Yesterday I had an interesting lesson debating the concept of Old Masters with my students, and recounting some of the strategies used by feminists in the 70s to challenge the assertion that there were no women great artists. Elisabeth Vigée leBrun was one of the artists they produced as evidence.
I found out about Shinrin-Yoku, or forest bathing, through facebook. It’s one of those things that recirculates, as more and more tree lovers discover it, but without much more than its definition. Last week I listened to a fascinating talk by Chanchal Cabrera, a horticultural therapist, who’d both researched and used this as a clinical practice. In Japan doctors can prescribe Shinrin-Yoku and there are 44 designated forest sites. It’s a government approved form of meditation. The practice involves being in the forest; sitting and meditating or standing and staring are more beneficial than walking through it. It decreases hostility and depression, increases well-being, even lowering blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol, which can impact the immune system). Cabrera explained how trees release phytocides, volatile chemicals which move through the air sending messages to each other about pests and diseases. This is not just oak to oak, beech to beech etc, but a message to all the trees in the vicinity. Being among trees can change our own biochemistry. We share DNA with oak trees and all living things. As she eloquently put it, ‘we are tuned to resonate with Nature’. Shamanic cultures have always known this, speaking of ‘all our relations’… the stone people, the plant people, the finned, the insects, the four legged, the two legged and the winged ones. Phytocides lower cortisol levels, which are inflammatory markers of stress (if I understood the science correctly). They are absorbed through the skin… so the less clothing you wear the better! Pine trees release more phytocides than other tree species. In her clinical practice Cabrera takes cancer patients into the forest and teaches them to meditate. She argues that Nature gives free healing… even without ingestion of herbs and remedies. A 2008 study published in the Lancet found that people who live closest to a green space in an urban environment have better health than people with a higher income who live further away. Another study in Bradford found that people living close to trees or green spaces were less likely to be obese or inactive. Sadly, while more and more people are discovering the benefits of eco-therapy and the healing power of our tree relations, our mature urban trees are being cut down at a rate of fifty eight a day. According to an article in the i yesterday, more than 150,000 have been removed from urban highways since 2010. Sheffield Council has been one of the worst culprits, surpassed only by Birmingham. Whenever I consider moving to the sea, the thought of London’s many beautiful and varied trees holds me here. Hampstead Heath alone has over four hundred veteran trees, including some ancient oaks and beech trees. Kensington Gardens, where the poet Mathew Arnold encountered Pan, still has a walk of plane trees planted by Queen Caroline in the 1730’s. The striking weeping beech in the south flower walk is the place where Peter Pan fell asleep after escaping from the nursery. The Royal Parks have around 1500 veteran trees and recognises their importance in providing ‘a sense of continuity … linking past, present and future’, as well as their benefits to health, the environment, wildlife and community. For decades the woodland in Holland Park has been my sanctuary and the place I go to regenerate. Synchronistically, it also has the Kyoto Garden, which was a gift of the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce, and is still managed collaboratively with the Japanese Government. If the beautiful maple and cherry blossom trees here don’t heal you, the rocks and waterfall will. http://www.chanchalcabrera.com http://www.natureandforesttherapy.org/the-science.html http://www.ancienttreeforum.co.uk/?s=london https://www.royalparks.org.uk/press-and-media/factsheets-on-the-royal-parks/trees In the European tradition the forest is often a place of confusion and fear. It’s where lovers get lost, children are abandoned, danger lurks everywhere. The forest is a place of difference, where ‘normal’ life is suspended any anything might happen. I get disorientated in woods and forest, and can easily get lost, even in a small, urban wood like London’s Kenwood. Once a friend took me to Ashdown Forest and we might be wandering there still, if we hadn’t come across a clearing, with a cricket club and a match in progress. Following their directions, we eventually found the road, but were some miles away from the car park, in the opposite direction to where I’d expected to emerge. On Hampstead Heath I know I’ll work out where I am at some point, so being disorientated is a pleasure, making you look at a