book, Split Tooth was published in 2018. In an interview about her book, she voices discomfort in sharing herself in the written language of English to her audience. Concern regarding intellectual judgement from western audiences is well placed given how, as Four Arrows theorizes, “European languages facilitate colonization and neoliberal globalization. They make it easier to categorize, objectify, and concretize realities than those (e.g. Indigenous languages) that emphasis movement, change, complementarity, and diversity.”39 Tanya’s book is based on “scraps of poetry, dream journals and observations jotted down over the past 20 years.” Drawing from these arational processes, she authentically and poignantly expresses herself within the liminal of her written voice, despite writing in English. The interviewer shares that through writing, Tagaq gives voice to the spirits of their traditions, Igbo and Inuit respectively, and tells unsettling, transcendent stories about the violence licking at the heels of girls growing into adulthood. Both sets of spirits serve compassion and menace; they push back and decolonize the flattened representations of complex traditions.40

The dream realm in Shamanic traditions refers to “becoming aware of secondary processes, noticing dream-like experiences during waking life, and sending and living the energy of impulses and figures until they become you…. this is a matter of awareness in feeling, moving, seeing, hearing, and relating.”41 ‘Native Australians call it, “dreamtime,” Shamans refer to it as “Becoming a warrior on the path of the heart.”’42 Tanya’s decision to publicly perform a traditional practice for Western audiences has led to becoming an artist warrior for her people and land. The dreaming body and sound landscapes transport the living energy of traditional spirits to an entranced audience. Audiences simultaneously are unsettled and lifted out of a spiritless worldview. Now through written words, drawn from secondary processes of dreams, trance, poetry and insights collected during her waking life others are invited into an Indigenous way of knowing and being on this Earth. In the book she writes of a song that came to her while outdoors at night in her Northern home, Arqsarniq. I sing for you. Humming shakily at first, thin tendrils of sound. The trepidation dissolves and a throbbing vibratory expulsion of sound

6  ATTENDING TO ANCIENT VOICES 

131

emerges. Thicker, richer, heavier. Sound is its own currency. Sound is a conduit to a realm we cannot totally comprehend. The power of sound conducts our thoughts into emotions that then manifest in action. Sound can heal. Sounds can kill. Sound is malleable. Sound can be a spear or a needle. Sound can create the wound and then stitch it. Sound can cauterize and materialize. No one can hear my song but the Northern Lights…. The lights become bolder and grow closer. They seem curious…. The lights begin to blur and I swear they are calling me backwards/forwards in Time, back to a time before I was born and where I will return to after I die. The lights join my song with a sound of their own: high-pitched ringing mixed with the crackling snap of electricity. I can feel it on my skin and in my belly. A dog howls, and I can also hear someone weeping in agony a long ways away, but a long time ago.43

The art created by both Tanya and Wendalyn as woman artists simultaneously unsettles and uplifts those who listen to and hear it. Both enter altered states of consciousness through their improvisational vocalizing practices and writing. Drawing from the arational realms of vocal trance and dreams they connect deeply with the natural world and return contemporary audiences to ancient myths and stories that are ancestrally based. These are crucial ingredients for healing historic and current traumas that beset us as humans in these times. Trance Practice Four

Awake Field Attunement as Sounding/Listening Intention To listen to and engage the electroacoustic field with playful sacredness. Guiding Narrative Create a ritual space. See Ritual Practice in Chap. 1. “We are part of the electroacoustic field of this Earth. To begin to attune your awareness to that field or your imaginary understanding of the field engage a breath exercise of whistle breathing. Inhale and exhale, allowing a whistle to emerge while pursing your lips in a fish-­ mouth shape. Eyes can be closed or slightly open in soft gaze. Do this for 3–7 minutes.” (continued)

132 

B. A. BICKEL

(continued) “Return to your regular breath and sit quietly, noticing and listening to the subtle felt experiences of your body with your inner ear. Noticing unconditionally. Next, bring your awareness to external sounds and energies in the environment with your outer ear. Noticing unconditionally.” “While staying attuned to both the inner and outer electromagnetic field, inhale deeply and exhale. On your next exhale allow sound to escape on your breath. Continue to allow sound to emerge from your throat while you listen.” “While sounding allow your body to follow any emergent body movements. These movements may impact sounds releasing through your vocal cords. Stay tuned to both your inner and external ear. Environmental sounds may elicit your voice to respond. Allow sounds to continue with unconditional listening internally and externally.” “Continue until the sounds and movements come to a natural closing.” (5–20 minutes) “Acknowledge and thank the field for the co-experience.” “Come to a quiet stillness and journal/sketch in response to your experience. This practice can be done alone or with others.”

Notes 1. Ettinger & Virtanen, 702. 2. O’Rourke. 3. Grimes, 232–233. 4. R. Murray Schafer conceptualized soundscapes as the noises we live with in his 1977 book, “The Soundscape.” 5. Westerkamp, 12. 6. Ettinger 2006, 20. 7. Diamond, 5. 8. Perlmutter & Koppman, 153. 9. Bickel et al., 153. 10. Four Arrows, 91. 11. Personal communication.

6  ATTENDING TO ANCIENT VOICES 

133

12. https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology-mysteriousphenomena/experts-unravel-sound-effects-malta-s-hypogeum-hal 13. http://www.barbarabickel.ca/oracular-co-encounter.php 14. Wolfsohn, n.p. 15. Roy Hart (on behalf of Alfred Wolfson), n.p. 16. Armstrong, n.p. 17. Schelde, n.d. 18. O’Brien, n.p. 19. Osborne, 201. 20. Ibid., Oliveros in O’Brien, n.p. 21. See http://wendebartleyvoicingstones.blogspot.com/ 22. 2007 Bartley composition later adapted and titled “Sirens of the Deep.” 23. This installation became part of my dissertation and was re-installed at the AMS Gallery at the University of British Columbia where I staged a solo performance with stones on the labyrinth called “Stillpoint.” 24. Jordan. 25. September 18, 2007 email. Christian de Quincey, accessed December 1, 2019 http://www.christiandequincey.com/?s=the+spell+of+the+sensuous 26. Bartley 2012, 2. 27. Bartley’s 2014 talk and music at OCAD https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=fZKNT2_25Ck 28. Composed in the Electronic Music Studios of McGill University on the Synclavier II, an early digital synthesizer. 29. Ibid., Bartley 2014. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Bartley, http://wendebartleytempleproject.blogspot.com/ 33. https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/the-sleeping-lady-a-uniquemaltese-icon-national-museum-of-ar chaeology/bgKS7KPNkUDKw?hl=en 34. Ibid., Bartley 2014. 35. Ibid., Bartley 2012. 36. Personal communication, November 2019. 37. See Jacky Sawatsky, Baba Yaga by Wende Bartley, 2008. Accessed November 15, 2019, https://vimeo.com/10017201 38. See Tagaq performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= ClLbkEMaNvU 39. Ibid., Four Arrows, 105. 40. Mistry, n.p. 41. Mindell, 129. 42. Ibid., 23. 43. Tagaq, 55–56.

134 

B. A. BICKEL

References Armstrong, Richard. Teaching Statement. Accessed 5 Dec 2019. https://www. richardarmstrong.info/teaching-statement Bartley, Wendalyn. 2012. Sound Dreaming: Oracle Songs from Ancient Ritual Spaces (Liner Notes). 2 Compact Discs. ———. 2014. Wende Bartley — Electro-Vocal Composition: Voice and disembodied media. Accessed February 12, 2020. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f/ KNT2_25Ck. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ———. The Temple Project. Accessed 1 Dec 2019. http://wendebartleytempleproject.blogspot.com/ Bickel, Barbara, Nané Jordan, and Medwyn McConachy. 2011. Gestating Art in the Matrixial Labyrinth. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative 2 (1): 148–170. Diamond, Elin. 1997. Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theatre. New York: Routledge. Ettinger, Bracha L. 2006. The Matrixial Borderspace. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ettinger, Bracha L., and Akseli Virtanen. 2005. Art, Memory, Resistance. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 4 5 (X): 690–702. Four Arrows. 2016. Point of Departure: Returning to Our Authentic Worldview for Education and Survival. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Grimes, Ronald L. 1995. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Hart, Roy. 1961. Speech to the Jung Society (on Behalf of A. Wolfson), London, July 24. Accessed 5 Dec 2019. http://www.roy-hart.com/roy.lecture.htm Jordan, Nané. 2007. Womentoring and Womb-Entering: Walking the Labyrinth Womb of the Goddess as Witness and Mentor. In Womentoring: Cultivating Sacred Mentorship: 15th Annual Event Program. Vancouver: Women’s Spirituality Celebration. Mindell, Arnold. 1993. The Shaman’s Body: A New Shamanism for Transforming Health, Relationships, and the Community. San Francisco: Harper Collins. Mistry, Anupa. 2018. ‘This Book Was Written for My Own Heart’: Tanya Tagaq on Split Tooth. The Globe and Mail, September 24. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/article-this-book-was-written-for-my-own-hearttanya-tagaq-on-split-tooth/. Accessed 15 Nov 2019. O’Brien, Kerry. 2016. Listening as Activism: The “Sonic Meditations” of Pauline Oliveros. The New  Yorker, December 9. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/listening-as-activism-the-sonic-meditations-of-pauline-oliveros. Accessed 13 Mar 2019. O’Rourke, Deb. 2018. NOW, December. https://nowtoronto.com/news/ toronto-islands-indigenous-rights/. Accessed 15 Nov 2019.

6  ATTENDING TO ANCIENT VOICES 

135

Osborne, William. Thoughts on Listening. http://www.osborne-conant.org/listening.htm#luminous. Accessed 1 Dec 2019. Perlmutter, Dawn, and Debra Koppman, eds. 1999. Reclaiming the Spiritual in Art: Contemporary Cross-Cultural Perspective. Albany: Statue University of New York Press. Schelde, Karina. https://soulvoice.net/. Accessed 13 Mar 2019. Tagaq, Tanya. 2018. Split Tooth. Toronto: Penguin. ———. 2019. The Kennedy Center, April 5. Accessed 1 Nov 2019. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=ClLbkEMaNvU Westerkamp, Hildegard. 2008. Soundwalking as Ecological Practice. In Soundwritings, ed. Stephanie Loveless, Brady Marks, Igor Santizo, and Hildegard Westerkamp. Vancouver: Vancouver New Music. Wolfsohn, Alfred. 1960. Cited in Marita’s English Preface to Alfred Wolfsohn’s “The Human Voice,”. Accessed 5 Dec 2019. http://www.roy-hart.com/marita1.htm

CHAPTER 7

Performance Ritual: With Tannis Hugill

Abstract  This chapter holds a dialogue between dance artist-healer Tannis Hugill and Barbara Bickel exploring their current and past collaborative performance rituals sourced from trance and the practice of Authentic Movement. A trance practice of journeying to meet a double ally is shared at the close of the chapter. Keywords  Performance ritual • Performance • Dreams • Authentic Movement • Altered states of consciousness • Artworld • Healing arts • Ancestors • Allies • Double • Witness • Community • Relationship • Trance

Holding hot kettle up high tip slightly, cascade of water to cup below.

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this chapter (https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. © The Author(s) 2020 B. A. Bickel, Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_7

137

138 

B. A. BICKEL

In her opening to an unconscious matrixial event-encounter, the artist can’t not share with an-other, she can’t not witness the other. (found in Ettinger1)

Dream While in process writing this book, I had three teacher transmission dreams. I interpret these transmissions as a teacher appearing as an ally to support the writing. A transmission from a teacher is a gift given directly to the learner when the learner is willing and open to receive. One of these dreams was with a wise healer priestess, my collaborator artist and healer friend Tannis Hugill. Tannis and I are co-facilitating a large ritual. As we begin Tannis decides we need to open the ritual with everyone walking into the water, clothes and all. I am surprised by this change in our plans but realize it is a cleansing ritual that is needed. I watch, everyone, including Tannis, walk into the large body of warm water. As I visually take in the sight of this en masse walking processional into the water, I am aware of how very powerful this ritual act is.2 Prior to me having this dream Tannis was diagnosed with throat cancer. I am grateful to communicare with her through matrixial borderspace(s) encountered in the dreamworld. Communicaring is not limited to our ordinary understanding of time and space. It opens a fragile passageway to the other and offers hospitality. Not able to be together on a regular basis I have been able to extend a matrixial gaze through the matrixial web and experience com-passionate wit(h)nessing through art making when we are together, at a distance and in my dreams. Tannis was diagnosed while I was visiting and spending time in the studio working on our collaborative ancestral project. Her clear, calm and

7  PERFORMANCE RITUAL: WITH TANNIS HUGILL 

139

cogent response to a second cancer diagnosis in two years reflects years of dedicated practice as a spiritual learner, teacher and artist approaching all that life offers with grace. We had a frank conversation about death, where she shared her life had been fulfilled, but what she still wanted to complete was our ancestral project.3 A few days after her diagnosis, we have a dialogue regarding the development of our art and performance practices and the presence and impact of trance, ritual, place and healing. This conversation is shared as a glimpse into the evolution of two woman artists on artistic paths, from the traditional artworld to a healing world of art.

