Books now also available as E-Books!

I'm pleased to offer the following books in Apple (Ipod, Iphone and Ibook) format from Blurb.com for just $5.00 to $10.00!  I'm so happy to make the books available in this way to those who cannot afford them in hard copy.

THE RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE

A Divination System

Soft cover:                           $27.95
Hardcover, Dust Jacket:   $41.95
Hardcover, ImageWrap:   $45.95

Apple format E-book:        $5.00

 In the Tarot, the Higher Arcana is a progression through what mythologist Joseph Campbell called the "Hero’s Journey".  The first card in the traditional Tarot deck  is The Fool .  The Fool represents the utterly open innocence, and infinite possibilities,  with with we incarnate into this world.  The Arcana progress through  revelations, trials and initiations. The last card of  is The World, the return Home. Although my Oracle Deck, which features 52 illustrations,  is not a Tarot, I have  used this metaphor in its creation.

The journey is a Circle.

To learn more about "The Rainbow Bridge", visit the Blog: 

 http://rainbowbridgetarot.blogspot.com/2011/02/introduction-13-card-reading.html

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The Masks of the Goddess

Sacred Masks and Dance

THE MASKS OF THE GODDESS, beautifully illustrated with photographs by Thomas Lux, Peter Hughes, Anne Beam, Ileya Stewart and others, documents a collection of 30 multi-cultural masks of Goddesses created by artist Lauren Raine. The collection of masks traveled throughout the U.S, from the Spiral Dance in San Francisco to the Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors in New York City, continually in use by choreographers, ritualists, and storytellers for almost 10 years, as they celebrated the Divine Feminine in myth, history,  and within our own lives. The book includes stories of the Goddesses, articles, performance excerpts, and interviews collected during those years.

Softcover                                 $54.95
Hardcover                               $60.95
Hardcover, ImageWrap        $64.95

Apple E-book:                         $ 9.99

www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/504345

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Spider Woman's Hands 

Weaving a New Web

Softcover:                              $40.95
Hardcover, Dust Jacket:     $48.95
Hardcover, ImageWrap:     $51.95

Apple Ebook:                         $  9.99

www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3465321

"What is the new mythology to be,  the mythology of this unified earth
as of one harmonious being?" 

Joseph Campbell

A Metaphor for Our Time

By Lauren Raine MFA    (www.laurenraine.com)

Pueblo mythology tells that when each of the 3 previous worlds ended, it was Spider Woman who led the people through the sipapu, the kiva (or birth canal) into the next world.   With so many people interested in the “2012 prophecy”, which reached epic proportions through Hollywood, it seems strange that so few know of Spider Woman, the midwife/creatrix, who plays a key role in this metaphor for our time.   Perhaps the World Wide Web is Spider Woman's latest appearance.  She's increasingly making visible the connections, the strands of the Web of life, whether we speak of an evolving global human culture, ecology, quantum physics, or synchronicity and integral psychology.  “Spider Woman’s Hands” is my contemporary exploration of this myth, as a visual artist, community art project, and as a story teller.

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A HOUSE OF DOORS
~Open Poems~

by Lauren Raine

Felicia Miller

Joanna Brouk

I don't believe we can know who we are without re-discovering those people who had a lot to do with who we were, and who we became. In 2004 I found a treasure in an old cardboard box. A collection of poetry written by myself and my friends some 35 years ago when we had the good fortune to be young in Berkeley in the halcyon days of the early '70's. Many of them I illustrated. I'm delighted to publish these poems and art finally - and to add to the mix over 30 years of poems that reflect my journey since. Joanna, Felicia, thank you. Wherever you are, we were beautiful.

available from:   BLURB.COM BOOKSTORE

THE RAINBOW BRIDGE: An Overview

 THE RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE

“Rainbow Bridge consciousness is a way of thinking and acting that allows us to hold multiple perspectives in our minds simultaneously....As the saying goes, there are always two sides to a story. Rainbow Bridge consciousness is unity consciousness.”

           Brent N. Hunter,  The Rainbow Bridge Project

I'm pleased to announce that I've published  a limited edition of my 53 card deck  "The Rainbow Bridge Oracle".  The  deck comes with a velvet bag.   Because I'm self-publishing, the book and the cards must be ordered separately. THE RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE DECK  is $30.00 plus shipping, signed by the artist,  and can be purchased through PayPal at my website  www.rainewalker.com.      Please allow up to 30 days for delivery for the card deck.