familiar place in a new way, but in a real forest you could be lost forever. The forest is a place of the imagination. It looms large in folk and fairy tales. Many of our real forests are dissected by roads, scarred by trails, studded with car parks, cafes… and even cricket or other clubs… but they retain remnants of their more potent pasts. Some remain only as ghost forests, evoked by place names. There’s a poignant chapter in the book From the Forest: A Search for the Hidden Roots of Our Fairy Tales by Sara Maitland, where she walks through the area which was once The Great North Wood, stretching between the Thames and Croydon. In Arthurian legend the mysterious forest Brocéliande is the setting for some of the most intriguing and evocative stories. Here, after his father’s death, the young Lancelot is raised by the Lady of the Lake. Unfaithful lovers are lured to a rock where they are imprisoned by the fairy Viviane, who is also said to have trapped Merlin in a stone, after learning all his magic. This Arthurian world has been mapped onto the forest of Paimpont in Brittany, the remnants of a much greater ancient forest. You can visit the alluringly named Val sans Retour or conjure up rain at the fountain of Barenton. Perhaps the archetypal magical forest is found in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night's Dream. Here the defiant lovers seek refuge, but are both confused and enchanted before emerging renewed on Midsummer’s morning. Each is now with the partner they love. The king is appeased. The patriarchal law that allows a father to kill a disobedient daughter is set aside. Balance is restored. Lovers, parents and children, spouses are reconciled. Even the fairy world is temporarily at peace. The forest can be a protective space. In Sleeping Beauty the briar forest protects the princess until her prince finally comes. It allows only the true love to pass through its many thorns and awaken her with a kiss. For Robin Hood and his Merry Men, it was a place of refuge, a home and a base from which to attack the rich and redistribute wealth to the poor. Once again, it’s a place where truth prevails. The truly noble, the honest and the oppressed are sheltered and protected while the rich and corrupt are frustrated. Robin is a Green Man, a manifestation of the mysterious figure of fertility found in so many churches, so no wonder that he can survive in the forest and outwit the law. Perhaps this is where forest meets wildwood. In the dark and bloody world of Greek Mythology, Dionysus ruled the winter months of December, January, February, while Apollo dominated the rest of the year. His festival took place near the winter solstice, on top of Mount Parnassus. “Up there in the snow and winter darkness Dionysus rules in the long night, while troops of maenads swarm around him, himself the choir leader for the dance of the stars and quick of hearing for every sound in the wastes of the night." Sophocles Antigone The maenads have had a tougher journey through the centuries than their god. They are more often called the ‘frenzied’ than the ecstatic. Their name comes from the same root as our word mania, and means the ‘raving ones’. Their wild dancing and ecstasy ends in bloodshed, with the literal tearing to pieces of small animals… and occasionally larger ones… as if discarding logic and reason could only end in horror. They seem creatures of the shadow side, unleashing the dark, repressed forces in our psyches. That they are women makes this more shocking. In Ancient Greece women were similar to slaves, having few rights, and living largely confined to the house. These women are potent, archetypal creatures, capable of uprooting trees or killing a bull. When Nietzsche acclaimed the Dionysian, perhaps he unleashed the Maenads back into the world. They await in the dark shadows of artists such as Klimt and in the subconscious realms mined by the surrealists. But unlike the Sirens and other femme fatales, the Maenads neither lure nor tempt mortal men. They are totally focused on their god and have no interest in men. As Plutarch puts it: ‘The image of Dionysus, whom she loves, stands alive before her soul…” These are ecstatic dancers, possessed by their god. Their dance is a ritual accompanied by the clashing of cymbals and the beat of drums. The drum is very similar to drums used by shamans in many cultures, across the centuries and still used today. Maenads carried the thyrsus staff of Dionysus, which ended in a pine cone. As they danced they beat these on the ground until the sound resounded through the earth and the forest. Visual images of the maenads are less bloody than their portrayal by Euripides in the Bacchae. Their dance is a ritual, a going beyond the self into connection with the divine. They share their god’s links with vegetation and festivity, as well as with wine. Dionysus was said to have discovered the grape vine, and taught men how to grow it. Classical