“PETRO WAS BORN OUT OF THIS RAGE. It is not evil; it is the rage against the evil fate which the African suffered, the brutality of his displacement and his enslavement. It is the violence that rose of that rage, to protest against it. It is the crack of the slave-whip sounding constantly, a never-to-be-forgotten ghost, in the Petro rites. It is the raging revolt of the slaves against the Napoleonic forces. And it is the delirium of their triumph. For it was the Petro cult, born in the hills, nurtured in secret, which gave both the moral force and the actual organization to the escaped slaves who plotted and trained swooped down upon the plantations and led the rest of the slaves in revolt that, by 1804, had made of Haiti the second free colony in the western hemisphere, following the United States.
+Maya Deren”
sibyl #3 / zili dechennen (zili unleashed), acrylic, sequins, faceted jewels, rhinestones and glass on wood, 2015.
Ravyn Lenae - Moon Shoes EP
Executively Produced By Monte Booker
Mixed & Mastered By Bryan "Kawaakari" Schwaller @ Classickstudios
final stretch. sibyl #3. #amen. #tanialaure.
“Ancient moon priestesses were called virgins. ‘Virgin’ meant not married, not belonging to a man - a woman who was ‘one-in-herself’. The very word derives from a Latin root meaning strength, force, skill; and was later applied to men: virle. Ishtar, Diana, Astarte, Isis were all called virgin, which did not refer to sexual chastity, but sexual independence. And all great culture heroes of the past, mythic or historic, were said to be born of virgin mothers: Marduk, Gilgamesh, Buddha, Osiris, Dionysus, Genghis Khan, Jesus - they were all affirmed as sons of the Great Mother, of the Original One, their worldly power deriving from her. When the Hebrews used the word, and in the original Aramaic, it meant ‘maiden’ or ‘young woman’, with no connotations to sexual chastity. But later Christian translators could not conceive of the ‘Virgin Mary’ as a woman of independent sexuality, needless to say; they distorted the meaning into sexually pure, chaste, never touched.
+Monica Sjoo”
Yemanja comes to Brooklyn | Photoville NYC
Work © Wayne Lawrence
“You can be a thousand different women. It’s your choice which one you want to be. It’s about freedom and sovereignty. You celebrate who you are. You say, ‘This is my kingdom.’”
sibyl #3. progress.
"only the poets [artists] know..."