“The butterfly teaches us to not be afraid of change and transformation for, as warm and fuzzy as a caterpillar may be, it is the butterfly that lives fully and beautifully after having endured the fear and darkness of the unknown to reach the light outside the cocoon.” Pg. 178, SUN BEAR.

Sharing and setting limitations.

I had two dreams last night where my animus was most distinctly attracting my curiosity. I was offered delicious food which I did not have to go shopping for or cook. Then in another dream I was kissed on the neck and lips gently as in some film noir by a man who looked like Tyrone Power. My animus, the unconscious masculine side of a woman, was asking for attention.

I am listening!

Then awake from the dream world enjoying the morning, I was outside with the cats in my garden. A lovely butterfly came with the usual circle dance up to me from the west. I was focused on the symbol of spring as were my cats. Thinking it was a bit early for such a transformation to happen.

I went back into my cave and did research.

I pulled out two books; The Once & Future Goddess, A Symbol For Our Time by Elinor W. Gandon (1989) and Dancing with the Wheel The Medicine Wheel, Workbook by SUNBEAR (1991).

As always, I learned new things about art, nature and being in tune with a moments time of learning, is so important, synchronicity wise.

“Raven writes about what a courageous act of self-exposure it is for a woman to positively identify herself with her work and say something that challenges the existing and prevailing worldview. When she expresses herself without the support of a social, economic, and cultural base she has not participated in the mainstream of the culture. “The culture does not operate from her perspective. Her contribution has neither spoken to it, nor been understood by that system,” which is just what happened to Judy Chicago…

An energetic, assertive woman freely in touch with her own sexuality, and working directly from the erotic power, Chicago evolved an abstract form, the butterfly-vagina. This symbol was to become the core of her new iconography in The Dinner party, a monumental and complex work of art that is often misunderstood…

“The idea is obviously not to reduce all women to cunts, as society itself often does. [Chicago] sees the butterfly as metaphysical references to the whole issue of that it means to be ‘feminine,’ how that word reveals the slant in our values and how those values can be challenged by using the vernacular imagery of the female, ‘I was struggling with the issue of making the feminine holy.’ ”

 Pg. 322 The RE-EMERGENCE OF THE GODDESS: A SYMBOL OF OUR TIME.

• Arlene Raven (Arlene Rubin: July 12, 1944, Baltimore, Maryland – August 1, 2006, Brooklyn, New York) was a feminist art historian, author, critic, educator, and curator. Raven was a co-founder of numerous feminist art organizations in Los Angeles in the 1970s.

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