On the Winter Solstice last December, I pulled an archetype card for the coming year. I was buoyed by the image that appeared to me: that of the mysterious and sensuous Siren. Kim Krans, creatrix of the deck writes: “…the Siren calls and the world spins. What we thought we wanted pales in comparison to the sweet allure of her song… She eats rules.” With the sighting of the mythic mermaid, I had the thought that my year would be filled with delicious, intimate explorations that would allow me to deepen the connection I’ve been cultivating with pleasure and sexuality for the past few years. But overall, in these past months, this has not been the case. I’ve mostly been in survival mode, dragging myself through the days, selling strollers, diapers and baby clothes to new parents and wondering, once again, what my life is even for.
What I forgot is that the Siren archetype also represents our forays into the underworld. “Whether the thing calling to us is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is somewhat irrelevant — it’s the journey that matters. And the work of the Siren is to take us on a deep psychic descent. Following her song, we go down, down, down… to the place where lessons are learned and courage must be rallied to find our way back to dry land,” explains Krans.
I have been deeply immersed in several ritualistic practices this year: the Temazcal (Mesoamerican sweat lodge ceremony), a ritual working with garlic as a medicinal element to more deeply explore my sexuality, Butoh and therapy. Through these practices, I have had a few ecstatic moments of feeling the vibrancy and magic of life. Following each ceremonial Temazcal, I often plunge my sweaty body into the refreshing waters of a beautiful, lily-covered pool that I’ve been swimming in since I first came to Oaxaca in 2006. In those brief moments, I truly feel myself reborn and intimately connected to the vivacious Circle of Life that always surrounds and supports me, but can be obscured by the drudgery of daily chores and responsibilities.
Months ago, I dove into the pond, wrapped in a gauzy sarong and my human body was inhabited by the spirit of Mermaid. As I moved through the chilly waters, the thin fabric clinging to my body became an iridescent, scaly tail. A mythical, unearthly element rose up through the murky waters and I felt the elements of this hybrid, non-human being alive in me. While I was connected to the sensuality and vivacity of the moment, I was not bereft of anger, grief and longing either. It is almost as if the bottom half of the mermaid represents the sensual and pleasure-filled element, and the upper half — the human half — represents the frightening, screaming, seductive yet dangerous lure of dark emotion. La Sirena holds these extremes with a strange grace.
The Merfolk haunt and support me simultaneously. They unexpectedly arose again in the final ritual del ajo (garlic ritual) on the recent new moon in Cancer (July 2023). The ceremony this month centered around our lineages in the realms of intimacy and sexuality. I was feeling quite nervous and unsettled about it since I know that there is a lot of repression and trauma in the recent generations of my mostly Mormon family (especially for the women). But the ancestors who came to me were not human forefathers and mothers. We were asked about our origins, our clans and our purpose in this lifetime. I went all the way back. This is what came to me following the somatic practice:
The origin of every, every, every little thing is water. I come from there. From there I come. And my lineage is the lineage of the sea creatures: anemones, jellyfish (yes, I am from the Clan of the Jellyfish), the octopus, the things with no name that move in undulations. I am here to feel pleasure, the pleasure of these watery origins. And I am here to be a container that can hold all of the emotions — including rage, the most profound grief of all the worlds, fear and joy.
And so it is: Eros and Grief intimately intertwined throughout our experiences. In order to fully feel our pleasure, we must be willing to move deep into the pain of this thing called living. Remembering this has offered me new insight into my journey at this time and that letting go can often be a long and arduous process. Restoring confidence in life itself, after so much loss of faith, takes patience and tenacity… and a willingness to fall apart, again and again and again. The spirit of these mysterious hybrid sea-creatures, of the merfolk, is still with me… even though it certainly doesn’t feel like I thought it would.
This is an invitation to accept and embrace all of the various parts and sides of myself. So it requires leaning into the angry, dangerous, screaming sea creature that is the terrifying dark side of the Siren, at the same time I learn to love her/my sensuous, electrifying and seductive selves. There is much resistance in me. One of the ways it manifests physically is through a chronic and infuriating tension in my head, face, jaw, neck and shoulders. Often, this tension feels like a rigid metal cage that encloses the entire upper part of my body. It is my mind… trying to keep me safe and make me feel protected. But it is killing me. It is not allowing feelings to flow through me. I experience it as stagnation and stuckness in my life. The tension makes it very hard to feel appreciation for all the beauty that does, indeed, exist in my life.
So… what do I do with all of this resistance? Deep down, I know that resisting the resistance will not help at all; it only adds to the feeling of rigidity and brittleness. Pushing against the forces that seem to be holding me back only increases their hold over me. I must also accept the resistance, be with it. I must reassure my inner fetus, child and adolescent that I will not abandon them. I will joyfully abide and attend to myself, even deep within the walls of protection I have built around my heart to prevent myself from feeling injured and wronged. It goes against my instincts, but my heart is yearning to be free from the acute pain of loss.
Thus, I journey deeper into the dark underworld with no idea of how I will move through it… with only a few drops of sweet faith that, one day, I will come back to the worlds of the living more whole than I could ever have imagined.
In the Name of Rafa 