Fertility

October, 1995
Acrylics on Paper
18.5”x15”

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This is the Ace of Water in Lane's Greenwitch Tarot:

A brave and Fool-ish soul is getting ready to be born. A tiny green seed – an ovum – has made its way out of the ovary and into the fallopian tube where it waits to be fertilized. Its journey will then take it into the uterus to mature into a new being. To take the leap into earthly challenges. But for now it is cushioned and nurtured in the blood waters of the mothership. Its body will continue to be made mostly of water– that element in the direction of the West of emotions, intuition and psychic knowings. An element that can drown or inform us.

What deep waters are you leaping into? Can you learn to magically breathe in the water as you once did when you had gills in utero? Can you remember and swish your mermaid or merman tail? Do you let wisdom of your intuition and psychic messages guide you? If not, are you ready and willing to learn how?

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The Seed: The Next Installment – June 1996

My third bodywork session with Dana Zia where we uncovered the Burning Times [see Out of the Ashes painting] left me fragile and so full of emotions and fearful memories that being in ordinary reality was a strain. There was so much to process, and as Dana had warned the visions and feelings continued to roll for several days. My fourth session, in contrast, was grounding, affirming, and not so emotionally wrenching as the first. However, I am still vibrating – and at times in physical pain or just so spacey I can hardly deal with all the details asked of me (asked of myself). I have been given a new level of clarity and understanding about my life that is settling somehow.

Dana first got the image that when I fell off the cliff in Scotland and was beaten to death I put all my knowings into a little seed – a pod encased in something – and sent it off with my soul so that I would have it with me in the future and not have to learn it all again. It is hidden somewhere on my body. If that doesn’t send chills down my spine!

As we joked and giggled about wanting a treasure map she began to knead and rub and I began to visualize. When she pressed on a place on my right hip that was sore (and aches as I write this) I suddenly saw a door – a light blue grey door with intricate clasps of iron or brass. It was slightly ajar and I could sense a long tunnel behind it. Dana suggested I go in and I realized I couldn’t walk in, but rather had to make myself small and dive headfirst or slide in as if I were on a gurney (as I sort of was there on the massage table) heading into a CAT scan. So in I went, and the tunnel stretched out long before me – organic and pulsing. But I realized my feet were still touching the door and I was stretching myself out to explore the length. When I remarked on this to Dana she said I needed to leave the door so I did.

There around a bend I discovered the scene from my Fertility painting – all pink and glowing with a magical ethereal light. And there was the green seed. I started to cry because I recognized it – knew it deep in my soul as the hidden seed of my knowledge. I had painted it all last year – with great tears of longing – and now I had an inkling of what it was.

I went up to the seed and saw it was covered with signs but I couldn’t read them – a veritable Babel of ancient languages and knowledge that I could rub my fingers over but whose meaning is still beyond my grasp. Yet, I had the distinct feeling because of what Dana had said about my soul and its seed that I would be able to decipher them one of these days. In the meantime I was content to look and feel. The seed was seamed and creviced with intricate folds and hiding places. I wanted to go into it like the model of the heart in the Franklin Institute of my Philadelphia childhood.

After a bit, I commented to Dana that my right shoulder was fiercely hurting, cramping almost, as it had been ever since the day after my previous session. She moved her hands up to that area and soon exclaimed,” There is a knife in here – a magic knife… I’m going to pull it out.” She heaved and pulled, grunting a bit. She said that it left a hole – a square sided tunnel that she immediately packed with light.

“What color light do you want?” she asked.

“Gold.” I said.

Together we pieced together our impressions that the knife was put there by someone evil to block my knowledge and my access to it. I had impressions of something out of the Lord of the Rings – a tall robed figure stabbing the knife with a curse into my heart from the back. And it was a poisoned knife, but (like all good fairy tales) I was able to encapsulate it, sheath in my own magic so it did not fester and while it blocked a great deal, it only sealed it away for a time. It did not kill me or my knowledge forever, nor did it corrupt or bend me to its own energy.

Then it seemed appropriate to go inside the tunnel. The walls were smooth, cold and gray like metal, a space age feeling. But it was not very deep and soon I saw dripping stalactites and stalagmites and realized I was in a cave deep in my body. A holy place. And soon I saw a pool – still and deep. Dana asked what was in the pool and I saw a gaudy ring.

