THE WOMB ON CRUTCHES.

MEATING THE MOTHER MANDALA

Samten de Wet

 

— "Their words
are the bones
and marrow
of the buddha ancestors
who have attained the way
and have been passed on
since olden times."
Dogen, Instruction for the Tenzo.

First, we have to create, fabricate, manufacture a:

A SETTING FOR MEETING THE MONSTER

A Japanese harp on the polished surface of the table of black lacquer. There is a landscape on the wall - a 1940 print - a mountain in mist at dawn; two ancient spruce trees in the foreground, (or are they pine tress?), hills fading into the distance. Almost Arcadian.

Now we are in a dream. We are a dream. But, what was in the stable? It was not a baby, or The Baby, but, it was a Monster. Or was it?

The Cradle of Iron.

We have to get to know the monster. We have to give It\He\She a Name. AND: we have to meet the Monster.

This Monster is linked to:

The Mother's Meat Mandala - and King Herod lifting his skirt to see what it feels like to be a Can Can dancer. The lifting up of the skirt - a profound revelation of the Cervix of Origination.

  MILAREPA undergoes a Mother Meat Mandala, when he uses the bones of his mother as a meditation cushion.

The House was between two spruce trees, (or were they Pine), a mountain in mist in the background.

The House, the Palazzo, the Room, the Stable, the Site, the Cave - of the Monster - or the Birth of the Divine Being. The Dream:

"We drive up to the old Palazzo. It is also "... the room of the ancestors." () Is the Monster to be found in the Room of the Ancestors? This is indicated by the Mandala of Mother Meat Dream of: Oct.27th 1988. Sun. INSERT From the Dream Book.

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The nuclear history of meat and bone.

26.12.1988:

—"Jung called this circling approach to an image CIRCUMAMBULATION. The best way to find out for oneself is to beat around the bush, to walk in circles, to see a thing from all sides without being distracted by associations that pull the vision in other directions."

 

Strangely enough, while working through the Mothers Meat Material - I had come to the conclusion that NO solution to the image could be found - and called this `The Revolving Door' process/symbol. It is the archetype of CIRCULATIO.

Another conclusion could be that the `Monster' is actually the Ancestral Mother, or the Maternal Ground, i.e. The Matrix.

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Dreamt of mothers legs almost meaty bones, her skin showing holes into the bone. The death aesthetics - Venus and the Reaper - Eliphas Levi's Death image.

MEDEA slaughtering her children .

Offering MEAT to Vajra Varahi.

Francis Bacon/ Battleship Potemkin.

The nurse with shattered eyeball.

My great-grandmother threw herself in front of a train and was cut in half.

I journey into my genetic history,

the Family DNA Tree and the Biological Ark.

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Of course this resonates with my Venus in Scorpio, and is actually a manifestation of Persephone, the Venus of the Underworld.

Or rather, it is the Emergence of the Goddess of the Black Orchid - Hecate. Ruler of the Psychic Lacuna!

 

—"Recognition is one thing,

but a womb on crutches is another."

Alba Bewick (Leda) in `ZOO' by Peter Greenaway.

 

"As F. M. Von Helmont said, the grave in the great world corresponds to the womb in the less world, a place of renewal, not of destruction."

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My mother in the wheelchair, or later, in the hospital bed, unconscious with the drip hanging above her.Her dreams, which she related to me at that time, were images of a Celestial Marriage.Then she was led through the Valley of the Shadow of Shock treatment.

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While from CIRCUS came the transmission of Knee Greed O! The Work on the Cremation of the Mother. Why would the Anima be burnt? This was followed by a transmission on the subject requested from the Tarot.

 

Death by Fire or mere burning of the remains? The Splendid City, the Ruined City and the Dream of the Burning of the Corpse - not enough wood.The worms on the ground, exquisite aesthetics of the half-burnt body - like a nun's shroud, white Brussels lace etc. Children to collect wood, from the battered houses. Later - out come huge balls of phlegm. The arm fell out of the pyre. I picked it up.

The arm falls out of the pyre - the Boy picks it up. I picked it up.

 

At 705 Sunset Place after looking at the body of a Swapo "terrorist" burning in Scope magazine just prior to leaving for Stonehenge.

 

I am in Benares along the Ganges and the burning ghats, on the river - looking at the huge flaming piles of cremating bodies, corpses.

 

A dream of the Queen and the Queens' Mother in a great neo-Renaissance Palace.

 

Childhood fears of doctors, thunder, spiders and pregnant women. It adds up as evidence of my insecure gestation. Those men in white coasts with rubber gloves and steel instruments trying to rip me out of my Mother-Cave.

There was no place to hide really, in a ruined womb. But it was my mothers heart that saved me. She pleaded for the life of her unborn child. And it was my strong heart, that saved me, in the moments after I slipped into the world from between my mothers' legs - she was eating a salad sandwich.

...***...

womb

THE MANDALA OF MOTHER MEAT DREAM.

My mother is in hospital, like an old Goddess of Europe, she sits with rotting bandages.When we lift her skirt I see that one of her legs has been amputated - it looks like a Meat Mandala - a Mother's Meat Mandala =

M.M.M.