The Dialogue4 Barbara. We are currently working on our third collaborative performance ritual based on trance-based inquiry that explores healing the broken ancestral roots of our settler ancestors. Our last co-project created in 2006 was “Re/Turning to Her,”5 performed on an outdoor labyrinth at the Vancouver School of Theology (see Image 7.1). In that project we engaged the practice of “Authentic Movement” along with individual, partner and co-trance practices. Through our embodied inquiry the story

Image 7.1  Re/Turning to Her performance ritual with Tannis & Barbara, 2006. (Vancouver, British Columbia, photo R. Michael Fisher)

140 

B. A. BICKEL

of the loss of the ancient divine feminine and the grief of the youthful divine feminine emerged. At the start we engaged in a co-partner trance where we journeyed together, and from that trance journey came the vital elements of the performance ritual. Teachings were coming through my body and vocal expressions.

B. I’d like to explore how each of our early arts practices led to the collaborative trance-based inquiry and performance rituals we have engaged together. Tannis. What led me to use trance or, as I prefer to name it, altered states of consciousness as there are so many ways it manifests, began in “Authentic Movement,”6 which became a process where I entered an altered state of consciousness. What began to arise in me simultaneously were a kundalini awakening, and beings speaking through me. Without anticipation or preparation, I had become a medium. Although, it was not a totally foreign experience for me, as at the time I was studying and immersing myself in the Feri tradition, a wiccan practice. In the Feri tradition rituals, one or another person energetically invokes, takes on or becomes one of the deities invoked in the ritual. Although at that time I myself had not taken that role on. Disenchanted with making secular art, I decided I wanted to use this process for myself as a medium experience in a performance context. This was in the mid 1990s. People would invite me to perform in a group performance and prior to performing I would set up a sacred circle and open to whatever came. What came was not totally unknown to me as in my rehearsal preparation similar beings would show up and things would happen again and again. Although the being would change in each performance. It was my understanding that teachings were coming through my body and vocal expressions. B. Were there similar threads through those experiences or were they always different? T. From performance to performance they always seemed quite different and sometimes an idea for a performance would come out of what was arising in my Authentic Movement. I would go into a rehearsal space and see how it would manifest. B. You were doing this in the Bay area in a different context than in New York artworld where your art practice began in the 1970s. T. Yes, they were art performances. But other performers in the same venue were not doing what I was doing. It was the alternative art movement in the Bay area, an exploratory world.

7  PERFORMANCE RITUAL: WITH TANNIS HUGILL 

141

B. And you were doing it as a ritual where you set up sacred space? T. I was doing it as a ritual and setting up sacred space, but for my own safety and relationship to the world of spirit. In that context the ritual space for the audience was not known. B. So you did it for yourself as your container and were they all solo works? T. All solo. B. Except you collaborated with whatever beings joined you. T. Yes, that’s a good point. You have seen me perform, so you know what happens. They are pretty intense. But the ones I’ve done with you or that you have seen me perform they are openly ritual. Like “Ahh,” the performance you video recorded (see Image 7.2). In the trance performance I invited in the directions, spirits and allies to be part of a healing experience. What emerged was a being who brought awareness of great grief and pain in need of compassion. That shifted to one calling, really singing to the Earth for Earth healing. In my trance performances I am witness to the beings who come through me. I am conscious of myself as well as what is moving through me.

Image 7.2  Ahh, Tannis in performance ritual, 2005. (Vancouver, British Columbia, video still Barbara Bickel)

142 

B. A. BICKEL

Image 7.3  Moving with Stones, Tannis in performance ritual, 2012. (Vancouver, British Columbia, photo Yvonne Chew, @ courtesy of Tannis Hugill)

B. This form of trance performance came with you then from San Francisco to Vancouver T. Yes, and includes my 2012 performance ritual “Moving with Stones” where I attune to, move and respond to the stones (see Image 7.3).7 Our performance emerged from breath.

T. And my experience of these performances has changed over time and from my own reflection. I went to Brazil and worked with Henrique the shaman (he would call himself a medium), the leader of the Eastern Star church, an Umbanda practice. When I told Henrique what I did in my art practice and asked if I should continue to do it. He said no, it was not safe. Then as you know, I had a breakdown after returning home and realized it was not a safe or wise thing to do. So I just let that go. B. Thinking of how trance and ritual entered my art practice, I come from a different place than you. My trance work emerged through collaborations with performers. The first time I performed and experienced trance was with a dancer, Kathryn McGregor, a Continuum practitioner,8

7  PERFORMANCE RITUAL: WITH TANNIS HUGILL 

143

another body-based healing process. It focuses on breath and our performance emerged from breath. At that point I would not have called it trance but instead following spirit. Like you, trance came from a physical practice that included sound. We performed in a ritual context and I created physical altars with my art that included sacred objects. I consciously transformed the artist run gallery in Calgary into a sacred sanctuary. In that performance I had my first experience of moving outside of myself as we became two priestesses performing a ritual. I moved into a transpersonal experience of performing. T. When you say you moved out of yourself, you were not dissociating? B. No, but I was aware we moved out of our own identities and transformed into priestesses. That was quite powerful. T. So you did not expect it? B. No, not at all I was quite terrified to be performing. It was the closing performance ritual for the exhibition “The Spirituality of Eroticism” (see Image 7.4). Both the visual art and performance came from spirit,

Image 7.4  Spirituality of Eroticism performance ritual with Barbara and Kathryn McGregor, 1999. (The New Gallery, Calgary Alberta, photo Alanna Lafayette, @ courtesy of Barbara Bickel)

144 

B. A. BICKEL

from breath. I had been reading Audre Lorde9 who names erotic experience as the source of women’s wisdom and power. The title of the show came from her words. I am seeing differences and similarities for each of us in coming to trance or altered states of consciousness in our art. I saw the spiritual and healing side of art being ignored.

B. I am wondering about pivotal experiences with other artists that shifted our art practices towards trance-based performance ritual? I had an impactful earlier experience at an art opening of a spiritual teacher in Calgary while still in art school. He created a ritual space at his art opening. With people gathered and wine flowing, he spoke and set a sacred context. That is not what artists do at openings. And I thought, that’s what I want to do. I can take charge of a gallery as an artist and create a sacred context to share my art in. T. I am thinking through this conversation that my first solo “Not Named,” way back in 1974, wasn’t trance, but maybe it was… It was not consciously a ritual, but it was, and I had no idea. That was my very first solo art piece made in the context of my Masters of Fine Art in dance and theatre at New York University (NYU) at the School of the Arts. It grew out of a course I took with Meredith Monk at NYU and working with her. And the costume came out of a summer training with Anna Halpern. I put the two together. B. And Anna Halprin? T. She is a very important choreographer whose work then became healing. I wanted to work with Anna because my idols in New  York, Yvonne Rainier who I studied dance with, Simon Forti and the choreographers I respected had studied with her, and it had changed them, so I wanted to work with her too. I went to San Francisco for an intensive with Anna and that changed my life. I realized I needed to do my own work and changed my masters in Art History to dance and theatre. B. What makes trance pieces different for you? You make a clear distinction between your earlier “secular” pieces in New  York and your San Francisco pieces. T. In trance I go into an altered state of reality and I open to whatever arises and I am observing. But what happens comes through me. It is not me. I am watching but I am not doing it. That’s how I see the specific difference. For example, my hand is being turned, sound is arising in me. B. So a witness comes in.

7  PERFORMANCE RITUAL: WITH TANNIS HUGILL 

145

T. It’s like a force is moving through me. B. Beyond the personal. T. Yes, and I very rarely see things. It is not a visual state, but a sensate muscular moving state. I have now come to understand myself as a shapeshifter through my body and voice and that is my gift as an artist. B. A powerful insight Tannis. We have both been practicing spiritual and ritual-based artists for a combined 50 years. I had my first collaboratively conceived performance ritual in a gallery opening with my “Sisters” exhibition in 1995 when I worked with 29 women exploring sisterhood. That was the beginning of performance rituals with my art in galleries. I am curious how we have each negotiated the contemporary art world that only very recently has acknowledged that art can include a spiritual aspect? T. I would say I have not negotiated it at all. I have just quietly done my work and if people were interested and wanted to have me perform, that was fine. I also had drama and dance therapy conferences where I did performances of this nature. In the drama therapy environment, there were others performing and it was not at all in the context of spirituality. My piece was considered to be invocational. I was very clear I was performing in a ritual context, and I was demonstrating how a performance could come out of Authentic Movement. People had trouble with it, but I did not care. B. When I think about that question, I think back to the performance ritual with Kathryn in “The Spirituality of Eroticism.” I wanted it to be written about and invited a Western Canadian art writer, Yvonne Owens, who I knew had an interest in the spiritual in art. She wrote two pieces – for a national art magazine and a local arts magazine.10 T. That’s so you. I did care about my art being written about when I was in New York and worked hard to have it known there. When I shifted to being a creative arts therapist, I had no interest. I got so turned off by the artworld; the egotism, the greed, the materialism, the narcissism, the mental health imbalance. I saw no value in making art in that context. It just contaminated art making for me. For years I did not go to see art much at all. The art that interested me was being made by my patients in psychiatric hospitals. Both of us hold an understanding of art and the process of making art as healing.

146 

B. A. BICKEL

B. You were in the heart of the artworld in New York, whereas I was in the outback of Calgary, in this small young art community where I felt I could have a voice, T. Yes B. And I wanted that voice to reach further than Calgary. I was angry with the artworld too, as I saw the spiritual and healing side of art being ignored. But because I was in this small outback I was not burnt as you were from being at the heart of it. I saw the big artworld at a distance, and feel fortunate to have had a community that allowed me to blur art, spirituality and healing. T. I discovered the power of healing art at Hospital Audiences in New  York and that just led me. In San Francisco I co-directed Theatre Unlimited, a company of disabled and non-disabled actors and I was totally nurtured by that as an art making environment, which had tremendous value and beauty. B. My artist-self re-emerged working with adults with developmental and physical disabilities in my mid 20s as I was doing art and drama therapy with them. They were so expressive and free. I was so stiff and rigid in what I thought art was. They opened me up wide. It’s clear both of us hold an understanding of art and the process of making art as healing. T. I mostly think about how it is healing for others I work with and facilitate that for others. I would say it was “Not Named,” my first piece, that was deeply healing in bringing this voice and being out of my body. And I was obsessed with First Nations art. I used to go to the Library of Performing Arts and watch Edward Curtis’s 16  mm film reels on a Steinbeck. He took photos at the turn of the century and also did films of ritual of the Kwakwaka’wakw. I watched and watched those back in 1971–1972 and I said, this is what I want to do as an artist. I hung out in the Hall of the American Indian with the North West Coast masks. I would go to the New  York Library and take out books with images of Native American dancers, of masks. I brought them home and traced them. Not Named came out of this. The pieces that followed were stories with words, they were definitely expressing something clear about my relationship with reality or my reality. I was driven to create. They were healing in a way I can now understand consciously. They are all about love. B. Yes, relationship and collaboration with the spirit of love. Healing the broken aspects that get in the way of love. Thinking about what you shared about being enamored with Indigenous art and masks. Now we are

7  PERFORMANCE RITUAL: WITH TANNIS HUGILL 

147

doing a piece together exploring our settler ancestry. We are considering making masks for this performance ritual. T. Like many at that time I was not remotely aware of the oppression of the Indigenous people. My obsession came from a deep place in me. There was a way I knew this in my body. Where-ever I got that knowledge, it was from my ancestry, my deep, deep, ancestry. I did not know it then but I know it now. I was doing what I was called to do – art like those ceremonies. And then I got side-tracked. I was called to make spiritual art then, but I did not really start till 20 years later. B. But it was always there and I hear the importance of relationships in life and art, even in your secular art. Art has always been about relationship for me too. T. Yes, we can look back and see, but relationship is not primarily what my work is about. It’s really important for you, but not for me. B. For me it was a way of communicating and connecting with others and in that way, it is healing. Having my art seen allowed me to be seen and learn about myself through relationships. Multiple mirrors. Giving a mirror to others, but they were also a mirror for me. You spoke of being driven. My art was not so driven. I instead followed the art. It would take me places I would never have known to go. If I had known, I would not have probably gone. It has led me. I trusted the art, really trusted the art more than relationships as it gave me a place to process and work with and through relationships. This connects with my discovery and interest in art therapy, a pivot point when I discovered you can bring art together with therapy. I wanted to share this with others. As a teacher of art, teaching techniques are not of first importance for me, it is more the process of art, the healing and discoveries made through art that I love to teach. T. That is quite beautiful. I am realizing as I listen there was another piece going on with me in the mid to late 1980s. I came back from living in Germany very depressed for a year. When I discovered Authentic Movement, I realized I was very much in the artworld and the narcissism of the artworld paradigm. My woundedness and need to be seen, accepted and loved was unconsciously part of my need to perform. When it was successful it was great, but when it wasn’t, I was shattered. In the New York art community, I had a personal support cushion to hold me. But when I went to Germany, I did not have that cushion and I did not have the internal where-with-all to support that. B. So no community there to support you in the same way?