I giggled and protested that it looked like Lord of the Rings again – the place where Bilbo and the Gollum haggle over the ring. I didn’t want it to be that ring – rather tinselly and trite and realized it was a chimera. A test, a riddle of its own.

I hesitated by the pool, worried by the ring and my fears of caves and deep places (though I had to admit this felt much safer than I think of caves being). I was at this point very agitated on the table too. Dana was massaging me somehow through all of this but I cannot remember any of it, though her hands were soothing and encouraging. Presently, she said I needed to sit down by the pool. So I did and soon my fears quieted.

“Touch the water,” she said. I dipped my fingers in and watched the ripples ring outward. I may have put my toes in at this point too, I’m not sure.

“What is it saying to you?”

I listened for a long time and finally I heard, “Patience.” And I knew I was not going to hear any more right now. The pool of knowledge and stillness was there and I could get back to it now but I needed to wait. The process is still unfolding (“ungolding” – I typed) and I must wait for it to come to me in my soul’s time.

At that point it felt like time to come out so I retraced my steps through the two tunnels and out the door. Did I close it behind me? I can’t remember. The session ended gently with me feeling energized and refreshed.

I have gone back to these places – both the pool and through the door to the place where the seed lies. It continues to be calming and comforting. I get somewhat confused about the physical connection between the two places. Do I get from one to the other within my body? Or must I come out and into the knife wound somehow? Are they different symbols for the same thing or separate places and sets of information I must rediscover? I have the feeling I must find pools of water on our Europe trip to put my feet in. And always to be on the lookout for the serendipitous happenings that bring more knowledge to my consciousness with that ring of rightness that feels so wonderfully sane and familiar.

Part of the joy of the last week or so of living with the aftermath of this session is that it gives meaning to all my longings and urgings of the last year or so to find something ancient inside myself – to go deeper inside. The Intention painting of last May of me diving into my body and leaping from my head, reaching, reaching. And the hands off the page? All that reaching into the unknown, which was so scary when painted about in – fearful masks, yet exciting too with the raven there to egg me on.

There is something there in my belly and I’ve been sensing it. I’ve been searching, reaching, uncovering. The painting process was exactly what I needed. The seed showed up. I remember how I cried while I did the homework assignment to “Paint something I didn’t understand” and did Ova with the seed/fetus buried near the right ovary. For a long time after that I cried whenever I looked at that painting.

And I tried to go in to the seed by painting my vagina in Going Inside which was affirming and wonderful to do but did not get to the seed, though I was clear at the time that part of the way to it was via the circle of dancing women. The midwife’s hands were a help but not able to get me there yet. Nor was the birth ready to happen yet as shown in the next painting of Difficult Labor. How I remember agonizing in the dark and cold of spring vacation to do that painting. And the next class session doing Fallopian Tube was inevitably inside my body, which I thought at first was in the birth canal but which soon became apparent was further in. The signs in there were ancient and flowing fast in my mind but I was unable to catch them in order to draw them. It felt so puzzling at the time, but became clear as Dana and I worked. We each had the sensation of the signs flowing past in dizzying streams, too fast and too many to distinguish or articulate. Just enough indication to know they were there – signposts.

And I had gone back and back to that scene in the fallopian tubes over the summer and early fall of 1995, compelled, absolutely compelled to paint the inside of the fallopian tubes with the little green egg or seed nestled in there. I got so excited one day near the end of school watching a Lennart Nilsson video tape that I brought it home for the summer.

It is difficult to express the love and tenderness and excitement with which I painted those pictures, with which I looked at them over recently and which I am feeling now as I write. The profound recognition I feel now about the little seed inside me – the strong pull I felt towards it in the visioning process with Dana and the painting process all last year. I cannot yet see it, read it, open it. But it is there and I love it with all my heart and soul – neither words do I use lightly but in their true meaning. Even the series of surrender paintings, those passive waiting places, and the walls, the walls of fear I had to jump over, all have meaning now.

The winter had to pass, my body had to go through its cleansing, Dana had to be ready and so did I for the next step of the revelation process to begin.

Blessed Be.