The female metaphor - virgin, mother, crone - of the dynamic cosmological unfolding : her embodiment in seasonal ritual as a catalyst for personal and cultural change

Abstract

This research is a study of the Female Metaphor in her three aspects of Virgin, Mother and Crone. It is an interpretation of these three faces as representing the Dynamic by which the Cosmos unfolds, that is, the extant Creativity that is in continual transformation and has always been so. Accordingly, as this thesis takes the Cosmos to be a seamless whole, the conscious alignment with the continual process of transformation innate to Being. Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme call the composition of these three, cosmic grammar. The ritual celebration of seasonal points are then developed as a method of embodying and sensualizing, and speaking this deep Dynamic of Creativity. These ritual celebrations are based in ancient Western spiritual practice that relates with Earth's cyclical transitions. Through methods of ritual, meditation, imagination, dance and storytelling, over the period of the annual seasonal cycle, I created a context, which sought to enable more harmonious relationship with self, other and Cosmos through identification of the self with an organic and primordial process innate to the unfolding Cosmos. I found it to be a process that catalyzed personal transformation of the participants over time - a transformation that has clear and inevitable cultural implications. While it is not the focus of this thesis to track these cultural changes, such change is implicit in the personal and relational changes experienced and noted, since the personal and the cultural are mutually embedded in a shamanic process like this is.

Date of Award	2002
Original language	English