There is some doubt whether she has three legs or not. (I always seem to be in Antwerp!) Later I am rummaging through the cupboard, (or is this the Famous Wardrobe of the Mother?), find a broken chocolate in the form of a Buddha - some knitting, plastic bags, an apple - I am trying to find perfume - Eau du Cologne - with which she can sprinkle herself. Then I am crying that she is dying, to my Father who says he can give me a lift to the hospital, but not home again, as he has to go to a meeting.

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A collection of letters from my mother.Still locked up in a box at 'Watersedge'.

An image of a dream. A San woman, wrinkled yellow skin and loincloth - is setting up fine nets on a green landscape. Her action has a name, which I have forgotten - but the nets brought to mind my mothers' fine hair-nets. Associations of weaving a web to hunt - Maya, the spider &c. Note: The 'green landscape' was a combined mixture of watercress and Astroturf.

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I remember my mother's wardrobe. It was huge, in a dark wood, imbua I think, with the veins of the wood forming wonderful patterns. Inside, it needed an archaeologist to work through the layers of debris that had collected over the years. There was no order. Stockings banked up in various stages of decay. Pills and make-up, bags, purses, receipts from shopping expeditions, shoes and boxes on the lower shelves. And the dresses.

The mother is the re-entry reality to existence. That is, she is the runway and landing strip, by which we enter into Life itself. "But Mommy", said the little boy. The mother heals the trauma of death. The images of birth and putrefaction are bound together with lead chains. Or is it a Golden Chain?

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Now it is utterly lost, that small LINGERIE Label, cracked at the one corner and made of bone or Bakerlite. The Nostaglia of Bakerlite. A label from one of the drawers of my mother's wardrobe. I can still smell the stale stockings, before the days of pantyhose.

This is another dream image:

"An old Grandmother helping with the task of sorting out the mess."

The Palazzo Dream of: Ancient MSS.etc.

I am convinced that the Cinqueterra has very powerful telluric forces. In a day and a half at Levanto, I underwent further surgical researches into my psyche.The Baby in the Iron Crib. La Bibia di Ferro.The Cunt is my Dweller on the Threshold. Though I claim freedom from the biological programme, I must admit that regression has been in progress for many years - driving me back to that awful sojourn in the ruined womb of my mother.A horror, a fear so deep that I feel as if my heart has turned to a block of ice. The LACUNA again. And remember the Heart of the Giant Tortoise was torn out.

That day in the train when my mother said: "Don't go, Andre." The tone of her voice was very soft, but retrospectively, it contained a profound plea for help which I ignored. At that stage she had only had four shock treatments. Later, whether I came or went, was of no concern to her.But in the times we were together, there was a deep understanding, and almost a gift that she was always giving to me. It consisted of the fact that she wished me to continue with the creativity of my own life and not to accept the reality of her cancer. She dealt with her pain in utter silence.

Remember this Dream:

"Dreamt (in a train) my mother was beautiful I stroked her face and said her complexion was lovely, but she must use a cream."

I am always trying to find cream or perfume to moisten or scent the Rotting Roses, The White Roses and the Red Roses, and The Black Orchid that encloses my beating heart with its dark petal fingers.

My floral Nigredo, my Flowers of Ash. Her Katabasis.

My mother's death and the birth of Carmen Lucinda.Red Light, born on Christmas Eve. Aurora's birth in Turin, and the visit to the grave of the Antinori grandmother in Naples. Alpha & Omega.Elsewhere I referred to this as The Bookend Principle. Comings and Goings.A One-Way Ticket from the Womb to the Tomb, and back again. The Great Return Ticket.

  Today, alone for a day - dreams of rotting teeth and an appeal to my father to help me - the day before - burning butter and my mother entering the door at 25 Weetwood Road.

Behind her, the blue cerulean sky and the pine trees that she loved so much. The pine trees so sacred to Kybele.

The Seven Holy Fires of Samothraki:

The DACTYLS, the iron ores removed from the Mothers' Body.

Rotting Flesh and Rotting Lacework.

So much rot to feed the Seeds.

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August 6th, 1980

A dream of my mother dying. Her coffin and cremation atop a mountain. I do much crying. My father and toilets. A sort of air terminal.

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15th Oct, 1985. This tarot reading was done in Rome at Helen Birch's home two weeks before my mother died. I called it the Westertoring Reading. 1. Two of Coins. 2. Queen of Cups. 3. Horseman of Swords. 4. Arcanum 19. 5. Ace of Sceptres. 6. Arcanum 3. 7.Arcanum 21.

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July 1st,1986.

I see my mother coming down Weetwood Road, in the distance, wearing a bright floral skirt. I pick her up, she is small like a baby girl again. In the house I have to chase people out - men who are usurpers. Dream repeat of a beautiful Dionysian Fabric, perhaps printed with vines and grapes. Awoke to recall that Dionysos is 'The Moistener' and that Western Cape is a Vine area.

...ooo...

Published by:

UROBOROS,

[1] Dogen, Moon in a Dewdrop, Writings of Zen Master Dogen, Edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1985, p. 53