148 

B. A. BICKEL

T. No, so I questioned everything about art, about myself as an artist. What was the point of making contemporary art? That questioning was going on while I was also not well. I was drinking alcoholically, I had an eating disorder. There was so much out of balance. I was planning to leave New York and then my parents got ill, so I moved to the Bay area. At that point art making was healing, but performing was not. Performing could be devastating because I had this confused need to be seen, so when I moved and began practicing Authentic Movement it gave me an inner resource. The work I do now is not about me. B. That makes sense when I think about how so many artists who become big stars, may start out ultimately looking for healing and then get carried into another world that is not healing at all. T. Self-destructive. There is an energetic environmental vortex calling people to make community.

B. In thinking of our collaborative art as healing, and where we made and performed our art, I wonder how or has an experience of participation with place emerged for you? By place I mean both a particular location and in a general way. When we performed on the labyrinth in “Re/ Turning to Her”11 I was in such anxiety with the complexity and challenges of my life in graduate school. I found myself frequently walking the labyrinth on campus to steady myself. We were both in a very stressful time, and it became apparent that to ground the performance we needed a container. And that became the labyrinth (see Image 7.5). T. I thought it really worked. B. It was powerful to realize how place was important to contain the work. Has place been significant for you prior to or after that? T. For me less consciously, certainly, I was so formed by the New York artworld. But I had to leave to find myself. The environment of San Francisco is really an environment that breeds spiritual experience, and that is what I found there. Then I moved here to Vancouver as I was called by the land. Raven brought me here. In this environment every part of me feels at home and I feel so blessed. From that perspective place informs everything I do. I did not feel at home in Berkley but it was incredibly healing and still, I knew I needed to leave. The lack of green in the Bay area and the seismic activity contributed to not wanting to stay. The mountains and water in Vancouver were a pull. I was called to New York

7  PERFORMANCE RITUAL: WITH TANNIS HUGILL 

149

Image 7.5  Re/Turning to Her performance ritual labyrinth, 2007. (Vancouver, British Columbia, photo R. Michael Fisher)

too. Land and culture are two really important influences for me. I guess culture is relationship. B. When you say culture are you talking about the art culture of New York? T. In New York you can see great art from all over the world from every point in historical time. In a way I can’t say culture transcends land but there is something very important. Why is New York where it is? It has to do with the land. Same with San Francisco and Vancouver. It has exactly and only to do with the land. There is an energetic environmental vortex calling people to make community in these very specific places. And to make art we need community. I was making mostly solo art, but it was not outside of the community. Art is done in community. Always. B. And when you did not have it in Germany, you were lost. T. I was lost, completely lost. So relationship is important to me! Although not consciously like you. It is crucial actually.

150 

B. A. BICKEL

B. And as a performer…. T. You need an audience! B. Okay, I am glad we circled back around to relationships. I think it speaks to why we are drawn to collaborate with each other. T. You are my teacher regarding relationship, as for you consciously it is so important, and for me consciously it is so difficult. And I am getting better at it. B. It’s interesting that geographic place did not become consciously important to me in my art practice until I became displaced moving to Illinois. My artist collective Gestare had annual art practices and I sought out nurturing places in the environment for these, like the forest, lake, or in a field (see Image 7.6). The project of “Ancestral Journeys” took me on eight different trance-based journeys where I connected with ancestors of the land, both human and non-human, my pre-human ancestors, as well as my direct family ancestors.12 Coming to know those places and ancestral connections helped me find my place as the culture of Southern Illinois felt so foreign. I had to go to the land to start connecting and locating myself culturally (Video 7.1). It is really important is to be witnessing and wit(h)nnessing each other.

Image 7.6  Barbara Bickel, Ancestral Journey III, 2012. (Carbondale Illinois, video still) (https://doi.org/10.1007/000-08r)

7  PERFORMANCE RITUAL: WITH TANNIS HUGILL 

151

Let’s talk about our current ancestral project, which has been an intense process of working with each other and our ancestors. This work builds upon both our past work, moving us into new territory of place-based history. What some are acknowledging as rematriation. Re-connecting with and honouring our ancestry and the Earth as our ultimate source, our mother. You and I know relatively little about our ancestors. We are completely unfamiliar with the places they came from, born on a different continent. We have not been to the places our ancestors were born. Even today when we were each on our trance journey, we both travelled somewhere in the north of Europe, but did not know where we were. We went back hundreds and hundreds of years to find unbroken ancestral lines and to experience our land-based origins now lost to us. T. We went with the intention of going back to find a healthy well-in-­ spirit guide from our maternal mother’s lineages. B. Yes, and knowing how art helped me be in place while being displaced, I am struck that we are doing ancestral trance work to find place. We are settlers in this land, called to live in different places. I wonder how much of where we are called to live is connected in our DNA? We do not know. In our ritual work today, I ended up near an ocean. I found and met my well-in-spirit ancestor foremother in a protected cave high up on a cliff over-looking the ocean. How have and do we work to be conscious and protected; emotionally, spiritually, and physically in this trance-based ancestral project? It can be such disorienting and difficult work. T. We create sacred safe space by creating sacred circles. In our Wiccan practices we have experiences of how to be careful in this kind of work. We notice when we need to give ourselves extra support, such as cleansing ourselves of energy collected during the work we do not want to keep. Like when you were feeling tired after visiting with your mom and hearing troubling stories of her family, relatives you never met, and we thought cleansing would help you. B. That was a good insight. And it’s relevant that ritually invoking directions at the start of our studio and trance work brings place in while assisting the creation of sacred space for us to work within. T. Yes, also welcoming spirit guides as protectors and being alert. This evening in church I was aware of the well-in-spirit ancestor spirit that came in our earlier trance journey and she was there again. I think she is going to be a good ally.

152 

B. A. BICKEL

B. Creating connection with allies and drawing from Daniel Foor’s book, “Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing”13 has been helpful. His work and knowledge have assisted us in entering more specific family ancestral trance practices. T. And we had to go back 1000s of years to find someone well enough in spirit from each of our ancestral lines to be our guide. That is interesting. B. To be reminded it is not helpful to work with an ancestor who themselves are not well. The other piece I think is really important is to be witnessing and wit(h)nessing each other. We have our own spirit guides and ancestral allies, but we are also allies for each other. Which we have experienced strongly in witnessing each other in the studio (see Image 7.7). T. And work done outside the studio, wit(h)nessing each other in that way. B. Thinking about you being told to not allow any beings to come into you. Is there anything specific you do in your practice to only bring in what you have welcomed in consciously? Being grounded in yourself.

T. Yes, I have learned the hard way the dangers of that. I have to be careful when I am working with people therapeutically in a shared psychic

Image 7.7  Tracing the Ancestors, Tannis and Barbara in studio, 2019. (Vancouver Dance Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, video still Barbara Bickel)

7  PERFORMANCE RITUAL: WITH TANNIS HUGILL 

153

space. Sometimes I am taken by surprise because opportunistic beings will pop into me if I am not really being rigorous, and often I am not. So I do a practice each morning to strengthen my energetic boundaries. One I do in the shower every morning….with my breath I send a cord down into the fiery star in the center of the Earth and breath that up into my body and then exhale out through the top of my head and extend it to Source, whose energy I then breath down into my body to create a line of light through my center. Then with my tongue behind my front teeth I say “SO” as I breath in – hold for 4, and breathe out saying “HUM.” And I visualize the line at my core become a mandorla of white light. I also pray daily and make offerings to each of the directions and in the Feri Well in my garden, I also do Qi Gung. These are ways I cultivate boundary practices in my life. B. Last question, if you could give coaching to the next generation of woman artists what might you offer? T. I don’t have anything to share. It’s too soon. Do you? B. I think encouraging the development of healthy ritual life practices outside of an art practice to stay balanced. Not only caught up in what comes through you creatively, but being grounded in yourself. T. Can you explain that more? B. I think it’s the piece around being driven you talked about earlier. I had a student who was a phenomenal artist and completely driven by the daemon of her art to the point of making herself sick and unreliable in her personal and professional life. Her art would not let her rest. She was not grounding with normal life practices. Like making sure you are cooking good meals, eating and sleeping. T. Taking care of our bodies. B. Recognizing that your body is doing this work as well. T. Yes, they are doing the work. They are not doing it as well. They are doing the work! That’s a good observation. B. Staying aware of the state of your body consciousness. And also rest. T. Doing other things in your life… B. And having support. T. Seeing friends. B. Yes, friends are a significant grounding element when we do this work. T. That’s a great closing thought for this conversation. Let’s rest with it.

154 

B. A. BICKEL

Trance Practice Five

Double as Ally Intent To meet your double as an ally. The trance journey practice can be assisted through the invitation of the double as an inner ally/teacher/guide into your trance. In addition, an external wit(h)ness may be a partner/friend who works alongside the trance journeyer. This person, as an external wit(h) ness, holds the space of present time reality while the journeyer enters their trance. When undertaking more trance journeys with your double, your double may remain in the original form you met them, or they may transform and change over time. I have found it helpful to journey with an inner double and to not be alone on the trance journey. Inviting the double as an ally to travel into the unknown realms of trance can be helpful in moving past resistance or fears. It also creates an opportunity to include other ways of being engaged in the journey. For example, you may have a very adventurous and energetic double, willing to engage in ways you are not. Or alternately you may have a double that reflects a subdued or more careful way. All have something to contribute. Guiding Narrative Return to Trance Practice One in Chap. 3 to arrive at your sacred safe place. Speak the journey aloud to enable your partner to wit(h)ness you and/or be recorded. “With your body supported and grounded, take yourself back to the sacred place you visited before or find a new one.” “If you have a partner tell them when you are there”. “With your dreaming mind look around where you are until you find a path. Begin to move in its direction. Once you are on the path, move yourself along until you notice an entryway, some form of a portal. It can be a body of water you dive or step into, a hole in the ground, a tree with a hole, stairs or something else. Once you pass through the portal travel until you find a stopping place.” “This is the place you will meet your double. When you are ready to bring your double into your journey inhale deeply and then audibly exhale your double out of your body. Your double may appear in any form– human, non-human, animal, or ephemeral.”

7  PERFORMANCE RITUAL: WITH TANNIS HUGILL 

155

(continued)

“Notice who or what you have brought forward as an ally double to join you. Deeply listen and take in your double with all your senses in this safe place. “What are you feeling in your body as you meet your double? How are you receiving them? How do you communicate? You may want to introduce yourself. You may have something to say or ask your double? Does your double have anything to share with you?” “Spend as much time as you feel comfortable with this meeting of your double.” [Can be 5–10  minutes on the first meeting. In future journeys with your double engage the same entry process, but once you are with your double, you can travel further with your double and leave the meeting place if you choose. Always retracing your path back when you decide to return to the meeting place and end your trance journey.] “It is now time to say farewell to and thank your double and any other creatures or elements you may have encountered. Find a way to do this that works for you. “ “Once you have said farewell it is important to bring your double back into you. To do this inhale deeply, fully inhaling your double back into you. Do this with an audible breath.” “Having integrated your double back into yourself, retrace your journey on the path, making your way back to your starting place – your original sacred place.” Once you are in your sacred space, thank the place and thank yourself for going on the journey. Then say farewell to the place.” “Return to your breath. Become aware of inhaling and exhaling. Shift yourself into awareness of present time”. “When you feel ready, slowly open your eyes and bring your awareness back to the room, to the present, to who and what is around you. Pat your body. Notice your body and self here in present time. Connect with your partner if you have one. Thank each other for taking the journey together and share any reflections.” Journal/sketch about your journey afterwards. If you recorded it, it could be transcribed and drawn from as source material for future artworks.

156 

B. A. BICKEL

Notes 1. Ettinger, 704. 2. Dream on June 29, 2019. 3. Tannis responded to radiation treatments well and is now cancer free. 4. Took place July 14, 2019. 5. Documentary of “Re/Turning to Her” performance ritual and process https://vimeo.com/25099266 6. http://authenticmovementcommunity.org/about 7. Lee Su-Feh was dramaturge and director. 8. https://continuummovement.com/ 9. Lorde. 10. Owens. 11. Bickel and Hugill. 12. See 15 minute Ancestral Journey III video https://vimeo.com/37075230 13. Foor.

