The minster illuminated with white roses. Photo by Kippa Matthews

Every place has its symbol that defines it, captures its genius loci.

In London I worked in the City for a spell– one of the darker times in my life. I would often look to the guardian of that place– the pizzled dragon with its heraldic erection, and wonder.   To survive the alienation and everyday struggle I would often call on dark things to help me.  They were always there, waiting.

The York Rose

What a contrast now to find the sigil of this city, York, to be a white, five petaled mandala.  I fell in love with it when I first saw it.  Though the history dates back to the House of York in the 14th century and the War of the Roses in the 15th century, it was really the Victorians who popularized the symbol.  Great urban planners they were (though they tried to take down the city walls!) But they were also sentimentalists, and the white rose as a municipal symbol seems uniquely Victorian.

Of course the rose is the Christian symbol representing Mary– and where Mary is, we are sure to find also a much older goddess that predates Christianity. The rose is a pagan symbol– with its five petals like the five arms of the pentagram. Their cyclical, spiraled structure suggests the unfurled labyrinth of faith.

White Rose of York earrings by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

An iconic image of Mike Kelley

The news of L.A. artist Mike Kelley’s suicide has left me reeling and bereft.  The world is suddenly a much less interesting place without him.

Mike Kelley was perhaps my first real art world love.  I’d shaken off my infatuation with the Preraphaelites in high school and signed up for the whole art school experience as a rebellion, as a middle finger to all the other choices I didn’t have at the time.  I had no voice of my own, no medium I’d mastered.  I was stumbling along, and I stumbled on Kelley.

I remember going to the Newport Beach museum where this guy I’d never heard of had a solo show with peices like The Banana Man and Kappa (a scatological Japanese fairy). There were things made out of crocheted animals.  Freud and everything else was turned on its head.  My heart beat faster, looking at this show.  I went back over and over. Having never been to a circus I suddenly felt like a kid who’d been taken to see the clowns for the first time: terrified and giddy.

Later, Kelley actually came to my school to speak.  He was perhaps one of the few artists and writers who meeting in person was not a let-down.  The school I attended in the late 80s did indeed suck– not least because the chair at the time was a misogynist who was sexually harassing his women students. (Later, a group of women won a law suit against the school, but that is a matter for another post.)  In this darkness, Kelley was a light– he was, to me, a feminist artist,  deconstructing received notions of the body and framing women’s work in subversive ways.  He showed up looking like a sinister mod, with this crazy black hair and pegged trousers. He was funny, captivating and able to talk about very dark things with a lightness and beneath it all was a sly compassion.

Though I ended up working in very traditional mediums– oil paint and printmaking– I carried Kelley’s work around with me as a reminder of what is possible.

I can only think his suicide is some sort of medical failure– depression too often goes untreated. I end with this youtube video and hope it isn’t in bad taste– in it Mike Kelley talks about what he’s buying at Ameoba Music in Hollywood.  It sums up for me his unassuming presence and his creepy fascinations and characteristically gleeful attitude toward the abject. I can’t believe he’s gone.

Of all the pagan feast days, Imbolc is close to my heart. Spring is coming– and Brigid presides over the new sun, the quickening sap in the trees, the buds preparing to flower.

Brigid’s presence is felt all over this island, with many places being named after her. Brid(e) is Brigid; t is thought that her blessing was sought by brides. She is also the goddess of blackberries and swans, poets and blacksmiths–  a perfect correspondence!  I feel her over my shoulder as I work.

I have quoted Emily Dickinson’s poem 365 here before, but it is perfect here:

Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?
Then crouch within the door –
Red — is the Fire’s common tint –
But when the vivid Ore
Has vanquished Flame’s conditions,
It quivers from the Forge
Without a color, but the light
Of unanointed Blaze.
Least Village has its Blacksmith
Whose Anvil’s even ring
Stands symbol for the finer Forge
That soundless tugs — within –
Refining these impatient Ores
With hammer, and with Blaze
Until the Designated Light
Repudiate the Forge –

To celebrate today, I’ve experimented with making some incense from dried herbs and flowers– basil, bay, camomile flowers, cinnamon, dill, nettle and rosemary.  All ground up with my mortar and pestle and burned over a charcoal disc.

Blessed Imbolc, dear reader!