The Accompanying Book is   THE RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE

Softcover                           $27.95
Hardcover, Dust Jacket   $41.95
Hardcover, ImageWrap   $45.95

E-Book:                           $5.00

118 pages



 For a preview visit this LINK

                                                   

 
In the Tarot, the Higher Arcana is a progression through what mythologist Joseph Campbell called the "Hero’s Journey".  The first card in the traditional Tarot deck  is The Fool .  The Fool represents the utterly open innocence, and infinite possibilities,  with with we incarnate into this world.  The Arcana progress through different  experiences, revelations, trials and initiations. The last card of the Journey is The World, the return Home. Although my Oracle Deck is not a Tarot, I have still used this metaphor in its creation.

The journey is a Circle.

EXCERPTS:

THE STAR

The Stars are a perfect image of the constancy of Grace in our lives.  To raise one's eyes to the vast azure sky at twilight, and behold the ubiquitous wonder of the stars is to find wonder, and  inspiration that flows from the  Source.  The waters of Grace are eternal, and offer hope, healing and inspiration as they pour into the sustaining pool.  The woman's nude figure further enhances this image; there is nothing to fear or to hide, no artifice in the grace that pours through her hands, cleansing and nourishing the soul, bringing hope and renewal.

Reversed, the card could mean that you need to reacquaint yourself with your source of Grace.  The light of Grace, like starlight, is eternally present for you - don't be afraid to ask. You have become perhaps too exhausted, or despairing, to remember.  Or perhaps you have come to believe, erroneously and to your detriment, that you are "unworthy".  This is not true.  Grace is available for all.  Go outside, lie beneath the stars, and ask for the Grace that is unconditionally given to everyone.

VISION

 In this immeasurable darkness,

 be the power that rounds your senses 

 in their magic ring,
 the sense of their mysterious encounter

 Rainier Maria Rilke

Among the Lakota, long preparations were made for the Vision Quest.  Those who sought  initiation fasted, prayed, and prepared themselves  to  "call for vision".  They then went to a special place in the wilderness.  When a young man returned with  a vision it was shared with the tribe,  and sometimes examined to see if it had prophetic or ceremonial significance for not only the individual, but for the entire tribe.

This is a tool we have largely lost.   True visionary experience is "soul language"; like dreams and synchronistic experiences, a vision has multiple layers of meaning, and transcends  time as we understand it.   Visions, like dreams, communicate universal and personal truths, and whether unintended or intentionally induced in some way, can  catalyze a spiritual path or a life's work.  You are encouraged to "call for vision" in your own way. Do it in a sacred manner, and share and discuss your vision with others of like mind.

Reversed:  Visions can be profoundly significant.......but sometimes there is also a fine line between spiritual revelation and highly subjective schizophrenia.  Practice discernment.

The Card Deck  may be ordered from:   www.rainewalker.com - order form  

To purchase the accompanying book visit:  

THE RAINBOW BRIDGE ORACLE:  A Divination System

All artwork is copyright Lauren Raine MFA (2011)

New Edition of Spider Woman's Hands

"What might we see, how might we live if we saw with a webbed vision? 

The world seen through a web of relationships - as delicate as spider’s silk, 

yet strong enough to hang a bridge on."

Catherine Keller, "From A Broken Web"

SPIDER WOMAN'S HANDS:

Weaving a  New Web

is now available in a new, more comprehensive version!

Softcover:                              $40.95 
Hardcover, Dust Jacket:       $48.95
Hardcover, ImageWrap:       $51.95
Apple Ebook:                         $  9.99

www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/3465321

"What is the new mythology to be,  the mythology of this unified earth
as of one harmonious being?" 

Joseph Campbell

A Metaphor for Our Time

By Lauren Raine MFA    (www.laurenraine.com)

Years ago I was enjoying a panoramic view of the Sonoran desert.   I happened to be sitting near a spider web, stretched between two dry branches.  I realized, by shifting my point of view, I could view the entire landscape through the web’s intricate, transparent pattern…..a  landscape  seen through the ineffable strands of an almost invisible web.  

Pueblo mythology tells that when each of the 3 previous worlds ended, it was Spider Woman who led the people through the sipapu, the kiva (or birth canal) into the next world.   With so many people interested in the “2012 prophecy”, which reached epic proportions through Hollywood, it seems strange that so few know of Spider Woman, the midwife/creatrix, who plays a key role in this metaphor for our time.   Perhaps the World Wide Web is Spider Woman's latest appearance.  She's increasingly making visible the connections, the strands of the Web of life, whether we speak of an evolving global human culture, ecology, quantum physics, or synchronicity and integral psychology.  “Spider Woman’s Hands” is my contemporary exploration of this myth, as a visual artist, community art project, and as a story teller.