References Bickel, Barbara, and Tannis Hugill. 2011. Re/turning to Her: An A/r/tographic Ritual Inquiry. Visual Culture and Gender 6 (1): 6–12. Available from http:// vcg.emitto.net/index.php/vcg/article/view/54. Ettinger, Bracha L. 2005. Copoiesis. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 5 (X): 703–713. Foor, Daniel. 2017. Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. Rochester: Bear & Co. Lorde, Audre. 1984. The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Freedom: Crossing Press. Owens, Yvonne. 1998. Barbara Bickel’s Sacred Wounding: Woman’s Body as Original Temple. Artichoke: Writings about the Visual Arts 10 (3): 38–41.

CHAPTER 8

Dreaming into Lines of Matrixial Time

Abstract  This chapter brings the book to a close but not an ending. As a culture we are being awoken to collective grief, the ecological crisis and the Earth’s lament. To not succumb to the fear and despair that inevitably accompanies awakening, we can instead, restore the visionary function of art and trance to culture. Through dreaming into lines of matrixial time we can step onto paths of beauty, love, fearlessness and mystery in the borderspace(s) of “Dreamtime.” The collaborative art and performance entitled Women ‘Enduring Freedom’ with Barbara Bickel, Mary Blaze and Celeste Snowber are an example of remembrance, crossing lines of matrixial time. A process to close ritual is shared at the end of the chapter. Keywords  Samhain • Woman artist • Halloween • Knitting • Wounded Knee • Colonialism • Historical consciousness • Arational • 911 • September 11th 2001 • Enduring freedom • War • Remembrance • Mary Blaze • Celeste Snowber • Testimony • Gift • Ghost • Mystery • Performance ritual • Dance • Ritual • Matrixial theory • Wom(b)an artist Deceptive silence invites overture of fear inside overreaching mind. © The Author(s) 2020 B. A. Bickel, Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7_8

157

158 

B. A. BICKEL

The artwork extricates the trauma of the matrixial other out of its time-less-ness into lines of time, the effect of beauty is to allow wit(h)nessing with non-visible events of encounter to emerge inside the field of vision and affect you. (found in Ettinger1)

The Day Between the Worlds On “The Day” of the Lunar calendar year—the day between the worlds, also known as All Saints’ Eve, Samhain, Day of the Dead and Halloween,2 I find myself writing this closing chapter and cycling in and out of time. I write a/r/tographically as carriance. I have been carried, and because of this, I carry others. I awake in the early hours of the morning, unable to sleep. I get up and read the Indigenous history book I have been slowly, gently absorbing during the dark hours this past year while writing during daylight hours. On this day between the worlds, when the veil between the living and the dead is thin, I find myself reading the last chapter of “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.”3 It tells the tragic story of the suppression of the Ghost Dance, and the betrayal and slaughter at Wounded Knee enacted by my ancestors upon the original caretakers of this continent of North America I call home. I sit in quiet for a long time. Setting the book down, I pick up my ancestral shawl and begin to knit (see Image 8.1). I shift the colour from white snow-like yarn to a light shade of red. I knit another row, frequently dropping stitches while my whole being is awash with grief as flashes of the prior day’s news runs through my mind. The small holes in my shawl fill with the

8  DREAMING INTO LINES OF MATRIXIAL TIME 

159

Image 8.1  Ancestral Shawl knitting, 2019. (Calgary, Alberta, photo by R. Michael Fisher)

epidemic of suicides of Indigenous youth in the north of Newfoundland where elders are calling for support, then fill with the grief of Indigenous families in Winnipeg after a week of multiple attacks on children in their homes. I knit more deeply into the gaping holes in my ancestral lines as my awakeness attempts to digest the historical and current traumas I am inescapably part of. It is an essential waking up to “the deep confusion of what it means to be a human” and I feel the enormous responsibility.4 At 4 am I return to bed. A few hours later, in a hypnopompic dream state my visual memory is flooded by my visit to the Sioux tribal lands. I am wit(h)nessing the Ghost Dance and the slaughter at Wounded Knee. I feel the settlers fear of the Ghost Dance, the mistrust of Indigenous ceremonies, their spiritual practices and traditions. These slaughters are because my ancestors claimed and settled land that was not theirs. Land the Indigenous people have cared for, for thousands of years. These tragedies took place as my Christian ancestors worked to convert Indigenous

160 

B. A. BICKEL

peoples to their monotheistic religion and erase the emplaced spirits of their sacred land. Indigenous arational trance practices, ceremonies and ways of life were deemed primitive and dangerous as my ancestor’s rational logic turned irrational in righteous belief of one true way. Tragedies and traumas continue today for both Indigenous peoples and the white European foreigners due, in part, to the misplaced fear of arational ways of knowing and being, and disregard for a matrixial gift economy. I return again to art, trance and ritual practices to journey further into the broken lines of my ancestry. In writing of ancestral medicine, Daniel Foor reminds me that, [O]n a cultural and collective level, the ancestors are powerful allies in transforming historical trauma relating to race, gender, religion, war, and other types of collective pain. Recent findings in epigenetics are showing that in a very real way, the pain of our ancestors can endure through generations.5

My ancestral shawl knitting has become an ally and teacher in the troubled ancestral rhythms of the artworking process of this book. The knitting flows much more freely as I come to complete the last chapters when grief is flowing, not blocked by guilt and anger. I light a candle at the side of my bed and decide to keep it lit for the day, carrying it with me as I move through my space. At my computer I find myself searching for and listening to an interview with grief and death teacher Stephen Jenkinson, Mystery is the great midwife of the willingness to be human. With mystery you have a chance for humility…. Humanity is something we are entrusted with” and we live in a world where the earths blood is being drunk every day and every night…. Grief is an understanding and the word understanding does not demand comprehension…. Mystery is a useful proposition. Mystery is in charge.6

I move to the floor and do a yoga Kriya practice and find myself in full throated wailing with the grief of understanding what I cannot comprehend. I am propositioned by mystery. I return to the significance of walking the path of fearlessness led by the spirit of art, mystery and the novel education this book gives address to. The gift of fearlessness appears within the art, ritual and trance inquiry through the mystery of the arational. Unlearning is the result of the teachings that support awakening to the relational truth of my/our world.

8  DREAMING INTO LINES OF MATRIXIAL TIME 

161

Women ‘Enduring Freedom’ Through knitting, taking place in tandem with writing, I feel through the tips of my fingers how art is a holder of psychic pain, offering a vehicle of transport for trauma, grief and mystery. I give voice to and join with encounter-events that are beyond my ken, and move toward lines of matrixial time. I slip back in time to the first political trauma to awaken me and many others in North America on September 11th, 2001, when the ultimate symbol of Western patriarchy was attacked and destroyed. Recorded live, the trauma played over and over again through the television screen. I remember my artworking-through of the trauma of that day and the days that followed. In anger and grief, I turned to photos taken the year before for the women warrior series that first brought trance as a conflict tool into my art. It began with my studio-mate Mary Blaze holding my small collaged artworkings in front of her unfinished large white paintings with their recessed dark lines she calls ancestral female memories (see Image 8.2). We felt the wisdom of the past con-joining with the pain of the present. The fusion of a matrixial gaze between woman artists communicaring, co-­ encountering the enduring false freedom of war (see Images 8.3, 8.4, 8.5). Grief unraveled further through the embodied lament-full dance of Celeste Snowber (see Image 8.6), who joined Mary and me, as we continued to exhibit and perform the grief annually for the next four years as “Women ‘Enduring Freedom.’” Our woman artist collaborative relationship continues as I artwork-through my ancestral shawl knitting; another turn in the spiral, re-turning and re-membering. With the accumulated cultural traumas of 911 reverberating still today, I share artworks and a poem from the exhibition.7 The false shell of security, the denial, shattered. We now hear the terror. We now smell the fear in ourselves, in others. Grief flows too late. We live the war now, Awake. Being undone her spirit stunned jolted in the aftershock.

162 

B. A. BICKEL

Image 8.2  Mary Blaze & Barbara Bickel, Women ‘Enduring Freedom’ V, 2001. Acrylic and charcoal on canvas & mixed media on board, 60 × 36 inches

Her body her being quakes with-held memories of the assault unconsciously, deliberately delivered. Her bondage shaken off the sadness swells

8  DREAMING INTO LINES OF MATRIXIAL TIME 

163

Image 8.3  Barbara Bickel, Woman, 2001. Mixed media on board, 10 × 12 inches her spirit weeps the still entrapped female. Await a reclining woman cut into pieces destroyed as an inadequate whole. Now parts struggle speak tenfold of oppression of silencing, of rage cut open, torn apart.

164 

B. A. BICKEL

Image 8.4  Barbara Bickel, Rite, 2001. Mixed media on board 12 × 10 inches A woman enduring freedom The power to cut to dismember that which is no longer good. The power to deny pleasure to dismember that which perpetuates pain.

8  DREAMING INTO LINES OF MATRIXIAL TIME 

165

Image 8.5  Barbara Bickel, Ghost, 2001. Mixed media on wood, 9 × 9 inches The power to rage to move beyond the numbing that which binds the victim. The power to respond with open body with full voice that is life set free.

166 

B. A. BICKEL

Image 8.6  Anatomy of Grief performance, Celeste Snowber with Blaze & Bickel art, 2001. (Campbell River, British Columbia, photo by Leone Leighton)

Art as a Gift of Testimony In matrixial borderspace(s) The artist is working through cross-inscribed traces worked through by virtual, phantasmatic or traumatic real strings. Art that is an aesthetic-in-action is healing, healing as an ethics-in-action. Such is co-response-ability of

8  DREAMING INTO LINES OF MATRIXIAL TIME 

167

artworking and healing in copoiesis. (found in Ettinger8)

As a woman artist I am a witness, sometimes wit(h)nessing. I receive the testimony of the other as sacred. The wit(h)ness inherits the gift. Historical consciousness scholar Roger Simon wrote “that the inheritance of testament is the reception of ‘the gift of the ghost.’… the ghost arrives to give itself to me, demanding (from the start) my attention and my response in order to arrive at all.”9 Literary critic Shoshana Felman, in writing of Testimony notes how, “art inscribes (artistically bears witness to) what we do not yet know of our lived historical relation to events in our times.”10 The gift testimony thus unfolds within copoietic attending to artworkings. Within trance, ritual or creative processes ‘the gift of the ghost’ can appear. The testimony (gift), then elicits a response in the form of an artwork. The artist’s response is not necessarily the truth, but rather an engagement, a re-remembering, a return of the gift. Simon wrote how “remembrance enacts possibilities for an ethical learning that impels us into a confrontation and reckoning not only with stories of the past but also with ourselves as we are (historically, existentially, socially) in the present.”11 Art and performance rituals are matrixial gifts of fearlessness given back to the ghost. “The only way to return the gift is by giving it to someone else. One gives back speech to a ghost by speaking of the ghost to others.”12 It is a thesis of this book that within the realm of the arational we can speak with the ghost, giving voice to the psychic pain that signals collective and individual trauma. In re-turning to re-address the woman artist, we re-locate the presence/absence, a present of the ghost, a gift of the ancestors and an ally for the relational journey into grief and mystery. In suppressing the woman artist, so too we suppress, The visionary function, which fulfils the soul’s need for placing itself in the vast scheme of things, … with the result that as a culture, we have lost the gift of vision. We have lost access to the magical world of archetypal myth and symbol, the world of the “Dreamtime.”13

The practices of trance, art and ritual communicaring with the Earth have served humans well for millennia and can continue to move us to transform. And we are not in charge. In my hypnopompic waking state on this timeless morning the words of a chant written in the early 1980s by Elena Klaver drifts into my mind. “It’s the blood of the ancients, that runs through our veins. The forms pass, but

168 

B. A. BICKEL

the circle of life remains.”14 In accepting the gift of entry into matrixial borderspace(s) we open to the conjoined joy and grief of human fragility in copoiesis. In remembrance we are re-created. Life blood crosses lines of cyclical time and regenerates with the Earth and all its inhabitants. We may not know the forms of the future but we can attune to ancestral wisdom through accessing arational guidance and wisdom through art, ritual and trance. As a culture we are being awoken to collective grief, the ecological crisis and the Earth’s lament. To not succumb to the fear and despair that inevitably accompanies the awakening, we can instead, restore the visionary function of art and trance to culture. Dreaming into lines of matrixial time we can step onto paths of beauty, fearlessness and mystery in the borderspace(s) of “Dreamtime.” The gift this book extends is one of metramorphosis with/in/through the arational; an antidote found in the repository of sacred inquiry with the learning and unlearning processes of art, ritual and trance. We can carry this precious life remedy in/to the current irrationality of our vision-lost culture with its limited and limiting patriarchal language that sublimates the m/other. Matrixial theory offers a needed complementary feminine-based language for communicaring with the Earth and each other, teaching relational and love-based ways to endure the false freedom of human war culture. In the inevitable transition-times to come, the arational gifts of the m/other can seduce us into life while strengthening resiliency and restoring com-passion for all. Woman artists carry the mystery of the day between the worlds. They part the veils for entry into matrixial borderspace(s), thus ensuring there is always a place for the numinous.