Imbolc Bride, Necklace by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

Performing with Renegade Tribal. That's me on the left. Photo by Jennifer Bombardiere-Lippit

Perhaps my best kept secret is that I am a dancer.  The fact that I am a dancer is proof that sheer force of will can make almost anything happen.  I do not have what this culture considers a dancer’s body.  Since childhood I have been known as “the klutz”, and in high school theatre my inability to dance was used to comic effect, if it was used at all.

In hindsight we see our missed chances, places where we blew it.  I don’t have many, but the one that is most glaring is my refusal to dance, seriously, earlier in my life. In the late 80s I lived in San Francisco, just when Carolena Nericcio was inventing American Tribal Style dance and founding Fat Chance Belly Dance. I was hanging out at Cafe Istanbul in the Mission and there were women dancing.  Not the sequinned, chiffon veil bellydance I’d seen before (which I thought cheezy) but something else totally mesmerizing and earthy, and something I really, really wanted to do.  At the end, one of the dancers tried to pull me up to join them and…I refused!  I refused to dance because I was too ashamed of my body, and certain I would make a fool of myself.

One blessing about getting older is you no longer listen to those voices. Belly dance is a haven for women who have stopped listening to those voices and just want to move, and move well.

For a few years I have been dancing seriously– in my own living room. I have had world class teachers.   Kimberly MacKoy  gave me the gift of muscle memory training– “welcome to the labyrinth of your body” she would say.  Jesse and Philippa of Morai Tribal were the ones who taught me American Tribal Style, though I am still a beginner and would sometimes come home from that class in tears, it was so hard for me.  Jesse was the first teacher to help me understand that it wasn’t hopeless and it was dancing with her that I first realized that mastering even the most basic of ATS could feel like flying.

I now study with Samantha MacLaren in Selby and perform with Renegade Tribal, and my first performance in front of other people was this weekend– something I thought I would never do.  Life surprises you sometimes. With Samantha I have continued to hone my muscle memory and choreography skills.  Samantha not only believes everyone can dance, she makes it happen. She is a powerful dancer and I’m lucky to have her as a teacher.

Along with Tribal Fusion comes exciting possibilities in costuming– the photo below is of Samantha wearing her belt and headdress I made for her Lady of the Lake solo piece.

Samantha MacLaren wearing the Lady of the Lake belt and headpiece by Feral Strumpet on Etsy, photo by Mark Zuza.

“When the soul sees Azrael, it ‘falls in love’, and its gaze is thus withdrawn from the body as if by a seduction.”– Peter Lamborn Wilson

This is one of my favourite Coil Songs– I’ve received much comfort from it.  It, as well as the painting by Evelyn de Morgan, inspired the Azreal’s Trumpet earrings.

The Angel of Death by Evelyn de Morgan

Azrael's Trumpets by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

Nevermore illustration from AntiqueGraphique on Etsy

Happy Birthday, Edgar Allen Poe.

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by the blog and has helped promote my shop over the last few days of this Poe-party.  The winner of the Poe Grimoire bookmark has been chosen by the whims of fate (out of a hat), and she is the inimitable Jo Taylor– fantastic dancer and member of the wonderful 400 Roses Morris side.

Beautiful Jo is in the back row, far left!

Another manifestation of the Nevermoore bookmark is, of course, still available in my Etsy shop!

Poe Nevermore Grimoire Bookmark by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

This is the second post of three in honor of Poe’s Birthday on Thursday.  I’m celebrating by having a giveaway in my Etsy shop!  Read on for details.

I can’t remember my first encounter with Poe.  I  know I had to read The Tell Tale Heart when I was about 9 and it seared itself in my consciousness– one of those moments where you feel the initial betrayal of the universe, the dispelling of childhood.  Yes, the world is a dark place!  But I also have a visceral memory of the Vincent Price hour-long dramatic interpretation– reproduced in the above Youtube video.  Though, I must have seen it as a re-run.  Watching this I remember Price’s profound effect on me– the camp in his performance– the perfect last facet of his persona– was lost on me as a child.  You could call it a crush, that feeling he gave me, but I told no one, of course!  Others were cutting out pictures of Shaun Cassidy from Tiger Beat.  Yeah, it explains a lot– I also had a thing for Dan Haggerty/Grizzly Adams.

In Angela Carter’s meditation on Poe, “The Cabinet of Edgar Allen Poe” she imagines him as a child.  His infancy is invented with her charateristic cynical compassion and narrative shifts, like facets in the void-world of the story.  (She no doubt learned a trick or two from Poe–taking his unreliable narrators one step further). His mother, a vaudevillian actor, is rendered vividly– to this day I can’t think of Poe without seeing the grease-painted ghost of his mother close behind.  Such is the power of Carter’s writing.