In Pueblo mythology, Spider Woman is also called Tse Che Nako, Thought Woman. Thought Woman creates the world with what she imagines, weaves with the stories she tells.  We also participate in this imaginal power.   

"The question is not so much "What do I learn from stories" as "What stories do I want to live?" 

David R. Loy, "The World is Made of Stories"

Navajo rugs often have “Spiderwoman’s Cross” woven into the pattern.  The cross of Spider Woman represents balance - the union of the 4 directions.  Spider Woman is at the Center:  the 5th direction is a hologram, reflecting every other strand.   The ancient Maya used stones called ‘spiders’ to map the four cardinal directions required for ceremonies, and artists of the prehistoric Mississippian culture often depicted a spider on shell gorgets with a cross on its back.  Among the Osage, special women had a spider symbol tattooed on their hands, also with a cross at its center.  

As anthropologist Carol Patterson-Rudolph has written, to the Navajo,   Grandmother Spider Woman ((NA ASHJE’II ’ASDZÁÁ) represents initiation into a mature way of being.  The "Web" becomes visible within an integral, relational paradigm:   a "webbed vision".   Spider Woman thus is a bridge between the mundane, mythic, and sacred dimensions of life.  Like a spider web, her transparent, circular strands exist on multiple levels of meaning.   

In his book on Hopi religion, John Loftin writes that:

“Spider Woman was the first to weave. Her techniques and patterns have stood the test of time, or more properly, the test of timelessness.…..…..Weaving is not an act in which one creates something oneself – it is an act in which one uncovers a pattern that was already there.”

I believe Spider Woman is a myth with profound meaning for our time, in a world that urgently needs a vision of life as a shimmering web of interdependency and fundamental unity.   Exploring what that might mean I have  choreographed public web-weaving rituals (2004), made masks for theatre, and in 2007 received an Alden B. Dow Fellowship which allowed me to create a community art project called “Spider Woman’s Hands” in Michigan (2007).  The Project was duplicated with the Creative Spirit Center in 2008 (also in Michigan), and in 2009 I created “Weavers” for Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.   

“Tse Che Nako, Thought-Woman, the Spider is sitting in her room thinking up a story now -I'm telling you the story she is thinking. “

Keresan Pueblo saying

    References:

    Loftin, John D., Religion and Hopi Life, Second Edition, Indiana University Press

    Keller, Catherine, From a Broken Web (1989), Thames & Hudson

    Patterson-Rudolph, Carol, On the Trail of Spiderwoman, 1997, Ancient City Press

   Franke, Judith   A., The Gift of Spider Woman,  Dickson Mounds Museum, 

   THE LIVING  MUSEUM, volume 61, No. 2, 1999

The Masks of the Goddess

 Preview the book at:   Blurb.com

I began my project in 1999, when I made 20 multi-cultural masks for the Spiral Dance, an annual event held at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco by the Reclaiming Collective. Making the masks meant considerable research for me - exploring the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe, or imagining, from archeology or medieval alchemy, what the face of the Sumarian Goddess Lilith might look like, or Inanna, or Gnostic Sophia. 

I wanted to know how these stories were conversant in my own life, and as I worked, I began to understand why certain Goddesses had always been important to me, such as Hindu Kali and Tibetan Tara. In psychological terms, I found I had internalized two universal archetypes of the Great Mother: the "Dark Goddess" and the "White Goddess". But this did not do justice to the intimacy I felt.

In 2000 I deepened my understanding of mask traditions by studying with Ida Bagus Anom and other Balinese master mask makers in Mas, and there I extended the series with a number of collaborative works, which were exhibited at Buka Creati Gallery in Ubud. As the project has evolved, producers and cast members have contributed writings, performances, insights and little miracles to the story of the masks, filling them with energy. No artist could ask for more, and I'm privileged to document this 10-year project, and the women and men who danced the Goddess into the World, bringing Her many faces into the hearts and  of many.

Included are writings, interviews and excerpts from M. Macha Nightmare, Mary Kay Landon, Ann Weller, Elizabeth Fuller, Brooke Medicine Eagle, Grey Eagle, Erica Swadley, and many others. And wonderful photographs by Peter Hughes, Thomas Lux, Ann Beam, and Ileya Stewart.

