Yamamba
“No word can say as much as silence.” -Kawabata
Keywords: boundaries, craft, preservation
In old folktales, travelers wandering into Yamamba’s remote mountain territory often disturb her peace. She only wants to swap insults with the crows and tend to her hearth and home. Yet people come knocking on her door, or she sees them wandering about, hopelessly lost. She will often offer to help them, but that doesn’t mean they will survive her assistance. Yamamba doesn’t care for the company of humans, whose senses fail to discern all the living things in her domain. Their ears are dull. They cross the natural boundaries existing all around them. They wander into caves and get eaten by bears. They scare birds, mishandle the mountain’s native flowers and herbs, and trample all her lizard and insect friends. So Yamamba hides her ogress looks beneath an acceptable guise when they come around and does her best not to eat them.
There is no beauty without strategy. A mountain. A house. A self. All these sanctuaries need rules. In Japanese culture, forestlands are institutionally protected and widely respected by the people. Privacy is also sacred. Yamamba reminds you that a psyche is a house of many rooms. There is no need to fling your doors wide for anyone who comes knocking. Moreover, is it really a brag to be “an open book?” The American concept of “openness” disregards our human need for reflection and introversion. Yamamba will tell you it takes time and space to live the life you want to live. So if someone wanders into the one place in the house you have forbidden them to enter, gather up that man-sized pot and light the fire.
Reflections:
-
How do you cultivate and honor the beautiful spaces in your life?
-
Boundaries make people feel safe. Do you feel safe?
-
If you have nothing to protect, you have nothing to value.
“"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."
—The Weird Sisters, from Shakespeare’s Macbeth
Keywords: Attunement, Ritual, Summoning
Gatherings in the dark of night. The secret book listing their names. Orgies. Hierarchy. Devil possession. In the theatre of masculine fear and desire, the Witches Coven struck terror into the hearts of many Europeans between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Inspired by accounts of sightings of groups of women imbued with supernatural powers, the “Weird Sisters” in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth symbolized chaos, premonition, and strife. Their powers reportedly frightened audiences so much that people shrieked, fainted, and, according to rumor, suffered heart attacks. In treatises describing covens centuries ago, Satan appears as Head Witch and coven playboy, schooling his followers in the arts of magic and debauchery. How else could a group of women exert such influence over the weather, crops, birth, and death without a man to guide them?
The fear was never really about magic. It was about women gathering beyond the reach of male authority. A woman’s capacity to ground and connect her feminine energy to the people and places around her can manifest her will. When assembled, outraged women can manifest revolution. Consider the Argentinian Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the French Women’s March on Versailles, and the Woman’s Anti-Pass March in South Africa to understand what can be accomplished when women work together outside the realms of men and law. Will we embody the chaotic forces of nature to challenge structural abuses? Cause strife for lawmakers who seek to oppress marginalized people? Will we consult diabolical texts and arcane knowledge to educate ourselves? Will we love each other however we please and predict the inevitable failure of the nuclear family?
HELL YES. It’s not that we want to scare anyone to death. Truthfully, we want to scare the life back into them.
Witch's Coven
Reflections:
-
Do you pay homage to lunar and seasonal cycles?
-
When do you share or set goals with the people in your community?
-
In the company of women, attend a lecture, work with clay, or put your collective hands in the dirt to make a community garden.