“Edgar would lie in prop-baskets on heaps of artificial finery and watch her while she painted her face.  The candles made a profane altar of the mirror in which her vague face swam like a magic fish….”

The Nevermore Grimoire Bookmark by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

And, perhaps the only thing that would make my Poe Nevermore bookmark more lovely is if it were between the covers of The Trials of Edgar Allen Poe, a collection of poems by one of my favourite poets and essayists, Ned Balbo.

Today is the last day to enter the Nevermore bookmark giveaway!  Blog, Tweet or click the “like” button on your favourite item in my Etsy shop to be entered to win.  Be sure to comment here so I know to enter you.  Winner will be chosen tomorrow by a highly random, Discordian approved process that may involve kittens.

16th century illustration of the Maelstrom off Lofoten, Norway

This is the first of 3 posts celebrating Edgar Allen Poe’s 203rd birthday on Thursday the 19th.

Lofoten is where my great-grandparents were from.  My great-grandfather was a fisherman, like the Old man in Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelstrӧm”.   The search for one’s roots always involves a bit of myth-making, and I find this a fortuitous geneology. (I live in a country that makes a fair bit of money from ancestral tourism, and it’s with some chagrin I admit to wanting to visit these islands.) But I first knew of this place from the Poe story.

Thanks to Dylan Carlson for reminding me of Harry Clarke's beautiful illustration.

The Maelstrӧm itself is exaggerated by Poe: it’s a swallower of ships and devourer of whales, appearing as “a smooth, shining and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily, round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice…”

For all his sentimentality and persistent melancholy, Poe’s work has been one of the earliest influences on my own writing.  I am indebted to him, not least for giving me a certain mythic vision of my roots, even if it is the howling, watery maw of hell itself!

The "Nevermore" Grimoire Bookmark by Feral Strumpet on Etsy

Beautiful Tattoo Designs by Sarah Antoinette Martin: http://sara-land.blogspot.com

Above is a collection of designs by tattoo artist Sarah Anoinette Martin– if you are lucky enough to live in Brooklyn!

Today is Friday the 13th, a day that always felt a bit lucky.  Maybe it’s just the contrarian in me!  Friday is Freya’s day. There are 13 lunar cycles in a year.  13 witches in a traditional coven.  In a baker’s dozen, it means that extra cupcake.

To celebrate, I’m holding a one day sale in my Etsy Shop– everything is 13% off.  Use coupon code FRIDAY13.

Lucky Cat Earrings by Feral Strumpet on Etsy. All profits from these go to the RSPCA.

A stand-in for the face of Mary Smith, hanged for witchcraft in 1616.

396 years ago today a woman named Mary Smith was hanged for witchcraft in Norfolk, allegedly after a falling out with other villagers over the price of cheese.  Just one of the thousands of women to die in such a way at this time, the details of her life are completely lost to us.  Margaret Murray’s “The Witch Cult in Western Europe” contains a long Appendix of just such a list of witches in England and Scotland.  Mary Smith, with her common, every-woman name, is not among them.

Some claim the epidemic of witch burning during the 17th century was a systemic extermination of a certain kind of woman, or it was a mass hysteria. It certainly was singular consolidation of power– of supposed medical science over herb lore, of Christian customs over ancient, inherited Pagan ritual and the written word over oral history.  And the losers in it all were women folk.

Now, it’s big in the tourist trade, this particular bit of history.  Ghost tours make their rounds every night, the guides competing fervently for the tourist dollars. They might visit Tyburn on the Knavesmire near the race track, where executions once took place.  Many women who died there were accused of killing their husbands– considered high treason at the time.  The “Terrible Tales” bus makes its rounds, its sides painted with garish atrocities, and there’s the York Dungeon’s new attraction– “See Witches Burned Alive.” The ads promise “the witch hunt is on! Hear the screams and feel the heat as the accused are burnt alive before your eyes.” I can’t say how much I hate this aspect of the tourist trade, this sentimentality in reverse– the indulging in the sufferings of others.

Looking back at history will always be like looking into a shattered mirror.  How much more if one is a woman, picking up the shards and finding so many missing, deliberately destroyed.  And yet the impulse to wholeness is human, and we persist. As mothers of invention, we fill in the blanks, courting ghosts and making do– mending, as we have always done.