Ritual Practice Two

Closing Ritual Intent To close ritual space. Powerful experiences can take place within ritual space. It is important to honour the experiences and bring them to a close before returning to ordinary life. Integration of the experience takes place gradually afterwards—in all realms, and can include struggle and resistances or be surprisingly easy and welcomed. Guiding Narrative “When you have completed the ritual bring it to a close. To do this take a moment to reflect on aspects of the ritual you would like to honour. Offer words of gratitude for the gifts received.” (continued)

(continued)

“If you performed opening ritual processes, such as welcoming the directions or inviting guides or spirits in, offer thanks to them and bid them farewell.” “Make a closing gesture with your body such as hand-holding or self-hugging. Sing a closing chant, or engage a vocal sounding process. These can be pre-prepared or spontaneous.” “Consciously open the ritual space and return back to ordinary time. If you have used any sense altering tools bring them to a rest, e.g., blow out candles.” “Ways to acknowledge the opening of the ritual circle are: cross your hands and lay them on your chest, make silent eye contact with others, share a hand kiss, or clap hands.” “To further assist the return to ordinary time physically move your body, possibly to another location (see Image 8.7). Shift to engage in ordinary conversation with others. Eat food to reground in the material realm, tidy the space, or go for a contemplative walk.

Image 8.7  Barbara sitting with grasses on Bow River Escarpment, 2019. (Calgary, Alberta, photo R. Michael Fisher)

170 

B. A. BICKEL

Notes 1. Ettinger 1999, 92. 2. J. Kozocarl et al., 194. 3. Brown. 4. Stephen Jenkinson. 5. Daniel Foor, 4. 6. Ibid., Foor. 7. The first collaborative exhibition with Mary Blaze and 4 women performing artists (Celeste Snowber, Janet Sheppard, Anna Soole & Katherine Duncan) was in Vancouver, BC, Canada, Ishtar Gallery November 11th, 2001. 8. Ettinger 2005, 707. 9. Simon, 24 10. Felman, 108. 11. Ibid., Simon, 4. 12. Ibid., 25. 13. Gablik, 46. 14. Elena Klaver, It’s the Blood of the Ancients, (chant written in the early 1980s), personal communication. Accessed at https://lyricstranslate. com/en/song-goddess-and-god-blood-ancients-lyrics.html

References Brown, Dee. 1970. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Ettinger, Bracha L. 1999. Traumatic Wit(h)ness-thing and Matrixial Co/in-­ habit(u)ating. Parallax 5 (1): 89–98. ———. 2005. Copoiesis. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization 5 (X): 703–713. Felman, Shoshona. 1992. Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching. In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, ed. S. Felman and D. Laub, 1–56. New York: Routledge. Foor, Daniel. 2017. Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. Rochester: Bear & Co. Gablik, Suzi. 1991. The Reenchantment of Art. New York: Thames & Hudson. Jenkinson, Stephen. 2019. Mystery Is the Great Midwife of the Willingness to Be Human. Nurture your Nature Podcast interview with Dina Drosta, October 8, 2019. https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9udXJ0dXJleW91 cm5hdHVyZS5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw&episode=NTg0ZmFjYjBhY2YyNDk 1NTk1ZDIxZTIxMDA2ZjQ4Njk&hl=en-CA&ved=2ahUKEwizgpKn0MblA

8  DREAMING INTO LINES OF MATRIXIAL TIME 

171

hUUCjQIHW8lBaQQ4bgEKAJ6BAgJEAc&ep=6&at=1572529356776. Accessed 25 Nov 2019. Kozocarl, Jean, Yvonne Owens, and Jessica North. 1994. The Witch’s Book of Days. Victoria: Beach Holme Publishers. Simon, Roger. Innocence Without Naivete, Uprightness Without Stupidity: The Pedagogical Kavannah of Emmanuel Levinas, 24. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/hvt/works/Simon-Levinas.html. Accessed 12 June 2003.

Index1

A Abramović, Marina, 14, 36, 86 Acoustic ecologists, 118 Acoustic space, 36 Active imagination, 51 Active mystic, 36 Activist(s), 24, 35, 75 Aesthetic(s), 12, 14, 29–31, 33, 34, 41, 50, 57, 61–66, 85, 88, 119, 122 See also Arational Aesthetically, 4, 9, 23, 31, 33, 66, 82 Aesthetic sensorial practice, 50 Aesthetics-in-action, 166 African, 51, 53, 76 African American, 76 Ahh, 141 Alexander, M. Jacqui, 16n7, 53 All our relations, 40 Aloha intelligence, 4

See also Ways of knowing Altar, 124, 125 Altered state(s) of consciousness, xiii, 16, 27, 36, 52, 53, 74, 77, 79, 81, 83, 94, 104–106, 110, 128, 131, 140, 144 See also Trance Altered state work, 105 Alter-ego, 99 Alternate worlds, 26 Amnesia, 12 See also Memory Ancestral, 14, 23, 59, 76, 79, 111, 128, 138, 139, 150–152, 158, 160, 161, 168 Ancestral allies, 83 Ancestral bodily memory, 76 Ancestral female memories, 161 Ancestral heritage, 126 Ancestral Journeys, 103, 150

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 B. A. Bickel, Art, Ritual, and Trance Inquiry, Palgrave Studies in Movement across Education, the Arts and the Social Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45745-7

173

174 

INDEX

Ancestral line(s), 23, 159 Ancestrally, 131 Ancestral roots, 139 Ancestral voices, 14 Ancestry, 151, 160 Ancient myths, 131 Ancient sacred sites, 127 Ancients, xi, 13, 30, 55, 64, 70n36, 79, 88, 96, 118–132, 140, 167 Ancient songs, 128 Animism, 70n36 Annual practices, 102, 103, 110 Anthropologist, 52, 75 Anthropology, 75 Antidote, 50, 53, 168 Anxiety, 25 See also Fear Anzaldúa, Gloria, 14, 17n39, 56, 83, 84 Arational, xi, 2, 4, 5, 8, 23, 27, 28, 31, 40, 42, 50, 52, 53, 56, 57, 74, 88, 122, 130, 131, 159, 160, 167, 168 See also Trance Archetypal consciousness, 120 ARC Women’s Cooperative Gallery, 10 Armstrong, Richard, 122 Arqsarniq, 130 Art as compassion, 4–5 Art as life, 86 Art culture, 149 Art film, 65 Artist-academic, 18n41 Artist collaboration(s), 14, 61–65 Artist-educator, xvi, 16n6, 36, 41, 63, 64 Artist-healer, 8 Artistic inquiry, 3 Artistic moment(s), 64, 65 Artist mystic, 79 Artist priestess, 78

Artist residency/ies, 8, 57, 64, 80, 96, 97, 118, 121, 124 See also Retreat Artist run gallery, 143 Artists, xi, xii, xv–xvii, 2, 24, 51, 74–88, 97, 118, 124, 170n7 Artist warrior, 130 Art making, xvi, 2, 9, 13, 14, 24, 26, 31, 43n2, 59, 63, 64, 100, 119, 138 A/r/tography, xvi, 2, 3, 14, 22–42, 43n2 Artscape Gibraltar Point, 97, 118, 125 Artspeak Gallery, 82 Art therapy, 147 Artworking(s), 4, 5, 8, 12, 14, 30, 31, 33–35, 63, 74, 94, 119, 120, 123, 128, 160, 161, 167 Artworld paradigm, 55, 56, 94, 139 Astral travel, 52 Attention, 26, 28, 29, 36, 67, 84, 123, 167 Attunement, 32, 36, 38, 43n6, 123 Audience(s), 10, 36, 55, 87, 129–131 Australia, 55 Australian Pitjantjatjara peoples, 86 Authority, 26, 55 Avante garde, 51, 76 Awake dreaming, xvii, 52, 74, 88 Awakeness, 159 Awakening, 4, 8, 23, 43n8, 55, 128, 140, 160, 168 Aztec Nahuatl language, 83 B Barrette, Estelle, 44n33 Bartley, Wendalyn, 14, 96–98, 111, 118–121, 123–128, 131 Bateson, Gregory, 5 Bathory, Laakkuluk Williamson, 56 Beach, 95, 124, 126

 INDEX 

Beauty, 36, 62, 82, 85, 168 Becoming, xvi, 2, 33–35, 53, 64, 75, 78, 82, 130 Becomingness, 76, 78 Beginner mind, 30 Beittel, Joan, 36 Beittel, Kenneth R., 16n6, 22, 41 Benedictine nun, 79 Berkley, 148 Bickel, Barbara, 9, 11, 29, 38, 43n6, 43n8, 62, 65, 77, 78, 81, 95, 97, 104, 107, 111, 121, 125, 129, 141, 143, 150, 152, 162–166 Bickel, Helen, v Bi-hemisphere arousal, 52 See also Trance Biology, 44n34 Birth-art, 110 Birthed, 60, 96 Birthing, 40, 41, 80, 94, 99, 100 Birthing philosophies, 94 Birth movement, 102 Birth powers, 99 Birth practice, 99 Birthright, 5, 24 Birth writing, 100 Blackbridge, Persimmon, 61 Blackfoot Confederacy, Siksika, 96 Blaze, Mary, 14, 23, 43n10, 161, 162, 166 Blessing, xi Blood, xvi, 58, 99, 160, 167, 168 Bodily healing, 40 Body, xi, xvi, 2, 3, 6, 8–12, 16n7, 23, 26, 29, 39, 52, 53, 56, 58, 64, 68, 69, 76, 78–81, 83–86, 88, 99, 121–128, 130, 132, 138, 140, 154, 155, 169 Bogzaran, Fariba, 27 Borderland(s), xi, 7, 56, 83 Borderlinking, 96 Border-Other, 33, 74

175

Bourguinon, Erika, 52 Bow River Escarpment, 169 Brain, 52, 53, 123 Brazil, 87 Bridge(s), 6, 27, 28, 33, 50, 128 British, 55 Britzman, Deborah, 7 Bul, Phong, 82, 89n32 C Calgary, 96, 129, 143, 159, 169 Canada, xvii, 12, 27, 28, 43n2, 55, 60, 65, 170n7 Candomblé, 51 Capitalist patriarch-based economy, 39 Carbondale, 37, 38, 60, 108, 121, 150 Care, 23, 39, 40, 43n6, 43n8, 60, 96, 123 Caregivers, 39, 41 Caribbean, 75, 76 Carriance, 65, 158 Carried, 65, 80, 122, 123, 158 Carry, xvi, 32, 40, 82, 94, 100, 123, 158, 168 Carrying, 58, 66, 160 CAT FAWN, 54, 55, 85, 86 Catholicism, 79 Catholic mother church, 79 Celestial, 106 Centering, 55 Centzone, Megan (formerly Sims), 36, 60 Ceremony/ies, 14, 40, 118, 120, 159, 160 Chant, 167, 169 Chapel, 98, 99, 101 Choral, 128 Choreographer, 58, 75 Christian mysticism, 51

176 

INDEX

Circles, xv, xvi, 16, 38, 42, 80, 99, 124, 125, 140, 168, 169 Cixous, Hélène, 2, 14, 80, 81 Cleansing ritual, 138 Clergy, 101 Coast Salish, 96 Coatlecue, 83 Co-becoming, 30, 39 Co-created, xvii, 42 Co-creative practices, 97 Co-encounter, 31, 33, 161 Collaborative aesthetic, 61–63, 66 Collaborator, xv, 17n9, 61, 64, 76, 129, 138 Collage(s), 11, 64, 65, 81, 87 Collective(s), xvii, 6, 12, 16n7, 32, 53, 63–69, 88, 94–113, 119, 120, 160, 167 Collective grief, 27, 121, 168 Collective memory, 55 Collective pain, 160 Collective unconscious, 6, 35, 36 Communal trance state, 118 Communicare, 35, 138 Communicaring, xvii, 13, 35–38, 41, 50, 65, 76, 87, 88, 120, 123, 138, 161, 167, 168 Communicate, 7, 155 Communion, 86, 120 Community, xv, 5, 12, 23, 24, 27, 30, 35, 43n6, 50–53, 56, 58, 59, 63, 86–88, 99, 100, 114n6, 127, 128 Companion, 4, 57 Compassion, 4–5, 23, 27, 36, 38, 41, 43n8, 119, 130, 168 See also Primary compassion Com-passion, 27, 38, 141, 168 Compassionately, 4, 9, 14 Compose, 65 Composed, 3, 36, 128 Composer, 14, 36, 64, 118, 123, 126, 127

