CRUCIFIXION

Explanation for the Creative Piece

Vivienne Elanta 12021131

Ecofeminism S221 April 2003

Central to ecofeminist philosophy is the exploration of the link between the oppression and exploitation of women and nature inflicted by patriarchy. Karen Warren says, “Some ecofeminists have explored the symbolic association and devaluation of women and nature that appears in religion, art, and literature” (p.268). My creative piece affirms this ancient connection between women and nature, honouring and celebrating women’s sacred and deeply creative powers, expressed in art and literature.

Today is Good Friday, and in the Christian tradition it is the day when Christ was crucified on the cross. I am feeling quiet, contemplative and very creative. I have just finished my creative piece, or rather I shall call it my creative peace. Let me tell my story from the beginning.

Exactly ten years ago, as I was travelling home in my car from a therapy session, an image of a naked, pregnant woman nailed to a cross appeared in my mind’s eye. No matter how hard I tried to think of other things, thinking that this was ridiculous, the image would not go away. So I bought clay and set to work, never having worked with clay before. A few hours later I nailed her to the cross, and placed her on my altar and thought no more of it.

Three nights later I woke up drenched in perspiration with one desperate thought, to take her off the cross fast. Fumbling with kitchen knife and fork, I eventually freed her. Crouched on the floor next to the bed I held her to my heart and in that moment emotions of deep pain flooded my whole being for hours. Endless tears rolled down my cheeks like a brook flowing down a hill. I cried with the crying earth and I cried with all beings and I cried with all suffering women. The pain that I felt was so intense and deep, it seemed unbearable. My partner John slept through the whole event. My wailing would not even stir him the slightest.

When the dawn chorus began, the pain subsided, the tears dried up and I strongly felt to wrap her up in a black shawl and then placed her back onto the altar. There she lay for many weeks, undisturbed, like a chrysalis.

Then on my birthday, the 22nd of June she “insisted” to be brought into the centre of a circle of women friends. I carefully released her from the shawl, held her to my heart, bringing tears to my eyes again. She seemed to want to go around the circle, so I passed her on, every woman holding her to their heart and weeping, and passing her on in turn. No one uttered a word during the entire process. When she completed the circle I placed her on a green shawl in the centre of the circle, as we sat in silence for some time. We ended by swaying in a dance, singing, “…all will be well again I know…,” (“The Bells of Norwich”). None of this was planned or thought out. The event was totally spontaneous and it felt like this ritual created itself and did us, rather than we doing the ritual.¹

I want to say that at the time I did not identify myself as a Christian, a Pagan or a Feminist. What touched me, was that the women all had a similar response to the naked, pregnant woman and the women did not know that she had undergone the ritual of crucifixion many weeks prior to the gathering of this event. I suspect that something very archetypal was at work here.

For me she represents my own crucifixion as a woman growing up in a strongly abusive patriarchal family. She represents the crucifixion of all women. She represents the deep wounding of the feminine and of the earth, inflicted by a patriarchal world -view. She represents the crucifixion in the denial of the feminine within men. She also represents the journey of Inanna’s death and rebirth, much older than the Christian version.

Today on Good Friday many Christians all over the world gather to worship the death and resurrection of Christ, their Saviour. Five thousand years ago the Sumerian goddess, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth descended into the underworld to console her grieving sister Ereshkigal. Erishkigal’s husband Gugalanna, the great bull of heaven had just been slain by Gilgamesh, the first archetypal patriarchal hero.

In the wildness of her grief, Ereshkigal hung Inanna off a meat hook to rot. Three days later she was rescued, taken off the meat-hook and allowed to ascent, bringing fertility and life back to the land, a ritual enacted every year, which tied its people deeply to their land and its seasons and honoured the feminine powers.

Jean Houston, a leading spiritual psychologist, has said that the DNA of the western psyche has its origins in Sumeria, the cradle of our civilisation.² If that is the case then it makes sense why I, as a western woman, can with the help of a clump of earth, tap deep into ancient knowings and share this with my sisters without explanation. Deep knowings of the cycle of death and rebirth within the human psyche and within nature were known and honoured by women throughout the ages.

With the coming of the Christ we forgot much of our ancient ways, that of our ties to the land and the rhythms of the seasons. It became a worship of a male on the cross, a religion that persecuted women and nature. This view is powerfully supported by Lynn White Jnr.(1966) in his paper “Historic Roots of Our Ecological Crisis”. Warwick Fox, describing White’s contribution, says, “especially in its Western form, Christianity is the most anthropocentric [ie. human-centred] religion the world has seen’ and that, accordingly, ‘Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt’ for the ecological problems that have attended the ‘Occidental, voluntarist realisation of the Christian dogma of man’s transcendence of, and rightful mastery over nature”(p.5).

Today on Good Friday she is once more nailed to the cross, reminding us that things must die in order for life to continue. She also gives the deeply wounded the opportunity to undergo a resurrection of the healer; the healed.

My creative piece has brought me more in touch with my creativity, the feminine principle and nature, which in my view are inseparable. Easter Sunday brings the promise of new life, through the resurrection of the Christ in female form, offering spring to the landscape of the human soul.³

I made her of brown clay to celebrate Earth. I made her of brown clay to celebrate my sisters, especially my dark sisters. I covered her big beautiful swollen belly with the web of life, celebrating her fecundity. From her breasts flows milk, and from her vulva drips honey. I covered her not with a thorny crown, but with a halo, that of a serpent eating her own tail, symbolising the never- ending ecological and spiritual cycle of death and re-birth. The wood for the cross I salvaged from a rubbish heap, which came from the body of a murdered tree sister.

May she, who is the Holy One, guide me this Easter to my own resurrection, my own creative peace.

REFERENCES

Warren, Karen J, 1998, ‘Ecofeminism: Introduction’ in Michael E. Zimmerman et. al. Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology

Wolkenstein, Diane and Kramer, Samuel Noah, 1983, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth – Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer, Rider&Co., London

Fox, Warwick, 1990, Toward a Transpersonal Ecology, Shambhala Publ., London

Zimmerman Michael E. et. al. 1998 Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology Prentice-Hall, New Jersey

1 Tarquam McKenna, a Jungian/Art and Psychotherapist, suggested this attitude to ritual to me.

2 Jean Houston at her workshop “The Bones are Rising”, on the story of Inanna’s descent, 1995.

3 Easter Sunday is also the time of the full moon of the spring equinox, the time when the Sumerians celebrated the New Year Akitu festival, which was the sacred marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi, symbolising the rebirth of spring and the fecundity of life.