myths often have their origins in much earlier times. Trance or ritual dance seems the most ancient of the sacred arts. It was, and remains, a way of entering an altered state and accessing the spirit realm. In the shamanic world everything is sacred. Dance deepened connections with nature and the spirits who inhabit everything, those of plants, trees and animals. Dionysus was connected with the panther, the bull and the serpent.. animals which are potent archetypal forces in shamanic cultures. When Euripides has his Bacchae weaving serpents into their hair he sees this as evidence of their madness, rather than their links to Nature and Earth. Some Ancient Greek writers described Dionysus as the creator of the fig tree, apple and even of all fruits. Visual representations of maenads focus on their dance, rather than the blood thirsty frenzy portrayed by Euripides and in some of the myths. A relief in the British Museum shows a procession of Dionysus, panther, maenad with drum and satyr. Similar images are found on vases and in mosaics. There were real as well as mythological Maenads. They were celibate, ignoring the advances of satyrs or mortals, priestesses of their god. When a statue of Dionysus appeared in a tree, Apollo sent them to set up a new temple and teach the local people the rites. We all need a bit of Maenad spirit to get through the long, dark nights of midwinter and to revision them as a necessary and sacred part of the natural cycle. This embroidered rose is probably part of a set, for a dressing table. Every woman had a dressing table, which was her personal space. It was a sign of respectability and achievement. My mother’s family were at the upper, genteel end of the working class. They had one of the first council houses, with the luxury of an indoor toilet and a bathroom. Such a house was not easily acquired. You had to be interviewed and prove you would be a respectable, well behaved tenant. In her eighties, my mother said she was shocked to learn how many of her contemporaries had grown up in families so poor they couldn’t afford to buy shoes. She’d always been well clothed and had never been hungry.
The dressing table was a woman’s domain. I remember hers having an amber glass set consisting of tray (for hairbrush, mirror and comb) and two small pots, with lids, for earrings, hairpins etc. Part of growing up was being given your own sets of these things. The glass pots remain, but the tray is long gone. When my grandmother died my mother replaced her own set with her mother’s bone china one. This rose, embroidered on linen, would have been under one of these small pots. Perhaps the other bits will turn up too, in a different drawer or cupboard. It was probably made by my mother as she always kept the silk at full thickness, while ‘experts’ recommended using only a few strands. Going through cupboards, boxes and old suitcases I’ve found lots of this beautiful, gleaming silk in many shades, along with cut out shapes in tracing paper which were used for transferring designs onto the cloth. There’s an element of luxury in embroidery. It’s associated with leisure, so signifies a freedom from the drudgery of chores. My mother never liked housework, though for much of her life she was proud to be a housewife, who did not have to work, but she was never idle. She was always, sewing, knitting, crocheting, baking. She pressed flowers and made cards. When she could no longer do any of these she created scrap books. There’s a terrible poignancy when I find these, as if she was heroically defying the tides of time, clinging to a raft of girlish things. She made all my clothes, even swimsuits. We’d go to the Co-op to choose fabric, usually buying something with modern pattern and colours. I remember a turquoise dress with an embroidered kingfisher on the big, square pocket. Every dress had some individual detail such as piping, applique, ribbon… things I can no longer name. By the time I was a teenager I longed for shop bought clothes. Surprisingly, none of my childhood clothes remain. I once dreamed I was wearing all of these dresses, peeling them off one by one, like the layers of an onion. It was as if my soul had its own archive, where these dresses were carefully preserved. By Gainsborough Ladies I don’t mean the powdered and fashionably dressed aristocrats painted, often reluctantly, by the painter of that name, though they are distant relations. I’m thinking of the ladies that decorated many of my mother’s things, from tea plates to brooches. These are often seated demurely, amid a flower filled garden, wearing bonnets upon their ringleted hair and dresses with multiple ruffles and flounces.[1] They represent a feminine imagination that is now barely visible through the mists of time. Their immediate ancestor would be the heroines created by the British film company, Gainsborough Pictures, which paid a frivolous homage to the painter by adopting his name.