Composition, 124, 126–128 Concentrated attention, 36 Conference(s), 13, 28, 96 Conflict, xv, 35, 61, 63, 99, 161 Conflicted, 101 Connective aesthetics, 23, 43n8, 61, 74 Connective resonance, 123 Connectivity, 31, 35, 65 Conscious, xv, 8, 31, 41, 42, 51, 52, 55, 65, 67, 68, 76, 81, 82, 88, 122 Conscious community, 101 Consciously, xvii, 7, 13, 32, 53, 61 Consciousness, xvi, xvii, 4–6, 8, 15, 16, 17n39, 24, 25, 27, 28, 36, 37, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 64, 74, 77, 79, 81, 83, 85, 95, 118, 120, 122, 123, 127, 128, 140, 167 See also Mestiza consciousness Contemplative, 51, 79 Contemporary art, 55 Continuum, 51, 64 Cooperation, 66 Co-partner, 140 Co-poetically, 3 Copoiesis, 8, 32, 168 Copoietic, 167 Co-presence, 29, 30 Co-presencing, 29 Cosmos, 4, 7, 8, 16n7, 94 Co-trance, 64, 124, 139 Co-transformation, 39 Coulter, Ron, 36 Courtenay, 108 Craighead, Meinrad, 14, 79, 80, 82 Creative arts therapist, 145 Creative geography, 77, 78 Creative inquiry, 53 Creative practice, 34, 55, 74, 75, 78, 86, 118, 119 Creativity, 40–42, 51, 58, 83, 99

 INDEX 

Cretan, 95, 96, 114n14, 121, 124, 125, 149 Crete, 124, 127 Crisis, 8, 12, 54, 168 Cross-cultural, 53, 64, 65, 95 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 56 Cultural, xvii, 7, 12, 24, 26, 38, 41, 44n35, 50, 53, 55, 56, 63, 66, 76, 160 Cultural embeddedness, 32 Cultural traumas, 6, 161 Culture, 4, 8, 12, 23, 28, 40, 41, 45n64, 50, 52–56, 59, 66, 76, 84, 85, 88, 99, 126, 167, 168 Curriculum, xvii, 54 Cyclical time, 168 D Dakini, 107 Dance anthropology, 75 Dancer, 4, 14, 58, 75 Dance studio, 76 Dance therapist, 14 Dance therapy, 145 The Day, xvi, 14, 158–161, 168 Daydreaming, 40 de Cossen, Alex, 43n2 de Vilder, Yantra, 14, 64, 65 Death, 4, 33, 40, 41, 55, 139, 160 Decolonize, 130 Deep Listening, 54, 123, 124 Deep sonic listening, 129 Dehypnotizing, 54 Deities, 140 Deleuze, Gilles, 44n33 Demonization, 31, 40, 114n7 Dempsey, Shawna, 66 Deren, Maya, 14, 76, 77, 82 Deslauriers, Daniel, 27 De-White, Janice P., 44n35 Dialogue, 14, 96–98, 120, 139–155

177

Distance-in-proximity, 96 Divine, 79 Divine feminine, 97, 124, 127, 140 Divine gaze, 79 Divining, 120, 127 Divining rod, 127 Documenting, 26 Dominated, 3, 5, 8, 26 See also Oppression Dominating, 41 See also Oppression Domination, 3 See also Oppression Double, xvii, 74, 104, 154–155 Double Goddess, 125 Drama therapy, 145, 146 Dream-based, 76 Dream-body, 83 Dreaming, xvii, 2, 14, 22–42, 52, 58, 67, 68, 74, 79, 80, 82, 84, 88, 130, 154, 158–169 Dream journals, 130 Dream world, 75, 83, 86 Dreamspin, 127 Dreamtime, 130, 167, 168 Driver, Thomas, 5 Drug(s), 2, 56 Drug-induced, 51 Drumming, 98, 120 Dunham, Katherine, 14, 75, 76 Dunham dance technique, 75 E Earth, xvii, 1–18, 23, 40, 41, 57–61, 64, 68, 75–77, 79, 82, 85, 86, 88, 94, 97, 99, 103, 106, 108, 110–113, 119, 126, 128, 130, 131, 141, 151, 153, 167, 168 Earth cycle, 103 Earthling, 2–4, 16n4, 54, 58, 119 Earth-places, 109

178 

INDEX

Earth stewards, 54 Earthvox, 2, 58–61 Eastern Star church, 142 East Vancouver, 99 Eco-feminist, 51 Ecological, 12, 17n39, 38, 40, 96, 168 Ecological consciousness, 118 Ecological traumas, 27 Economy, 38–42, 96, 97, 112, 160 Eco-philosopher, 54 Ecstatic, 3–5, 8, 12, 51 Ecstatic Trance Postures, xvi, 69n4 Edelson, Mary Beth, 14, 24, 34–36, 87 Education, 13, 54, 104 See also Novel education Ego-based, 103 Egotism, 145 Egypt, xvii Elders, 55, 159 Electroacoustic music, 126 Electromagnetic field, 123, 132 Electronica, 129 Electro-vocal, 118, 128 Eliade, Mircea, 16n7 Embodied Prayer, 4 Embodied trance, 99 Emergent ritual, 24, 25 Empathic, 123 Empathy, 2, 27 Encounter-event, 32, 33, 161 English, 12, 80, 83, 130 Enlightenment, 3, 16n7, 56 Entrance, xi En-trance-ability, 53 Entranced, 130 Entrancement, 4, 54, 88 See also Hypnotic spell Environment, 3, 42, 43n6, 68, 87, 113, 120, 123, 124, 132 Environmental vortex, 148–150

Erzuli, see Goddess of love Esquimalt, 96 Ethereal realms, xi Ethical existence, 31 Ethically, 4, 23, 33, 66 Ethics-in-action, 166 Ettinger, Bracha L., 2, 4, 7–10, 13, 14, 22, 28–35, 50, 57, 64, 74, 94, 118, 119, 138, 158, 167 Europe, 151 European, 4, 12, 130, 160 Exchange, 39 See also Capitalist patriarch-­ based economy Experimental film, 51 Experimental film maker, 76 External spirit guides, 85 Extrovert meditation, 36 F Fall equinox, 96 Fathergod, 79 Fear, 6, 25, 26, 32, 40, 53, 55, 63, 74, 85, 86, 114n7, 128, 154, 158–161, 168 See also Anxiety Fear-based, 7, 54 Fearlessness, 6, 7, 55, 160, 167, 168 Fearless trust, 87 Felman, Shoshana, 167 Female artist, 10 Female sentences, xvi, 8, 74, 94 Feminine, xii, xvi, 3, 31, 33, 57, 64, 126 Feminine aesthetic, 57 Feminine-based rituals, 101 Feminine logic, 31 Feminine spiritual energy, 101 Femininity, 31, 33 Feri tradition, 140 Fetus, 30–32

 INDEX 

Field, 18n41, 31, 36, 52, 54, 65, 66, 74, 75, 80, 88, 119–121, 123, 126, 127, 131, 132, 158 Film(s), 24, 51, 58, 65, 76–78, 82 Finley, Karen, 14, 84 First Nations art, 146 Fisher, R. Michael, 45n52, 57, 62, 108, 139, 149, 159, 169 Fleur, Blanche, 99 Flight, 80 Flying, 80 Foremothers, 79, 129 Found poem(s), 3, 16n8, 23, 75 Four Arrows, T., 54, 55, 85, 87, 120, 130 Fox, Matthew, 12, 36, 40 Fragilizing, 8 Free association, 51, 74 Freemasonry, 51 French, 80, 110 French-Algerian, 80 Freud, Sigmund, 33 Fusco, Coco, 66 G Gablik, Suzi, 23, 43n8 Gaia, 120 Galleries, xvi, 10, 87, 121 Gardiner, Kyoko, 44n46 Gaze, 8, 10, 16, 37, 67, 78, 79, 94, 121, 131, 161 Gebser, Jean, 2 Gender, 24, 33, 44n35, 57, 120, 160 Generational wisdom, 113 Geographic, 96 German, 122 Germany, 147, 149 Gestare, 94, 96–100, 104 See also Gestare Art Collective Gestare Art Collective, xvii, 14, 64, 66, 93–114, 119, 123 Gestare practices, 96

179

Gift circle, 38 Gift economy, 38–41, 96, 112, 160 See also Maternal economy Gift-giving, 40, 45n64 Gift of fearlessness, 160 Gift testimony, 167 Gifting, 112 Glen Valley Organic Farm Cooperative, 102 Glossolalia, 51 God, 56, 75, 76, 84 Goddess of love, 76 God the Mother, 79 Goddess(es), 64, 75, 76, 96, 104, 124 Goddess of love, 76 Gomez-Peña, Guillermo, 66 Goode, Sage, 98 Goodman, Felicitas, 52 Gowan, John Curtis, 52 Grace Cathedral, 100, 108 Gradle, Sally, 59, 79 Grandmother, 79, 86, 97 Gratitude, xvii, 57, 123, 168 Greece, 127 Greenlandic mask dancing, 56 Grief, 4, 12, 14, 27, 57, 121, 140, 158–161, 167, 168 Griefwork, 4 Griffin, Susan, 127 Griffith, Cindy Lou, 98 Grimes, Ronald, 24, 25 Ground, 6, 25, 26, 58, 67, 68, 75, 80, 83, 95, 148, 154 Grounding, 26, 98 G20 Summit, 105 Guatarri, Felix, 44n33 Gulf of Mexico, 105 Guerrilla Girls, 66 Guidance, 12, 58, 60, 61, 83, 120, 168 Guide(s), 4, 5, 12, 33, 52, 59, 63, 75, 79, 85, 154, 169 Guided meditations, 51

180 

INDEX

H Haiku, 3, 14, 23 Haiti, 75, 76 Hall of the American Indian, 146 Hallucinogens, 51 Halprin, Anna, 58 Ħal Saflieni, 127 Hammid, Alexander, 89n15 Hand drum, 98 Hart, Roy, 122 H/a/r/tography, 30 Haunting, 6, 7, 32 Hawaii, 3 Healer(s), xvii, 13, 30, 41, 138 Healing, xv, xvi, 7–10, 26, 28, 30–32, 36, 38–40, 53, 57, 84, 85, 87, 88, 96, 118–128, 131, 139 Healing gifts, 40 Healing paradigm, 38, 39, 96 Healing practice, 103, 122 Healing trance, xv Health, 30, 40, 55 Hills, 94 Historical, xiii, xvii, 2, 25, 31, 53, 57, 64, 74, 127, 159, 160, 167 Historical consciousness, 167 Holistic worldview, 84 Hollywood, 77 Holy soil, 79 Home birth, 99 Honour, xvii, 17n14, 29, 41, 168 Hospitable, 35, 113 Hospital Audience, 146 Houston, Jean, 53, 54 Hugill, Tannis, 14, 23, 76, 138–155 The Hummer Sisters, 66 Hybrid, 83 Hyde, Lewis, 41, 56 Hypnopompic, 159, 167 Hypnotic, 36 Hypnotically, 9 Hypnotic spell, 12

Hysteria, 31, 120 I Igbo, 130 Illiniwek people, 59 Improvisational, 128, 129 Improvisational vocalizing practices, 131 Inanna, 64 In-between, xv, 7 In-between state, 83, 98 Indigenous art, 146 Indigenous artists, 55, 56 Indigenous languages, 130 Indigenous philosophies, 83 Indigenous Poiesis, 59 Indigenous way of knowing, 130 Indigenous worldview, 54, 55, 70n36, 120 Indigenous youth, 159 Initiate, 75 Inmerge, 2 Inner ear, 132 Inner spirit guide, 85 Inner world, 88, 127 Inquirer, 2 Inquiry, xi, xvi, xvii, 2, 3, 5, 12–16, 18n41, 22–26, 30, 42, 43n2, 50–56, 58, 63, 85, 160, 168 Inquiry-based writing, xvi Inquisition, 114n7, 127 Inspirited, 14, 30, 57, 85 Installation, xvi, 10, 23, 121, 124, 125 Instrumental music, 126 Intentional, 6, 15, 51 Intentions, xvi, 6, 10, 15, 16, 26, 36, 58, 95, 113, 120, 121, 131 Inter-disciplinary, 64 Interrelational, 2 Intersubjectivity, 22 Interweaving, xvi, 3