To learn more about Stories of the Goddess, visit the "Masks of the Goddess" section of my website. All of these stories are in the book as well.

AVAILABLE THROUGH: BLURB.COM - visit my bookstore!

EXCERPTS:

SARASWATI
Patron of the Arts
Love is Saraswati's river
flowing through our lands.
She will feed the rice fields,
She will accept our woven offerings.
She will bear our ashes
and the fires of Kintamanito the sea.
Formless,
she neither takes nor gives:we impose these significances
upon the flowers we cast in her.
From birth to death,
Saraswati's river
sustains us to the sea.
I Made Sura Warini

Valerie James as "Sophia"

"The Latin word for mask is persona. And masks are all about circles, the round of changing personae that encircle our souls. We’re all made of many personalities, wearing, in the course of our lives, many life masks. Our faces are dissolving before our eyes daily, through time and space, the "I" we bring to each passing experience and role. And beyond the last mask is the mystery of spirit. How can we dance more lightly with the mask that is ever changing? One way is to observe well what masks we create for ourselves, and respect the power of the masks we wear, becoming self-aware shape shifters within the mythic conversation that is taking place all around us. "

"Grandmother Spider Woman is the divine Weaver in Native American creation stories. Her web is a shining web of spiritual, human and ecological relationships. When we do ritual about Spider Woman we are weaving ourselves into the Great Web of relationship, strand by strand, story by story. "

"Pomona was among the Numina, guardian spirits who watched over people, places, or homes. The Numina were the holy spirits of place, from which the word "numinous" derives. Pomona protected and inspired the abundance of the fruitful gardens and orchards.

She had her own priest in Rome, called the Flamen Pomonalis. A grove sacred to her was called the Pomonal, located not far from Ostia, the ancient port of Rome."



All Images and Text are Copyright Lauren Raine, Thomas Lux, Peter Hughes, Ann Beam and Ileya Stewart.

A House of Doors: Open Poems

A HOUSE OF DOORS ~Open Poems~

1971 to 2004

 Lauren Raine
Felicia Miller
Joanna Brouk

Available from:

BLURB.COM BOOKSTORE

I don't believe we can know who we are without re-discovering those people who had a lot to do with who we were, and who we became. In 2004 I found a treasure in an old cardboard box. A collection of poetry written by myself and my friends some 35 years ago when we had the good fortune to be young in Berkeley in the halcyon days of the early '70's. Many of them I illustrated. I'm delighted to publish these poems and art finally - and to add to the mix over 30 years of poems that reflect my journey since. Joanna, Felicia, thank you. Wherever you are, we were beautiful.

FOR THREE WEEKS

the cool moon, bound by occult cords

moves through the houses
of memory and sleep
distills night in a bowl

But on the night of the full moon

what is mirrored
in a still pool?


Felicia Miller    (1972)

IT WAS ONLY 

three strands of hair
falling across an eye half closed
a flash of green light, 
curtain of eyelash,

a snapshot in my memory book

where you exist,  still
the moment unlost

expanding, weightless



Lauren Raine (1972)

The Artist's Oracular Cook Book

~ Divine Recipes for the Muse ~

"Art is food for the Soul. Bon Appetit."

In the summer of 2005 I was blessed with a residency at the Artist's Enclave at IPark in Connecticut. At the time, I was exploring my own version of the Tarot, and playing with the idea of Divination cards. It's an IPark tradition for each resident to contribute a special "cocktail recipe" when they leave. And so, in the course of that magical summer of art making, The Artist's Oracular Cook Book became my contribution.

Ask the Muse a question and then pick a card. It works for me.

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Available in hard cover
with dust jacket or image wrapped from: BLURB.COM BOOKSTORE

More than you can imagine is possible.

The most important
ingredient

is believing
that it's possible.

When the Sun is shining - Play!

in the dappled play
of light and shadow,
the amazing rainbow
~palette of color ~
the purple taste
of grapes, of lemon grass,
pearls of raindrop epiphanies
strung on a shining cord,
iridescent gleaming words
crystallizing
on a pristine page......

A Feast!

Take good care of your work.
Nurture your creativity.

Protect the children
of your imagination.
Avoid people
who talk you into being smaller
than you really are.

And anyone or anything
that wounds your enthusiasm.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All images and text copyright Lauren Raine MFA 2008