According to the BFI[2], its studios in Islington “were dedicated to lower-status fare”. It’s most often remembered for the romantic costume melodramas of the 1940’s such as ‘The Wicked Lady’ and ‘The Man in Grey’ which fired the imaginations of the women of the era with their tales of gypsies, “wanton women” and wicked aristocrats. It made stars of British actors Margaret Lockwood, Stuart Granger and James Mason. Everything about these pictures was extravagant, from the plots to the costumes. They offered a temporary escape from the constraints of war time and the restraints of convention and morality. My mother has a collection of signed postcards from the stars of this period, which were stored in the little cupboard next to her armchair, along with old diaries, photos and papers. I like to think there was some lingering whiff of the Wicked Lady as she got out these plates to set the table for afternoon tea, on one of those rare occasions that someone came to visit. The brooches are probably pre-war, and may look back to an era, real or imagined, when ladies did not discard their ball gowns and disguise their selves as highwaymen. Neither did they have to leave the garden to do the chores, the cooking or the cleaning. Their lovers would be invariably charming, well dressed and affluent. They would not gamble, drink, deceive… When she married she left these brooches behind, among the things in her jewellery box on the dressing table. These, along with much else, my grandmother gave to me. I have worn them, once upon a time, on vintage jackets or blouses. I suspect the plates had been in the cupboard for decades, though I did find them on the top shelf of the cupboard next to the kitchen. They weren’t in the cupboard under the stairs, which fulfilled an out of sight out of mind function for so many things. I don’t know if my mother had any special attachment to any of these things and it’s now too late to ask her. Since her stroke we communicate more by facial expression and touch. Verbal communication is best kept to questions that can be answered by either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. This gives all her stuff an added poignancy, as if they hold secrets that will now never be unlocked. 1. gold dish, Crown Clarence Made in England; Lady in bonnet dish, Morley Ware England; Two plates, 1960’s, Alfred Meakin England 2. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/448996/ Gainsborough Pictures 1924-1951 It's always a joy to get out the Samhain box, with its little skeletons, glow in the dark bats and day of the dead skulls. I used to be happy about the growing popularity of Halloween, and have a stock of 50p pieces to distribute to the neighbour' children, until I realised the same children kept coming back in an altered disguise. This year shops are expecting a £3 million shopping spree, yet I've found myself able to resist all the garish stuff on the shelves. This seems remarkably similar whether stocked in Poundland, supermarket or more up market stores. While orange is the colour for the festival, nature has a much greater and subtler array of shades.
As a society we tend to be in denial about death and our own dark sides, so it is good to have a time when both are celebrated. Halloween confronts fear in a playful way. But Samhain is a time when the veil between world is very thin and we can welcome back our ancestors and friends. Up until 1938, it was an English tradition to bake soul cakes. Children went from door to door 'souling' for cakes or money. At midnight the souls of the dead revisited their homes. Candles were lit in every room to guide them (Whistler English Festivals). In Mythologies Yeats writes of Red Hanrahan sitting down to rest on Samhain Night and finding a door where he had never seen one before. He enters and finds inside it is still daylight and still summer. He meets an old man who guides him to a big, shining house where there is a beautiful, but tired, woman and four old women. one held a cauldron, one held a heavy stone, another a spear and the last a sword. each stood up in turn, held out their object and spoke. 'Pleasure.' 'Power.' 'Courage.' "Knowledge.' Tuning in to the changing season and honouring the dead can make this both the most mysterious and rewarding festival. It is wonderful that Oberon has been rehomed in the magical garden at Arundel Castle, commemorating the 14th Earl, Thomas Howard, a collector of art and restorer of the Norfolk family fortunes. Oberon is also much travelled, journeying around Europe for some centuries, appearing in poetry, masques, stories and opera. His fame was spread by the French medieval poem Huon de Bordeaux, where he uses his magic to help the hero complete an impossible task. A translation of this poem by John Bouchier (Lord Berners) was the inspiration for the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was first performed around 1595–96. In Shakespeare’s English woodland Oberon causes much confusion for the human lovers and casts a spell on his wife Titania, making her fall for the peasant Bottom, now transformed by an ass’s head. Though he restores order in the final act, Oberon remains a mysterious and unpredictable character. In Ben