 INDEX 

Intuition, 2, 36, 84 Inuit throat singing, 56, 129 Invocational, 145 Iranian, 82 Irwin, Rita L., 43n2 Ishtar Gallery, 170n7 Island, 8, 9, 77, 96, 97, 118, 124, 125, 129 J Jenkinson, Stephen, 160 Jointness-in-difference, 122 Jones, Lizard, 63 Jordan, Nané, 39–41, 80, 96, 97, 111, 119 Journeyer, 67, 154 Journeys, xv, xvii, 6, 9, 10, 27, 64, 65, 67, 69, 86, 124, 126–128, 151, 154, 155, 160, 167 Jung, Carl, 6 K Kahlo, Frida, 89n2 Kainai, 96 Katherine Dunham Dance Company, 76 Keating, AnaLouis, 17n39, 90n36 Kelly, Vicki, 59 Kerr, Sarah, 28 Kimmerer, Robyn Wall, 40 Kiss & Tell collective, 63 Klaver, Elena, 167 Knowing, xvii, 2, 4, 12, 23, 24, 27, 41, 52, 53, 55, 64, 78, 87, 130, 160 Knowledge, 4, 6, 8, 12, 23, 25, 41, 50, 53–56, 59, 81, 83, 88, 90n38 Knowledge keepers, 54 Kriya practice, 160 Kundalini awakening, 140 Kwakwaka’wakw, 146

181

L Labowitz, Leslie, 66 Labyrinth, see Classic; Cretan Lacan, Jacques, 33 Lacy, Suzanne, 35, 66 Lake Ontario, 9 Lament, 5, 168 Lamenting, 10, 13 Language, 8, 10–12, 16n4, 30, 34, 74, 76, 80, 83, 94, 120, 126, 130, 168 Languaging, 8 Learner, xvii, 13, 58, 138, 139 Learn, xi, 13, 14, 23, 58, 67, 87, 106, 147 See also Unlearn Learning, xv–xvii, 5, 6, 15, 16, 23–25, 50, 51, 53–59, 63, 64, 85, 98, 99, 102, 106, 110, 167, 168 Leggo, Carl, 16n8 Leighton, Leone, 166 Lekwungen, 96 Lemay, Gloria, 99 Lévinas, Emmanuel, 31, 33 Life, xi, xii, xv, xvii, 3–6, 8, 16n7, 17n14, 23, 28–31, 33, 34, 36, 39–41, 54, 78, 79, 82–84, 86, 87, 114n7, 120, 122, 128, 130, 139, 160, 168 Life spirit, 70n36, 123 Lineages, 40, 41, 74, 88, 122 See also Ancestral Lines of time, 158 Listen, xi, 8, 10, 28, 58, 60, 61, 68, 122, 123, 131, 132, 155 Listening, xi, 2, 14, 54, 58, 67, 84, 118, 120, 122–124, 126, 129, 131, 160 Listening meditations, 123 Literary, 5, 167 Living inquiry, 4 Lost voice of the feminine, 126 Lorde, Audre, 156n9

182 

INDEX

Love, 6, 30, 36, 76, 87 Love-based, 7, 66, 168 Love-based gift, 39 Love-base theory, 30 Loved, 108, 147 Lovers, 97 Loving, 3, 4, 79 Lucid dreaming, 67 Lunar calendar, 14, 158 Lys, Valerie, 102 M Ma, 14, 64–65 Ma aesthetic, 14, 64–65 Maar, Dora, 89n2 Macy, Joanna, 54 Magical realism, 82 Maker, 4, 5, 31, 59, 118 Making, xvi, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 36, 55, 59, 63, 86, 87, 95, 96, 140, 155 Making Eye Contact, 35, 36, 38, 87 Male logic, 31 Malleus Maleficarum, 126–127 Malta, 121, 127, 128 Mandalas, 124 Manifesto, 66 MA Poses, 64 Market economy, 41, 96 Mary, 23, 80, 161 Mask dancing, 56 Maternal, 38, 39, 41, 96, 128 Maternal economy, 39 See also Gift economy Maternal mother’s lineages, 151 Matrix, 30, 31 Matrixial, xi, 4, 7, 8, 10, 14, 30–35, 38–41, 50, 65, 85, 94, 119, 122, 160, 167, 168 Matrixial borderspace(s), 6–10, 22–42, 58, 64, 78, 138, 168

Matrixial gaze, 8, 10, 94, 138, 161 Matrixial gift economy, 38–41, 160 Matrixial language, 7, 8, 94, 120 Matrixial practices, 50, 96 Matrixial time, 14, 158–169 Matrixial web, 138 McConachy, Medwyn, 96, 97, 111, 119, 128 McGowan, Bridgid, xxiiin2 McGregor, Kathryn, 143 Medicine wheel, 55 Meditation in action, 36 Medium, 7, 42, 64, 77, 85, 140 Mediumship, 50, 51 Memory, 33, 55, 76, 80, 98, 124, 127, 159 See also Ancestral Mentors, 100 Mestiza, 56, 83 Mestiza consciousness, 56 Methods, xiii, xv, 2, 7, 10, 43n2, 53, 63, 74, 122, 123 Metis Nation (Region 3) Treaty 7 people, 96 #Me Too Movement, 12 Metramorphosis, 10, 29, 31, 32, 119, 168 Meyer, Karen, 18n41 Meyer, Manu Aluli, 3 Midwife, 39, 99, 160 Mid-wifed, 94, 96 Midwifery-like ways, 100 Midwives, 98 Millan, Lorri, 66 Mindell, Arnold, 52 Mindfulness, 87 Mind meld, 64 Minh-ha, Trinh T., 24 Missionary(ies), 55 Mississauga-Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, 118

 INDEX 

Mississaugas of the New Credit, 97 Missouri Lutheran, 101 Mistrust, 26, 159 Modern dance, 76 Mom, 28, 29 MOMA, 86, 87 Monasteries, 87 Monk, Meredith, 144 Monotheism, 53, 56 Moon cycle practices, 111 Moonly Dreaming, 110 Moon phase practices, 106 More-than-human, xi, xvii, 23, 26, 30, 61, 120, 121 Mother, 2, 7, 30–33, 39–41, 56, 77, 79, 80, 82, 83, 86, 97, 99, 119, 151, 168 M/other, 2, 31, 119, 168 See also Other Mother Earth, 99 Mother gifts, 41 See also Maternal economy Mothering, 39, 40 Mother lake, 109 Mother tree, xvii, 61 Mountains, 57, 64 Mourning, 4, 8, 119 Movement practices, 98 Movements, xi, xiii, 7, 9, 23, 26, 33, 57, 66, 76, 77, 79, 121, 124, 126, 130, 132 Mudras, 125 Music, 36, 55, 124, 126 Musical, 5, 15, 124, 126 Musician, 14, 36, 64, 123, 129 Musqueam, xvi, 96 Mystic traditions, 2 Mystical, 2, 32, 36, 57, 122, 123 Mystical states, 52 Myth, 64, 66, 131, 167

183

N Nahuatl, 83 Nascent ritual, 25, 26 See also Ritualizing Native American dancers, 146 Natural, xiii, xvii, 38, 40, 50, 87, 99, 128, 132 Natural resources, 40 Natural world, xvii, 58, 120 Nature, xiii, 15, 24, 40, 57, 58, 61, 63, 79, 85–87, 122, 128 Neolithic goddess, 64 Neolithic goddess postures, 96 Nepantla, 83, 84 Neshat, Shirin, 14, 82 Neurobiological, 52 Neurodiverse, 98 New Age, 41, 51 Newborn, 40, 122 New College, Women’s Spirituality graduate program, 100 Newfoundland, 159 New old intelligence, 4 New Orleans, 35 New York art community, 147 New York City, 35, 82, 86, 87 New York University, 140, 144 Ninshuba, 64 Noble, Vicki, 100 Nonconscious, 51, 52, 67, 68 See also Arational Non-drug, 51 Non-fear-based practices, 6 See also Love-based Non-judgement, 36 Non-object art, 112 Northern Lights, 131 North West Coast masks, 146 Norway, 35 Not knowing, 2, 24, 27, 55

184 

INDEX

Not Named, 144, 146 Novel, 12, 13, 62 Novel education, 7, 160 See also Education Nurturing, 7, 39, 59, 60 O Object art, 103, 112 Occult, 51, 74 Occupied lands, 96 Oliveros, Pauline, 123 Osborne, William, 123 Oppression, 53 Oracle, 119, 120, 128 Oracle chamber, 121 Oracle singing, 119, 120, 128 Oracular, 121 Oracular art, 98 Oral traditions, 126 Ordinary state of consciousness, 6, 15, 16, 50 Organic farming, 102, 103 Originary compassion, 39 Originary matrixial difference, 33 Osborne, William, 123 Other, 4, 8, 9, 23, 27, 30, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40, 56, 64, 120 Other-dimensionality, 106 Other-than-ordinary, 15 Otherworld dimensions, 105 Owens, Yvonne, 145 P Pagan, 103 See also Witch Painting, 32, 79, 80, 84, 98, 161 Pairs trances, 98 See also Trance Paradigm, xiii, 16n7, 38, 39, 43n6, 56, 96

Paralogical, 56 Paranormal, 2, 51 Paranormal sensing, 52 Paris, 80 Participatory pedagogy, 59 Partner, xi, 6, 10, 29, 67, 69, 70n52, 86, 154, 155 Paternal market economy, 96 Path, xi, xvi, 6, 7, 12, 120, 123–126, 130, 139, 154, 155, 160, 168 Pathological, 8 Patriarchal, 8, 40, 53, 56, 77 Patriarchal language, 168 Patriarchal medical culture, 99 Patriarchal medical culture, 99 Patriarchal systems, 100 Patriarchal voice, 127 Patriarchy, 161 Pedagogy, 59 See also Teachings Performance, xi, 14, 24, 35, 36, 38, 52, 56, 63, 64, 75, 76, 84–87, 124, 128, 129, 139, 140, 166 Performance art, 14, 34–37, 86 Performance ritual, xvi, 10, 14, 35–38, 87, 114n14, 120, 124–126, 128, 129, 138–155, 167 Performative inquiry, 18n41, 24 Performer, 142 Perspectives, xvi, 2, 52 Phallic, 7, 8, 10, 11, 31, 33, 34, 36, 40, 74, 77 Phallic gaze, 10, 94 Phallic language, 8, 34, 74, 77 Phallocentric, 31, 120 Philosopher midwife, 39 Philosophic inquiry, 30 Philosophical choreographic methodologies, 76 Pikani, 96 Pintupi aboriginal peoples, 86 Place-based, xiii, xvii, 51, 151 Placelessness, 59

 INDEX 

Placenta, 39, 99 Placental relations, 39 Placental thinking, 39 Plant-based medicines, 50 Playful sacredness, 131 Poetic writing, xvii, 24, 60, 98 Poets, 2, 4, 56, 58, 80 Political, 4, 12, 26, 27, 30, 33, 34, 41, 53, 161 Pollock, Griselda, 31 Portal, xi, xvii, 7, 64, 75, 97, 118, 154 Possession states, 50 See also Trance Postcolonial, 24 Post-truth, 3 Potawatomi, 40 Prayer, 16, 17n9, 79, 114n13, 126 Pre-cognitive, 39 Pre-human ancestors, 150 See also Ancestral Pre-logical, 88 Presence, 4, 5, 29, 30, 51, 59, 61, 66, 85, 88, 96, 119, 128, 139 Presence/absence, 7, 88, 96, 98, 167 Present/absent, 33 Present time reality, 154 Pre-verbal, 39 See also Sound Primordial, 128 Primary compassion, 36 Process(es), xii, xiii, xv–xvii, 2–7, 9, 10, 15, 16, 22–25, 27, 28, 31, 36, 39, 40, 42, 44n33, 50, 55, 57, 63, 64, 119, 129, 130, 138, 140, 151, 155, 160, 167–169 Process meditation, 50 Profit-oriented, 39 See also Market economy Prophesy, 36 Prophetic, 12, 58 Psyche, 33, 53, 56, 119 Psychiatric hospitals, 145 Psychic, 2, 51, 76, 83, 84, 122 Psychic field, 31

185

Psychic pain, 4, 12, 161, 167 Psychic portraits, 84 Psychoanalysis, 51, 74 Psychoanalyst, 4, 7, 31, 33 Public performance ritual, see Performance ritual Purification lodges, 55 R Radical faith, 85 Radical relationality, 14, 22–24 Radical teachers, 101 Radical trust, 6 Rainier, Yvonne, 144 Raven, 148 Ray, Man, 82 Reality, 26, 27, 51, 56, 95, 120, 154 Reclaiming community, 98, 101 Reclaiming tradition, 51 Recurring dreams, 80 See also Dreaming Reflexive consciousness, 24 Refuse, 13, 39, 40, 56 Regenerating, 2 Regenerative, xv, 6, 12, 23 Relational inquiry, 22 Relational paradigm, 31 Relational truth, 160 Relational worldview, 83 Re-learn, 4 Religion, 5, 26, 51, 53, 74–76, 160 Religious, 6, 15, 25–27, 50, 51, 53, 75, 79 Religious dances, 75 Remedio, Varo, 89n2 Remembrance, 85, 127, 167, 168 See also Memory Response-ability, 12 Retreat, 97, 106, 114n6 Rhythm, 4, 75, 76, 82, 85, 124, 160 Rising Tides of Generations Lost, 126 Ritual-based, 14, 25 Ritual-based performance art, 86

186 

INDEX

Ritualizing, xi–xiii, 5, 24–27, 50, 51, 65 Ritual space, 5, 6, 15–16, 131, 168, 169 Rose, Ingred, 98 Roy Hart method, 122 S Sacred communication, 55, 85, 87 Sacred feminine musical aesthetic, 126 Sacred inquiry, 14, 15, 168 Sacred land, 160 Sacred liminal space, 96 Sacredly, 2, 13 Sacred objects, 28 Sacred psychology, 53 Saints, 158 Sameshima, Pauline, 64 Sanctuary(ies), 6, 10, 25 Sanctuary space, 10 San Francisco, 100, 108, 142, 144, 146, 148, 149 Schafer, R. Murray, 132n4 Schechner, Richard, 52, 53 Schelde, Karen, 123 Schumacher, Erica Paige, 17n14 Secondary processes, 130 Secret mystery school, 113 Secret teachings, 103 Secular art, 140 Self-authored, 86 Self-authorship, 55, 85, 86, 88 Self-hypnosis, 55 See also Trance-based learning (TBL) Senses, xvi, 2–4, 15, 16n7, 33, 36, 51, 57, 59, 68, 78, 84, 85, 94, 113, 124, 127, 155, 169 Sensorialness, 8 See also Senses Sensory ability, 126 Sensory shifting, 15, 16 Sensual spirituality, 2–16

Settler ancestry, 147 Settlers, 12, 159 Sexual orgasm, 52 Shakti energy, 100 Shaman, 118, 130 Shamanic ecstasy, 52 Shamanic-identified women, 100 Shamanic performance ritual, 129 Shamanism, 50, 55, 79 Shapeshifter, 145 Shapeshifting, 12, 83 Shapeshifts, 12, 90n38 Shawnee forest, 59, 60 Simon, Roger, 167 Sims, Megan, 36, 45n49 Sings, 65, 130, 169 Sioux, 159 Sioux tribal lands, 159 Sisterhood, 145 Sisters, 28, 40, 97 Skoteino Cave, 124 Sky, 124, 129 Sleeping Lady, 127 Snowber, Celeste, 3–5, 14, 17n9, 18n41, 23, 161, 166 Social activist, 75 Social change, 17n39, 26, 90n36 Social justice, 7 Socially-engaged art, 86 Socially-engaged performance art, 36 Social movement, 102, 112 Songhees, 96 Sonic Meditations, 123 Soul, xii, 6, 37, 84, 167 SoulVoice, 123 Sound, 15, 51, 68, 85, 118–127, 131, 132, 143, 144 Sound art, 98, 124 Sound Dreaming, 128 Sound Dreaming Woman, 128 Sounding art practice, 119 Sound landscapes, 130 Soundscape, 36, 118, 124

 INDEX 

Sound vibrations, 123 Soundwalk, 118, 128 Soundwalkers, 128 Source, 3, 6, 9, 10, 31, 32, 42, 43n2, 80, 83, 97, 119, 151, 153, 155 South American, 76 Southern Illinois, 59 Southern India, 124 Spanglish, 83 Spanish, 83 Spell, 12, 54 See also Hypnotic spell Spirit guides, 79, 85 Spirit of art, 6–11, 13, 160 Spirit of love, 146 Spirit of play, 88 Spirits, xi, xv, xvi, 3–13, 35, 41, 52, 57, 61, 70n36, 74, 79, 80, 83, 85, 88, 94, 96, 118, 120, 123, 124, 126, 130, 160, 169 Spiritual activism, 17n39, 84, 90n36 Spiritual activist, 84 Spiritual art, 147 Spiritual experience, 148 Spiritual feminist, xvii, 4, 57 Spiritual feminist movement, 104 Spiritual-infused art practice, 86 Spiritual labor, 53 Spiritual midwifery, 99 Spiritual path, 12 Spiritualism, 51 Spirituality, 13, 64, 74, 90n36 Spiritually-based, 63 Spoken word narrative, 85 Spontaneous creation-making, 42 Spontaneous discipline, 41 Springgay, Stephanie, 43n2 STAG Residency, 106 Starhawk, 51, 54, 100, 114n7 Stepmothers, 97 Stewart, Susan, 63 Stillpoint, 124, 125 Stony Nakoda, 96

187

Story(ies), 6, 9, 66, 96, 120, 127, 128, 130, 131, 139, 158, 167 Storytelling, 128 St Paul’s labyrinth, 108 Studio, 5, 15, 35, 43n10, 76, 118, 124, 138, 152, 161 Subconscious, 27, 53, 74 Subtle activism, 12, 17n39 Subtle energies, 106 Subtle realms, 52 Sumerian myth, 64 Surrealism, 66, 74 Surrealist art, 51, 89n2 Surrealists, 74, 82, 89n2 Svankmajerová, Eva, 89n2 Symbolic, 23–25, 30, 40 T Tagaq, Tanya, 14, 56, 129–131 Teacher(s), xvi, 3, 13, 23, 28–30, 36, 38, 43n2, 51, 59, 86, 99, 118, 122, 123, 138, 139, 154, 160 Teachings, 2–4, 10, 12, 13, 28–30, 35, 42, 43n2, 54, 55, 57, 60, 74, 75, 83, 84, 86, 87, 98, 103, 123, 140, 160, 168 Telepathic communication, 86 Telepathy, 120 Testify(ies), 22 Testimony, 13, 166–169 Theatre Unlimited, 146 Theory(ies), 168 Threads, xi, 10, 27, 29, 30, 33, 99, 123 Tibetan guru, 87 Time, xi, xvi, 5, 6, 9, 11, 14, 26, 28–31, 35, 40, 42, 52, 54, 59, 60, 62–64, 68, 69, 75–78, 83, 85, 87, 88, 96, 113, 120, 123, 127, 131, 138, 140, 148, 154, 155, 158–169 Timelessness, 108

188 

INDEX

Time/space-based, 97 Tool(s), 15, 16, 24, 55, 58, 63, 68, 95, 161, 169 Toronto, 105, 119, 125 Toronto Island, 8, 9, 96, 97, 105, 110, 111, 118, 129 TouVA, 66 Trace(s), xv, 27, 166 Tradition(s), xi, xv, 2, 3, 5, 41, 51, 52, 55, 56, 129, 130, 140, 159 Tragedy(ies), 4, 159, 160 Trance, xv–xvii, 2–16, 24, 27, 29, 40, 50–69, 74–88, 95, 97–99, 118, 124, 130, 131, 139, 140, 151, 154, 155, 160, 161, 168 Trance-based, xvii, 14, 54–58, 66, 74, 77, 85, 88, 128 Trance-based ancestral project, 151 Trance-based healing, 128 Trance-based inquiry, xvii, 2, 25, 26, 50–56, 58, 74, 85, 139, 140 Trance-based learning (TBL), 54–57, 85 Trance-based performance ritual, 14 Trance-based video art, 77 Trance-formation, 65 Transference, 31 Transformative, xvi, 8, 9, 25, 26, 30, 54, 63, 98, 99 Transmission, 28–30, 138 Transpersonal, 143 Trauma(s), 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 27, 30–33, 36, 40, 57, 86, 122, 131, 158–161, 167 Trauma-based narratives, 85 Traumatized, 27 Tree-friending, 113 Tree-friending practice, 113 Tree-leaning, 57 Trout Lake, 109 Trust, 6, 8, 9, 36, 63, 83, 87 Trusted, 147

Truth, 3, 12, 24, 160, 167 Truthfully, 4 Truth telling, 4, 14 Tsuut’ina, 96 U Ulay, 86, 87, 90n48 Umbanda practice, 142 Unbroken ancestral lines, 151 See also Ancestral heritage Unceded traditional land, 96 Unconditional, 41, 67, 87, 96, 132 Unconditional gift economy, 96 See also Maternal economy Unconditionally, 39, 40, 87, 132 Understanding(s), xi, xvi, 4, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16n7, 24, 25, 33, 36, 39, 41, 42, 43n2, 54, 57, 61–63, 70n36, 80, 88, 99, 122–124, 127, 128, 131, 138, 140, 146–148, 160 Underworld, 64, 65 Ungrounded, 109 United States (USA), 10 Universe, 13, 51, 58, 80, 83, 85, 87, 122 University of British Columbia (UBC), 43n2, 96, 101, 104 Unlearn, xv Unlearning, xvii, 23, 53, 54, 59, 160, 168 V Vancouver, 43n2, 81, 96, 97, 104, 107, 129, 139, 141, 142, 149, 152, 170n7 Vancouver Folk Festival, 129 Vancouver New Music, 128 Vancouver School of Theology, 96, 139 Vaughan, Genevieve, 39, 41

 INDEX 

Victoria, 96 Video, 10, 26, 77, 82, 90n38, 108, 111, 141, 150, 152 Violence, 3, 10, 130 Virgin of Guadalupe, 100 Virtanen, Akseli, 45n50, 118 Visionaries, 75, 79, 167, 168 Visions, 5, 27, 36, 41, 55, 63, 79, 80, 167, 168 Visual, xvi, 5, 10, 53, 74, 79, 80, 97, 98, 159 Visualization(s), 51 Vocal, 10, 16, 97, 121, 122, 124, 128, 131, 132, 140, 169 Vocalization(s), 128 Vodou, 51, 53, 75–77 Voice, xvi, 2, 5, 10, 13, 14, 29, 30, 56, 58, 80, 81, 84, 99, 120–124, 126–130, 132, 161, 167 Voicing the Stones, 124–126 Vulnerability, xvii, 62 Vulnerable, 7, 15, 23 W Walk, 57, 61, 74, 80, 88, 95, 96, 113, 119, 124, 125, 138, 169 Walking, 24, 88, 95, 96, 98, 124, 138, 160 Walsh, Susan, 16n8 War, 35, 75, 86, 160, 161, 168 Warrior, xv, 161 Water birth, 99 Ways of knowing, xvii, 53, 160 Web of all being, 30 Well-in-spirit ancestor, 151 Wendat, 118 Wendt, Gregory, 37, 44n44 West Africa, 75 West African Mahi dance, 75 Westercamp, Hildegarde, 118 Western rational perspective, 2

189

Whistle breathing, 131 White, Kenneth, 43n8 Wholistic justice movement, 7 Wiccan, 151 See also Pagan Wiccan practice, 140, 151 See also Witch Wiccan tradition, xv, 51 Wilson [Kind], Sylvia, 43n2 Wind, 124 Winnipeg, 159 Wisdom, xi, xvii, 3, 13, 30, 31, 50, 57, 59, 113, 120, 128, 129, 161, 168 Wit(h)nesses, 9–12, 34, 65, 67, 76, 85, 88, 138, 154, 159, 167 Witch, 98, 100, 114n7, 127 Witchcamp, 98, 114n6 Witchcraft, 102 Wolfsohn, Alfred, 122 Wom(b)an artist, 10, 14, 33–35, 51, 57, 66, 74–88, 94, 96, 128, 131, 139, 161, 167, 168 Womanfesting, xi Wom(b)an reading methodology, 44n35 Woman’s movement, 102 Woman’s time, 77, 78 Woman’s writing, 80 Woman warrior, xv Womb, xi, xii, 7, 30, 31, 33, 34, 39, 44n35, 96, 119 Womb-based, 31 Womb of wonder, xii Wombsoundings, 119 Wombspace, 9, 96, 97 Women artists, 8, 56, 57, 66, 74, 75, 77 Women ‘Enduring Freedom’, 43n10, 161–165 Women’s circle, xvi Women’s liberation movement (s), 66 Women’s multi-faith leadership, 102

190 

INDEX

Women’s power, 99 Women’s spirituality, 100 Women’s Spirituality Celebration, 96 Women’s spiritual power, 100 Women’s spiritual teachers, 102 Women’s ways of knowing, 53 Woodman, Francesca, 89n2 Words, xii, xvi, 85, 120 Workshop(s), xvii, 36, 96, 123 World-centric, 43n8 Worldview(s), 4, 7, 54, 55, 70n36, 83, 84, 120, 130 Wound(s), 5, 10, 30, 57, 84 Woundedness, 147 Writing, xvi, xvii, 2–4, 7, 8, 12, 13, 15, 16, 22–26, 28–30, 33, 35, 36, 41, 53, 56, 60, 61, 65, 75,

80, 82, 83, 87, 98–100, 126, 130, 131, 138, 158, 160, 161, 167 Writing inquiry, 2 WSÁNEĆ peoples, 96 Y Yaga, Baba, 128 Yoga, 160 Yogic samadhi, 52 Yoruba, 75 Yugoslavia, 86 Z Zen meditation, 52