Jonson’s masque Oberon, the Faery Prince, (first performed on 1 January 1611, in the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace) the Prince of Wales Henry Frederick, took the title role. Fairy and human princes are synthesised, but King James 1 is the subject being honoured. While Oberon is celebrated by the god Silenus and his satyrs whose songs declare he ‘doth fill with grace, Every season, ev'ry place; Beauty dwells, but in his Face’ his climactic appearance in the masque ‘proclaims homage to the British Court’ and the sovereignty of the king. Melt Earth to Sea, Sea flow to Air, And Air flie into Fire, Whil'st we in Tunes, to Arthur's Chair Bear Oberon's desire; Than which there nothing can be higher, Save JAMES, to whom it flies: The costumes and sets in the Masque were designed by Inigo Jones and the Temple of Oberon in the Earl’s Garden reinvents his creation for Johnson’s masque. Set at the top of a ‘mountain’, between two obelisks, and amid a landscape of boulders and tree ferns, nothing is as it seems and magic is everywhere. The masonry is green oak. The Temple is a grotto lined with mosaic and shells. A gold crown spins in mid-air, mysteriously suspended over a stalagmite fountain. The white water sings and dances as it flows into the ground, seeming both elemental and wraith-like. Other features of the garden are equally enchanting, with gateways and pavilions also based on designs by Inigo Jones, for an earlier Earl’s garden at the long vanished Arundel House, by the River Thames (where Temple station now stands). Designed by Isobel and Julian Bannerman and intended as ‘an evocation of a Jacobean garden, not a re-creation’ it seems a fitting home for the Fairy Prince and his kin. It is playful, mischievous and enchanting with scented roses, organic vegetable garden and huge red apples hanging temptingly low on the espaliered trees. It is too reminiscent of other magical gardens, like the one at La Bête’s chateau, to steal one. Anyone foolhardy enough to do so might discover the darker side of Oberon, the Nibelungen Alberich who steals the Rhine maidens’ gold features in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. All doors are portals, though not all portals doors, but few are as magical as the Unicorn door at Kew Gardens. Not far from the main entrance, set in the boundary wall, many people walk past without seeing it at all. I have photographed this beautiful guardian in all weathers and every season. It seems quite content, as it is looking into a world other than the traffic filled road, ice cream van and tree lined streets that most of us pass through. The unicorn is such a magical creature that he originates in natural histories, rather than myth. His horn is a cure for poison and can purify contaminated water. In 400BC, the Greek historian Ctesias described it as ‘the size of a horse, with a white body, purple head, and blue eyes, and on its forehead was a cubit-long horn coloured red at the pointed tip, black in the middle, and white at the base’. Even drinking from his horn could cure stomach troubles and epilepsy. Unsurprisingly, it was very difficult to catch. In medieval times unicorn horn was a much sought after ingredient in remedies. The unicorn is so potent, yet so allusive that he can only be tamed by a virgin and, unlike his heraldic partner the lion, he has to be chained. A series of seven Gothic tapestries (1495-1505) relate the story of the hunt, capture, death and resurrection of the unicorn. The final scene shows him penned and chained to a pomegranate tree. In other versions the chains are broken. This association with the virgin led to allegorical interpretations where he represents Christ. A more intriguing narrative is hinted at in a tapestry known as The Wildwoman and the Unicorn, dated to 1500-1510, and now in the Basel Historical Museum. This is who I'm hoping to meet if I ever get through to the other side. Photo by Shandi Peterson I woke at 2 am, remembered the eclipse and saw the first bite was already taken (from top, left). I had a perfect view from my bed, with much of the landscape of the moon visible. I dozed for a while then watched the earth’s shadow slowly spread across the surface and the earth darken. At one point it was like the yin yang symbol of perfect balance. Then a red light flickers round the dark orb and the globe does turn a dried blood shade. This goes on for about an hour. By now I am standing at the window singing the moon song Dawn and Lorraine taught. Clouds have gathered so the view is less sharp but the moon is still fully visible. She is a potent, magical sight. I have never seen this before in my life and never will again. I feel the perfect view is my reward for all the moon ceremonies and the decades of worship of the Moon Goddess by her many names. It was so beautiful to see the dark globe cradled in a very thin perimeter of light. The return of the light seemed very, very slow with a long, thin crescent appearing round the bottom. The surface is now a smoky, rusty colour. I watch until I can stay awake no longer. |
AuthorHazel Riley is an author, teacher and shamanic practitioner living in London. Archives
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